A Celestial Warrior from Welcome to Upper Zygonia appears in R is for Revolution

 

Thanks to Tchello d'Barros for including my collage, A Celestial Warrior of the Zygonian Galaxy in R is for Revolution in the Visual Poetry Museum on Facebook. The exhibitions features 111 artists from 30 countries. I am the only Canadian.

From Tchello:

 ABOUT THIS EXHIBITION

The participating artists responded - with their works - to the following provocation: “Is there currently space for revolutions? Is there in your heart any revolt against the current status quo? Do we need to change something on our street or in global geopolitics? Will humanity witness any (r)evolution in this century? Can art be a weapon to transform consciences? You don't need to answer these questions, but your art can tell us a little about your imaginary combatant. The project is also a tribute to the bicentennial of the South American revolutionary Anita Garibaldi (1821-1849), the ‘heroine of 2 worlds’. Anita was an amazon, wife, mother, guerriller and revolutionary, fighting in 4 wars in Brazil, Uruguay and Italy. You may choose creat your art under Anita’s miyth, with her figure, name or history!”

 According to the curator,  "this exhibition presents part of the imagination of artists from all continents from their worldview to the theme "Revolution". If in the 19th century the Brazilian guerrilla Anita Garibaldi fought for freedom in South America and Europe, today we have our demands for change, whether on our street or in global geopolitics. May art be as contemporary as the everyday revolutions in our consciences".

 

THE ARTISTS

ARGENTINA: Alejandra Bocquel - Amelia Vilches - Ana Verónica Suárez - Catanzaro Claudia - Hilda Paz - Ma. Angélica Carter Morales - Norberto José Martinez – Omaromar - Patricia Negreira - Raquel Gociol - Rosa Gravino - Walter Brovia |  AUSTRALIA: Denis Smith | AUSTRIA: Piroska Horváth | BELGIUM: Luc Fierens - Renaat Ramon | BRASIL: Al-Chaer - Alex Hamburger – Almandrade - Frdipinto Constança Lucas - Denise Moraes - Eni Ilis - Gringo Carioca Franklin Valverde - Guto Lacaz - Hugo Pontes - Iara Abreu - Ivana Andrés - Jairo Fará - Janys Oliveira - Joaquim Branco - Maria De Lourdes Rabello Villares - Maria Tereza Penna - Marisa Vidigal - Mercedes Brandão - Roberto Keppler - Rosana Schmitt - Rui Costa Marques - Tchello d'Barros - Yolanda Freyre | CANADA: Amanda Earl | CHILE: Emilio López Gelcich | COLOMBIA: Ariel Chavarro Avila - Maskin - Tulio Restrepo | DENMARK: Marina Salmaso | FINLAND: Anja Matilla-Tolvanen |  FRANCE: Cristophe Massé - Katerina Mandarik | GERMANY: Hans Braumueller & Ruggero Maggi - Horst Tress - Klaus Pinter | GREECE: Petala Eftichia | HUNGARY: József Bíró - Márton Koppány | ITALY: Angela Caporaso - Bruno Chiarlone - Cinzia Farina - Claudio Romeo - Cosma Tosca Bolgiani - Enzo Correnti - Enzo Patti - Franco Panella - Ljdia Musso - Mariano Lo Gerfo - Maya Lopez Muro - Morice Marcuse Carrara - Oronzo Liuzzi - Roberto Scala - Ruggero Maggi - Serse Luigetti | IRAN: Elham Hamedi | JAPAN: Keigo Hara | LATVIA: Gundega Strautmane | MEXICO: Elodia Corona Meneses - Gema Rios - Mac Ilhui - Persefone Manuel Oreste Suárez - Sergio Araht |  PERU: Liesel Cerna - Victor Valqui Vidal | POLAND: Miron Tee | PORTUGAL: António Barros - Avelino Rocha - Feliciano De Mira - Marcela Santos - Vanessa Bastos | RUSSIA: Alexander Limarev - Irina Novikova | SERBIA: Dejan Bogojevic | SPAIN: Àlex Monfort - Alfonso Aguado Ortuño - Daniel De Cullá - Francisco Sánchez Luz - Ferran Destemple - José L. Campal - Miguel Jimenez - Sabela Baña - Victoria Esgueva | SWITZERLAND: Bruno Schlatter | URUGUAI: Clemente Padin | USA: C. Mehrl Bennet - Joey Patrickt - John M. Bennet - Nico Vassilakis - Reid Wood - Rosalie Gancie | UNITED KINGDOM: Lola Gonzáles | VENEZUELA: ­_Guroga

