Exploding Tongues: Language, Art, and the Russian Avant-garde

Book Page Project Proposals

ASSIGNMENT PROMPT      (DUE Tuesday, 3/28 midnight)
Students in ARTS 227 and CSLC 134 / RUSN 334 will collaborate in small groups of 2-3 students on the design, creation and use of print materials to produce one page contribution to a limited edition of a course book inspired by examples from the Russian/Soviet Avant-garde. Text can be composed in any of a variety of styles, from traditionally rhyming and metrically regular to zaum. Layout, design and distribution of text are similarly freed for expression or provocation. 

Each student is required to submit a brief (paragraph-length) statement of intent in the form of a Comment submitted by clicking the Comment (speech bubble) button at the very bottom of this page (make sure to scroll past the last media window for "Tango with Cows"). Each statement should indicate which "type" of project it will be (see below), as well as any formal properties the content will have (e.g. text length, layout, graphics, imagery).

ParametersTo facilitate project work, we have to constrain the possible approaches to a reasonable number. For your proposals, please select an option from any of the three project types: 
  1. A simulated lithograph, using the more current "flexographic" technology using Photo Polymer Printing Plates. This method enables free-hand writing and illustration, of the sort exemplified in the famous early zaum poem, "Dyr bul shchyl," by Aleksei Kruchenykh, illustrated by Mikhail Larionov. 
  2. Suprematist-inspired graphics, using geometric and semi-regular shapes to compose letters, designs, and scattered decorative fragments, such as "Nash marsh" (Our March) from Dlia golosa (1923), a collection of poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky, with typographic/illustrative design by el Lissitzky. 
  3. Moveable type. This approach allows free and expressive arrangements of consistent or mixed type blocks, such as lidandtIU FarAm (1923), a "Dra" (dramatic play) by Il'ia Zdanevich, or Tango with Cows (1914), a collection of "ferroconcrete" poetry by Vasily Kamensky, with illustrations by David Burliuk.
For each of these methods, limited hybrids and decorative hand-work (such as rubber stamped elements), etc. can be proposed and pursued, with time, equipment and materials considered. 
 

