Public Program – ‘The Weight of the Concrete’ Ezio Gribaudo, Grazer Kunstverein
Ezio Gribaudo’s exhibition The Weight of the Concrete culminates with a series of events exploring the nexus of concrete poetry, publishing, graphic design, typography, feminism, and performance, inspired by Gribaudo and Adriano Spatola’s pioneering publication Il Peso del Concreto (1968). The series marks the end of an exhibition and sets the stage for a forthcoming publication published by Axis Axis and Grazer Kunstverein revisiting Gribaudo’s legacy and intertwining his graphic work with new and historical experimental poetry, slated for summer 2024 release.
The exhibition, its public program and the publication are curated and edited by Tom Engels and Lilou Vidal.
(Performance)
Avoiding The Genius / Blackbirds
Jesper List Thomsen
29/02/2024, 18:30
Responding to Il Peso del Concreto, Jesper List Thomsen is set to deliver readings from two texts, Avoiding The Genius (2017) and Blackbirds (2018), each unraveling the complex ties binding body, language, and image. Avoiding The Genius draws upon language as a tool to dissect and articulate the body, crafting a method that operates like a drawing—tracing forms and lines, portraying the body in a pose of defiance, capturing resistance through physical and linguistic expression. Blackbirds delves into the nuanced evolution of an individual’s bond with their foundational language, charting a journey from initial learning phases to the eventual, unavoidable decline of linguistic engagement. Together, these texts illuminate Thomsen’s engagement with how one portrays and perceives physical and linguistic selves in the world.
JESPER LIST THOMSEN (b.1978, Denmark) is an artist based in London and Torino. He works with text, painting, sculpture and performance. Recent exhibitions and performances have taken place at MACRO, Rome; Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne; West Den Haag, Den Haag; Braunsfelder, Cologne; Fanta-MLN, Milan; Radio Athènes, Athens; Hot Wheels Athens, Athens; Parrhesiades, London; ICA, London; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Stuttgart; Bureau des Réalités, Brussels. BASE BASE, a book-length collection of his writings was published by Juan de la Cosa, Mexico City/London in 2018 and his book FREEEee was published by L’Esprit de l’Escalier, London/Helsinki in 2021.
(Conversation, Presentation)
Of Muscular Movements and Mental Forms
Andrea di Serego Alighieri
29/02/2024, 18:30
Andrea di Serego Alighieri will focus on the distinct recto/verso format of Il Peso del Concreto [The Weight of the Concrete], as the book presents a unique duality: one side of the page showcases Gribaudo’s artwork, while the opposite side features an anthology of concrete poetry composed by the poet Spatola. As a response to this anthology, he will explore the work of Italian poet Amelia Rosselli (1930–1996) and examine her unique perspective on writing as both a graphic and bodily act of inscription and decipherment, an interplay she described as a fusion of “muscular movements and mental forms.” He will shed light on how this concept of physical inscription resonates with Gribaudo’s Logogrifi, discussing the tangible and performative dimensions of the page, extending it to his research on embossed squeeze papers used in epigraphy to archive inscriptions from antiquity.
ANDREA DI SEREGO ALIGHIERI (b. 1988, Italy) is a writer, editor and typographer based in Brussels. He studied Graphic Design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Comparative Literature at the University of Amsterdam. Between 2014/2015 he was a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie. He is the co-editor of “Resistance” by Lyn Hejinian (uh books, 2019) and translator of Simone Forti’s L’orso allo specchio (Kunstverein Publishing & Galleria Raffaella Cortese, 2020). Recently, he co-edited and authored Glossator 11 (Open Humanities Press, 2021), FR DAVID “Take, Eat” (KW Institute for Contemporary Art & uh books, 2022) with Will Holder, and is the editor and translator of A Talk on Metrical Spaces by Amelia Rosselli (forthcoming for The Last Books). He is a lecturer in writing, typography and thesis tutor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, and a PhD candidate in Medieval & Modern Languages at the University of Oxford.
