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Martin Högström is a poet and a graphic designer. It's no coincidence that these two fields of practice is mentioned in one mention as in his first book Transfutura (OEI editör 2005), Högström depicts a history of typefaces from Fenician characters to the digital medias of today. In addition, he designs the typeface Transfutura based on Paul Renner’s Futura, which is moulded when every letter of a word is invaded by its neighbouring characters. Transfutura also appears in the visual suite ”Subjunktioner” (OEI #31–32, 2007), an assortment of still images of letters in different stages of becoming, changing and dissolution.
Almost exactly a year ago, the collection of poems Kommande industrilandskap (Forthcoming Industrial Landscapes) was released and for the book launch at Index in Stockholm, I heard Martin read. With great precision he delivered the strangely empty poems that at once make up an intense surface tension. The texts stemming from the suite "Two Million Five Hundred And Sextio Thousand Poems", which furthermore correspond to what will take place in my studio at the time for the next publishing of Téléphone. The text that follows is an edited version of an email conversation between Martin and I.
PETER: Thanks for a good meeting last time – both of your ideas for the show that we talked about sound very good – the sound piece and the Transfutura images. Have you had any chance to reflect on what you want to show here?
MARTIN: I have involved a programmer, Stian Kristensen, who is working on the sound piece. It seems very promising.
The piece emanates from the last part of my book Kommande industrilandskap. At this point, the thought is to have these randomly composed poetical four line verses played from a loud speaker from your gallery and outwards. It does not need to be very loud. These lines are written partly with the thought of a sincereness expressed from a lack of, or at least a mutilated, "inner" in a romantic lyrical sense. This sincereness constists of some sort of generic or superficial (a concept that immediately is problematic but I won't go into that in this mail) quality. Anyway, all this plays well, I think, with the inverted gallery room that in it's limited space in relation to the street outside may correspond to the relation between inner and outer that constitutes these verses. At the same time, we might consider the possibility of an additional activity in the space. Maybe the sound should be audible inside as well so that the difference between outside and inside is suspended in a simple way, which then would be reduced to a question of resonance.
P: Good to hear that the sound piece seams possible to realize. It will be interesting to consider it in relation to the other exhibitions that has taken place in my studio. Many of the questions that have been raised in relation to them include the positions of the space, the piece and the spectator in relation to eachother, and here your work offers a completely new angel. It is interesting that you describe an "inversion" of the gallery space, this room becomes thus the only place where the piece is not present... It is rather the place from where the work is presented. A place from where you can overlook the process. It will be interesting to see what consequences this will have. I think that perhaps it should be an "empty inner", that the sound only is audible outside… To make the inversion clearer. Or maybe the speaker could be placed in the door opening, on the boundary of in and out?
M: I think that a speaker at the door opening, with it's radical placing, draws too much attention to that aspect of the piece – the placing. I like the sense of it just beeing played straight out, as if there was a public. Only one speaker outwards, placed on the front, that is.
P: You have talked about the verses in "Two Million Five Hundred And Sixty Thousand Poems" in terms of photographs, on-the-spot accounts of an ongoing process – same thing with the images that you have showed in OEI, on Transfutura letters in different stages of change and dissolution – in light of this, how do you regard the sound piece? It appears as if you recreate the event in retrospect, the process that has anticipated these "photographs"?
M: With exception from these upper case messages, the book Kommande industrilandskap contains three suites that depart from the German photographers Bernd & Hilla Becher's documentations of mines and other industrial sites. Coal and photo recur. Moreover, these upper case verses that now are going to be activated in your gallery have partly accumulated their energy from Raymond Queneau's suite of sonnets Cent mille milliards de poèmes. A cut has there been made between every verse so that you can browse and produce new combinations with verses on other pages of the book, which by it's immense combinatory possibilities primarily constitute a potential collection of poems. It would be impossible even in generations to browse through and read all possible poems contained within the book's covers. It is a book with poems that you primarily have not read. My suite, "Two Million Five Hundred And Sixty Thousand Poems", has a similar point of departure, but there are no cuts between the lines. The potential is only suggested and the poem rests in it's only form, like a photograph, i.e. a frozen version of an imagined process – where the imagined process at the same time constitutes the point of departure for the momentary quality. Even a photograph by the Becher’s formulates, in a certain respect, the image of a frozen process, even if perhaps that isn’t the most obvious way to read them. The poem will thus, at your space, be liberated from it's photographic impression. The verses will be cut up, and they also leave their visual representation and appear as sound. An anti photographic work maybe. To clean the poems of photographic quality. Maybe the photographic metaphors are no longer productive and I don't even think that you can talk about negatives, etc. I haven't really thought this through so much, but in a superficial way, this is how I picture how the photographic condition is going to be dissolved in Aspudden, by materializing the potential that is the foundation of the photographic poems represented in the book. What do you think of this, how do you consider the photographic nature in relation to the sonorous and the emphasise on combinations, the discharge of the potential?
P: Now, when you ask me about the relation between the photograpic and the sonorous qualities of the piece I think about the relation between the object status (photograph, book) of the photographic poem and the actual process – the deobjectified poem. You materialize the potential of the work by dematerialize it's formal qualities. Maybe the book/object should be included in the exhibition, in the space? So that the two versions of the text may be regarded in relation to each other?
