SIGNALISM - ESSAYS

Signalism

2009-12-05T07:46:00.000-08:00

(From Project of Serbian Wikipedia)

Signalism (lat. Signum – sign, signal) represents a neoavant-guarde literal and art movement that originated in Serbian culture in the mid-sixties. It gathered wider support base both in former Yugoslavia and the world in the late sixties and the beginning of seventies. The beginning of Signalism dates back to 1959 when its founder and main theoretician Miroljub Todorović started with his linguistic experiments. His main belief was that there can be no significant leap forward in poetry without revolutionizing its main medium – the language.

The origins and goals of Signalism

The birth of Signalism in Serbian literature and culture, with its tendency to revolutionize other arts as well (visual, theater, music and movies), came from the need to eliminate the spent models carried on by poetic and cultural traditions, as well as from the necessity to take on the challenges and spirit of the modern technological and electronic civilization. In its program (Manifesto and other guiding texts) as well as in its art pieces, Signalism made a clean break from the principles of neo-romantism and late symbolism still governing Serbian literature. Its goal was set to radically change Serbian poetry both through content and form, and make it compatible with the contemporary times.

Revolutionizing of the poetic language started with the introduction of the symbols, formulas and linguistic forms of the “hard” sciences (physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, biochemistry and astronomy). Furthermore, the language was made visual by dispersing words and sentences into syllables and letters forming visually recognizable patterns, as well as by introducing non-verbal symbols into the text (drawings, photographs, graphs…) for the purpose of creating a collage of verbal and visual elements. This first phase of Signalism is often referred to as Scientism, with the most prominent examples including the books “Planeta” (Planet, 1965) and “Putovanje u Zvezdaliju” (A trip to Starland, 1971) as well as poetry cycles “Belančevina” (Protein), “Kiseonik” (Oxygen), “Ožilište” (Nursery) and others in which the topics are Space, Time and Matter.

In their for decade long research and creative pursuit that followed, Signalists significantly expanded cognitive boundaries and genre profile of modern Serbian poetry. Signalist poetry can be divided into two main forms: verbal and non-verbal. Verbal poetry consists of scientist, aleatoric (random), stochastic, technological, phenomenological, slang and apeironistic poetry. Non-verbal poetry subtypes include visual, object, sound and gestual poetry.

Signalism made significant advances in prose (experimental novel and short story). There is also a number of significant Signalist children literature accomplishments. In visual art strides are made in body art, mail art, performance and conceptual art.

Three manifestos helped define Signalism as a neoavantguarde movement that negates literal, artistic and cultural heritage, poetic and aesthetic conventions and canonical ways of creativity by insisting on creative experimentation – “Manifesto of scientific poetry” (1968), “Signalist manifesto (Regulae poesis)” (1969) and “Signalism” (1970). The movement was significantly boosted by the international magazine “Signal”, inaugurated in 1970.

Nine issues of “Signal” appeared between 1970 and 1973, presenting a number of domestic and international artists, as well as printing bibliographical data about the avantguarde publications all around the world. From 1973 until 1995 magazine could not be published, mainly for financial reasons. From 1995 to 2004 another 21 issues of “Signal” appeared. The new release of “Signal” revitalized the Signalist movement and brought an army of young artists into the movement.

Important international correspondents of the “Signal” magazine

Raoul Hausmann, dadaist, the founder of Berlin Dada in 1918.
Augusto de Campos, one of the initiatiors of the concrete poetry.
Michele Perfetti, mail-artist, critic and theoretician of neoavantguarde, wrote about Signalism on numerous occasions.
Adriano Spatola, Italian poet, editor of the experimental poetry magazine “Tam Tam”.
Clemente Padin, visual poet and theoretician, wrote about “Signalism” numerous times, editor of the neoavantguarde magazine “Ovum 10” in Uruguay)
Julien Blaine, visual poet, performer, mail and conceptual artist. The editor of one of the best neoavantguarde magazines “Doc(k)s”
Sarenco, visual poet, performer, anthologist, founder and editor of the Italian neoavantguarde magazine “Lotta Poetica”
Eugenio Miccini, one of the most prominent Italian visual poets and theoretician of neoavantguarde
Richard Kostelanetz, visual poet, theoretician of neoavantguarde, anthologist, editor of the “Assembling”
Guillermo Deisler, Chilean visual poet, critic and anthologist
Bob Cobbing, English concrete poet and theoretician of sound poetry
Eugen Gomringer, concrete poet and theoretician, one of the founders of concrete poetry
Pierre Garnier, concrete poet and theoretician, founder of French spatialism (Le Spatialisme), the space poetry
Enzo Minarelli, main representative of the Italian “poesia visiva” -- the visible poetry
Keiichi Nakamura, Japanese visual and mail-artist.
Dick Higgins, visual poet and theoretician of neoavantguarde, editor of the publishing company “Something Else Press”
Dmitry Bulatov, Russian visual poem, theoretician and anthologist
Sol LeWitt, one of the most prominent American conceptualists
Shozo Shimamoto, a member of the famous Japanese neoavantguarde group “Gutai”
Dr. Klaus Peter Dencker, visual poet and theoretician who put together one of the cult anthologies of visual poetry “Text-Bilder”
Ruggero Maggi, Italian visual poet, painter and mail-artist
Daniel Daligand, French visual poet, mail-artist and critic
Willi R. Melnikov, Russian visual poet, mail-artist and performer
Kum-Nam Baik, South Korean mail-artist
On Kawara, American conceptual artist
Dr. Klaus Groh, neodadaist, the founder of the great neodadaist center in Germany and author of numerous anthologies and collections of visual poetry, mail-art and conceptual art.

