taste of space 2012 – 2013

Video-instal­la­tion 

A DVD (4:50:00 minutes) of the poem layout with voice-over sound­track for projec­tion was created in 2013 (image format 4:3) 

Infor­ma­tion
Poetry, design & recording Tanya Ury
Video edit Mirco Sanftleben
Correc­tion of German parts Amin Farzanefar 

In a similar manner to her other poetry series Tanya Ury’s taste of space is written off the cuff, what­ever comes to mind during the day, or a mixture of misheard parts of conver­sa­tion, misread found texts, one’s own mistakes while writing.

“For example I write on post cards, oh well I write on post cards. ​“I” begins again with a repro­suc­tion (say, I just wrote repro­Suc­tion: have you noticed that I make more and more strange mistakes, is it fatigue or age, occa­sion­ally the spelling goes, phonetic writing comes back in force, as in elemen­tary school where it did not happen to me more­over, only to others whom I confus­edly looked down on – plus the lapsus or ​“slips” obvi­ously). And by means of a repro­duc­tion itself repro­duced seri­ally, always the same picture on another support, but an iden­tical support, differing only numéro.”
p. 27, ​“The Post Card – From Socrates to Freud and Beyond” Jacques Derrida, 1980 trans­lated by Alan Bass, The Univer­sity of Chicago Press, 1987

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Like half dimen­sional poems 2009 – 2011, cement 2011, weißer neger (white nigger) 2011, oral call 2011, cross word 2011 – 2012, toned poems 2011 – 2012, and pommes 2012, taste of space is prose poetry, written in English and German. In style and sense these are concrete poems, a collec­tion of jumbled abstract thoughts, misun­der­stood conver­sa­tion and misread text, which, reflect the daily life and tempera­ment of the Jewish artist. This piece, unlike Tanya Ury’s other concrete poetry will however be presented with several actors and thema­tises Jewish iden­tity and life in Germany today.

Tanya Ury

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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.

2011, Ury created visual images of 17 concrete poems, to be presented online and as print versions (23.5 x 32.45 cm), digital image processing Mirco Sanftleben, two of these poems being femi­ninity and femi­nini­a­tion, the rest being part of the series cement, weißer neger (white nigger), concrete party & oral call, cross word, toned poems, two toned, pommes, taste of space, leeres archiv and since 2011 Tanya Ury recorded 6 of the more tradi­tional poems (toned poems: 5.54 minutes) to be found in the poetry series, together with Kasander Nilist (double bass, sound and mix), also for the June edition online of Imag­i­na­tions – Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, Univer­sity of Alberta (CA) with Ury as featured artist.
www​.csj​.ualberta​.ca/im…

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

2013 (11.7. – 7.9) ​“Righting the Image” — The Liter­a­ture Collec­tion in Cologne (LiK) and the Cologne City Library, present an exhi­bi­tion of Tanya Ury’s work. Opening event — Thursday, 11.7.2013, 8 pm. Intro­duc­tion: Dr. Gabriele Ewenz, Director of the LiK-Archive, with Suspended Beliefs — impro­vised poetry with impro­vised music: Tanya Ury (voice), Gernot Bogumil (trumpet), Kasander Nilist (double bass), Hans Salz (percus­sion), Peter Worringer (e‑guitar) 

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