 

SERVICE

Mail Art exhibition ‘‘R for Revolution”

Curatorship: Tchello d’Barros | Brasil 

Executing Entity: Visual Poetry Museum

Production: Instituto Cultural Tchello d’Barros

Opening: 18 December 2021  

Visit period: 18-31 december.2021 

Site: Visual Poetry Museum’s community in Facebook

Links:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/181520088856020

https://www.facebook.com/visualpoetrymusem

https://www.facebook.com/tchellodbarros

 

CONTACT

Tchello d’Barros

Curator | “R for Revolution”tchellodbarros@yahoo.com.br  

www.tchellodbarros.wordpress.com

Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

Kept Awake by Little Fires Dreaming from Welcome to Upper Zygonia will be in the Trickhouse Press 2022 Annual

 Thanks to Dan Power of Trickhouse Annual for including several visual poems/doodles from Welcome to Upper Zygonia. Also included is the full interview / e-mail exchange with Imogen Reid, "Creating Culture Among Women: Friendship and List Making for Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry, A Conversation with Imogen Reid" originally published in abridged form by Wisdom Body Collective.

You can preorder the anthology here while copies last.

To whet your appetite, here's the table of contents:

Amanda Earl - Kept Awake by Little Fires Dreaming
Astra Papachristodoulou - from Like Amber
Chris Kerr - Mildred
David Spittle - enfants en deuil
draftpost0.github.io - like something else, nerds
Imogen Reid - 5 poems
James Knight - from Bodies
Joseph Turrent - Cyclohexane Drift Example
JP Seabright - Moveable Type
Katy Wimhurst - The State We're In
Laura Kerr - 6 poems
Maggs Vibo - M.U.S.I.C.
Martin Wakefield - Lego Poems
Matthew Haigh - BORN
Paul Robinson - STOPLOSS
ReVerse Butcher - 8 poems
Robin Boothroyd - Unearthed
S Cearley - 9 poems
Silje Ree - Knitting Patterns
Sy Brand - On Having Needs
Vilde B. Torset - Like A Mindmap of a Thoughtcloud

Amanda Earl - "Creating Culture Among Women: Friendship and List Making for Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry, A Conversation with Imogen Reid"

Scott Lilley - "An interview with Trickhouse editor Dan Power"

SJ Fowler - "Sticker Poems: Unstuck"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

260-page, A4, full-colour.

Jérôme Melançon on the Vispo Bible

 I was startled with delight by Jérôme Melançon's recent note of praise on the Small Machine Talks, the podcast I host through AngelHousePress. 

"Amanda’s frequent mentions of the Vispo Bible project (look it up (nothing else comes up!) or look at this essay) give a sense of a shifting, evolving work that is promising to become one of the major creations in Canadian poetry, the equivalent of a series of long poems, something I’d perhaps place beside bp nichol’s Martyrology in terms of its ambition and daring (and of course the religious/non-religious metamorphosis, the saints). I can’t imagine publishing such a large project piece by piece, as it moves forward and evolves, and not being able to go back to change the beginning. There’s courage both in the undertaking and in the releasing of this major work. And there’s something beautifully vulnerable and brave in sharing this project, bringing it into conversation, throughout the seasons of the podcast, giving a sense of its evolution and being honest about the relationship to the instruments and software that make it possible and force its transformations.”

Gobsmacked! 