International anthologies containing works of Signalists

Maurizio Spatola «Poesia Sperimentale», Turin, Italy, 1970
Guillermo Deisler «Poesia Visiva en el Mundo», Antofagasta, Chile, 1972
Klaus Peter Dencker, «Text-Bilder Visuele Poesie International Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart», Koln, Germany, 1972
Klaus Groh, «Visuel-Konkret-International», Gersthofen, Germany, 1973
Fernando Millan and Jesus Garcia Sanches, «La escritura en libertad», Madrid, Spain, 1975
Alan Riddel, «Typewriter Art», London, England, 1975
G. J. De Rook, «Historische anthologie visuele poezie», Brussels, Belgium, 1976
Josep M. Figueres and Manuel de Seabra, «Antologia da poesia visual Europeia», Lisbon, Portugal, 1977
Sarenco, «Poesia e prosa delle avangardie», Brescia, Italy, 1978
Julien Blaine, «Mail Artists in the World», Paris, France, 1978
Julian Kornhauser, «Tragarze zdan», Krakow-Wroclaw, Poland, 1983
Enrico Marscelloni and Sarenco, «poesia totale 1897-1997: Dal colpo di dadi alla poesia visuale», Mantua, Italy, 1998
Dmitry Bulatov, «Точка зрения. Визуальная поэзия: 90-е годы / Točka zrenija. Vizualnaja poezija. 90-e godi”, Kaliningrad, Russia, 1998

Three anthologies were also published in Serbia: “Signalist poetry” (1971), “Concrete, visual and signalist poetry” (1975), “Mail-Art Mail-Poetry” (1980), as well as several collections and almanacs.

The most important authors and works of Signalism

Many poets, writers and painters accepted the basic concepts of Signalism, further developing and spreading the ideas of this Serbian (Yugoslav) neoavantguarde movement.

Besides the founder of Signalism Miroljub Todorović (Kyberno, 1970; The Pig is an Excellent Swimmer, 1971; Bumpkin Shows Off, slang poetry, 1974; Insect on the Temple, 1978; Algol, 1980, Textum, 1981; Chinese Erotism, 1983; Knock-Out, 1984; I Mount Rosinant Again, 1987; Water-Snake Drinks Water, 1988; The Diary of Avant-Guard, 1990; Electric Chair, slang poetry, 1998; I’ve Just Opened my Mail, 2000; It Walked Into my Ear, slang stories, 2005; Blue Wind, 2006; Slang Stories, 2007;) important contrubutors to the theory and practice of Signalism include Marina Abramović, Vlada Stojiljković, Zvonimir Kostić Palanski, Slobodan Pavićević (Flowers’ Silicates, 1973; Roadworks, 1984), Milivoje Pavlović (White Book, 1974; The World In Signals, 1996), Zoran Popović, Ljubiša Jocić (Moonshine in Tetrapack, 1975; What’s the Time, 1976: Essays on Signalism, 1994), Jaroslav Supek, Zvonko Sarić (Overcoat until the Dawn, 2001; Soul Catcher, 2003), Bogislav Marković (Altai Dust, 2006), Ilija Bakić (Prenatal Life, 1997; New Babylon, 1998; Protoplasm, 2003; The Autumn of Gatherers, 2007; To be Continued, 2009), Slobodan Škerović (Indigo, 2005; All Colors of Arcturus, 2006; Chimera or Borg, 2008), Žarko Đurović (The World of Signalism, 2002), Dušan Vidaković, Dobrivoje Jevtić, Dejan Bogojević, Andrej Tišma, Dobrica Kamperelić, Milivoj Anđelković and others.

