Keep your eye on Lex-Icon!

 Starting tomorrow, the 20th of March 2012, the "Lex-Icon: treating the image as text and the text as image" conference I am putting together with Oceane Delleaux and others will begin our pre-conference blogorama project. What, you ask, might this be? A method of opening dialogue, getting started, and also enjoying seeing some great images by authors and artists who are making us look at what can be done with language when we take it out of its habitual 2-dimensional space, or rethink the visual-verbal possibilities on the page itself.  To see more of an explanation of what is to come, check out our LEX-ICON BLOG EXPLAINER HERE which is in French and English. But why not be part of the project, too? To contribute, see our CALL FOR BLOG MATERIALS below.

As for myself, one of the greatest joys of preparing this conference--outside the wonderful university professors, curators, artists, publishers and writers I have been meeting with in person over these past weeks as things gear up for the exciting June 7th-9th conference (Program soon in its final format online HERE) and reading events which will take place before, during and after the conference (ie on the 10th with Estepa, Dusie, Corrupt and other presses' authors)--has been the discovery of authors and artists who are out there making great language work. One of the coolest must be EBON HEATH (photos of him and his work are taken from this article and interview on him, EBON HEATH AND HIS VISUAL POETRY By Apostolos Mitsios (http://www.yatzer.com/1690_ebon_heath_and_his_visual_poetry). 


When I saw Ebon Heath's webiste, "LISTENING WITH MY EYES" (click HERE to visit) it seemed insane that I had gone on so long unaware of this person. His work astounds me in its dynamic nature, and delights me as it ties together design, language, typography, sculpture, architecture and even, for some works, jewelry-making skills. If any of you are in NYC and seeing his work in person, feel free to let me know how it feels to see these works up close! Until that happens, I look forward to discovering more artists and authors who are redefining in the 21st century how language can be materialized... 


And now, for anyone wanting to contribute to the Lex-ICON blog--here is our invitation for short critical texts or visual page or art images and reflections:


INVITATION:

Critics, philosophers, authors and artists:

In the context of our conference Lex-ICON and of our pre-conference blog project on http://lex-icon21.blogspot.com/, we would very much like to invite your participation as a blog poster. To contribute, send the following to the email: fragment78 [at] gmail [dot] com

          1)   A short critical text (250-300 words, or one-two paragraphs about any textual and visual works realized since the year 2000, or a theoretical reflection on verbo-visual works in the 21^st century) OR  a single JPEG page image (either a page of one of your works or books, or a jpeg of a visual art work mixing text and image by you) created anytime between 2000 and now 

          2)  Note: IF YOU SEND AN IMAGE, please also send a sentence or a few (1-5) by you (send this in the email as an in-text text) about the jpeg page. The sentences may address the techniques involved in making the text-image, the interest of the visual and textual practices at work, the fascination or interest you have in creating texts using visual art techniques or visual artwork using language, questions you have perhaps for readers/viewers of this work that might get people thinking about it, readability or illisibility issues with your work or even that of others, where the work emerged from, etc. etc. The idea is to accompany the image with some sort of creative, critical or questioning reflection—it is up to you what form that takes, but we do want it to be brief.\

          3) Note: IF YOU ARE SENDING A CRITICAL TEXT: Your text can be a mini critique of a specific artwork or book, it can be about hypertext works or the movement into the domain of hypertext, it can be linked to poetic or language works which use visual art techniques or typography in innovative ways, it can be about the ways that visual artists or a visual artist is using language in their work, it can be about asemic writing, techniques of language or image use in contemporary lexiconographic works, or forms of narration in texts that are unreadable, or new forms of narration in books which use visual images as text, etc. You may even write a presentation of the theoretical or philosophical ramifications a conference like Lex-Icon evokes for you. Your take might even pose questions that you hope talks at our conference might answer. For further ideas, you can also refer to our original call for abstracts on the website.

          4)    A 100 word max bio (very brief thanks!) and any blog or website links for your site or blog.

All of the texts and images posted on our blog will be assembled into a mini booklet to be printed in early June and distributed at the international conference “Lex-Icon: treating the image as text and the text as image” in Mulhouse, France on June 7^th at the opening art expo welcome meeting (see our programme).  Again, please send work to fragmen78[at]gmail[dot]com