Clair de Lune is a special edition from hieroglyphica and Ana María Caballero’s long-form generative FX HASH collection POEMS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN [PITPD]. This project represents a new form of poetic anthology—one that celebrates the role of the reader in shaping the life of a poem.
In this piece, several readers take turns reading and rereading Paul Verlaine’s iconic Clair de Lune, as translated by Gertrude Hall.
Inspired by Roland Barthe's maxim, those who fail to reread are obliged to read the same story everywhere, each reader is represented by multiple pen colors and new marginalia, suggesting the crucial act of rereading.
The verses vanish, just like our memory of their exact words might fade, but distilled, standout moments of personal connection remain. In time, even these wane, providing a scarcely perceptible backdrop as the poem is discovered & interpreted anew.
PITPD explores authorship. When a poem enters the public domain, it no longer belongs to its author but to its readers. In the intimate moments we read a poem, we link it to our private, pulsating worlds & help ensure others will read it, too. If history’s palms hadn’t held Sappho’s words, our fingers wouldn’t be holding them now.
Readers write poetry’s survival.
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hieroglyphica and Ana María Caballero, Clair de Lune, MP4, 1080 x 1080, 1/1, 2022.
A conversation between the digital and the physical and 2023 Crypto Art Award Shortlist, The Lumen Prize.
“The poem-object is a composition that aims to combine resources from poetry and the visual arts, and to contemplate their capacity for mutual exaltation.”
— André Breton
Poème Objkt is a conversation between poetry and the visual arts brought to life through the liminal play of the physical and the digital. As contemporary expressions of Breton’s poem-object, the pieces in this exhibition present works of poetry, experimental writing and literature on the blockchain that enhance, reinvent and reimagine the relationship between the text and the image, the analog and the digital, ultimately opening up a space for dialogue that blurs and challenges the lines that divide.
This co-curation with L'Avant Galerie Vossen and theVERSEverse in Paris materializes in two parts:
Part 1 opened in October 2022. L’Avant Galerie Vossen and theVERSEverse curated the works of Sasha Stiles, Ross Goodwin, Ana María Caballero, aurèce vettier, Campbell McGrath, Robness, Kalen Iwamoto, Julien Silvano, Jason Sholl, and Saul Steinberg.
This first exhibition’s curatorial framework falls along the following lines:
GENERATIVE LITERATURE
POEM = WORK OF ART
CONCRETE POETRY
CONCEPTUAL
Part 2 takes place May 2023 at Librairie Métamorphoses in Paris, with a section of the exhibition taking place at L’Avant Galerie Vossen.
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Image:
Exhibition view © Photo: Jean-Louis Losi