The Book of Joshua, Old Testament from the Vispo Bible is now completed

 I have now completed The Book of Joshua from the Old Testament. This is Chapter 24.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CXC2yHHLmhMDozu2_pjA0hixtsxT54wgzOvts80/

The Vispo Bible now has 343 pages, with 8 / 39 books from the Old Testament and 10 / 27 books from the New Testament completed. Still many books, chapters and verses to go. There's a reason why this is a life's work. I began it in June, 2015. I am into my 6th year.

More info about the Vispo Bible

http://eleanorincognito.blogspot.com/2020/05/where-can-you-find-work-from-vispo.html

back to the Vispo Bible: Joshua 11

 

Upper Zygonia Meets Dragana

in response to Astra Papachristodoulou's great new book, Inside Ocean Größt’s Time Capsule, A Future-Facing Exercise Book with Visual Poetry Prompts. i didn't have test tubes so i used glass containers i had. i've only just started the book, but it is the most gorgeous and imaginative work. i had great fun with the first and second prompts. i call this series Welcome to Upper Zygonia meets Dragana, who is listed in the glossary as Dragana 5230 or the Indestructible, an Astronoid built in 2129...widely known for their ability to be recovered."

 

Prophesy, a vispo series from Welcome to Upper Zygonia

 

Nusquam from Welcome to Upper Zygonia

 

Nusquam is from Thomas More's Utopia and means nowhere. Parts of The Dream Beings of Upper Zygonia have been woven in to the visual poem. Thank you to the City of Ottawa for the Creation and Production Fund for Established Artists received in July 2021. This is one of several visual poems that will be part of the manuscript, a collection of poems entitled "Welcome to Upper Zygonia."

So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed, the poster

 if i could afford it, i would make a 24 x 36 inch poster to offer for sale; instead, here  it is.

and here is a link to a better quality of the poster which you can download for free. 

SO MANY SILENCED, SO MANY UNNAMED

So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed is a translation of specifically misogynistic passages of the Bible and early Christian writings. The Vispo Bible is a defiant feminist response to the Bible and its hate - misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia. The interpretation and enforcement of these  texts can be directly linked to the ongoing bigotry and violence we are living in today. 

SMS / SMU : thank you and sources + Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons [A Long Dress]

 

So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed

What is the current that makes machinery, that makes it crackle, what is the current that presents a long line and a necessary waist. What is this current.

 

What is the wind, what is it.

 

Where is the serene length, it is there and a dark place is not a dark place, only a white and red are black, only a yellow and green are blue, a pink is scarlet, a bow is every color. A line distinguishes it. A line just distinguishes it.

Tender Buttons [A Long Dress]

Gertrude Stein - 1874-1946

//

Main Sources

[additional sources for individual visual poems are quoted within the entry.]

 

Wikipedia list of women in the Bible

King James Bible Online

 

100 Dresses: The Costume Institute / The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, Yale University Press, 2010.

Alice Connor, Fierce: Women of the Bible and Their Stories of Violence, Mercy, Bravery, Wisdom, Sex, and Salvation, Fortress Press, 2017.

April D. Deconick, Holy Misogyny

Why The Sex And Gender Conflicts In The Early Church Still Matter, Bloomsbury, 2011.

Lydia Edwards, How to Read a Dress. A Guide to Changing Fashion from the 16th to the 20th Century, Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.

Lindsay Hardin Freeman, Bible Women: All Their Words and Why They Matter

Forward Movement, 2014, Fifth printing, 2020.

Sue Poorman Richards and Lawrence O. Richards, Women of the Bible: The Life and Times of Every Woman in the Bible, Thomas Nelson, 2003.

 

List of podcasts I listened to during the making of this work:

 

The Babel Tower Parish Radio

Chloë Proctor,  Sascha Akhtar, Sarah Dawson, JD House, Aaron Kent

 

Full House Lit Podcast

Chloë Proctor and Richard Capener

 

Between the Covers with David Naimon

Jen Bervin

Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Natalie Diaz – Part 1 and Part 2

 

Commonplace with Rachel Zucker

M. NourBeSe Philip

 

Penteract Press

Episode 24: Kate Siklosi, Gregory Betts, & Nasser Hussain

 

 

Thank you to the Ontario Arts Council Recommender Grant for Writers Program for funding So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed. Thank you to the recommenders: Invisible Publishing and the New Quarterly. And a huge thanks to all the feminist activists, artists and writers of the past, present and future who are trying to make a world that is just and equal for all.