Excerpts from the reviews of Signalism

Numerous domestic and international critics and theoreticians hold Signalism in high regard:

Prof. Milos Bandic, University professor: “Signalism is – after Zenitism, Surrealism and the movement of social literature – the next and autochtonous litarary and artistic movement in Serbian literature of 20^th century. At the same time, in contemporary Yugoslav lieterature and culture, Signalism is confirmed as an exclusive modern dimension and a separate artistic form and production. Without it all would probably be poorer and who knows how deprived.”

Oskar Davico, famous writer: “For the first time from the appearance of Surrealism in the twenties, we can joyfully confirm that with exploration of Miroljub Todorovic, Serbian poetry can again catch up with the genuine worldwide avant-guard explorations.”

Zoran Markus, visual arts critic: “Signalism is our parallel phenomena within the brackets of the most extreme avant-guard and that explains its international expansion, approval and importance in certain artistic and intellectual circles.”

Dave Oz, Canadian multimeida artist: “True essence of Signalism is that it expects appearance of planetary consciousness.”

Gillo Dorfles, Italian arts theoretician: “Signalism means a step forward, in relation to concrete poetry, visual poetry and the art of the sign.”

Prof. Dr. Milivoje Pavlovic: “Thanks to Moriljub Todorovic and the group that follows him, Signalism with its main stream represents the arc which connects in a creative manner avant-guard aims from the period between wars with the contemporary epoch, bringing valuable inovations and connecting Serbian art with the modern world’s processes.” (From the book The Keys of Signalist Poetics)

Literature

Miroljub Todorović, Signalizam, Gradina, Niš, 1979.
Julian Kornhauser, Signalizm – Propozycja serbskiej poeziji eksperymentalnej, Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, Krakow, 1981.
Signalizam - avangardni stvaralački pokret, zbornik, KCB, Beograd, 1984.
Signalizam u svetu (stranci o signalizmu), Beogradska knjiga, Beograd, 1984.
Živan Živković, Orbite signalizma, Novela, Beograd, 1985.
Živan Živković. Svedočenja o avangardi, Draganić, Zemun, 1992.
Miroljub Todorović, Oslobođeni jezik, Grafopublik, Zemun, 1992.
Živan Živković, Signalizam: geneza, poetika i umetnička praksa, Vuk Karadžić, Paraćin, 1994.
Živan Živković, Od reči do znaka, Signal, Beorama, Beograd, 1996.
Miroljub Todorović, Signalism - Yugoslav Creative Movement, Signal, Belgrade, 1998.
Julijan Kornhauzer, Signalizam srpska neoavangarda, Prosveta, Niš, 1998.
Milivoje Pavlović, Ključevi signalističke poetike, Prosveta, Beograd, 1999.
Signalistička utopija, almanah, bibliofilsko izdanje, Beograd, 2001.
Milivoje Pavlović, Avangarda, neoavangarda i signalizam, Prosveta, Beograd, 2002.
Signalizam - umetnost trećeg milenijuma, almanah, bibliofilsko izdanje, Beograd, 2003.
Vladan Panković, O signalizmu, Feniks, Beograd, 2003.
Granice planetarnog – vizije signalizma, almanah, bibliofilsko izdanje, Beograd, 2003.
Miroljub Todorović, Poetika signalizma, Prosveta, Beograd, 2003.
Razmišljajte o signalizmu, almanah, bibliofilsko izdanje, Beograd, 2004.
Miroljub Todorović, Tokovi neoavangarde, Nolit, Beograd, 2004.
Ilija Bakić & Zvonko Sarić, Preko granice milenijuma, Feniks, Beograd, 2005.
Vreme signalizma, almanah, bibliofilsko izdanje, Beograd, 2006.
Demon signalizma, almanah, bibliofilsko izdanje, Beograd 2007.
Slobodan Škerović, Himera ili Borg (eseji), Zlatna edicija, Tardis, Beograd, 2008.

Signalism in Lexicons

Mala enciklopedija PROSVETA (opšta enciklopedija), treće izdanje, Prosveta, Beograd, 1978.
Jugoslovenski književni leksikon, Matica srpska, Novi Sad, 1984.
Rečnik književnih termina, prvo izdanje, Institut za književnost, Nolit, Beograd, 1985.
Mala enciklopedija PROSVETA (opšta enciklopedija), četvrto izdanje, Prosveta, Beograd, 1986.
Opća enciklopedija JLZ, (Dopunski svezak), Jugoslavenski leksikografski zavod, Zagreb, 1988.
Rečnik književnih termina, drugo izdanje, Institut za književnost, Nolit, Beograd 1992.
Tanja Popović Signalizam u: Rečnik književnih termina, Beograd, 2007, str. 663-664.
Enciklopedija srpskog naroda, Zavod za udžbenike, Beograd, 2008, str. 1002.

