Honouring Emmett Williams

Emmett Williams, artist and poet, died the day before yesterday, February 14, 2007 in Berlin. Emmett Williams, who collaborated with Daniel Spoerri in the Darmstadt circle of concrete poetry from 1957 to 1959 was the European coordinator of Fluxus, and a founding member of the Domaine Poetique in Paris, France. His theater essays have appeared in Das Neue Forum, Berner Blatter, Ulmer Theater, and other European magazines. Williams translated and reanecdoted Daniel Spoerri's Topographie Anecdotee du Hasard (An Anecdoted Topography of Chance), collaborated with Claes Oldenburg on Store Days, and edited An Anthology of Concrete Poetry, all published by the Something Else Press (owned and managed by fellow Fluxus artist Dick Higgins in New York and Vermont). In 1996 he received the Hannah-Hösch-Preis for his life work.
To honour Emmett Williams we will screen the short video work Emmett 06 by fellow Fluxus artist Wolf Kahlen subsequent to the presentation of the ZEBRA poetry and film awards, tomorrow, Sat 17th around 9:30 pm.
Emmett 06 will be screened in world premiere.

Emmett Williams, der US-amerikanische Dichter, Perfomance-Künstler und Mitbegründer der Fluxusbewegung, verstarb vorgestern, Dienstag dem 14. Februar 2007 in Berlin. Er war Präsident des Internationalen Künstlermuseums in Lodz. 1996 wurde er für sein Lebenswerk mit dem Hannah-Höch-Preis der Berlinischen Galerie ausgezeichnet. 1966 veröffentlichte er den erotischen Gedichtband "sweethearts", der zu seinen wichtigsten Werken zählt, und 1992 sein autobiografisches Werk "My Life in Flux – and Vice Versa". Seit 1956 experimentierte Emmett Williams mit seinen Procedural Poems, ohne einen Computer zu benötigen − er ersetzte die Buchstaben des Titels des zu schreibenden Gedichtes durch zufällig ausgewählte Wörter, so dass sich daraus wie durch ein Computerprogramm ein künstlicher Text generierte.
Als Würdigung seines Werkes zeigen wir morgen, Samstag 17.2., im Anschluss an die Präsentation der ZEBRA film and poetry awards die Videoarbeit Emmett 06, des Freundes und Künstlerkollegen Wolf Kahlen.
Emmett 06, 2006, 4 min. wird in Weltpremiere gezeigt.

In Focus: Wolf Kahlen • Sa sat 10.2.

• 20 h • 8 pmIn Focus curated by Gallery KMZA

Wolf Kahlen


Einer der ersten Videokunstponiere Deutschlands im Portrait

A closer look into the work of one of the earliest video art pioneers

Wolf Kahlen (left) in talk with Longest F. Stein of gallery KMZA during Directors Lounge 2006

In Wolf Kahlen´s NetWorks images or sounds, words of the classical poets in world languages or the European anthem dissolve by the clicking interactivity of the user. And return cyclecally in a second part of the piece, pixel by pixel, the same way they disappeared.
Life and death of images and sound compositions: The triptych of the reknowned piece (of the year 2000) called SELBST-LOS/Self-less (shown to the left), or WOLKEN-LOS and the recent GEDANKEN-LOS, and others like EUROPA ON THE FLY or VERZEIHUNG HERR VON GOETHE, SORRY MISTER JOYCE ...
In analogy then the single found and unchanged stones and ‘young rocks’ (a title of an 1969 video sculpture of Kahlen using a floating stone) , no more than atomic or pixeled parts of their environment, but joined together to groups of two or three, they may be looking like letters or archaic sculptures. May take over associations of any kind, though they are born out of chance and play, like the NetWorks.
Which are as site specific as the stone works, since they happen only at the site of the user at instant and never repeat, though they can be printed out, signed and numbered, as globally distributed parts of a piece, which knowbody owns, but many thousands so far have only details of.
The momentary associations, their potential of temporaily changes, this is the connection between the stones and the pixels.Peter P. Kajzar

Ich weiss nicht, wie man alle anspricht. Ich persönlich kann nur jemanden ansprechen.
I d not know how to address any-body. I can communicate with some-body only.
Es gibt keine Wirklichkeit. Es gibt nur Wirklichkeiten.
There is no one reality. I only know realities.
Nichts ist direkt erfahrbar, alles ist ver-mitte-lt, also objektiv falsch, persönlich wohl richtig.
No perception is pure of ..., anyone is media-ted, objectively wrong, personnaly maybe right.
Medien vermitteln.
Media mediate.
Im besten Falle zwischen der Situation und mir.
If I am lucky between matter and me.
Zwischen Materie und Immaterie.
Between material and the immaterial.
Ohne geistige Energien materialisiert sich garnichts.
Without spirit-ual energies no-thing matters.

(Wolf Kahlen 1980)

• Ich kann sagen was ich will 5 min, 1975

• Selbstversuch II (Körperrasur) 1 min 45s,

• Trespassing 5 min,

• Selbstversuch IV (Bräunung) 5 min 45s

• I can’t get hold of her 5 min, 1975

• Lindentunnel 7 min 36, 1991

• Some proofs/Some more proofs of water refraining from shaping

12 min 43s, 1991/2002

• Art Flood 4 min 22s

• Schnelles grau 6 min 49s, 1990

• Wolken die Berge Versetzen 36 min 36, 1990/1999

more at placeboKatz

Wolf Kahlen Museum