half dimensional poems 2009 – 2011

Dedi­cated to Alan 

Xmas 2009 — New Year 2011 

Video-instal­la­tion with live perfor­mance reading.

A power point presen­ta­tion of the poem layout was created in 2011 — also a DVD (36:08 minutes) with sound­track for projec­tion was created in 2011 – trailer half dimen­sional poems no.15, 1:25 minutes.

For the première in the Kunst­palast Düssel­dorf 24.2.2011 Ury played back the video-instal­la­tion and read the text unsyn­chro­nised. 

A docu­men­ta­tion (39 minutes 45 seconds) of the half dimen­sional poems presen­ta­tion in the Kunst­palast Düssel­dorf 24.2.2011, was filmed, edited and produced by Sukyun Yang & Insook Ju (6.2011) (trailer 7 minutes 48 seconds).

A docu­men­ta­tion (8.21 minutes) of the half dimen­sional poems presen­ta­tion in the Kunst­palast Düssel­dorf 24.2.2011, with on a mat appear -, impro­vised poetry in WP8 Düssel­dorf 12.3.2011, was filmed, edited and produced by Maxi­m­ilian Hoffs.

These unorthodox poems are a compi­la­tion of words, thoughts that routinely run through the mind, usually discarded, forgotten — a stream of uncon­scious notated; the sounds of words, onomatopeia re-inter­preted, their meaning decon­structed; words read or heard, misread, misheard, slips of the mind, word­play, poems that write them­selves; all put together so that a different sense may be intuited.

“And what of uncon­scious mean­ings, which are by defi­n­i­tion not delib­er­ately intended? ​‘I really do think with my pen’, Wittgen­stein observes, ​‘because my head often knows nothing about what my hand is writing.’” 

Ludwig Wittgen­stein, ​“Culture and Value”, Chicago 1984, 17e, quoted on p.47,
of ​“The Meaning of Life”, Terry Eagleton, Oxford Univer­sity Press, 2007,
ISBN 978−0−19−953217−9

Tanya Ury commenced writing the bi-lingual half dimen­sional poems Xmas 2009. This collec­tion of one-liners was continued in 2010, during the time of break­down, discovery, treat­ment for breast cancer, falling in and out of love, break­down again. The 28 poems were completed a year later, New Year 2011.

“Certain slips of the tongue in the course of a phrase give us sudden insight into ourselves by substi­tuting one word for another, and the unwel­come word is ameans whereby poetry escapes and perfumes the phrase. These words are a danger to the prac­tical under­standing of discourse. In like manner, certain acts. Faults some­times – they are deeds – produce poetry. Though beau­tiful, these deeds are none the less a danger.” 

P.42 ​“Miracle of the Rose”, Jean Genet 1951, Penguin Books 1971,
ISBN 0−14−018054−0

An example of this phenom­enon is to be found in Genet’s text:

“Darling is merely a fraud (‘an adorable fraud,’ Divine calls him), and he
must remain one in order to preserve that appear­ance of a rock walking
blindly through my tale (I left out the d in blindly, I wrote ​‘blinly’).* The
words in italics do not appear in the revised edition. (Translator’s note.)”

P. 26 of Jean-Paul Sartre’s intro­duc­tion to ​“Our Lady of the Flowers”,
Jean Genet 1951, Granada Publishing 1973 586 02039 X 2

In its style and inten­tion the concrete poetry is a collec­tion of jumbled, abstract ideas that reflect the day-to-day life and mood of the artist. Above all, it is impro­vised and written down imme­di­ately — in essence it is auto­matic writing.

Tanya Ury’s written poetry may be regarded as ​“concrete” because of its visual design, and uncon­ven­tional aural effect when spoken — the texts thereby gain in dimen­sion beyond accepted meaning.

Ury has also created other artworks that might be consid­ered visual poetry. Moving Message 1992, incor­po­rates an LED sign displaying the words: you are why; Sonata in Sea 1999 – 2000 is a photo series combined with poetry and wrestle­with­y­ourangel 2001, is a neon sign produced together with the neon sign neonazi 2001; the title of a double photo portrait lesser is me more or less 2003 plays on the name of the German Post-Impres­sionist Lesser Ury, as does the title of a further double portrait or else 2007, which refers to the German writer Else Ury. The title of a third photo-portrait Beelze­bu­larin 2005 (in the Promised Land series) reveals itself to be an anagram of the biblical Bezalel Ben Uri. half dimen­sional — semi detached 2010, combines the first of the half dimen­sional poems with the photo­graph semi detached.

concrete – a collec­tion of works (including poetry series) 


Presen­ta­tion

2010 (10.7) semi detached – half dimen­sional poems, record cover design by Ury (1989−2010), group exhi­bi­tion: kjubh KUNSTVEREIN (Art Centre), ZEHN JAHRE (10 years), with music by popnoname, 7 pm, in the cabinet of the Kölnis­cher Kunstverein (Cologne Art Centre) Hahnen Strasse 6 (D)
2011 (24.2) Tanya Ury presented half dimen­sional poems as video projec­tion and live perfor­mance (a parallel but unsy­chro­nised reading), 7 pm, as part of the Jewish Cultural Days, at the Great Art Exhi­bi­tion North Rhine West­phalia, in the Donner­hall, at the Kunst Palast, Kulturzen­trum in Düssel­dorf (D) DIE_GROSSE_Kunstausstellung_NRW_Duesseldorf.pdf

Infor­ma­tion

Poems, design and recording Tanya Ury
Video edit Mirco Sanftleben
Text editor Amin Farzanefar

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