5th International Meeting of Experimental, Sound and Visual Poetry

Centro Cultural Recoleta  -  26 . September . 2002  -  Buenos Aires

Presentation

By the Committee on Organization

Buenos Aires, September 2002

For three years (1998,1999 and 2000), all visual poetry meetings took place at the Barraca Vorticista, summoning not less than 50 people interested in this kind of Fine Arts, which had originally begun in La Plata in 1967 with the Zero Diagonal Movement (Movimiento Diagonal Cero) with artists Edgardo A. Vigo, Luis Pazos, Carlos Ginzburg and Jorge de Lujan Gutiérrez.

Last year, the 4th meeting took place at the Espacio Giesso during one single day, and there we realized more and more people were getting interested in visual poetry. This year's event at the Centro Cultural Recoleta we had even more people coming, and eventually it lasted for a whole week.

We got so surprised to receive so many artworks sent by Argentinian artists (paper, objects, videos, multimedia and performing projects) that we realized visual poetry is alive and kicking, thus enriching the heritage of the pioneering artists, about 30 years ago.

Artists from all over the world sent their works building on a tradition in visual poetry that produces publications, performances, meetings and seminars non-stop, adding new technologies like tools, eventually improving their working techniques and promotion.

Visual poetry has come a long way. Apart from Mallarme and the "words of freedom", dating from not less than a century ago, other expressions have surfaced, producing an universe of hybrid works where the limits of the most traditional expressive ways (prints, texts and performances) have lost their original concept to become other works, still difficult to sort, maybe because they just don't need to be classified.

This hybridism process was going on gradually since the '60s, adding new ways of printing (fast offset and xerography), as well as sound and vision methods (magnetophone and video).

Last, with computers and digitalization, both in sound and vision registers, artists began working with no limits, eventually introducing works currently creating a true revolution in visual poetry.

This represents a breaking-point towards the first speeches, but also a continuance, indeed a great contradiction.

Visual poetry will live on only if it keeps on denying itself, and today, like a rising spiral, it will still be in the same place as yesterday, but a little higher.

Today in Argentina

We can't stop referring to what's happening to us Argentinians who have been fooled in good faith, and in the way we live.

Members of the government, judges, bankers and corrupt businessmen have led us to a situation almost unknown in our country, which makes us being forced  to work really hard in order to produce our works, and also to send it by mail, or other assorted media.

We organizers of this meeting salute all partcipating artists that have printed and sent their works, later to conduct their performances.

Undoubtedly every artist has decided to keep on struggling; we call it a "struggle", as we consider artistic practice "a kind of struggle" for a better lifestyle, and a bigger freedom to express ourselves.

So we say, quoting those anti-globalization demonstrators from Seattle, a few years ago, that RESISTING MEANS EXISTING.

Photos of the Meeting

Essays

Featuring

Works by 162 artists from 15 countries on

. Graphic .

. Objects .

. Artist Books .

. Publications .

. Multimedia .

. Video Poetry .

. Performances .

. Poetic Actions .

. Sound Poetry .

Special focus on

. Contemporary Spanish Visual Poetry .

Artists Participants

G=graphic | O=object | LA=artist book | CD=multimedia

V=video-poetry | PE=performance | PU=publication

See the Program of Activities

Opening

September 26, 19 hs.

Centro Cultural Recoleta

Junín 1930, Buenos Aires

room 14  -  1st floor

[ until October 6, 2002 ]

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Committee on Organization

VORTICE  ARGENTINA

coordination by Fernando García Delgado,

Ivana Martínez Vollaro and Juan Carlos Romero

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Supported by

Presidential Culture Secretary

Museums Head Office

Austrian Embassy

Spanish Embassy

Uruguayan Embassy

Brazilian Studies Foundation