External Links

Signalisme

2009-07-30T11:22:00.001-07:00

Source: Wikipedia

Le signalisme, serbe: сигнализам, signalizam (en latin signum – signe), est un movement artistique et littéraire de la nouvelle avant-garde, né dans la culture serbe vers la moitié des années soixante, et il a acquis des adhérents (symapthisans) sur un espace yougoslave plus étendu versla fin des années soixante et au début des années soixante-dix. Les débuts du signalisme datent de 1959., lorsque le fondateur et le téoricien de ce mouvement, Miroljub Todorović a commencé ses expériments (expérimentation) avec la langue, convaincu qu’il n’y a pas de révolution dans la poésie si elle n’est pas exécutée dans son médium principal – la langue.

Naissance et objectifs du signalisme

La naissance du signalisme dans la littérature et la culture serbe et sa tendance de révolutionner aussi les autres domains de l’art (les arts plastiques, le théâtre et le cinéma) découlent du besoin de négation des modèles usés ancrés dans la tradition poétique et culturelle générale et du besoin de répondre d’une manière créative aux exigences et à „l’état d’esprit“ de la civilisation technologique et électronique contemporaine. Dans les textes du programme (les manifestes et les autres textes d’une destination spéciale) s’expriment d’une manière claire une volonté ferme de rompre avec les principes du „néoromantisme etdu symbolisme tardif“ qui règnent toujours dans la poésie serbe et les efforts de changer le code de la poésie serbe et de l’harmoniser avec la vie actuelle au moyen d’opérations radicales tant sur le plan objectif (du contenu) que sur le plan de l’expression (de la forme).

La révolution dans la langue de la poésie a commencé par son scientification – par l’introduction de symboles, de formules, de lexèmes et dexpressions linguistiques plus importantes provenant des sciences exactes (physique, biologie, chimie, mathématiques astrophysique) et par la visualisation du texte (décomposition graphique des mots, des syntagmes et des expressions en syllabes et en lettres sous forme de signes et leur étalement sur l’espace d’une page ; introduction de signes non verbaux dans le texte, comme ce sont les dessins, les graphiques, les photographies et d’autres éléments qu’on y colle), de sorte que lapremière phase du signalisme est désignée par le terme scientisme, et elle est illustrée de la meilleure manière par les livres de Miroljub Todorović Planète (1965) et Voyage dans le pays astral (1971) et les cycles poétiques pesama Albumine Oxygène, Germe de la vie, ainsi que les autres, dans lesquels les catégories Espace, Temps, Matière délimitent le champ objectif.

Dans la suite de leurs travaux de recherches et de création, les signalistes ont considérablement étendu les frontières de la prise de conscience et enrichi le profile du genre de la poésie serbe contemporaine. La poésie signaliste peut être divisée en deux types fondamentaux : poésie verbale et non-verbale. La poésie verbale comprend la poésie scientistique, aléatoire, stohastique, technologique, phénomènologique, argotique et apeyronistique. Et la poésie non-verbale comprend la poésie visuelle, sonore, gestuelle et la poésie des objets.

Le signalisme réalise d’importants résultats aussi en prose (roman expérimental, récit) Les succès de certains signalistes dans la littérature pour les enfants ne sont pas non plus négligeables. Dans les beaux-arts, des oeuvres de valeur ont été réalisées dans le body-art, le mail-art, le performance-art et dans l’art conceptuel.

Trois manifestes : Le manifeste de la science poétique, 1968, Le manifeste du signalisme (Regulae poesis), 1969 et Le signalisme, 1970, ainsi que le lancement de la revue internationale Signal (1970) ont considérablement contribué à la constitution du signalisme en tant que mouvement de la nouvelle avant-garde qui, en reniant l’héritage littéraire, artistique et culturel, les conventions poétiques et esthétiques et les procédés canonisés de création de formes, insiste sur l’expérimentation dans la réalisation de nouvelles choses.

Pendant la période de 1970-1973, cinq volumes de Signal (nos. 1 - 9) ont été publiés; ils contenaient, outre les contributions littéraires et artistiques des auteurs nationaux et étrangers, de courtes présentations et données bibliographiques des publications d’avant-garde dans le monde. La publication de la revue a été interrompue jusqu’en 1995, avant tout pour des raisons financières. De 1995. à 2004. dix nouveau volumes de Signal (21 numéros) sont sortis. La reprise de la publication dela revue a contribué à la révitalisation et au rajeunissement du mouvement..

