The Epiphany of Language: The Connotation of Zen-Taoism in Charles Bernstein's Echopoetics

boundary 2 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 163-183
Author(s):  
Yi Feng
Keyword(s):  
Early Years ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Language Poetry ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Charles Bernstein ◽  
Taoist Philosophy

Abstract As a prominent representative figure of American Language poetry, Charles Bernstein has incorporated many themes concerning “nothingness” into his poetry. Contrary to the traditional Western philosophy that defines the concept of “nothingness” as meaninglessness and agnosticism, “nothingness” in Bernstein's poetics is endowed with profound poetic and aesthetic implications. Bernstein studied the works of Zen-Taoist philosophy in his early years. Understanding the Zen-Taoist connotations of “nothingness” is an important new dimension in interpreting Bernstein's echopoetics. Bernstein integrates the anti-traditional ideas in Zen-Taoist philosophy and aesthetics with the experiment of American avant-garde poetry. “The transformation between Xu (emptiness) and Shi (Being),” the beauty of “speechlessness,” and the expression of “defamiliarization” show the “epiphany” of language and the “nature” of language. The Chinese traditional Zen-Taoist philosophy is an important part of Bernstein's echopoetics.

Kharkiv Scenography School of O. Khvostenko-Khvostov: The Experience of Professionalization

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (02) ◽  
pp. 85-95
Author(s):  
V. Chechyk ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Music And Literature ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Theatrical Design ◽  
Outstanding Teachers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Compulsory Subject ◽  
The City

The article is devoted to the early years of formation of Kharkiv scenography school and to the creative and pedagogical activities of Olexander Khvostenko-Khvostov (1895–1967). It was reported that the bold experiments of this artist, in the field of theatrical design of 1918–1922, made him one of the central figures of Kharkiv avant-garde scene (“Mystery Buff”; “The Army in the City”; “Lilyuli”, etc), strengthening the reputation of an innovator and causing the beginning of pedagogical activity at the Kharkiv Art College in 1921. The theatrical and decorative workshop was opened at the faculty of painting at the Kharkiv Art College in 1922, it was headed by A. Khvostenko-Khvostov. Among the first graduates were such bright alumni as A. Volnenko, P. Suponin, V. Ryftin, A. Bosulaev, B. Chernyshov, and others. Fundamental provisions of the educational program, which A. Khvostenko borrowed from the teaching practice of A. Exter (Kyiv Studio, 1918–1920), reflected the formation idea of future theater artist’s synthetic thinking. It is known that the education program of the Theater and Scenery Workshop of KAC, equally with the Studio of A. Exter, in addition to the subjects common to all students of painting and drawing faculty as special subjects (theatrical scenery, technique and technology of the stage, etc.) included also the history of theater (I. Turkeltaub), material culture, costume, music and literature (A. Beletsky). O. Khvostenko paid special attention to theoretical and practical issues of composition. He introduced the course of fundamentals of directing (V. Vasilko) as a compulsory subject. Much of what the students mastered at the Workshop was tested on the professional stages of Kharkiv theaters. Associated with the Kharkiv Art School for a quarter of a century (1921–1946), O. Khvostenko-Khvostov has not still been included in the pantheon of its outstanding teachers.

Re-Imagining Westphalia

2021 ◽  
pp. 145-198
Author(s):  
M.I. Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Electronic Music ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Karlheinz Stockhausen ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Miles Davis ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Sound Transformation ◽  
The Cold War

Chapter 5 focuses on a work from Karlheinz Stockhausen entitled Hymnen (Anthems). Stockhausen’s influence on the electronic music avant-garde, in classical and popular music domains, on those from his native Germany to the UK, the US, and elsewhere, is legendary. The techniques Stockhausen was refining were also being put to work by the Beatles, Miles Davis, and Frank Zappa, to name a few. Working with national anthems that are sampled and transformed, Hymnen is a landmark work that I argue is as much about “remembering” as it is a research-based experiment in the early years of electronic and acoustic sound transformation. This work, completed during 1960s, evokes the cold war years where space exploration, civil rights, and nuclear (dis)armament standoffs between the communist East and the capitalist West predominated. It is also the decade of Woodstock, political assassinations, civil rights, and antiwar movements in the US and around the world. Hymnen still has a lot to offer for contemporary explorations into the geopolitics of any music-politics nexus.

Richmond

Alive Still ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 3-14
Author(s):  
Cathy Curtis
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Drop Out ◽  
Only Child ◽  
Advertising Agency ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
First Time ◽  
Evening Class

Born in 1922 in Richmond, Virginia, Nell Blaine was a rebellious only child, a loner fussed over by her mother. Her early years were plagued by serious vision problems, finally corrected in her teens. She was active in extracurricular clubs in both high school and college, where she encountered avant-garde art for the first time. Although she had to drop out of college after two years for financial reasons, she took an evening class in painting that helped her connect with new ideas in art. Meanwhile, she worked at an advertising agency, gaining experience that would stand her in good stead years later when she needed to earn a living. At age twenty, she left for Manhattan, ignoring the pleas and threats of her mother.

