Small painted envelope I mailed to Renée Wagemans, The Netherlands
woensdag 31 augustus 2011
maandag 29 augustus 2011
MON PAYS EST CELUI DES RÊVES
Small painted envelope I mailed to an Elementary school project in Toulouse, France
LES POISSONS-RÊVEURS
Small painted envelope I mailed to an Elementary school project in Toulouse, France
I AM AN ASEMIC WEAVER
Small painted envelope I mailed to Bifidus Jones, USA.
In a way an addition to the discussion on IUOMA on Eco- Asemics.
I like this comment by Superhero (by email):
guido!!!
this will be short because i have chicken on the stove,
but i have to say you are onto something there.
it is exactly that mentality.
you shouldn't have to feel bad for saying something
just because one of the "greats" said it!!!
ideas should not belong to people,
they should be FREE!
ideas are as much part of the universe as a flower or grass,
they float around and are part of the natural world;
they grow and decay, they bloom, they bear fruit;
they are their own kind of life form.
we should let them be wild, and not treat them
like they are something you need to package up
in little tv dinner trays for mass consumption.
that is the kind of world we are heading toward if we don't tackle "Intellectual Property."
vending-machine ideas.
put in your .25 and you are allowed to agree with one of the contemporary brilliants;
and put their idea into your work. much like you buy paint and brushes,
you will have to pay for re-use of thoughts.
see, guido, look at the craziness you inspire in me!!! ;-D
SUPERHERO, USA
FAKE OPPOSITIONS
A5 painted envelope I mailed to KDJ, USA.
Full title:
"There is no real opposition
between focussing on details
& seeing the larger picture;
we have to do both!"
BIRDS, READY FOR MIGRATION
Small painted envelope I mailed to Eduardo Cardoso in Portugal, cover for 2 add and pass artist books.
ALL SPIRITS ARE TRANSPARENT
A5 painted envelope for Cheryl Penn in South Africa, containing the 8 pages for the book on Plagiarism
zondag 28 augustus 2011
ON PLAGIARISM
8 pages I made for a book project on plagiarism (Cheryl Penn, South Africa).
Because of the beauty of the handmade paper I limited the text bits to 2 pages.
This is the text:
PLAGIARISM IN LITERATURE
We live in an age of "intertextuality", which makes it quite difficult to accuse writers of plagiarism when they use fragments in their books of other writers. The real problem starts when there is no mentioning at all of the sources they are using.
It's almost a plague in contemporary African writing! A few examples:
Sony Labou Tansi's novels retells the stories written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One hundred years of solitude/ The autumn of the patriarch) in his own magical reallist books
Yembo Oudologueur used passages from Graham Greene and Simone Schwartzbart in his 1968 novel "Bound to violence"
Calixte Beyala copycats passages from Ben Okri's famous novel "The famished road" in her own book "Lost honors" (what's in a name?). She got a prestigious literary prize while at the same time she was condemned in a Paris court. Isn't it sick that one African writer copies from the other without giving him the credit of his work. Beyala's reputation was already quite damaged because she had done this before in other books like her own version of Saint Exupéry's The Little Prince.
She defended herself in 2 ways:
In Europe the writers of some centuries ago often used large passages of writers before them without giving them the credit (has been done in music also by the way) and then the ultimate defense was the ethnic angle. We Africans have an oral tradition and retell the stories of others all the time. There is no copyright in Africa.
Beyala forgets she's not in Cameroun anymore but has made a career in literary and cultivated France.
A close friend of mine, writer and artist Laurent d'Ursel, has always "crazy" projects. Some years ago he had written a book based only on quotes of other writers who were mentioning "grelot". He asked for my help to find more passages on grelots. It was A French word I did not understand. A grelot is a small bell but enclosed in a sphere. My help was limited to making the cover for his book (a collage where I used for the first time 19th century graphics). Laurent tried to find a publisher for his book but nobody was interested. He became very frustrated. What's the matter with these editors today? We live in an age of intertextuality! Don't they know the work of Solers?. I said to him that I found the work of Solers extremely boring and his book suffered from the same handicap: there is no story or structure, there is nothing in fact. It's a huge text collage of passages of writers mentioning this type of bell. I like the idea, it is modern or postmodern or whatever term or label you would like to wear as a medal but it can't hide the fact that such books are unreadable for a larger audience than that of the writer and some close friends and admirers.
Laurent and I are still friends. His wife is a professional translator of books, movie scripts and theatre plays, which makes the situation even funnier.
Guido Vermeulen, August 2011
zaterdag 27 augustus 2011
HET MASKER VAN DE HOFNAR
A5 painted envelope I mailed to Anke van den Berg in Belgium.
I like to make art that can be viewed from different directions. This is a "lucky" example.
Full title is much longer:
"Aha, I'm wearing a cosmic mask tonight, said the clown
of het zeer introverte zelfportret
van de koninklijke hofnar,
te bekijken in alle richtingen
van de spottende windstreek"
ONTMOETING MET DE DOOD VAN EEN KIND OF DE TRAGIEK VAN HET ONVERVULDE
A5 painted envelope I mailed to Cathérine Petré, Belgium.
I wanted an envelope that matched the ED papercut.
When finished this hit me: it was all about Gabriel again and also Vasalis, who lost her child and refused to publish poetry for decades (in her case a personal loss was mixed with the holocaust tragedy).
TRIBUTE TO EMILY DICKINSON
A5 Papercut around one of ED's wonderful poems:
That such have died
enable us
the traquiller to die
That such have lived
certificate
for immortality
Mailed to Cathérine Petré in Belgium
SHAMAN'S PRAYER AGAINST THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE SUN
A5 painted envelope I mailed to Lesley Magwood Fraser, South Africa
LES NUITS D'ETE
A5 painted envelope I mailed to Linda Pelati
based on a great song cycle by Hector Berlioz around poems by Théophile Gautier
dinsdag 23 augustus 2011
HALLOWEEN PHANTOMS
Collage A4 around the Night Town Poem II by David Stone.