Les collaborateurs étrangers éminents de la revue „Signal“

Raoul Hausmann, dadaiste, fondateur de Dada de Berlin en 1918,
Augusto de Campos, l’un des initiateurs de la poésie concrète,
Michele Perfetti, mail-artiste, critique et théoricien de la nouvelle avant-garde, a écrit sur notre signalisme à plusieurs reprises neoavangarde
Adriano Spatola, poète italien, ancien rédacteur de la revue de poésie expérimentale „Tam Tam“,
Clemente Padin, poète et théoricien visuel, écrit sur le signalisme à plusieurs reprises, rédacteur de la revue de la nouvelle avant-garde „Ovum 10“, d’Urugvay
Julien Blaine, poète visuel, mail-artiste, artiste conceptuel et acteur, rédacteur de l’une des meilleures revues de la nouvelle avant-garde Doc(k)s,
Sarenco, poète visuel, performer, antologicien, fondateur et rédacteur de la revue italienne de la nouvelle avant-garde Lotta poetica,
Eugenio Miccini, l’un des poètes visuels et théoriciens italiens les plus éminents de la nouvelle avant-garde,
Richard Kostelanetz, poète visuel et théoricien de la nouvelle avant-garde, antologicien, rédacteur de l’almanach „Assembling“,
Guillermo Deisler, poète visuel chiléen, critique et antologicien,
Bob Cobbing, poète anglais, pratiquant la poésie concrète et théoricien de la poésie sonore,
Eugen Gomringer, poète pratiquant la poésie concrète et théoricien, l’un des initiateurs de la poésie concrète,
Pierre Garnier, poète pratiquant la poésie concrète et théoricien, fondateur du spatialisme français – Le spatialisme – Poésie spatiale,
Enzo Minarelli, représentant pricipal de la poesia visiva – la poésie visible italienne,
Keiichi Nakamura, poète visuel et mail-artiste japonais,
Dick Higgins, poète visuel et théoricien de la nouvelle avant-garde, rédacteur à la maison d’édition anglaise Something Else Press),
Dmitry Bulatov, poète visuel, théoricien et antologicien russe,
Sol LeWitt, l’un des conceptualistes américains les plus éminents,
Shozo Shimamoto, membre du groupe de nouvelle avant-garde japonais Gutai,
Dr Klaus Peter Dencker, poète visuel et théoricien, auteur de l’une des fameuses antologies de la poésie visuelle „Text-Bilder“,
Ruggero Maggi, artiste italien, pratiquant les arts plastiques, poète visuel et mail-artiste,
Daniel Daligand, poète visuel, mail-artiste et critique français,
Willi R. Melnikov, poète visuel, mail-artiste et performer russe,
Kum-Nam Baik, mail-artiste sud-coréen,
On Kawara, artiste conceptuel américain,
Dr Klaus Groh, néodadaiste, fondateur d’un grand centre néodadaiste en Allemagne et auteur de nombreuses antologies et recueils de poésie visuelle, du mail-art et d’art conceptuel.

Travaux de nos signalistes dans les antologies étrangères

Maurizio Spatola, Poesia sperimentale, Torino, Italie, 1970,
Guillermo Deisler, Poesia Visiva en el Mundo, Antofagasta, Chili, 1972.
Klaus Peter Dencker, Text-Bilder Visuele Poesie International Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Cologne, Allemagne, 1972.
Klaus Groh, Visuel – Konkret – International, Gersthofen, Allemagne, 1973.
Fernando Millan, Jesus Garcia Sanches, La escritura en libertad, Madrid, Espagne, 1975.
Alan Riddel, Typewriter Art, Londres, Angleterre, 1975.
G.J. De Rook, Historische anthologie visuele poezie, Bruxelles, Belgique, 1976.
Josep M. Figueres, Manuel de Seabra, Antologia da poesia visual Europeia, Lisbonne, Portugal, 1977.
Sarenco, Poesia e prosa delle avangardie, Brescia, Italie, 1978.
Julien Blaine, Mail Artists in the World, Paris, France, 1978.
Julian Kornhauser, Tragarze zdan, Krakovie – Vroclau, Pologne, 1983.
Enrico Marscelloni, Sarenco), Poesia totale 1897-1997: Dal colpo di dadi alla poesia visuale, Mantova, Italie, 1998.
Dmitry Bulatov, Точка зрения. Визуальная поэзия: 90-е годы, Kaliningrad, Russie, 1998.

