experimental writing, art etc.: linear texts, vispo, abstract stuff, independent editions and mags, asemic writing etc, a one-morning exhibit and talk @ Istituto Svizzero in Rome, Jul. 7th, 2021. thanks to Professor Nils Röller and the artists and students at the Institute.
with works and editions from my collections. plus a wide selection of works from Benway Series.
«I am Michael Jacobson, a book and sound poetry publisher at Post-Asemic Press. This video displays the books I have written and released out into the world. They include my collected asemic calligraphy ‘Works & Interviews,’ my ribald-punk senryu poetry collection ‘Hei Kuu,’ a prose poetry novella ‘Somnolent Game,’ and my forthcoming (September 2023) abstract illuminated manuscript: ‘id est: neo scribalist asemic expressionism.’ All of these books express different chapters in my life experience, but they all tie together my personal mythology in the codex form».
Michael Jacobson is a writer, artist, publisher, and independent curator from Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA/Turtle Island. His books include an abstract illuminated manuscript titled ‘id est: neo scribalist asemic expressionism,’ a prose poetry novella ‘Somnolent Game’ (Post-Asemic Press), his collected asemic writing ‘Works & Interviews’ (Post-Asemic Press), his autobiographical collection of senryu poems ‘Hei Kuu’ (Post-Asemic Press), and his EP of sound poetry ‘Schizo Variations;’ he is also co-editor of ‘An Anthology Of Asemic Handwriting’ (Punctum Books). Besides writing books, he curates a gallery for asemic writing called The New Post-Literate. He also sits on the editorial board of SCRIPTjr.nl. Recently, he was published in ‘The Last Vispo Anthology’ (Fantagraphics). In 2017, he curated the Minnesota Center for Book Arts exhibit: Asemic Writing: Offline & In The Gallery. Other countries where he has curated exhibits of asemic writing include Mexico, Spain, and Malta. His online interviews are at Poemeleon, SampleKanon, Asymptote Journal, Twenty Four Hours, David Alan Binder, GAS, Utsanga, Schizoaffective, and at Medium. In the past, he created the cover art for Rain Taxi’s 2014 winter issue. Back in 2017, he founded Post-Asemic Press, to publish asemic writing, visual poetry, experimental poetry, and audio recordings of sound poetry. In 2019, he was written up in the book ‘Asemic: The Art of Writing’ (University of Minnesota Press) by Peter Schwenger; it has an entire chapter dedicated to Jacobson’s calligraphic work. He also founded and administers the asemic writing Facebook group. In his spare time, he curates a cyberspace gallery of planets dubbed THAT: A Plan(et).
Shanty Town packs a powerful punch. It stakes you straight through the heart and throws you overboard, only to next moment toss you a life buoy. It’s Grzegorz Wroblewski’s opus magnum, in which he brought together the heart and the mind on a whole new level. I see a world that worries him but nonetheless he manages to draw pure beauty from it. Somewhere in between, a fragile hope for salvation emerges. His own and ours.
— Karina Obara
Rough, unkept, spontaneous and free, Grzegorz Wróblewski’s Shanty Town depicts a blurry world of post-literate indecipherability. With coarsely drawn shapes imposed upon a chaos of asemic writing, this collection is built from the rubble of uncomfortable truths. A triumph of bold writing.
Jaap Blonk (born 1953 in the Netherlands) first became known worldwide for his performances of sound poetry. He has performed and taught on all continents. From his sound poetry scores he gradually developed an independent body of visual work. This new product of his abundant phantasy is a book of colourful and playful drawings, adding new dimensions to writing. Myriads of little beings populate each page. As in the artist’s 2019 book “111 Recipes” they are distant descendants of Blonk’s earlier phonetic signs. From the introduction by Canadain writer, artist and scholar Derek Beualieu: “Each possible garden is a harvest of sound and image, of script and performance, which asks the reader to be open to a new menu.” One element here is the depiction of a struggle between restriction and freedom as a reminder of the recent lockdown periods: in each drawing some of the tiny beings are boxed, while many others roam freely. Sometimes the images look like scientific illustrations from an unknown world, depicting mysterious interactions and behaviors. But always there is poetry in these protozoa as they squirm and swim though a microscopic linguistic field, ebbing and flowing, gathering and fracturing – a constant dance of interplay and restriction. This edition fits the history of Post-Asemic Press beautifully, as a publisher of novel ways of writing. Asemic: no semantic meaning in the word sense, abstract, but with a lively and abundant musical expression. Small wonder with Jaap Blonk’s background as a world-renowned sound artist.
“These asemic poems move fluently between language, design and illustration, creating informational graphics where the information remains unknown, inviting diverse interpretations. The suggestion that these are scientific illustrations from an unknown world depicting mysterious interactions and behaviors—animal, vegetable, chemical—does little to make their uncomfortable strangeness more familiar. If anything, the sense these are poetic explanations of processes and activities brings their alienation more fully into consciousness.” —Michael Betancourt
“Stare gently at each possible garden Jaap Blonk has sown here until it begins to vibrate, layer by layer, lifting off the page, two dimensions shifting into three then four. Keep staring and the gardens and landscapes and maps will move and grow and glow into and through and with your eyes. Continue to stare and they will become your eyes and then your ears. To reap the tactile possibilities Blonk has generously cultivated, stare longer, and listen closely (listen as if you are the soil), page after page. When and if you are ready to eat, gently shake the pages onto the tip of your tongue (no seasoning or dressing needed). Enjoy the harvest!” —Crag Hill
>>> with a special dedication to De Villo Sloan, who loved my book so much as to ban me for no reason <<<
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See more glitchasemic images here (2016, hosted by Jim Lwftwich), here (2016), here (2016), here (2017, Otoliths), here (2018, Slova), here (2019), etc etc.
Take note:
Hâle Turhan & Gökhan Turhan experimented “glitched asemic writing” since 2015 or 2016, I think, and I definitely want to praise their work @ Ada & Arx too (e.g. here).
As the blurb of their book Hür (Xerolage #65, Dec. 2016) says: “Xeno-Poiesis is needed within the entagled bubbly nodes of the Remixocene”.
