Fluxus Poetry

INFORMATION ABOUT FLUXUS POETRY BY FLUXUS HEIDELBERG

(c) October 2003 by Fluxus Heidelberg.

Defining Fluxus Poetry

People who read books can easily explain what Poetry is. A poem is different from a story or essay because of its form. In literature it is quite well defined what a poem is, what an essay is or what a novel is. And then there is the Visual Poetry. In this artform the writers/artists use letters and words to make visual images, some call it collages of texts, to make a message clear for the viewer. The roots of Visual Poetry lies in art-forms DaDa and Bauhaus on which already a lot has been published.

How Fluxus Poetry is produced by Fluxus Heidelberg

Litsa Spathi was working with Visual Poetry since the 1980s. Before that her poems were published in several publications (like the Anthology: "Hab gelernt durch Waende zu gehen" , ISBN 3-89244-064-6 , 1993). Litsa Spathi also collaborated with some important names in the field of Visual Poetry like Robin Crozier , Rea Nikonova , Serge Segay , Edgardo-Antonio Vigo , Guillermo Deisler and John M. Bennett. In the 1990s her works were published in magazines like PIPS , Edition YE, Mani-Art and Rampike. Also she illustrated several books with her graphic work. (more information in Litsa Spathi's Biography that is available online).
Fluxus Poetry is a new form where the Visual Poetry is integrated in the electronic world. Visual Poetry is normaly the end-result of a process. In Fluxus Poetry the build up of the Poem is visible as well. Normaly this can only be seen in a video-fragment or as a slideshow.
Within Fluxus Heidelberg Litsa Spathi writes her Visual Poetry and as a kind of Fluxus Performance. The poem is transferred into a Fluxus Poem which goes in these steps: Litsa Spathi has written a concept text and has visualized the concepts in several frames. together with Ruud Janssen she sits down behind a computer and they start to work together. With voice she instructs Ruud how to create the visual images. She discusses size of the letters, background-colours, rotations, colour of the letters, the design of the several frames. The endresult is a set of images that are saved on the computer. Ruud then arranges the electronic format to publish the Fluxus Poem on the internet. First publication is always on the www.fluxusheidelberg.org site. After publishing the Fluxus Poem the visitors of the site can see the result of the process by viewing the set of frames where they see how the Poem is realized. For Fluxus Performances these Fluxus Poems will be used as background or as leading line through the performance. As a final step the Fluxus Poem will be printed and integrated by Litsa Spathi into an Artist's Book. A nice example of a Fluxus Poem is: Where? (do you go to my lovely?), where in 7 frames a complete poem is shown.