Trois antologies nationals ont aussi été piubliées : Poésie signalétique (1971), La poésie concrète, visuelle et signalétique, (1975), Mail-Art Mail-Poetry (1980), ainsi qu’un certain nombre de recueils et d’almanachs.

Les auteurs et les oeuvres significatives du signalisme

De nombreux poètes, prosaïstes et artistes pratiquant les arts plastiques ont adopté les principes du signalisme, tout en développant et en promouvant les idées fondamentales de ce mouvement de nouvelle avant-garde serbe (yougoslave).

Outre les oeuvres du fondateur du signalisme Miroljub Todorović (Kyberno, 1970, Le cochon est un excellent nageur, 1971, Le troufion astique ses godasses, 1974, L’insecte sur la tempe, 1978, Algol, 1980, Textum, 1981, Chinese erotism, 1983, K.O. , 1984, J’enfourche à nouveau Rosinante, 1987, La couleuvre boit la ruche, 1988, Le journal de l’avant-garde, 1990, La chaise électrique,1998, Je viens d’ouvrir mon courrier, 2000, Ca m’est arrivé dans l’oreille en se promenant, 2005, Le vent bleu, 2006, Les contes de l’argot, 2007), les travaux de Marina Abramović, Vlada Stojiljković, Zvonimir Kostić Palanski, Slobodan Pavićević (Les silices de la fleur, 1973, Les travaux sur la route, 1984), Milivoje Pavlović (Livre blanc, 1974, Le monde en signes, 1996), Zoran Popović, Ljubiša Jocić (Le clair de lune en tetra-emballage, 1975, Quelle heure est-il, 1976, Essais sur le signalisme, 1994), Jaroslav Supek, Zvonko Sarić (La capote jusqu’au lever du jour, 2001, L’attrape-âme, 2003), Bogislav Marković (Le crépuscule d’Altai, 2006), Ilija Bakić (La vie prénatale, 1997, Nouvelle Babylone, 1998, Protoplasme, 2003, L’automne du ramasseur, 2007, Les films, 2008), Slobodan Škerović (Indigo, 2005, Toutes les couleurs d’Arkatus, 2006, La chimère ou Borg, 2008), Žarko Đurović (Le monde du signalisme, 2002), Dušan Vidaković, Dobrivoje Jevtić, Dejan Bogojević, Andrej Tišma, Dobrica Kamperelić, Milivoj Anđelković représentent des contributions importantes à la théorie et à la pratique du signalisme.

Des présentations critique du signalisme

De nombreux critiques nationaux et étrangers ont accordé une appreciation très élevée au signalisme.

Selon le professeur Miloš Bandić „Du point de vue de l’histoire littéraire, le signalisme représente – après le zénitisme, le surréalisme et lemouvement de la littérature sociale – le suivant mouvement littéraire et artistique nouveau et autochtone dans la littérature serbe du éà-ème siècle. En même temps, le signalisme s’affirme dans la littérature et la culture contemporaine yougoslave comme une dimension expréssement moderne et comme une forme artistique et productive à part. S’il n’existait pas, tout serait probablement différent et qui sait combien plus pauvre.“

Pour Oskar Davičo, „Pour la première fois, depuis l’apparition du surréalisme, nous pouvons, avec les recherches de Miroljub Todorović, constater en nousréjouissant, que la poésie serbe rattrape le pas de véritables recherches d’avant-garde dans le monde.“

Zoran Markuš, critique des arts platiques estime que „Le signalisme est notre apparition parallèle au sein de l’avant-garde la plus extrême et c’est ce qui, entre autres, explique sa diffusion internationale, sa reconnaissance et son importance dans des milieux artistiques et intellectuels déterminés“

Et le théoricien de l’art italien bien connu Gillo Dorfles écrit „Le signalisme représente un pas en avant par rapport à la poésie concrète, la poésie visuelle et l’art du signe en général.“

Le poète visuel et le critique Arigo Lora-Totino affirme d’une manière encore plus explicite que „Le mouvement littéraitre yougoslave du signalisme se distingue des mouvements semblables, apparus après le Seconde guerre mondiale dans l’atmosphère endormie de l’Europe, des Etats-Unis et du Japon.“

„Grâce à Miroljubu Todorovic et au groupe qui le suit, il représente par son courant principal ce pont qui relie créativement les tendances d’avant-garde de la période d’avant-guerre avec l’époque contemporaine, en apportant des innovations précieuses par lesquelles l’art serbe se rattache sur un plan d’égalité aux processus mondiaux modernes“, conclue dr Milivoje Pavlović dans son livre Les clefs de la poésie signaliste.