M: Just like the poem, that is graphically represented in the book, even the sound piece constitute a materialization of an aspect of the poem's potential. And therefore a depotentialization. One of the points of departure for the poem in the book was that it should constitute an example of a large number of possible combinations of the verses. At the same time, you can agree with the literary critic Nils Olsson when he proclaims that these verses are a bit too good to be read as arbitrary examples. There are quite simply less successful imaginable combinations. In this case we may deal with fairly succesful examples – however still examples all according to the formula that the poem is subordinate to and that I have borrowed from Raymond Queneau and his suite of sonnets. A certain degree of arbitrariness is inscribed to the composition of the verses. As if another combination always was possible. The poem that we read in the book constitutes, in this aspect, the "photograph" that has been presented: the process frozen at a certain moment in time. With Queneau, it is the reader who produces new sonnets by browsing; the reader's activity has been inscribed into the piece – whereas I have left the two levels work/public a bit more separated. The work removes itself from the supposed democracy in such a gesture.
The poem lingers in the book – to refer to your question. It presents itself through it's material limitations. It is an object. The sound piece, on the other hand, doesn't account for the limits of it's physical body. The presence of the book in the room would imply that the sound piece is connected to a certain amount of data. Even if you can't be sure that the data of the sound piece is identical to that of the book, such an understanding is enhanced at every verse that the piece produces. Every read verse – that in itself always stands before the same amount of data and hence always starts again – cements more and more, slowly but surely, the knowledge of it's own limited material. The verse that is composed by the sound piece machine – which never learns anything, never accumulates any experience – constitutes an alternative to the book's proposition. This way, you can maintain that the photographical principal is applied here too. But without any photographer. The machine that wants to produce verses is repressed in the book since the poet/photographer has "put a spoke in it’s wheel" in order to restrain the process/photograph/compose poems. In the sound piece, the camera has taken over the responsability on the level of the verse. What the poem in the book and the sound piece have in common, is in this regard, the model of possible combinations. However, in the sound piece, the role of the poet has been confined to that of a supplier of raw material, while the book's poet at the same time is a photographer.
P: The fact that you talk about the materialization of the potential of the piece appears rather unusual to me; you see rather many art works that are interested in different forms of undeveloped potential, different kinds of vague versions of inherent promises – but you seldom attain the outlet of the potential…
M: It may be important to not only produce possibilities but also objects. If the quality of the object primarily is negativ in it's capacity of a lost possibility of a number of other objects, you may end up in a metaphysical condition. I gladly refer to Oulipo who, except from producing new possible forms and formulas for future poets and poetry, also underlined the importance of exemplifying – suggestions of poems produced according to the machines of these new formal structures. Not only ideology, but also society, maybe one could conclude. But, a society where other possible realities have been inscribed. It may be valuable to subordinate a piece of work to it's own model. To take responsability for the space that you occupy.
P: You could also apply musical metaphors to express the photographic in relation to the sonorous – I think about Kraftwerk, how they talk about their musical creations, it reminds a lot of your software that randomly portions material in ever new combinations. They describe their recording sessions in terms of them sitting and listening to the computers playing to them, and how certain excerpts are chosen for publishing. I don't know how productive these metaphors are, probably time to leave them, but maybe still the Kraftwerk reference has some relevance to the language in your verses, with it's "sincereness expressed from a lack of an inner"? It may remain an interesting parallell in my mind, it would however be fun to hear you elaborate on how you think regarding what you call the generality or superficiality of the texts.
M: Yes, why not like Kraftwerk, even if the musical references may drift us in other directions. You can also consider the late Wittgenstein. In Philosophical investigations, he informs us about the impossibility of a privat language and what all languages have in common that they follow rules. Here he also develops the famous "language-games". The specific, where every utterance carries it's meaning in a certain context, in a certain play, in combination with the general, where the language anticipates every application with certain rules, interests me. In a formal sense, at the same time, the early Wittgenstein – the Tractatus of aforisms – has influenced my poem. As opposed to the late W who underlines the use of language as a condition for the meaning of an utterance, the logical W aims in another way to design a total philosophy for reality. It is always hazardous to refer to Wittgenstein – you often make the mistake to believe that his philosophy lends itself to a bit of everything. But if you read these both currents into one another, you may misinterpret yourself into what I wish to say.
Moreover, I think that nor a linguistic analysis of these verses, neither a "consumption" of their content would be especially productive, and it wouldn’t manage to say much of their value. I am more interested in the surface that separates these levels. Here we find the sincereness of the surface. Poetry as interface and this interface as poetry.
P: You have written that you want the material to be "played straight out, as if there was a public". At the same time you have said that the verses are "written with the lack of inner". This suggests that these messages, which are delivered very precisely, with a certain self-evidence, and with a clear direction, at a closer look, seam to lack both sender and recipient.
M: "Played straight out, as if there’s a public". Important to stress the local. The publicity is constructed in language. A massmedia mode, because it is possible to talk about such a thing, has occupied public domains with references to certain quantitative aspects. This with pompous rhetorics that in one single blow bring together concepts like "reach", "representation" and "democracy" – according to a logic that would make Volvo more democratic than Saab, since there are more of them. In the piece here in Aspudden, the linguistic act is regarded as a potential publicity. The piece believes that the publicity is produced through and inscribed in every message and every structure of messages. This may not be unique. And here is obviously no solution to the dilemma of the concept of publicity. But here is something else than what has been occupied by TV4, Expressen and Moderaterna. Here's an object that talks.
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