From Concrete to Liquid to Spoken Worlds to the Word

From Concrete to Liquid to Spoken Worlds to the Word explores the emancipation of language through historical and contemporary positions, from the earliest typographic and sound works of concrete poets to poetic experiments in the digital era. This diverse exhibition is accompanied by a series of readings, performances and screenings that reveal the porosity between art and poetry.

The Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève is pleased to present a major project dedicated to contemporary poetry and its various modes of dialogue within the visual culture of our era. The goal of this complex exhibition program is to highlight how in recent years, contemporary art has begun to show a revived and growing interest in the world of poetry and the written and spoken word. Poetry readings and recitals in museums, performances centered on the importance of the text and its recitation, videos where poetic language takes on a role that rivals the visual component: the art of our time appears to be deeply and intimately rooted in words. Just when its fate seemed sealed for good in this chaotic and (seemingly) aphonic civilization of images, the word has returned to the fore among young artists and the viewing public.

The Centre’s program, while tracing this link between word and image to the concrete poetry of the 1960s and ‘70s, will try on the one hand to examine this renewed artistic interest in the word, and on the other to show how the web and social media are introducing new ways of making poetry. The underlying aim is to explore how art and poetry shape each other in an increasingly interconnected world, through ongoing, rhapsodic communication. The “poetic acts” we will be exploring do not even seem like “works of poetry” in the classic sense, since they include a mosaic of texts drawn from videos, performances, and songs, as well as quotes and phrases from the web and its social networks. Social media are turning even the poetic experience into a widespread, everyday social activity that is fragmentary and non-hierarchical. In conclusion, we will look at how younger artists are showing a fresh interest in bringing words back from their digital, liquid dimension and giving them a more concrete, tangible form. With this in mind, Karl Holmqvist has been invited to conceive a platform/space in which words will function like a vast stage set.