 

For those who are able to provide aid and support, please donate or assist your local women’s shelter, organizations fighting for gender equality, to world wide feminist organizations, pro-choice groups fighting for the autonomy of women over reproductive rights, such as the Abortion Right Coalition of Canada.

 

If you’d like to support an Ottawa based organization, I suggest Cornerstone for Women, which provides emergency housing and other support locally.

 

Thank you for your interest and support. I am honoured and grateful. 

SMS/SMU Judges 19.29

 

So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed

Judges 19.29 “He took a knife and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces.”

 Published in Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry, Timglaset Editions, 2021.

 dedicated to victims of gender-based violence, and to missing and murdered Indigenous women and their loved ones. i am sorry for your loss. 

//

 one of the inspirations for this project was the cover art for Klara Du Plessis’ first poetry book, Ekke, Palimpsest Press, 2018.

 

the art entitled Vela Sikubhekile was created by Nandipha Mntambo. “Mntambo was born in Mbabane, Swaziland. In 2007, she completed a Master’s in Fine Art from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. Mntambo currently lives in Johannesburg. The work is on display at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA).

 

"Her work addresses ongoing debates around traditional gender roles, body politics, and identity. She works in photography, sculpture, video, and mixed media to explore the liminal boundaries between human and animal, femininity and masculinity, attraction and repulsion, life and death.”

 

After I had made this visual poem, at some point, it dawned on me that I was inspired specifically by Nandipha Mntambo’s Vela Sikubhekile.

 //

Kimberlé Crenshaw, Intersectional feminism: what it means and why it matters right now, UN Women, 2020

SMS/SMU François Rabelais

So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed

When I say woman I mean a sex so weak, so fickle, so variable, so changeable, so imperfect, that Nature — speaking with all due reverence and respect — seems to me, when she made woman, to have strayed from that good sense with which she had created and fashioned all things. I have pondered over it five hundred times yet I can reach no solution except that Nature had more regard for the social delight of man and the perpetuating of the human species than for the perfection of individual womanhood. Certainly Plato does not know into which category to put women: rational animal or irrational beast.

François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel

Jamie Leigh, Sexism in Classic Literature

 

 

“The garment is an element on which the artist has often pondered. To her it represents the tension between nature and artifice, between our desire to be free and our need to represent ourselves.” Jane Sterbak

 

SMS/SMU The Unnamed Women

So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed

adulteress, anointing sinner, anointing woman, bent woman, bride of Cana, Catalphas’ servant girls, Cain’s wife, crippled woman, daughters of men, daughters of Zelopehad, David’s ten concubines, demonized slave girl, gifted artisans, Hebrew woman, Jairus’ wife and daughter, Jerusalem disciples, Job’s wife, Lot’s wife, Naman’s wife’s slave girl, Noah’s wife, notable women of Shunem, Paul’s sister, persecuted disciples, prominent women, Queen of Sheba, Samaritan mother, Samaritan woman, Samaritan women, Samson’s mother, Shunammite woman, sinful woman, Syrophoenician’s woman, Timothy’s mother, two harlots, Tyrian disciples, widow of Nain, widow of Zarepath, widow, poor, widow with the mite, widowed wife of a prophet, widows, wise woman of Tekoa, wise woman of the city, witch of En Dor, woman who blessed Jesus’ mother, woman with issue of blood, women disciples, women of Israel, women witnesses to resurrection

 

Sue Poorman Richards and Lawrence O. Richards, Women of the Bible: The Life and Times of Every Woman in the Bible, Thomas Nelson, 2003.

 //

Erase the Patriarchy: An Anthology of Erasure Poetry edited by Isobel O’Hare (University of Hell Press, 2020)
 
“History is history.
 
