Jean-Francois Bory - Some Like It With Words exhibition

 

I hadn't heard of Jean-Francois Bory either (oh, you had? Good, well done. You are attuned to the outer fringes of the artworld!) but knowing the curator, Frédéric Acquaviva, I was aware of this one-day show on Saturday so I went along and I'm very glad I did because the works on display were amazing, from the visual poetry to the typewriter 'sculptures'. The man himself was present and it was good to have a chat with him. Frédéric is curating another show featuring a selection of artists very soon in London. I'll let you know the details when I know. meanwhile, enjoy the images...

Joe Tilson - The software chart questionnaire - The Magazine of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (May/June, 1968)

Took a punt on this seeing as it was reasonably priced online. The best feature is undoubtedly Joe Tilson's 'software chart questionnaire'. It reminds me of the art/text intersection explored by New Worlds magazine from the same period. I looked up the forthcoming 'book' mentioned on the final page but it turned out to be a plush portfolio of prints, therefore way out of my price range should any appear for sale. Never mind. I'm very happy with these pages in the ICA magazine. 

Ink drawing: Whatcha Gonna Do?

Whatcha Gonna Do?, RTomens, 2025

 

The entrance to Hell / 'Anarchist' book fair groupthink hell / Vispo: For All I Care

 

I found the entrance to Hell on Saturday. It's near Waterloo station. 

Meanwhile, just a few yards away, I had to enter another kind of hell, the Anarchist Book Fair.

Yes, I had to enter because I was helping someone do a mimeograph workshop. My job being to type some stencils to be rolled through the mimeograph machine.

Apart from the Clod magazine stall and a couple of others I noted as I sped through the tunnels (yes, the event was in some tunnels - how...underground! - what's more, tunnels famous for being decorated by graffiti artists, as if the political messaging from the stalls wasn't traumatic enough my eyes were treated to a visual blitz of spray can...stuff) the politics all ran down the same tram lines (oh, plus, at least a few old-school sellers offering theoretical history books which, in this context, seemed quaintly old-fashioned since some of it was peddled by bearded men to whom Kropotkin actually meant something).

I used to think anarchy was about rebellion and free-thinking but here was a majority all saying the same thing instead of offering alternatives to the regimented official Alternative - blah, blah. 

I'm too old to care?  

To me the spirit of anarchy resides in Dada, in actual diversity of thought, in unique creative vision etc.

What do I know? 

For All I Care, RTomens, 2025

Metafisikal Translations - Eduardo Paolozzi / Paolozzi's artist's books (absence of)

 

I've been watching it for years. 

The price never dropped.

I couldn't afford this, the one artist's book by Paolozzi that I didn't have. 

Three weeks ago I got a tax rebate so I could afford it, in theory, but should I really spend that much on one book? A 48-page, screen printed book from 1962, signed by Paolozzi. Big deal!

'You don't need it.'

'Of course I don't need it. Who actually needs books? What do we 'need' apart from food, housing and enough money to pay the bills?'

'Then again, what's money? There are no pockets in a shroud, are there?'

'No, so you can't even take one book with you when you...go.'

'Don't remind me, please, of either my mortality or the fact that my book collection cannot go with me...and anyway, it'll be nothingness...forever...'

'So before you sleep The Big Sleep, buy what you want if you can afford it!'

Luckily, a London bookseller was offering Metafisikal Translations at the joint lowest price online so I emailed them and cheekily asked if they could drop the price at all. They agreed. It still took me a few days to finally decide to buy it.

Little seems to have been written about Paolozzi's artist's books. They're mentioned in some monographs, usually in passing. The best source has been Eduardo Paolozzi - Writings And Interviews, edited by Robin Spencer, a superb collection and essential for anyone wanting to dive more deeply into Paolozzi's work. That does include this book and The Metallization Of A Dream, but strangely, neither Kex nor Abba Zaba. The Metallization Of A Dream does get two pages to itself in the Whitechapel Gallery's monograph to accompany their major exhibition in 2017 and Judith Collins at least dedicates a page to Paolozzi's use of texts in her monograph, tying in his word collages with Gysin and Burroughs' cut-ups.

Obviously his major works according to most critics will be the sculptures, followed by his prints and collages but as someone who works with words and has had a few books made I naturally find Paolozzi's books fascinating. Anyway, here are a few pictures of my Metafisikal Translations. You can scroll through the whole book here on the Tate gallery page.

Vispo: I Meant To Say / Keep on taking the tablets / Type, Type Overtype/ On making mistakes in Art (?)

 

I Meant To Say, RTomens, 2025

This one almost ended up in the bin at the early stages but I decided not to let it go, not to give in. It wasn't even due to exist because I was only testing the printer and having done so decided to work with the result. 

Earlier this morning, one did go in the bin. It wasn't going that well anyway when the doctor called, which broke my flow, my concentration (I do actually concentrate when typing, you know, despite results which sometimes suggest otherwise) - two more tablets to take - whoopee! Soon I'll be a walking dispensary with a body functioning purely on complex chemical combinations designed to give me more time on planet Earth - more time to make art - yes! Be positive! As a kid watching The Six Million Dollar Man I dreamt of having bionic parts like Steve Austin that would enable me to be a superhuman. Today, the reality is that my science/medicine-enhanced self will soon be taking seven tablets a day just to stay alive and be able to walk about.

