John Giorno
Encyclopedia
John Giorno is an American
poet
and performance art
ist. He founded the not-for-profit production company Giorno Poetry Systems and organized a number of early multimedia poetry experiments and events, including Dial-A-Poem. He became prominent as the subject of Andy Warhol
's film Sleep
(1963). He is also an AIDS
activist and fundraiser, and a long-time practitioner of the Nyingma
tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.
. He graduated from Columbia University
in 1958, where he was a "college chum" of physicist Hans Christian von Baeyer
. In 1962, while in his early twenties he briefly worked in New York
as a stockbroker. In 1962 he met Andy Warhol
during Warhol's first New York Pop Art solo exhibit at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery
. They became lovers and Warhol remained an important influence for Giorno's developments on poetry, performance and recordings. Giorno and Warhol are said to have remained very close until 1964, after which time their meetings were rare. Their relationship was revived somewhat in the last year before Warhol's death. Inspired by Warhol, and subsequent relationships with Robert Rauschenberg
and Jasper Johns
, Giorno began applying Pop Art
techniques of appropriation of found imagery to his poetry, producing The American Book of the Dead in 1964 (published in part in his first book, Poems, in 1967). Meetings with William S. Burroughs
and Brion Gysin
in 1964 contributed to his interest in applying cut up and montage techniques to found texts, and (via Gysin) his first audio poem pieces, one of which was played at the Paris Museum of Modern Art Biennale in 1965.
Inspired by Rauschenberg's Experiments in Art and Technology events of 1966, Giorno began making "Electronic Sensory Poetry Environments", working in collaboration with synthesizer creator Robert Moog
and others to create psychedelic poetry installation/happenings at venues such as St. Mark's Church
in New York. In 1965, Giorno founded a not-for-profit production company, Giorno Poetry Systems
in order to connect poetry to new audiences, using innovative technologies. In 1967, Giorno organized the first Dial-A-Poem event at the Architectural League of New York, making short poems by various contemporary poets available over the telephone. The piece was repeated to considerable acclaim at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970, and resulted in a series of LP records compiling the recordings, which were issued by Giorno Poetry Systems. Some of the poets and artists who recorded or collaborated with Giorno Poetry Systems were Burroughs, John Ashbery
, Ted Berrigan
, Patti Smith
, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass
, Robert Rauschenberg
and Robert Mapplethorpe
.
Giorno's text-based poetry evolved rapidly in the late 1960s from direct appropriation of entire texts from newspapers, to montage of radically different types of textual material, to the development of his signature double-column poems, which feature extensive use of repetition both across columns and down the page. This device allowed Giorno to mimic the echoes and distortions he was applying to his voice in performance. A number of these poems were collected in Balling Buddha (1970). The poems also feature increasingly radical political content, and Giorno was involved in a number of protests against the Vietnam war. Spiro Agnew
called Giorno and Abbie Hoffman
"would be Hanoi Hannahs" after their WPAX radio broadcasts made to the US troops in South Vietnam
on Radio Hanoi
.
Giorno travelled to India in 1971 where he met H.H. Dudjom Rinpoche
, head of the Nyingma
order of Tibetan Buddhism. He became one of the earliest Western students of Tibetan Buddhism, and has participated in Buddhist communities for several decades, inviting various Tibetan teachers to New York and hosting them. His poetry has reflected Buddhist and other Asian religious themes from the beginning, but the poems in Cancer In My Left Ball (1972) and those that follow involve a highly original interpenetration of Buddhist and Western avant-garde
practices and poetics.
Touring rock clubs in the 1970s with Burroughs, Giorno continued to develop an amplified, confrontational performance poetry that was highly influential on what became the Poetry Slam scene, as well as the performance art
of Karen Finley
and Penny Arcade
, and the early Industrial music
of Throbbing Gristle
and Suicide
. In 1982 he made the album Who Are You Staring At? with Glenn Branca
and is prominently featured in Ron Mann
's 1982 film Poetry in Motion
. He stopped using found elements in his poetry in the early 1980s and has since pursued a kind of experimental realism, incantatory and repetitive yet at the same time lyrical.
