Henri Chopin
Encyclopedia
Henri Chopin was an avant-garde poet
and musician
.
and sound poet
, well-known throughout the second half of the 20th century. His work, though iconoclastic, remained well within the historical spectrum of poetry as it moved from a spoken tradition to the printed word and now back to the spoken word again (Wendt 1996, 112). He created a large body of pioneering recordings using early tape recorders, studio technologies and the sounds of the manipulated human voice. His emphasis on sound is a reminder that language stems as much from oral traditions as from classic literature, of the relationship of balance between order and chaos.
Chopin is significant above all for his diverse spread of creative achievement, as well as for his position as a focal point of contact for the international arts. As poet, painter, graphic artist and designer, typographer, independent publisher, film-maker, broadcaster and arts promoter, Chopin's work is a barometer of the shifts in European media between the 1950s and the 1970s.
His publication and design of the classic audio-visual magazines Cinquième Saison and OU between 1958 and 1974, each issue containing recordings as well as texts, images, screenprints and multiples, brought together international contemporary writers and artists such as members of Lettrisme and Fluxus
, Jiri Kolar
, Ian Hamilton Finlay
, Tom Phillips
, Brion Gysin
, William S. Burroughs
and many others, as well as bringing the work of survivors from earlier generations such as Raoul Hausmann
and Marcel Janco
to a fresh audience.
distortion and intelligibility. He avoided high-quality, professional recording machines, preferring to use very basic equipment and bricolage methods, such as sticking matchsticks in the erase heads of a second-hand tape recorder, or manually interfering with the tape path (Wendt 1985, 16–17).
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
.
Life
Henri Chopin was a French practitioner of concreteConcrete poetry
Concrete poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on....
and sound poet
Sound poetry
Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging between literary and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words"...
, well-known throughout the second half of the 20th century. His work, though iconoclastic, remained well within the historical spectrum of poetry as it moved from a spoken tradition to the printed word and now back to the spoken word again (Wendt 1996, 112). He created a large body of pioneering recordings using early tape recorders, studio technologies and the sounds of the manipulated human voice. His emphasis on sound is a reminder that language stems as much from oral traditions as from classic literature, of the relationship of balance between order and chaos.
Chopin is significant above all for his diverse spread of creative achievement, as well as for his position as a focal point of contact for the international arts. As poet, painter, graphic artist and designer, typographer, independent publisher, film-maker, broadcaster and arts promoter, Chopin's work is a barometer of the shifts in European media between the 1950s and the 1970s.
His publication and design of the classic audio-visual magazines Cinquième Saison and OU between 1958 and 1974, each issue containing recordings as well as texts, images, screenprints and multiples, brought together international contemporary writers and artists such as members of Lettrisme and Fluxus
Fluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
, Jiri Kolar
Jirí Kolár
Jiří Kolář was a Czech poet, writer, painter and translator. His work was divided between literary and visual art.- Life :Kolář came from a poor family of a baker and a seamstress...
, Ian Hamilton Finlay
Ian Hamilton Finlay
Ian Hamilton Finlay, CBE, was a Scottish poet, writer, artist and gardener.-Biography:Finlay was born in Nassau, Bahamas of Scottish parents. He was educated in Scotland at Dollar Academy. At the age of 13, with the outbreak of World War II, he was evacuated to family in the countryside...
, Tom Phillips
Tom Phillips (artist)
Tom Phillips CBE R.A. is an English artist. He was born in London, where he continues to work. He is a painter, printmaker and collagist.-Life:...
, Brion Gysin
Brion Gysin
Brion Gysin was a painter, writer, sound poet, and performance artist born in Taplow, Buckinghamshire.He is best known for his discovery of the cut-up technique, used by his friend, the novelist William S. Burroughs...
, William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
and many others, as well as bringing the work of survivors from earlier generations such as Raoul Hausmann
Raoul Hausmann
Raoul Hausmann was an Austrian artist and writer. One of the key figures in Berlin Dada, his experimental photographic collages, sound poetry and institutional critiques would have a profound influence on the European Avant-Garde in the aftermath of World War I.-Early biography:Raoul Hausmann was...
and Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect, art theorist and cultural promoter, known as the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in Eastern Europe. His first contribution came in the 1910s, when he joined up with poets Tristan Tzara and Ion Vinea...
to a fresh audience.
Aesthetics
Chopin's poesie sonore aesthetics included a deliberate cultivation of a barbarian approach in production, using raw or crude sound manipulations to explore the area betweendistortion and intelligibility. He avoided high-quality, professional recording machines, preferring to use very basic equipment and bricolage methods, such as sticking matchsticks in the erase heads of a second-hand tape recorder, or manually interfering with the tape path (Wendt 1985, 16–17).
Further reading
- Jamet, Cédric. 2009. "Limitless Voice(s), Intensive Bodies: Henri Chopin's Poetics of Expansion". Mosaic 42, no. 2 (June): 135–51.
- Lentz, Michael. 1996. "'Musik? Poesie? Eigentlich …': Lautmusik/Poesie nach 1945". Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 157, no. 2 (March-April): 47–55.
- Norris, Andrew. 2005. "Projections of the Pulseless Body: Don van Vliet and Henri Chopin". Chapter & Verse, no. 3 (Spring).
- Oehlschlägel, Reinhard. 2008. "Henri Chopin gesorben". MusikTexte, no. 116 (February): 87.
- Zurbrugg, Nicholas. 2001. "Programming Paradise: Haraldo de Campos, Concrete Poetry, and the Postmodern Multimedia Avant-Garde". In Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language, edited by Brandon LaBelle and Christof Migone, 7-35. Los Angeles: Errant Bodies. ISBN 0-9655570-3-0.