Introduction:
David Antin, “can we mean what we say” (published in Golden Handcuffs, spring 2010):
Dominique Pasqualini:
Double Change et L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris
vous invitent à une improvisation de DAVID ANTIN
mercredi 24 janvier 2007 à 19h à l’ENSBA, 14, rue Bonaparte, 75006
entrée libre
DAVIDANTIN [WITH GUITAR], 2006, 7’, vidéo-performance
de Dominique T. Pasqualini sera projetée en introduction.
DURATIONS, talk paru en 1993, sera lu en traduction française.
Poète, critique et performance artist, DAVID ANTIN est né en 1932 à New York et vit depuis 1968 à San Diego en Californie. Depuis 1971, à l’invitation de musées, d’universités, d’institutions culturelles, David Antin improvise des talk poems ou talk pieces au croisement de la conférence, de l’anecdote, du monologue, de la méditation, du récit, du dialogue philosophique. Par des digressions en cascade, au gré de réflexions sur le cadre de l’adresse, sur l’art (objet, histoire, milieu), les institutions, la société, la mémoire, ou le langage, un discours se construit, se déploie, dérive et s’observe, tandis qu’Antin parcourt imperceptiblement son motif. Certains de ses talks sont parus en recueils: TALKING AT THE BOUNDARIES (1976), TUNING (1984), WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AVANT-GARDE (1993) et récemment I NEVER KNEW WHAT TIME IT WAS (2005) et JOHN CAGE UNCAGED IS STILL CAGEY (2005). Ses SKYPOEMS, ‘publicités qui ne vendent rien’ ont été aérographiés dans le ciel de Los Angeles et de San Diego, et ses WORD WALKS réalisés dans des parcs et jardins publics. Professeur émérite d’art de l’université de San Diego, il a publié des articles critiques dans les plus importantes revues d’art aux Etats-Unis.
DAVID ANTIN Poet, performance artist, art and literary critic internationally known for his “talk pieces” — improvisational blends of comedy, story and social commentary that critics have described as “a cross between Lenny Bruce and Ludwig Wittgenstein” or alternately as “a blend of Mark Twain and Gertrude Stein. New Directions has published three books of these “talk pieces” — TALKING AT THE BOUNDARIES (1976), TUNING (1984), and WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AVANT-GARDE (1993). TUNING was awarded the prize for poetry for 1984 by the PEN Center of Los Angeles. Much of his earlier work was collected in SELECTED POEMS 1963-1973 published by Sun and Moon Press in 1991, and he has performed at the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Getty Center in the U.S. at the Centre Pompidou and the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris. He has designed SKYPOEMS, short texts he describes as “commercials that aren’t selling anything,” that have been skytyped over Los Angeles and San Diego, designed WORD WALKS for urban parks, an ongoing electronic poem for an airport and performed both improvised and scripted verbal works for radio and television. He received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEH and was awarded the PEN Los Angeles Award for Poetry in 1984. He has published criticism in most major art and literary journals, and his work has been written about in THE POETICS OF INDETERMI-NACY, Marjorie Perloff (Princeton, 1981); THE OBJECT OF PERFORMANCE, Henry Sayre (Chicago, 1989); THE JAZZ TEXT, Charles O. Hartman (Princeton, 1991). An extensive interview with him has been published in SOME OTHER FREQUENCY: INTERVIEWS WITH INNOVATIVE AMERICAN AUTHORS, ed. Larry McCaffery, U. Penn. 1996, and the Review of Contemporary Fiction devoted its entire Spring 2001 issue to his work. Dalkey Archive recently republished his 1972 book talking (originally published by Kulchur Foundation) with a Preface by Marjorie Perloff and a Postface by David Antin. Granary Books recently published A Conversation with David Antin, the text of a 3 month email conversation between David Antin and Charles Bernstein. The most recent works include two new collection of talk pieces — I NEVER KNEW WHAT TIME IT WAS (UC Press, 2005) and JOHN CAGE UNCAGED IS STILL CAGEY (Singing Horse, 2005).