Diagrammatic Writing

By way of archiving, digital translation and reproduction, Philip Poppek extracts from Magritte’s word paintings twenty-six letters; segmental symbols of a textual system form an alphabet of a, with a familiar apple punctuating a provisional end to the sequence. A poetic correspondence with the letter a speculates on the prehistory of this alphabet, as though searching for some indication as to how we may have come to where we are now, in this ‘post-factual moment’.

Maybe at some point we fell into the foxes’ den, only to re-surface in a landscape of ruins. This book poses a number of necessary questions, perhaps beginning with: ‘Which feminine noun trails after the title script ‘est pas une?

Pomme? Pipe? Histoire? Communauté?

The Weight of the Concrete explores the legacy of the Turinese artist and publisher Ezio Gribaudo (1929–2022), examining his multifaceted oeuvre at the confluence of image and language. This publication, named after Il Peso del Concreto (1968)—a seminal work that featured Gribaudo’s early graphic creations alongside an anthology of concrete poetry edited by the poet Adriano Spatola (1941–88)—places Gribaudo’s work in conversation with approximately forty artists and poets from different generations, all of whom similarly engage with explorations of text, form, and visual expression.

Reflecting the editorial premise of Il Peso del Concreto, The Weight of the Concrete revisits the influential anthology, including archive material that documents its production, and reimagines it, pairing Gribaudo’s graphic work with a new selection of historical and contemporary concrete and experimental poetry.

At the heart of the volume is Gribaudo’s emblematic Logogrifi series, developed from the 1960s onward. The Logogrifi reveal his deep engagement with the art of bookmaking and fascination with industrial printing processes, relief matrices, typefaces, and language games.

In this new edition, the editors take the opportunity to revisit Gribaudo’s pioneering work, examining previously overlooked dimensions—gendered, geographical, and technological—and exploring contemporary associations beyond the original context. The book also includes essays that elucidate the poetic and political interplay between image, language, and materiality.

This publication is released following Ezio Gribaudo – The Weight of the Concrete, an exhibition held at the Grazer Kunstverein in Graz, Austria (2023–24), and at the Museion—Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano-Bozen, Italy (2024).

Edited by Tom Engels and Lilou Vidal
Published by Axis Axis and Grazer Kunstverein

Contributions by Anni Albers, Mirella Bentivoglio, Tomaso Binga, Irma Blank, Al Cartio, Paula Claire, CAConrad, Natalie Czech, Betty Danon, Constance DeJong, Mirtha Dermisache, Johanna Drucker, Bryana Fritz, Ilse Garnier, Liliane Giraudon, Susan Howe, Alison Knowles, Katalin Ladik, Liliane Lijn, Hanne Lippard, Sara Magenheimer, Françoise Mairey, Nadia Marcus, Giulia Niccolai, Alice Notley, Ewa Partum, sadé powell, N. H. Pritchard, Cia Rinne, Neide Dias de Sá, Giovanna Sandri, Mary Ellen Solt, Alice Theobald, Colleen Thibaudeau, Patrizia Vicinelli, Pascal Vonlanthen, Hannah Weiner, and Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt

Essays by Alex Balgiu, Tom Engels, Nadia Marcus, Luca Lo Pinto, Mónica de la Torre, and Lilou Vidal

Johanna Drucker's The Century of Artists' Books is the seminal full-length study of the development of artists' books as a twentieth-century art form. By situating artists' books within the context of mainstream developments in the visual arts, Drucker raises critical and theoretical issues as well as providing a historical overview of the medium. Within its pages, she explores more than two hundred individual books in relation to their structure, form, and conceptualization. This latest edition of the book features a new preface by Drucker and includes an introduction by New York Times senior art critic Holland Cotter.

The English translation of Zdanevich's Dadaist autobiographical lecture in Paris in 1922, where he adopts the name Iliazda. In this entertaining lecture, the achievements of the avant-garde is presented as a combination of zaum, polymorphous sexuality, aleatory forms and scatological interpretation of culture.

The second volume of the bie bao series presents a eulogy entitled Iliazda at the Birthday Party, a pseudo-autobiographical lecture delivered by Ilya Zdanevich in Paris in 1922. It reports on Zdanevich's artistic and political adventures up until then. Along with an autobiography full of self-admiration, in this lecture Zdanevich gives an interpretation of his zaum dramas inspired by Freudianism, and humorously describes a colourful image of the Russian microcosm in Montparnasse. 

Additionally, this second volume also includes Iliazd's letter to Ardengo Soffici from 1964, where one can read, in the most unambiguous terms, about Zdanevich's positions against war, imperialism, and all forms of nationalism. Subtitled 50 Years of Russian Futurism, the letter to Soffici presents us with an altogether new Zdanevich—a "fellow traveller" in both leftist and avant-garde circles. As well as the extended introduction and extensive annotations, the texts are further contextualised with Johanna Drucker's visual presentation of the birth of the Iliazd cult.

The bie bao series will include eight publications, covering many layers of Zdanevich's rich theoretical and artistic output. Each volume consists of a bio-bibliographical introduction, a commentary, a translation with annotations, and artistic intervention.

Iliazd (Ilya Zdanevich, 1894-1975) was a Russian poet, designer, typographer, theoretician, art critic, and publisher, close to the avant-garde circles and one of the promoters of Futurism in Russia, author of a poetic work, drama written in zaum abstract poetic trans-sense or "transrational" language, and novels.

Peach machine comprises nine months of poems, tracing a recurrent cycle of sickness, heartbreak, reparation, and recovery from late summer back into early Spring. The work is roughshod: grieving, oxygen-starved, jetlagged, reflective, and relieved.

Designed and typeset by Phil Baber.

An inscription of time at the coast, singing crows, albatrosses and seagulls. STOP. Extracted from the earth a whole alphabet. The waves uplifted countries and washed mountains until the storm came undone. The plantation of tobacco was maintained among the meadows and cafes flourished as the core of erudition, the power was theirs - you could see it in cinema- the actors spoke feverishly with enthusiasm, rather than breathless, meticulous and austere. The scars healed on mysterious skin that came out of the shadow to cross the day.

Slangen krioelen in de sarcofaag van het heden, in de krochten van de popcultuur, in de mummie van de natuur, in wondes en rot vlees, in artificiële woestijnen en op geoliede dad bods. Ze wentelen zich rond beursgrafieken, raken verstrengeld met wurgende algoritmes, orkestreren een trage ondergrondse revolutie. Een meisje snijdt zich aan een nepdiamanten piramide en werpt haar slangenvel van zich af.

Dominique De Groen is schrijver en beeldend kunstenaar. Ze publiceerde de dichtbundels Shop Girl (2017), Sticky Drama (2019) en offerlam (2020). Ze werd genomineerd voor de Poëziedebuutprijs Aan Zee 2018, de Herman de Coninckprijs 2020 en de Fintroliteratuurprijs 2021 en won de Frans Vogel Poëzieprijs 2019 en de Fintropublieksprijs 2021.

Nico Vela Page’s Americón is a collection of poems in Spanglish that weaves a space for the queer, trans body to know the land, and itself, as extensions of each other. The land is the desert of Northern New Mexico, the forgotten Pan-American Highway, the space between our thighs, the quaking cordillera of Chile, the moans of elk, and the ripe fruit waiting to be picked. Through archive, attention, and erotic ecopoetics, Page’s debut collection of poems extends far across the page, the gender binary, language, and the Americas to find out who we are by asking where we are.