Giorno has celebrated queer sexuality from the 1964 "Pornographic Poem", through his psychedelic evocations of gay New York nightlife in the 1970s, to more recent poems such as "Just Say No To Family Values". He founded an AIDS charity, the AIDS Treatment Project in 1984, which continues to give direct financial and other support to individuals with AIDS to the present day.
In addition to his collaborations with Burroughs, Giorno has produced 55 LPs, tapes, videos and books. He continues to perform at poetry festivals and events, notably in Europe where he has been an active participant in the sound poetry scene for several decades.
In 2007 he appeared in Nine Poems in Basilicata, a film directed by Antonello Faretta based on his poems and his performances. In addition to his solo performances in live poetry shows, he has collaborated since 2005 in some music-poetry shows with Spanish rock singer and composer Javier Colis.
The first career-spanning collection of Giorno's poems, Subduing Demons in America: Selected Poems 1962-2007, edited by Marcus Boon, was published by Soft Skull in 2008.
In 2010, Giorno had his first one-person gallery show in New York, entitled Black Paintings and Drawings, at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, wherein he exhibited works that chronicled the evolution of the poem painting. The first Poem Prints were part of the Dial-A-Poem installation in the 1970 exhibition Information at the Museum of Modern Art
. Connecting words and images, the poet uses the materiality of the written word to confront audiences with poetry in different contexts.
In 2011, he starred in one of two versions for the music video to R.E.M.
's final single "We All Go Back to Where We Belong".
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
poet
Performance poetry
Performance poetry is poetry that is specifically composed for or during a performance before an audience. During the 1980s, the term came into popular usage to describe poetry written or composed for performance rather than print distribution.-History:...
and performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
ist. He founded the not-for-profit production company Giorno Poetry Systems and organized a number of early multimedia poetry experiments and events, including Dial-A-Poem. He became prominent as the subject of Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
's film Sleep
Sleep (film)
Sleep is a film by Andy Warhol which consists of long take footage of John Giorno, his close friend at the time, sleeping for five hours and 20 minutes. The film was one of Warhol's first experiments with filmmaking, and was created as an "anti-film". Warhol would later extend this technique to...
(1963). He is also an AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
activist and fundraiser, and a long-time practitioner of the Nyingma
Nyingma
The Nyingma tradition is the oldest of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism . "Nyingma" literally means "ancient," and is often referred to as Nga'gyur or the "old school" because it is founded on the first translations of Buddhist scriptures from Sanskrit into Tibetan, in the eighth century...
tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.
Career
Giorno was born in New YorkNew York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. He graduated from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in 1958, where he was a "college chum" of physicist Hans Christian von Baeyer
Hans Christian von Baeyer
Hans Christian von Baeyer is a Chancellor Professor of Physics at the College of William and Mary. His books include Information: The New Language of Science and Warmth Disperses and Time Passes: The History of Heat.Von Baeyer was born in 1938....
. In 1962, while in his early twenties he briefly worked in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
as a stockbroker. In 1962 he met Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
during Warhol's first New York Pop Art solo exhibit at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery
Stable Gallery
The Stable Gallery, originally located on West 58th Street in New York, was founded in 1953 by Eleanor Ward. The Stable Gallery hosted early solo New York exhibitions for artists including Robert Indiana and Andy Warhol.-History:...
. They became lovers and Warhol remained an important influence for Giorno's developments on poetry, performance and recordings. Giorno and Warhol are said to have remained very close until 1964, after which time their meetings were rare. Their relationship was revived somewhat in the last year before Warhol's death. Inspired by Warhol, and subsequent relationships with Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...
and Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns, Jr. is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and printmaking.-Life:Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his paternal grandparents after his parents' marriage failed...
, Giorno began applying Pop Art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
techniques of appropriation of found imagery to his poetry, producing The American Book of the Dead in 1964 (published in part in his first book, Poems, in 1967). Meetings with 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 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...
in 1964 contributed to his interest in applying cut up and montage techniques to found texts, and (via Gysin) his first audio poem pieces, one of which was played at the Paris Museum of Modern Art Biennale in 1965.