(Conversation, Presentation)
Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959–79
Mónica de la Torre, Alex Balgiu
01/03/2024, 18:30
In their upcoming talk, Mónica de la Torre and Alex Balgiu will present their 2020 publication, Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979, an influential anthology that assembles concrete poems by women from the early stages of this avant-garde movement. This comprehensive collection highlights the contributions of 50 writers and artists from Europe, Japan, Latin America, and the United States, demonstrating how they challenged traditional conventions of genre, gender roles, and the patriarchal constraints on language and syntax. De la Torre and Balgiu will delve into the process behind compiling this anthology and share their personal reflections on the making of this publication, drawing from their experiences as poet, designer, and bibliophile, illuminating the collective endeavor to redefine poetry’s boundaries.
MÓNICA DE LA TORRE is the author of six books of poetry, of which the most recent, Repetition Nineteen (Nightboat), centers on experimental translation. Other collections include The Happy End/All Welcome (Ugly Duckling Presse)—a riff on a riff on Kafka’s Amerika—and Public Domain. Several of her books have been published in Mexico, among them Acúfenos and Taller de Taquimecanografía, written jointly with the eponymous women artists’ collective she co-founded. Recent art writing focuses on Cecilia Vicuña’s Palabrarmas series, Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s Photostats, and Ulises Carrión’s bookworks. She coedited Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959–79 (Primary Information) with Alex Balgiu. She is the recipient of the 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts C.D. Wright Award for Poetry and a 2022 Creative Capital grant and teaches poetry at Brooklyn College.
ALEX BALGIU is an educator, designerwriter and bookgatherer about the age of a Heidelberg GTO 52 press. Concerned with designing spaces for collective creativity and experimenting with various modes of transmission, you can catch him reading, playing and disseminating in Lausanne (Écal), Paris (Doc & Pca), Kyoto (Villa Kujoyama) or the bookshop next door. Or you can pick up Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-79, a collection of outstanding concrete poems by women edited together with Mónica de la Torre (NY: Primary Information, 2020). Do you love books too much? Then join Bibliomania, an ongoing series of editorial puppet shows created with Olivier Lebrun, touring around the world. Currently learning from the forest and the river.
(Performance)
Dance for Nothing (revisited)
Eszter Salamon
01/03, 20:00
Choreographer and filmmaker Eszter Salamon revisits John Cage’s Lecture on Nothing (1949), a piece she initially engaged with in 2010 through her choreography Dance for Nothing, which paired Cage’s words with her movement. This time, Salamon leaves the physical movements behind, focusing on the sonic aspect of this seminal lecture on nothingness, void, and composition. She adds depth by repeating the lecture after a slowed-down recording by the American cellist and composer Frances-Marie Uitti, creating an auditory exploration of interpretation and transmission. Salamon’s fusion of body, voice, and score sets the framework for a meditation on nothingness amongst Gribaudo’s achromatic, seemingly silent works.
ESZTER SALAMON is a choreographer, artist and performer living between Berlin, Paris, and Budapest. Salamon uses choreography as an activating and organizing agency between various media such as image, sound, music, text, voice, bodily movement and actions. Since 2001 she has created solos and large scale performances, performative installations, and films that have been presented in performing arts venues and museums internationally, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; MoMA, New York City; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona; Serralves Foundation, Porto; Akademie der Künste, Berlin; mumok, Vienna; Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam; Museo Centro Gaiás, Santiago de Compostela; Fondation Cartier, Paris; Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Salzburg; Villa Empain – Boghossian Foundation, Brussels; ING Art Center, Brussels; and KINDL, Berlin. Her exhibition Eszter Salamon 1949 (2014) was presented at Jeu de Paume, Paris, as part of Satellite curated by Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez. Her performative installation Study for the Valeska Gert Pavilion was presented at the 16th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art 2022. Her most recent film Sommerspiele (2023) premiered at Akademie der Künst, Berlin, and was presented during Hors Pistes 2024 at Centre Pompidou.
Credit photos: Grazer-Kunstverein – Sebastian-Reiser, 2024