The uncompromising, oppressive, outdated reins of patriarchy plaguing the entire world have never been more obvious—and perhaps never more in need of dismantling. Inspired, seemingly tireless people across the globe have always banded together in solidarity and action hell-bent on change. Sometimes this change is rooted in policy reform, sometimes revolution—and often artistic expression.
 
Within this gorgeous volume of erasure artworks exist differing cultural experiences connected by the desire for paradigm shift on a global political scale. Familiar statements and treatises are transformed into poetic versions of what reality looks like or could become for many of us stuck in a vicious machine. This international artistic appeal rips apart layers of deception, inequity, and fraud perpetuated by systems of power. Erasing what no longer serves us can reveal another avenue from which to begin.”

 

SMS/SMU Thomas Aquinas

So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed

"As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from a defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence. "–Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church, 13th century

//

Hei Lam Ng

“片言⇄カタコト⇄broken language is an ongoing text based project of Japanese kanji characters that have different definitions in Cantonese and Japanese.

 There is poetry in the unique set of words and phrases of a language that other languages don’t have, and therefore cannot be accurately translated. Being a multilingual person allows me to peek into these lost-in-translation gaps and be amazed by them, which inspired me to work on this project.”

SMS/SMU John Wesley

So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed

 

Wife: Be content to be insignificant. What loss would it be to God or man had you never been born.–John Wesley, founder of Methodist movement (1703-1791)

//

Katharina Ludwig

"is an artist and writer working with text, installation and objects. Her research in the framework of the Art Research programme at Goldsmiths is concerned with narrative holes in women*’s writing and the temporalities of the “wounded text”. Katharina tries to activate textual holes as a subversive feminist practice of resistance with insurrectional potential that treats the textual wound as a political and writerly strategy in opposition to authoritarian systems. Her work has been shown, performed or read internationally and is published by a.o. 3am Magazine, Zeno Press, Chris Airlines, Ma Bibliothèque ."

SMS/SMU John Calvin

So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed

Thus the woman, who had perversely exceeded her proper bounds, is forced back to her own position. She had, indeed, previously been subject to her husband, but that was a liberal and gentle subjection; now, however, she is cast into servitude.–John Calvin, Reformer (1509-1564)

//

Dodie Bellamy, Cunt Norton, Les Figues Press, 2013

“In Cunt Norton, the sequel to her unforgettable Cunt Ups, Dodie Bellamy “cunts” The Norton Anthology of Poetry (1975 edition), setting her text-ravenous cut-ups loose to devour the canonical voices of English literature. The texts that emerge from this sexual-linguistic encounter are monstrous, beautiful, unashamed: 33 erotic love poems (“the greatest fuck poem in the English language,” according to Ariana Reines) that lust after the very aesthetic they resist. “These patriarchal voices that threatened to erase me—of course I love them as well,” Bellamy writes. Even as Cunt Norton dismembers the history of English poetry, “cunting” Chaucer and Shakespeare, Emerson and Lowell, it simultaneously allows new members to arise and fill in the gaps, transforming the secret into the explicit, the classically beautiful into the wonderfully grotesque. Bellamy’s cunted texts breathe life into literary “masters” with joy, honesty, hilarity, and insatiable passion.”

 

SMS / SMU Deuteronomy 22-21

So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed

Deuteronomy 22-21 “and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house”

//

Christine Walde

“Christine Walde’s Bride Machine is a limited edition artist multiple composed of 14 folios of poetry with original artwork in a custom-made clamshell box, inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s iconic Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even, also known as the Large Glass. Composed of single broadsides, transparencies, chapbooks, and other printed works, each folio in Bride Machine is both a disruption and meditation on the act of reading, challenging readers’ assumptions about the codex and the ephemeral nature of the archive through the counter-narrative of its hinged, folded, coiled, bound and stapled elements. Part amuse-bouches, part observation, Bride Machine is also a rigorous interrogation of desire, the fourth dimension, conceptual poetics, and the emancipation of Duchamp’s Bride from her apotheosis of virginity."