Poetic? Poétique? (Coffret Deluxe)
Author: Bernar Venet
Publisher: JBE Books
This collector's box set is the culmination of the conceptual poetry work of the mathematician sculptor Bernar Venet. It contains three exceptional elements:
The original work: A contemporary edition of a poem, created by Bernar Venet, strictly limited and numbered to 25.
The art book: Poetic? Poétique ? Anthology 1967-2017 (376 pages, 22.5 x 29 cm).
The double 33 RPM vinyl: The sound adaptation of the poems from the book, read and interpreted with the complicity of the 'American voice' of conceptual poetry: Kenneth Goldsmith.
Poetic? Poétique ? Anthology 1967-2017
The book gathers for the first time the entirety of the poetry production never exhibited and rarely published by the French artist Bernar Venet. This collection of 248 poems constitutes an essential marker of conceptual writing that emerged in the 1960s and, with hindsight, positions itself as one of the first building blocks of a major literary shift in the 20th century: writing without writing, the keystone of our relationship with text in the digital age.
The texts, written in French, English, or mathematical language, composed in lists, diagrams, or prose that can be appreciated at a purely informational level, are here cut and pasted, the information they carry being shifted into the field of poetry. Through this gesture, Bernar Venet brings to the surface of the page the visual and musical matter of pure knowledge. The non-understanding of the text or the obsolescence of the information gives this ensemble a poetic force with an encyclopedic charm.
This anthology is illuminated by a critical text by Mathieu Copeland and an essay by Véronique Perriol.
The Two Voices of Conceptual Poetry
The double 33 RPM vinyl of this box set was born from an exceptional meeting between Bernar Venet and the famous American poet Kenneth Goldsmith (a major theorist of conceptual poetry and author of the manifesto Writing Without Writing, also offered by this stand).
The idea of this record is to transform a visual anthology (lists, diagrams, mathematical language) into a true auditory experience, intimate and captivating.
The composition of the discs
The project is divided into two linguistic and sound acts:
Disc 1 (French Version): Bernar Venet lends his own voice and reads a selection of his conceptual poems in French.
Disc 2 (English Version): Kenneth Goldsmith takes hold of the texts and interprets them in English, giving them a typically American resonance.
In summary, this double vinyl is a sound dialogue between two giants of art and conceptual poetry, demonstrating that even Bernar Venet's mathematical equations possess an authentic musicality when read aloud.
- Year
- 2018
- ISBN
- 978-2-36568-015-8
- Pages
- 376
- Price
- 473.93 EUR — In stock
From the same publisher
- The American Subject
- La carte des précipitations sentimentales
- Suce moi, une fabuleuse histoire des bonbons de France
- Claire Chesnier
- L'écriture sans écriture
- Kim Jong Il Looking at Things
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