Inspired by Rauschenberg's Experiments in Art and Technology events of 1966, Giorno began making "Electronic Sensory Poetry Environments", working in collaboration with synthesizer creator Robert Moog
Robert Moog
Robert Arthur Moog , commonly called Bob Moog was an American pioneer of electronic music, best known as the inventor of the Moog synthesizer.-Life:...
and others to create psychedelic poetry installation/happenings at venues such as St. Mark's Church
St. Mark's Church
St. Mark's Church is a Serb Orthodox place of worship in Belgrade, Serbia. The church is located in the Tašmajdan park in Belgrade, near the Parliament of Serbia. There is a small Russian church for Russian Orthodox faithful next to St. Mark's.-History:The Church of the Holy Apostle and...
in New York. In 1965, Giorno founded a not-for-profit production company, Giorno Poetry Systems
Giorno Poetry Systems
Founded in 1965, Giorno Poetry Systems was an American artist collective, record label, and non-profit organisation founded by poet and performance artist John Giorno with the direct aim to connect poetry and related art forms to a larger audience using innovative ideas, such as communication...
in order to connect poetry to new audiences, using innovative technologies. In 1967, Giorno organized the first Dial-A-Poem event at the Architectural League of New York, making short poems by various contemporary poets available over the telephone. The piece was repeated to considerable acclaim at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970, and resulted in a series of LP records compiling the recordings, which were issued by Giorno Poetry Systems. Some of the poets and artists who recorded or collaborated with Giorno Poetry Systems were Burroughs, John Ashbery
John Ashbery
John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...
, Ted Berrigan
Ted Berrigan
-Early life:Berrigan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 15, 1934. After high school, he spent a year at Providence College before joining the U.S. Army in 1954 to serve in the Korean War. After three years in the Army, he finished his college studies at the University of Tulsa in...
, Patti Smith
Patti Smith
Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....
, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
, Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...
and Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers and nude men...
.
Giorno's text-based poetry evolved rapidly in the late 1960s from direct appropriation of entire texts from newspapers, to montage of radically different types of textual material, to the development of his signature double-column poems, which feature extensive use of repetition both across columns and down the page. This device allowed Giorno to mimic the echoes and distortions he was applying to his voice in performance. A number of these poems were collected in Balling Buddha (1970). The poems also feature increasingly radical political content, and Giorno was involved in a number of protests against the Vietnam war. Spiro Agnew
Spiro Agnew
Spiro Theodore Agnew was the 39th Vice President of the United States , serving under President Richard Nixon, and the 55th Governor of Maryland...
called Giorno and Abbie Hoffman
Abbie Hoffman
Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman was a political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ....
"would be Hanoi Hannahs" after their WPAX radio broadcasts made to the US troops in South Vietnam
South Vietnam
South Vietnam was a state which governed southern Vietnam until 1975. It received international recognition in 1950 as the "State of Vietnam" and later as the "Republic of Vietnam" . Its capital was Saigon...
on Radio Hanoi
Radio Hanoi
Radio Hanoi was a propaganda radio station run by the North Vietnamese Army during the Vietnam War.In September 1967, Radio Hanoi transmitted a message by General Võ Nguyên Giáp entitled "The Big Victory, The Great Task". Unbenknownst to Americans listening to the message, it was actually an...
.
Giorno travelled to India in 1971 where he met H.H. Dudjom Rinpoche
Dudjom Rinpoche
Dudjom Rinpoche is the title of a prominent line of tulkus of the Nyingmapa order of Tibetan Buddhism. Dudjom Rinpoche was born in 1904 on the tenth day of the sixth month in the year of the wood dragon in Southern Tibet in a region called the "hidden land" of Pema Ko. He died on January 17, 1987...
, head of the Nyingma
Nyingma
The Nyingma tradition is the oldest of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism . "Nyingma" literally means "ancient," and is often referred to as Nga'gyur or the "old school" because it is founded on the first translations of Buddhist scriptures from Sanskrit into Tibetan, in the eighth century...
order of Tibetan Buddhism. He became one of the earliest Western students of Tibetan Buddhism, and has participated in Buddhist communities for several decades, inviting various Tibetan teachers to New York and hosting them. His poetry has reflected Buddhist and other Asian religious themes from the beginning, but the poems in Cancer In My Left Ball (1972) and those that follow involve a highly original interpenetration of Buddhist and Western avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
practices and poetics.