Rejections of Barthes

2018 ◽  
pp. 159-192
Author(s):  
Calum Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Language Poetry ◽  
Kathy Acker ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
John Yau

The methodology of the book means that writers’ engagement with Barthes is what is studied, but this risks erasing writers who shy away from him. This chapter considers why some poets, particularly those who are people of colour and/or queer, reject Barthes aesthetically and politically. This issue is positioned in relationship to contemporary discussions of avant-garde poetry and whiteness, and these concerns are illustrated with a more in-depth reading of the work of John Yau. This is followed by a discussion of queer objections to the Barthes of language poetry and a consideration of his work in the context of the New Narrative. The chapter concludes by considering why Kathy Acker rejects Barthes in favour of Bataille.

Robert Ashley

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Gann
Keyword(s):  
Performing Arts ◽  
Early Years ◽  
American Composers ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Vernacular Music ◽  
Ann Arbor ◽  
Group A ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Similar Text

This book explores the life and works of Robert Ashley, one of the leading American composers of the post-Cage generation. Ashley's innovations began in the 1960s when he, along with Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, and David Behrman, formed the Sonic Arts Union, a group that turned conceptualism toward electronics. He was also instrumental in the influential ONCE Group, a theatrical ensemble that toured extensively in the 1960s. During his tenure as its director, the ONCE Festival in Ann Arbor presented most of the decade's pioneers of the performing arts. Particularly known for his development of television operas beginning with Perfect Lives, Ashley spun a long series of similar text/music works, sometimes termed “performance novels.” These massive pieces have been compared with Wagner's Ring Cycle for the vastness of their vision, though the materials are completely different, often incorporating noise backgrounds, vernacular music, and highly structured, even serialized, musical configurations. Drawing on extensive research into Ashley's early years in Ann Arbor and interviews with Ashley and his collaborators, this book chronicles the life and work of this musical innovator and provides an overview of the avant-garde milieu of the 1960s and 1970s to which he was so central. The book examines all nine of Ashley's major operas to date in detail, along with many minor works, revealing the fanatical structures that underlie Ashley's music as well as private references hidden in his opera librettos.

In the Un-American Tree: The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poetries and Their Aftermath, with a Special Reference to Charles Bernstein, Translated

boundary 2 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 99-105
Author(s):  
Leevi Lehto
Keyword(s):  
Special Reference ◽  
American Poetry ◽  
Language Poetry ◽  
Specific Relation ◽  
Charles Bernstein

Abstract Leevi Lehto, in a keynote on American poetry presented in China, outlines the challenges and possibilities of Language poetry outside the American context, with specific relation to the meaning of translation.

Apollinaire, Guillaume (1880–1918)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tara S. Thomson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Pablo Picasso ◽  
Visual Poetry ◽  
Henri Matisse ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Guillaume Apollinaire ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Spanish Flu ◽  
Poetry Collection

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) was a poet, literary and art critic, playwright, novelist, editor, and journalist. Born in Rome to a Polish-Russian mother and an unknown father, Apollinaire’s birth name was Guglielmo Alberto Wladimiro Alessandro Apollinare de Kostrowitzky, though his family called him Wilhelm (the German form of the Italian Guglielmo). After spending his early years moving throughout Monaco, France, Belgium, and Germany, he finally settled in Paris in 1902, adopting the pen name Guillaume Apollinaire. Apollinaire became a prominent cultural figure in Paris and was a key player in the literary and artistic avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century, particularly Cubism and Surrealism. Apollinaire first gained literary recognition for his poetry collection Alcools (1913) but is best known for inventing calligrams, a form of visual poetry. While Apollinaire was primarily a poet, he earned his living as a journalist and art critic. In his articles and reviews he championed avant-garde art, and was friends with such artists as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Apollinaire fought for France in WWI and returned home in 1916 after receiving a head wound. He survived the war but died of Spanish Flu in 1918.

“Nothing tires a vision more than sundry attacks / in the manner of enclosure”: An Afterword to Angriff der Schwierigen Gedichte

boundary 2 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 107-112
Author(s):  
Dennis Büscher-Ulbrich
Keyword(s):  
German Language ◽  
Critical Survey ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Bilingual Poetry ◽  
Jacques Rancière ◽  
Charles Bernstein ◽  
Critical Theorist ◽  
Distinguished Scholar ◽  
Poetry Collection

Abstract The following text was published in German as an afterword to the bilingual poetry collection Charles Bernstein: Angriff der Schwierigen Gedichte (München: luxbooks, 2014). Originally intended as a critical survey and introduction for German-language readers, it traces Bernstein's work as a radical modernist poet, distinguished scholar, and critical theorist in his own right from the late 1960s to the early 2010s. From his early poetry to L = A = N = G = U = A = G = E magazine, from his major books of poetry and collective avant-garde performances to his essays on poetics, Bernstein, I argue, consistently articulated with wit and precision why and how radical modernism affects what Jacques Rancière has called the “distribution of the sensible.”

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