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  1. I intend for the page I contribute to the book to be in a moveable type style. I want it to include between 5 and 10 words. Each of the “words” will be arranged in varying shapes, and colors if possible. Longer words will be in smaller type, shorter words will be in large type. Two of the words will be placed in two corners of the page, as if they were shoved into the corner using a push broom. The other words will be scattered throughout the page, to be read in any order, and separated using line segments. The line segments will either be hand drawn or composed of repeating small shapes. A small flower, or similar image, will be centered at the bottom of the page in red.
  2. I'd like to work with movable type for this book project. The text would be sourced from a section of some story book from my childhood, but the words would be distorted out of sense to mere sounds, like we practiced in last class. I'm interested in what effect that might have on text so close and meaningful to me. Simple images and/or patterns will be printed onto the page by a pronto-plate printing process or photo polymer printing process. The text will be printed in multiple colors and like "Tango with Cows," I want the book also to be cut in an unconventional shape.
  3. For my contribution to the book I'd like to use the simulated lithograph technique (or whatever works best for the image I'd like to create) and the first five lines of Richard Brautigan's poem "The Sawmill." My idea for the lithograph is to write the poem over and over again in a very light gray/near white color (so it barely stands out from the paper) and use that image to cover the page. I want to print the poem upside down and offset at diagonal angles, in either a dark crimson or black color. The upside down poem would be overlaid over the background text.
  4. I would like to create a poem in a form inspired by Ilia Zdanevich's "As Though Zga" (link below). The idea of the page is to infer multiple possible readings of the poem from its typography. The work will be set in movable type with common elements of two or more words in large lettering, and associated prefixes/suffixes in smaller type justified with the top, bottom, and center of each larger common element (see link for example). While Zdanevich's poem includes numbering for some possible "roadmap" for reading the poem, I would like to omit such a scheme to increase the number of possible readings. The poem will be centered horizontally and vertically on the page, and will be between 4 and 7 lines long (not including sub-lines within each). http://scalar.usc.edu/works/exploding-tongues/media/as-though-zga?t=1490756651439
  5. I would really like to work with moveable type, inspired by Tango with Cows (1914). I like the bright colors and floral designs on one side, and I want to consider using other bright nature themed images. I also appreciate how there is just text on the right side of the pages, and how both the images and the text are on pigmented paper which blends the two elements together nicely. Overall I like the ability to move the images wherever I please and have them be bright and colorful. I intend the words to be from nature themed poetry, such as that from Robert Frost, but with Zaum aspects.
  6. For this book project, I would like to use the moveable type technique. I also like the idea of doing something similar to the activity we did in class where we combined different words to give the original words new meaning. I think it would be interesting to come up with contradictory words and combine them in some way (such as hot and cold, etc.) to give them a new meaning. This poem will be short (consisting of only three words max) and would be done using large wooden type. Each wooden type piece will be inked using different colors that will be chosen depending on the word. Each word will consist of more than one color of ink.
  7. For a possible page, I am interested in creating a concrete poem with moveable type that attempts to embody Roman Jakobson's concept of sound shapes in language. This poem will also involve ink color, size, and tone in contributing to the both the poem's concrete shape and the aforementioned elements' relation to the concept of the sound shape. Possible topics/objects for this poem are birds, daemons, nude bodies, and/or landscapes. Ideally, the poem will be represented through unconventional reading responses ie backwards, reversed, etc. Finally, I am interested in constructing and composing this poem with mixed media (glass, particle board, water slide paper, and possibly metal), however the feasibility of implementing this design choice is tenuous and subject to hesitance in my mind.
  8. For this project, I hope to use movable type to attempt to create a page that challenges the reader's internalized processes of reading. I would like to do this with either backward or inverted text as well as zaum poetry that evokes emotions of disruption. Ideally, the zaum poetry would be off center somehow. In addition to the text, I think it would be interesting to add hand-drawn lines that move the reader's eyes away from the inherent left to right reading strategy. I imagine the text to be black, but the lines could be either black or in color. The page overall would be fairly simple, however hopefully still eliciting feelings of chaos and confusion.
  9. For my book page, I would like to use a combination of movable type and freehand drawing. Taking cues from Dadaist chance practices, my idea is to pick a word (tbd), select the individual letters for that word and arrange them randomly onto the page- by dropping them from above, or rolling them like die, so that they arrive at a position entirely of their own volition. After determining the position of the letters, I’d stamp them onto the page, and then use whatever shape they form as an outline for a drawing. Thus, the final product is a combination of text and drawing, not unlike dyr bul schyl, and incorporates both chance and deliberate intention.
  10. I would like to work with suprematist-inspired graphics. I may like to start with coherent words and show them gradually moving towards nonsense and simple sounds. I would arrange words so that they could be read alongside the graphics. Larger letters or words would be printed with gold ink and smaller text wold be printed over top in black or gray. I also plan to have some words printed within and over shapes at odd angles. For example, I would like to have incomplete squares or circles with words freely flowing through them.
  11. For my page, I would like to create a pattern of rectangular blocks that starts from the left side of the page and spirals to the right, down, and into itself. Basically the pattern trails off and the blocks get smaller as they spiral in. Each of the blocks will house a guttural sound or combination of sounds and the entire spiral represents a long sentence or communicated expression of meaning that ultimately trails off into meaninglessness. Each block or sound has a specific meaning, but when pieced together, these meanings are replaced by a single, unified, but diminished meaning. Because the structure spirals, the reader has to read some of the sounds upside down, making the unified expression more difficult to read and causing a further loss in meaning when the page is approached as a single unit instead of a collaboration of separate, sovereign entities.
  12. I would like to use the movable type style for my contribution to the book and the words that remind me of change and uncertainty. My idea for the type is to write flagrations of the words in neutral colors and use a variety of words lengths. I want to print the poem in a spiral, zig-zag, and dot shape and offset with shadow, in gray.
  13. I'm interested in doing a project with moveable type, and creating something inspired by Ilya Zdanevich. Type would be of various sizes, colors would be minimal, and the words would be invoking the likes of zaum. With my created words, I would like to try and get as many different sounds down on a single page as possible.
  14. I know that I want to use visual lexicality and create a spacial representation of grammar in a simulated lithograph, and I know that I want to make use of the unique visual-lexical hybrid of handwriting. I don’t have any particular details about the layout or design. I think I want the work to develop organically out of the process rather than strive to replicate a presupposed form. The physical process of this is unique and fascinating, and I want to make the most of the intentionality that goes into the ritual of studio work.
  15. Our plan was to use the handwriting plastic press. We want to write the same poem in our three different handwriting styles, then layer them over each other offset by two lines. That way, the first two lines are totally legible, the second two look like a mess, and the third are illegible. However, because the lines are offset, the second to last pair of lines will be as legible as line 3 and 4, and the last two lines will be perfectly legible again. This method, while convoluted, has its inspiration in the tradition of musical round. With this layering, we seek to capture on paper the phenomenon of reciting it as round, each voice adding on as the poem progresses, then dying out. That being said, we're not quite sure what it will look like yet and we are open to suggestions and critique.
  16. The book page will incorporate Suprematist-inspired graphics. The zoom poem lends itself to be read aloud and therefore will be read in canon. This canon reading will be represented visually by layering the text of the poem on top of itself. Each printed iteration of the poem will be at the start of the second line of the previous iteration, as it would be, were it read aloud in canon.

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