Inspired by these final lines of poem II
"Halloween phantoms
bathed on the steppes
refused ale cake
and raked raucous steak
Bugle sounds endured
Siberian air space
and ignited plutonial
engine transfer. "
I could never have made this collage without the inspiration and stimulation of Superhero's Zombie project, so thanks for that!
Also it was fun that D (for Devil) and J (for Jesus) formed together a DJ (disc Jockey
(and the beat of machine guns goes on, sung Sunny & Cher, well not exactly, but my diabetes makes me say crazy memories).
I just saw again "Pandora and the flying Dutchman", the doomed sailor became in my collage a pilot of a bomber and which of the shocked girls will save him, my guess: NO BODY ... so the town extinguishes in the night and the tower of manhood has fallen forever... (GV)
RODENT' LIES
Painted collage around the Night Town Poem II by David Stone.
Inspired by these lines:
"Rodents swarmed
the blooded streets"
&
"Lies crossed
borders on trains"
Dutch title refers to a major bombing of a night city during world war II
"Stuka's above Sebastopol"
Stuka's were the German bombers and Sebastopol was the city.
I transformed the bombers into a blackbird.
IN RUSSIA & AFTER RUSSIA
Collage A4 around the Night Town Poem II by David Stone.
Inspired by these lines:
"In Russia
1000 acres burned
near Moscow,
animals perished
& rockets ignited"
The "after Russia" in my title refers to a major work by the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva (in exile). It was David Stone who introduced me to these tragic poems in Baltimore in 1997.
MANDELSTAM & TSVETAEVA
Small painted envelope around the Night Town Poem II by David Stone.
Inspired by these lines:
"In the tundra, Mandelstam
hid his poems under lichen coated rocks
and memorized star charts
in the moonlit winter."
The painting is a bit cryptic, so I want to explain (with tears in my heart):
P1-P7 are 7 poems by Ossip Mandelstam
M T stands for Marina Tsvetaeva
Her nostalgia for Russia was so big she returned from exile to stalinist Russia, then the femail poet was banned to Siberia, she packed and her suitcase did not close, Mandelstam gave her his belt to close the suitcase. It was with that same belt MT ended her life by hanging herself in Siberia. The rope formed the letter O for Ossip. (GV)
AGENT ORANGE
Painted collage A4 around the Night Town Poem by David Stone.
Inspired by these lines:
"Niemands Gott
burned the sky
orange"
I had a certain pleasure of turning images of nazi propaganda of 1941 against them in 2011!
Deze schaamte is Dutch for This shame
De kunst om afscheid te nemen is Dutch for the art to say good-bye
Verdeeling van het vuur bij het vliegen in verband is Dutch for distribution of fire during flying in formation
The G above the rat indicates that the rodent is the "Gott mit uns"
I liked the Höhe 1000 meters über Platz because it made a link with the "beyond the Plaza" lines
Agent Orange refers also to the biological warfare of the US against Vietnam, if this is not a crime against humanity I don't know what is? Google if you've never heard about it!
If you wonder what Napoleon is doing in the collage, Hitler admired Napoleon as his equal and the nazis transported his tomb back to Corsica with a lot of pump and circumstance. I had a row with my French teacher when I was 16 because I compared Bonaparte with Adolph. I'm sure it was the memory of the Signaal propaganda of 1941 that was in my subconscious (heritage of my dad).
TANKS IN MUD, MUD IN TANKS
Collage A4 around the Night Town Poem by David Stone.
Inspired by these lines:
"Sentenced over granite rocks,
tanks sank deep
in mud banks"
YELLS IN JAIL
Small painted envelope around the Night Town Poem by David Stone.
Inspired by these lines:
"The stroke of the clock
cut the electrodes of Recht
in seconds opened
tangential lies
analyzed in corridors,
smashed in reactors,
yells in jail
claimed Niemands Grund
in migratory lapses."
MIGRANTS
Small painted envelope around the Night Town Poem by David Stone.
Inspired by these lines:
"Migrants
from Romania,
Lithuania,
Russia, Siberia
on shores
propelled
on iron core mantles
& phantoms"
URANIUM SHOES
Small painted envelope around the Night Town Poem by David Stone.
Inspired by these lines:
"Paste doctors
combed Uranium Shoes,
Orionic stairs,
radium maps,
sorted gravel graves
on granite grains."
Is it accidental that Uranium Shoes in abbreviation indicates US or U.S. (United Sates) ?
maandag 22 augustus 2011
THE TWIN TOWERS OF NITE TOWN
Large painted envelope around the Night Town poem by David Stone.
Inspired by these lines:
"In the tower,
an allegiant thirst
annexed the Styx
with a surveillant buoy."
THE SCORCHED TOWER
Collage around the Night Town by David Stone
inspired by these lines
"The scorched tower
metal pours
grains of Erinnerung"
MORPHOLOGY OF WAR
Collage around the Night Town by David Stone
inspired by these lines
"a morphology of war from bayonettes & rifles to terror & missiles"
THE VULTURE NIGHT
Collage around the Night Town by David Stone
inspired by these lines
"The Vulture Nacht fell from the orange sky, disgorged mechanical gadgets & glamorous models"
zondag 21 augustus 2011
BEYOND THE PLAZA
Small painted envelope for David Stone. David asked me to accompany his long poem NIGHT TOWN with some visual art. This is the first one around the lines
"Beyond the plaza,
odorless steel carriages
arrived on orange wheels"
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