Touring rock clubs in the 1970s with Burroughs, Giorno continued to develop an amplified, confrontational performance poetry that was highly influential on what became the Poetry Slam scene, as well as the performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
of Karen Finley
Karen Finley
Karen Finley is an American performance artist, whose theatrical pieces and recordings have often been labelled "obscene" due to their graphic depictions of sexuality, abuse, and disenfranchisement...
and Penny Arcade
Penny Arcade
Penny Arcade may refer to:* Penny arcade, a venue for coin-operated devices* Penny Arcade ** Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, a series of video games based on the webcomic...
, and the early Industrial music
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
of Throbbing Gristle
Throbbing Gristle
Throbbing Gristle were an English industrial, avant-garde music and visual arts group that evolved from the performance art group COUM Transmissions...
and Suicide
Suicide (band)
Suicide is an American electronic protopunk musical duo, intermittently active since 1970 and composed of vocalist Alan Vega and Martin Rev on synthesizers and drum machines. They are an early synthesizer/vocal musical duo....
. In 1982 he made the album Who Are You Staring At? with Glenn Branca
Glenn Branca
Glenn Branca is an American avant-garde composer and guitarist known for his use of volume, alternative guitar tunings, repetition, droning, and the harmonic series. In 2008 he was awarded an unrestricted grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.-Beginnings: 1960s and early 1970s:Branca...
and is prominently featured in Ron Mann
Ron Mann
Ronald "Ron" Mann is a Canadian documentary film director focusing primarily on aspects of Canadian and American popular culture. He does most of his work through his company Sphinx Productions, while also running a film distribution company on the side called 'FilmsWeLike'. Mann has also put...
's 1982 film Poetry in Motion
Poetry in Motion
The term Poetry in Motion may refer to:*Poetry in Motion, a professional wrestling double-team maneuver.*Poetry in Motion , a #1 hit song by Johnny Tillotson *Poetry in Motion , a documentary film...
. He stopped using found elements in his poetry in the early 1980s and has since pursued a kind of experimental realism, incantatory and repetitive yet at the same time lyrical.
Giorno has celebrated queer sexuality from the 1964 "Pornographic Poem", through his psychedelic evocations of gay New York nightlife in the 1970s, to more recent poems such as "Just Say No To Family Values". He founded an AIDS charity, the AIDS Treatment Project in 1984, which continues to give direct financial and other support to individuals with AIDS to the present day.
In addition to his collaborations with Burroughs, Giorno has produced 55 LPs, tapes, videos and books. He continues to perform at poetry festivals and events, notably in Europe where he has been an active participant in the sound poetry scene for several decades.
In 2007 he appeared in Nine Poems in Basilicata, a film directed by Antonello Faretta based on his poems and his performances. In addition to his solo performances in live poetry shows, he has collaborated since 2005 in some music-poetry shows with Spanish rock singer and composer Javier Colis.
The first career-spanning collection of Giorno's poems, Subduing Demons in America: Selected Poems 1962-2007, edited by Marcus Boon, was published by Soft Skull in 2008.
In 2010, Giorno had his first one-person gallery show in New York, entitled Black Paintings and Drawings, at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, wherein he exhibited works that chronicled the evolution of the poem painting. The first Poem Prints were part of the Dial-A-Poem installation in the 1970 exhibition Information at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
. Connecting words and images, the poet uses the materiality of the written word to confront audiences with poetry in different contexts.
In 2011, he starred in one of two versions for the music video to R.E.M.
R.E.M.
R.E.M. was an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry. One of the first popular alternative rock bands, R.E.M. gained early attention due to Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style and Stipe's...
's final single "We All Go Back to Where We Belong".
External links
- Giorno Poetry Systems Discography/Web site
- Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews John Giorno
- Extensive interview discussing his life and his work
- Guardian article in which Giorno discusses his relationship with Warhol and his instrumental role in the production of the film 'Sleep'
- Review of sound poetry performance - Giorno is described as 'an elder statesman of bohemia'; also includes brief discussion of his technique of phrase repetition.
- UbuWeb Dial-A-Poem Poets, New York City - A downloadable audio collection of the Dial-A-Poem albums.
- Simplemente di no a los valores familiares / Just say no to family values.
- http://www.fascineshion.com/en/arty/john-giorno/23/ John Giorno interview video-performance, about poetry and Beat Generation