Audio-visual Poetry
Each borrowing of a term provenient from an unrelated art genre into one's own equals committing a small murder. I for one feel a great relief in seeing that the trendy use of the word „counterpoint“ in non-musical contexts is slowly coming to an end. The term however did not come out unharmed, its meaning having become diluted rather than broadened. It really describes nothing but a strict musical composition technique that allows for harmony without hierarchy between independent melody lines.
This is not different with the term „poetry“. It is used each time a moment, a situation or a work of Art is experienced as being so soft and tender that it can barely be expressed in words. A short search in Google displays „poetic landscapes“ and “poetic spaces“, „poetic gardens“ and „poetic floristry“. Besides the expected „poetic oil paintings“ and „poetic sculptures“ we also find a „poetic big bang melody“ and even „poetic terrorism“. And when prompted „Ask me about the poetry in movement, beauty, intelligence and strength“, equestrians will, knowingly and with a smile on their face, point at their horse.
A „real“ poet such as Durs Grünbein, according to himself, moves about within a triangle of interests: the musical interest in the sound of words, the linguistic curiosity about the possible semantic combinations between them, and the expressive impulse to display inner images. Those inner images differ considerably from the outer world: they do not intend to render an objective reality, but rather to reflect the world subjectively, to take it as object of our perception and make it tangible in the awareness-obtaining process. In doing so, poetry has to be different from so-called reality, in order to create correlations that do not comply ith the usual perspectives. Only through this irritation can our consciousness, which is inclined to stubbornness, be outwitted and opened. We are no longer able to impose our learned opinion onto the world, and therefore willingly forced to see it with new, young eyes.
This effect of opened perception is probably what the inclined people would experience as
being „poetic', and they would apply this term to any kind of situation in which the effect presents itself. In this way, poetry would be nothing but a way - one tool amongst many -
to achieve this particular condition; it is not its final result.
When the surrealists speak of the „poetry of everyday life“ (André Breton) or of „deliberate“ and „undeliberate“ poetry (Paul Éluard), they refer to a poetic gaze. A gaze that enjoys everyday things in their pure existence and materiality, without any prejudice, and puts them together in conjunctions that would not survive an objective gaze. Things are „riddled up“, and everyday life is discovered anew; the poetry in this is that new meanings are being drawn from the presumably most common and unpoetical things. A transposed Grunbein's triangle can be found here too: the imagetic interest in the form of things, the playful inquisitiveness into their possible semantic and narrative combinations, as well as – and that is of course the most important of all in surrealism – the embodiment of the inner, mostly dreamed, images. Since Salvador Dalí moved away from this last corner of the triangle and continued developing and churning out only the remaining first two, he is regarded as a traitor by „hardcore surrealists“ such as the Czech film director Jan Svankmajer.
In my attempts at categorizing my artistic work, I have now arrived at the term „audiovisual poetry“. It is not only audio-visual because it mostly contains acoustical as well as visual elements, but also because those elements depend on each other both structurally and semantically. I try to avoid using one of the two elements as pure background or illustration of the other.
It is poetical, because it moves about within the triangle of the poet: it is moved by the musical-pictural delight in sounds and objects themselves (or their registration through media, which in itself also evolves from a delightful relationship; what can be more beautiful then operating the release button of a camera?), the experiment with their possible structural-formal combinations (especially unrealistic image and sound conjunctions) and the desire to reproduce subjective perception or inner images: desires, longings, fears, dreams and hopes.
Now one could ask, why don't I call myself a surrealist straight away? But for that the respect is still too great. For now I'd rather commit a small murder.
Mathis B. Nitschke
Saas-Fee, May 2006