Littérature

Miroljub Todorović, Signalisme, Gradina, Niš, 1979.
Julian Kornhauser, Signalizm – Propozycja serbskiej poeziji eksperymentalnej, Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, Krakow, 1981.
Signalisme – movement créatif d’avant-garde, recueil, KCB, Belgrade, 1984.
Signalisme dans le monde (les étrangers sur le signalisme), Beogradska knjiga, Belgrade, 1984.
Živan Živković, Les orbites du signalisme, Novela, Belgrade, 1985.
Živan Živković. Témoignages sur l’avant-garde, Draganić, Zemun, 1992.
Miroljub Todorović, Le language libéré, Grafopublik, Zemun, 1992.
Živan Živković, Signalisme : genèse, poétique et pratique artistique, Vuk Karadžić, Paraćin, 1994.
Živan Živković, Des mots jusqu’aux signes, Signal, Beorama, Belgrade, 1996.
Miroljub Todorović, Signalism - Yugoslav Creative Movement, Signal, Belgrade, 1998.
Julijan Kornhauzer, Signalsme, la nouvelle avant-garde serbe, Prosveta, Niš, 1998.
Milivoje Pavlović, Clef de la poétique signalistique, Prosveta, Belgrade, 1999.
L’utopie signalistique, almanach, édition pour les bibliophiles, Belgrade, 2001.
Milivoje Pavlović, L’avant-garde, la nouvelle avant-garde et le signalisme, Prosveta, Belgrade, 2002.
Signalisme – l’art du troisième millénaire, almanach, édition pour les bibliophiles, Belgrade, 2003.
Vladan Panković, Sur le signalisme, Feniks, Belgrade, 2003.
Limites du planétaire – visions du signalisme, almanach, édition pour les bibliophiles, Belgrade, 2003.
Miroljub Todorović, Poétique du signalisme, Prosveta, Belgrade, 2003.
Réfléchisez sur le signalisme, almanach, édition pour les bibliophiles, Belgrade, 2004.
Miroljub Todorović, Les courants de la nouvelle avant-garde, Nolit, Belgrade, 2004.
Ilija Bakić & Zvonko Sarić, A travers la frontière de la nouvelle avant-garde , Feniks, Belgrade,2005.
Le temps du signalisme almanach, édition pour les bibliophiles, Belgrade, 2006.
Le démon du signalisme, almanach, édition pour les bibliophiles, Belgrade, 2007.

Signalisme dans les lexiques

Petite encyclopédie PROSVETA (encyclopédie générale), troisème édition, Prosveta, Belgrade, 1978.
Lexique littéraire yougoslave, Matica srpska, Novi Sad, 1984.
Dictionnaire des termes littéraires, première édition, Institut pour la littérature, Nolit, Belgrade, 1985.
Petite encyclopédie PROSVETA (encyclopédie générale), quatrième édition, Prosveta, Belgrade, 1986.
Encyclopédie générale JLZ, (Volume complémentaire), Jugoslavenski leksikografski zavod, Zagreb, 1988.
Dictionnaire des termes littéraires, seconde édition, Institut pour la littérature, Nolit, Belgrade, 1992.
Tanja Popović Signalisme dans : Dictionnaire des termes littéraires, Belgrade, 2007, pp. : 663-664.
Encyclopédie du peuple serbe, Zavod za udžbenike, Belgrade, 2008, pp. 1002.

Relations extérieures:

Manifestos and other Essays

2009-07-30T11:10:00.001-07:00

Miroljub Todorovic

POETRY – SCIENCE

(Manifesto of poetical science)

"Modern science introduces man into a new world. If man thinks science he renovates himself as a thinking man."Gaston Bachelard: Rational Materialism

