Gomringer at DMU

In September, Eugen Gomringer visited the UK as part of a celebratory tour of his life's work. As such, Gomringer spoke at the Royal Festival Hall in London, De Montfort University (DMU) in Leicester, the University of Derby, and Shandy Hall (home of 18th century author Laurence Sterne) in Yorkshire, amongst a few other places.

Born in 1925, Gomringer occupies an important place in the history of European art and poetry as the founder of the concrete poetry movement. His tour involved readings, talks, and exhibition openings.

The event at DMU exhibited works from the Conz collection, a selection of artworks donated to DMU by Italian art collector and avant-garde publisher Francecsco Conz. The donation, organised by Nicholas Zurbrugg, then Professor of English and Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Contemporary Arts at DMU, coincided with Eugen Gomringer's first visit to the University in 1996.

L to R: Francesco Conz, Eugen Gomringer, and Nicholas Zurbrugg

From the early 1970s, Conz began to work with experimental artists, such as key members of the Fluxus movement who were dedicated to exploring art in mixed media forms. Through his publishing company Editions Conz, he also produced large scale ink-on-canvas prints of concrete poetry, among which featured many of Gomringer's concrete poetry creations. Gomringer's works from the Conz donation have been exhibited in the Clephan building at DMU, home to the department of English and Creative Writing, and the Faculty of Art, Design, and Humanities.

The actual exhibition of large canvas prints is impressive. I've obviously seen and read about Gomringer's works in academic books and journal articles, but it really was a different experience to see them for real. There were four pieces which I particularly liked. The first two can be seen below.

L to R:

'memoires, memories, memorias' (1983)

'wind' (1953)

As with all his concrete-poetic works, Gomringer makes use of white space to explore the visual possibilities of the sign. 'wind' is rather self-explanatory, the scattered letters evoking a sense of dynamic motion, the letters themselves looking as though they have been blown by wind. 'memoires, memories, memorias' is somewhat more complicated. Gomringer writes the word 'memories' in French, English, and Spanish, arranging them to form a square, but with one side missing. In his talk, Gomringer mentioned this saying that he had deliberately left this absence, for another language, something else, perhaps beyond the sign.

Another of my favourites was 'kein fehler im system' (1969), shown below, which translates as 'no error in the system'.

The clever thing about 'kein fehler im system' is its playful performance of seeming error, amidst a clearly patterned system. With each repetition of the line, the 'f' from 'fehler' moves one position to the right, thus causing an error in terms of correct language use. However, at the same time, there is clearly a system, a code, which structures this concrete-poem. The code itself is exacted perfectly - there is no error in the system - evolving the text until it arrives full circle at 'kein fehler im system' after its series of permutations.

Finally, I can't not mention Gomringer's most famous piece, 'Silencio' (1954).

Again, Gomringer arranges language so that it performs. Here, the word 'silence' is arranged repeatedly in a rectangular shape. To look at, the block black repetition of 'silencio' appears visually noisy. And yet, in the centre, Gomringer leaves a perfect white space. A blank, which iconically depicts its meaning (and creates a synaesthetic mapping), the visual emptiness metaphorically performing sonic silence.

All in all, the Conz collection at DMU is remarkable. It adorns the walls of the second floor of the Clephan building, outside an undergraduate lecture theatre. Its presence there is understated, subtly imposing, and I do hope those who walk past it take note!