2 jim leftwich’s desemantized pieces in “lost and found times”, n. 39, nov. 1997, pp. 18-19

[Marco Giovenale]

https://slowforward.net/2021/05/20/leftwich-desemantized-pieces/

[John Bennett]

thanks for posting these, and Jim's text on the subject.

i like "desemanticized" better than "asemic" myself; the latter term was always a bit misleading, even downright wrong sometimes, I thought; except perhaps in a few situations...

unword

john

On Thu, May 20, 2021 at 9:17 AM Marco Giovenale <mgiov...@gmail.com> wrote:

https://slowforward.net/2021/05/20/leftwich-desemantized-pieces/

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[Marco Giovenale]

thanks to you, John.

in Italy "scrittura desemantizzata", introduced in 1972-74 by artist and poet Tomaso Binga (nickname of Bianca Menna), didn't have luck, I admit.

while "scrittura asemica" is now (almost) common in conversations and exhibits here.

I'm curious about other countries and languages. 

does anybody know something about the story and fortune of that (or another) term in different cultures?

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[Cecil Touchon]

I like Jim's statement and it totally makes sense in terms of his body of work that he refers to. However, since  'desemanticized' is a negative or reductive term, it suggests that the writer or poet or artist started with something that does have semantic content that has been removed or avoided like: "mne6s mt5-ge vaa4ep k59fhemfui74j". It is using the building blocks of what might create semantic content but avoids adding up to a coherent message which would be the point of semantic content. Desemanticized seems like a specialized term that does not cover the field at large as Jim states in his writing. Although there are a lot of examples of desemanticized works, such as redacted pages where the words have been blacked out and only the pattern of the structure remains and many other examples of obscured texts or text converted to some sort of code, or texts that have been manipulated to remove any perceivable content, etc. I have certainly made many such works.

I do like asemic but not necessarily 'asemic writing' because that causes a different limit that some sort of hand writing needs to be involved. Very often that is not the case. So I like just the word asemic or even better, asemics suggesting multiple but related approaches, a vast body of works that are being generated in relation to the field of language and possibly orienting itself or speaking to the traditions of text and/or writing and/or communicative constructs like newspaper grids, etc. So what would be wrong or limiting about just the term 'Asemics'? That seems like it would cover just about everything.

Another thing I have been thinking is that a lot of asemic writing might be simply called the 'body language' of writing since it is really about how the body generates marks and interacts with the marking tools and how the body communicates its feeling at any given moment with an intuitive sensibility that is more primal than semantic content but still communicates a great deal of suggestive information about the inner state of the person engaged in its practice or communicates various subconscious social or cultural biases.

I sometimes wonder what is motivating so many of us to be attracted to and engaged in these practices of gibberish, scribbles, jibber-jabber, scrawls, gobbledygook, doodles, mumbo jumbo and flapdoodle. Is it a kind of dadaistic response to moving into a post literate world where literature as we have known it is becoming extinct or antiquated or maybe information overload or cultural collapse or the general sense of global fubar? Or just personalized translingual global communication via the internet? Or something else?

How about translingual as a term instead of asemic or desemic? That seems pretty good too. or maybe transsemantic or subsemantic or sublingual or postlingual or nonobjective or supercalifragilisticexpialidociousical  .

Cecil

Cecil Touchon

4810 West Alameda Street

Santa Fe, New Mexico 87507

817-944-4000

tou...@gmail.com

http://ceciltouchon.com

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[Maya Berbery]

Hello Marco,

In French, we use "écritures asémiques" or "écritures asémantiques" under the influence of English, I suppose (although both Barthes and Derrida used the word "asémie" sparingly). I also saw "pseudo-écritures, contre-écritures, écritures picturales, pseudographies, métagraphies", but it is sometimes difficult to understand exactly what those words refer to, and if they refer to similar or different kinds of writing and practices. "Écritures illisibles" (Barthes mostly) seems to be the most generic term.

After reading your comments and posts (J. L., J. B. C. T.) I searched "écriture désémantisée" and it might open up an interesting field of inquiry. 

Thank you all.

May

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[Marco Giovenale]

thanks a lot, May. important infos!

I think I'll quote your notes in an essay I'm revising. (I wrote it in Italian).

all my gratitude

M

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[Cecil Touchon]

I had an exhibition of works here in Santa Fe in 2017 entitled Subliteral Poetics https://www.nuartgallery.com/exhibitions/20/works/

here was the blurb the gallery came up with...

Using typographic fonts, Internationally renowned artist Cecil Touchon creates abstractions coming from the collage tradition. His practice transforms the symbols of the written language into a form of visual architecture.

In this solo exhibition, Subliteral Poetics, Touchon explores the central paradox of language, whereby one can only understand the meaning of words by using other words. As the information age produces exponentially more data, our capacity to absorb text is diminished, and we are moving to more visual forms of communication. Touchon addresses this by reminding the viewer that written language was always based on abstract visual structures and that by returning to the aesthetic we can better contemplate this relationship.

Cecil

Cecil Touchon

4810 West Alameda Street

Santa Fe, New Mexico 87507

817-944-4000

tou...@gmail.com

http://ceciltouchon.com

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[Maya Berbery]

Hello Cecil, 

The transformation of symbols seems to go well with the idea of desemantized language. Would we need words for what is created through this process or would desemantized language be sufficient to describe both the process and its result?

And hello Marco,

I have been relying mostly on Jim Leftwich's  Asemic Writing: Definitions & Contexts, Federico Federici's theoretical papers and the answers of 12 artists to your 4 questions about asemic writing. I like the idea of defining the practice from what the practitioners have to say about it. Still working on it. Found very little in French except for a one-day conference called "Ecritures picturales, pseudographies, métagraphies, asémies" held by the Centre d'étude de l'écriture et de l'image in 2020. Thank you all for sharing this info/comments/questions.

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[Marco Giovenale]

thanks to you, May!

and...

seems that Amazon (not Skira, alas) still has 2 copies of this:

https://www.amazon.it/Ecrire-dessinant-Quand-langue-cherche/dp/2370741481

!!!

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[Cecil Touchon]

Hi Maya,

As I mentioned in my previous note, 'desemantized language' works just fine for many different applications but again I don't think it fits the whole field as a general term, only a part of the field. I mentioned the show 'subliteral poetics' but subletteral or subtextual might work too.Those terms seem to work if you are dismantling actual letters, in my case through collage techniques to then come up with compositions that are about the bits of letters and recombining them into new forms. Would I call it; 'desemantized'? Not really, but that term might work. I usually call them typographic abstractions If I am scribbling marks on paper in a way that seems to suggest handwriting but is not based on actual handwriting  would I call that; 'desemantized'? Absolutely not. I didn't start with anything that was actual language. There was no deconstruction involved hence the term would not apply in my opinion.

Cecil

Cecil Touchon

4810 West Alameda Street

Santa Fe, New Mexico 87507

817-944-4000

tou...@gmail.com

http://ceciltouchon.com

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[Maya Berbery]

Hello again,

I find the distinction helpful - transformed, dismantled (déformés-reformés) through different means (cut-ups, collage, glitch) vs scribbling not based on actual language. Just curious to know what John Bennett would consider 'asemic' - the few situations that would fit the term.

Many thanks again for the discussion.

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