Fondazione Antonio Ratti

Karl Holmqvist

Word Text Vortex – Dream of Insomnia Workshop

PERFORMANCE
17 February 2012
FAR – Villa Sucota

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Karl Holmqvist shared some of his recent studies on the life and work of Ezra Pound. The typically learned and distantly observing position famously taken by the poet in his writings using frequent citations in a host of original languages etc. nonetheless led Pound to the twin disasters of him endorsing Mussolini's fascist regime during WWII and his subsequent incarceration in the U.S. for national treason. These dramatic events set the frame for a presentation by artist Karl Holmqvist, and a reflection on possible positions for art in present-day society between being a means of elitist exclusion or a democratic tool of self-expression. Or somehow possibly both. Language itself seems to hover between something like the redundant journalist's speak's lack in nuance and the possibly endless symbolisms, double meanings and ambiguities found in poetry (and the story-lines of dreams).

Parts of this presentation was published later in the spring by JRPRingier as an artist's book in association with Kunsthalle Zürich and Bergen Kunsthall.

Karl Holmqvist is a frequent participant in international exhibitions as a poet and performer as well as visual artist, most notably in the IllumiNations section of 54th Venice Biennial, in The Poetry Marathon and Manifesto Marathon organized by The Serpentine Gallery in London and the project Ecstatic Alphabets at Moma, New York.

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