This edition by Walter and Jan Verwoert pairs an 7" record featuring 6 pieces of sound poetry with facsimiles of the 6 collages used as scores for the recordings.
The scores are collaged from typographical material—letters sliced from local ads and daily papers with a compass cutter—which Walter arranged across long scrolls of paper, in a calmly factual yet free and playful manner (much like stenciling marks into a player piano roll). The sound poetry pieces have Walter perform the scores in a surprisingly wide range of ways: full-bodied singing changes into repetitive enunciations of letters, syllables and sounds; to suddenly paint concise pictures with words using layered language and existential humor. Putting the record on, with facsimile collages in hand, conjoins the listening and viewing experience. It may provoke performance: what noises, notes or words would you use to interpret the score? The 6 pieces are carefully selected from a larger series of recordings, Walter and son Jan Verwoert produced over a year, meeting monthly, to take a break from battling old age and illness, and experiment with giving voice to the typographical compositions.
Limited edition of 100 copies.
Walter Verwoert (born 1935) learned to be a typesetter after the war before going to art school in his hometown Düsseldorf in 1959 where he studied with
Joseph Beuys, and, 1965 graduated as a Meisterschüler in sculpture. He participated in the
Fluxus scene in Düsseldorf and Aachen with his particular blend of performance and sculpture. He continued his practice throughout the decades of teaching evening classes at the experimental school project Lernort Studio in Düsseldorf, with regular exhibitions in the region. His love for setting type resurfaced in recent years resulted in an extensive body of "typographical compositions".
Jan Verwoert (born 1972) is a writer, art historian, critic, and musician based in Berlin. He is a contributing editor at Frieze and writes regularly about contemporary art for magazines such as
Afterall and Metropolis M. A member of the advisory board of the Kunstverein Munich and Guest Professor of Contemporary Art and Theory at the Academy of Umeå, he teaches in the Fine Arts MA program at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, and at the Royal College of Art in London.