So I start anew with what became I Meant To Say. A few loose lines, wavy lines of various letters. Those you can still just about see behind the dense slab of letters that form the main shape and they emerge above it. It wasn't going well. I had no direction, or rather, no sense of direction as I usually do, the kind born not of planning but in the moment, working as the act of typing takes over, towards something.

Oh, I may as well draw some circles. Why not? They can't ruin what isn't much to start with. Look for some text and find it in Paul Valery's Analects (Vol 14). Add that. 

Almost give up.

I'll add a figure. Make him small. Careful about where he's placed. Yes, just right.

The typing that followed was a kind of manic desire to erase all legibility. Overtyping is a stubborn act, I know. It demands persistence beyond reason. Well, I was in that kind of mood by then.

Type

Type

Type

Type

Type

Type

&

Type

Then stop.

You'll note a mistake. That one almost caused me to stop right there, but I remembered Sun Ra saying something like 'Why don't you do something right and make a mistake?' Only yesterday I read a quote from Mark E.Smith saying 'With our stuff, I don't want to make it faultless like, cos then you've just blown it' (from Messing Up The Paintwork). 

Some mistakes are good. Some are just mistakes which don't ruin whatever they occur in and some really do add to a creation. Compared to computer-created text/visual poetry, the typewriter is a mistake machine. There is typed visual poetry that is the result of painstaking perfection, each letter/mark placed perfectly to create a clean, complex, tidy image. I always think the artist doing that in on the spectrum. I have neither the patience nor skill to do that kind of thing. My work is probably littered with 'mistakes', by which I mean wrong moves which I manage to use to the advantage of the piece which grows organically as a result.

Life's too short to worry about small mistakes but if I keep on taking the tablets I'll have longer to make a few more.

Vispo: What Did He Say?

What Did He Say? RTomens, 2025

As in you're unsure of what he said because he mumbled or spoke whilst others were speaking or spoke quietly...

...or as in you can't believe what he said, even though you heard it quite clearly. 

People can talk loud and say nothing, as James Brown told us. Talk today is cheap, if by talking we include online chat. Talk's currency has been devalued by the internet. Once upon a time, talking was actually opening your mouth and saying something to a person nearby. Do you remember when we'd go to bars and talk? People still do that, of course, but in my life it happens far less frequently these days. I 'don't get around much anymore', as another song goes.

Today we talk to people we've never met and will not meet. Our 'friends' and 'followers' or someone who's neither. Some even argue with names online. I confess to having done so years ago, but I've wised up to the futility of that. In a cynical mood, I may even doubt the worth of an online stranger-friend - any of them. People request my friendship frequently. I rarely accept. Only a good shared friend may tempt me. Half the time these people only want you to see what they're doing, having no interest in you or what you're doing - the nerve!

Vispo/drawing: Tired

Tired, RTomens, 2025

Our minds have grown tired...

It's conceivable that even the youngest (adult) mind may grow tired...tired of constantly scrolling, perhaps...tired of thinking about life - even as a teenager!

Meanwhile, at the other end of life, I have a good excuse - the accumulation of years can weigh heavy - memories are a burden! Carrying this mind and these bones around for almost 70 years! 

In Tired, The Walking Man (featured in previous pieces) has given up walking. He has laid himself down for a rest, trying to blank out the chatter of text, of people. He wants peace. He should visit the countryside, where the only sounds are those of the birds.

Vispo: Break Down The Barriers / Normal thinking in the arts

Break Down The Barriers, RTomens, 2025

In the shop 

 

An A5-sized piece for a change. I haven't worked this small for a while. One obvious advantage is that density in type can be achieved more quickly than in a larger space. You may notice that the black is heavier due to a new ribbon. This makes me ponder how much use I should try to get out of a ribbon. Perhaps I should change them more frequently. Then again, I've seen many pieces in books which are light in terms of blackness and it doesn't harm the overall effect. The temptation is always to get as much out of a ribbon as is possible before weakening the impact too much. 

'Normal thought' has to be placed in context, of course. I just liked the phrase when it leapt out of a short story. Normal thinking in one context may be abnormal in another. Normal is subjective, I suppose. Making visual poetry isn't 'normal', but does that make it abnormal? Artists like to think of themselves as not normal compared to those who don't make art. The romantic notion of the artists as 'crazy' outsider on the fringes of a 'straight' society dominated by common people who do normal jobs and rot their brains consuming normal entertainment - hah!

Scratch the surface of some artists though and you'll find they think very normally about certain things. Normal, that is, for the arts. Yes, there are supposedly 'proper' ways of thinking regarding some subjects in the arts community and woe betide anyone who thinks differently. Thinking outside the designated box could get you blacklisted. Ironic, eh? These people pride themselves in being 'individuals', not boring 'normal' people, yet they hold common beliefs that are the expected norm when you're an artist. There are rules in this world of 'rebels', you know. Don't break them! 

It's impossible to avoid groupthink, of course. Unless you're worldview is one-in-a-million on every subject you will find people for whom your ideas are normal. Yet to me, it is still unhealthy for groupthink to exists in the arts. Are artists not individuals? Do they not hold a diverse array of opinions on various subjects, just like non-artists? In my experience, no. Or rather, they may not dare reveal their thoughts on certain subjects for fear of being cast out. 

Breaking down the barriers of 'normal thought' as imposed on us by others, be they ultra-conservative or 'radical', can only be healthy for society and us as individuals.

Vispo: Politics

RTomens, 2025