1. SOURCES
New pages of reality, opened by physics, chemistry and biology, have long stood before poets waiting to be translated into verses. Poets, however, ignore them, "do not see them" or do not accept them. In these fateful moments for art and science, poetry turns its head indifferently or fearfully from the unseen growth of technological civilization, beginnings of conquering cosmos, discoveries of mesons, antimatter, quasars, the secrets of proteins, protoplasm, light, nitrogen and carbon, biochemical and physiological processes in plant tissues, karyokinesis.The breakthrough of science into the heart of matter (living - genetics, dead - nuclear physics) and the heart of universe (radio astronomy and astrophysics) not only failed to get closer, but even moved scientist more away from artist.Ancient ages, however, did not know for this huge and seemingly unbridgeable gap between science and poetry. Creating giant cosmogonies, encompassing in their poems the destiny of entire world (universe); Hesiod, Empedocles, Parmenides and Lucretius were at the same time poets, philosophers and scientists. It was not before the Middle Ages and alchemists, when scientific disciplines stepped on the hard soil of rationalism, building their own picture of the world and their language, that that gap became complete.Developments of chemistry and physics led, by the end of nineteenth century, to a shattering of Boltsman's mechanist picture of the world and breaking down the magnificent, but basically simple and one-sided vision of macro- and micro cosmos built on atom as a "compact indivisible" particle. Somewhat later on, with adopting Planck's quantum theory and Einstein's special and general theory of relativity, formal-logical and rationalistic structure of scientific spirit, cherished for centuries, was shaken. Finally, by De Broglie's waves of matter, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and more recent discoveries in biology (structure and role of protoplasm and proteins in living matter, relation of discontinuity quantum phenomena with mutation, role of genes and chromosomes in formation of living organisms), science has almost approached the sources of the irrational.Modern scientists-visionaries made, in creation of magnificent hypotheses about matter (living and dead) and universe, in travelling into the unknown, into transcendental, perhaps the first step toward getting poetry and science closer, accepting one of the basic instruments of poetry - imagination. Yet, scientific mind shackled by logic formulas can not solve itself the basic mysteries of matter and universe, no matter how much it liberates itself from those shackles: origin of life, protein, creation of matter, origin of universe. For new breakthroughs into the unknown a new unity of poetry and science is needed.

2. POETICAL VISION OF THE UNITY OF MAN, MATTER AND UNIVERSE

Poetry coupled with science (poetical science), accepting way of thinking of scientist and modern prophet, adopting from science its exactness and from poetry its analogy and sense for the irrational, will be able to explain to us paradoxes of matter and to solve the secret of creation. It will have, first of all, to break with tyranny of feelings and with needs of hearts. To renounce self-lauding and futile posing questions, whether this time needs it or not. Such as it is now it is absolutely unnecessary. Coupled with science, reading and deciphering the new pages of universe, poetry will not pose questions about the sense of its existence any more.Having accepted imagination from romanticist, as a creative instrument and sense for the miraculous, new poetry must stand in all other things on the positions absolutely opposed to the position of Romantism and various forms of modern Neo-Romantism. In that sense there will also exist its endeavours for a gradual de-subjectivization of poetical picture. It strives to clear away with the narcissoid and insufficiently justified right of poet to be a constant and sovereign object of poetry. Poetical science will equalize man (as an object of poetry) with things, nature, chemical, biochemical and physiological processes, living and dead substances, giving advantage neither to him nor to his relationships with nature, placing him and assigning him a place in all we mark as universe.Subduing abstract scientific scheme and symbol to an avalanche of new language and new form, bringing all his mind in a state of activity where all abilities - those of scientist, poet and alchemist - are dependent on each others, shattering by his, extremely zealous imaginative consciousness a major part of scientific, logical and rationalist basis, the new poet will be able to create a vivid poetical picture, a new vision of the world, to open unimagined roads of poetical science from the dead scheme and dry formula, by a method of intuitive synthesis.Only so understood and realized, new poetry will be the highest act of thought having before it man, matter and universe as a riddle.

3. VERHAAREN, RENE GHIL, FUTURISTS

All previous attempts of getting poetry closer to science - Emil Verhaaren, scientific poetry of Rene Ghil and, on a special plane, futurists and neo-futurists - declined due to inability of poets to realize a synthesis of poetical and scientific language, i.e. to penetrate deeper into lingustic system of science by poetry.Whereas Verhaaren and futurists accepted just external marks of new technological civilisation - aeroplane, automobile, phonograph, electrical light, machines as an object of poetry - Rene Ghil widened too much the circle of sciences ready to synthesise with poetry, including there also sociology and history, and so he has lost himself in the labyrinths of numerous and non-related scientific disciplines.

LINGUISTIC EXPERIENCE

A bit more careful linguistic examinations enable us to discern several languages in one linguistic system. First of all, daily (practical) and emotional, and then poetical and scientific ones. The essential thing that makes different the daily and emotional language from the poetical and scientific ones is communicability. With poetical and scientific language the communicability is brought down to a minimum. The science itself, such as we have it, is just a very complex linguistic system. The foundations of this linguistic system - newly created words, notions and symbols, were posed by an abrupt development of science three to four hundred years ago. The past refreshing of poetical language was done mainly on the sources of practical and emotional language. Language of science was neglected, to say the least. Basic goal of new poetry is penetrating that linguistic system.Function of scientific language is usually exhausted in exact-logical formulations, symbols, hypothesis and laws. To poetical language an esthetical function is essential. To deprive scientific language of its exact-logical function and to move it toward esthetical-irrational radiations would mean to succeed in one of the ways of realization of new poetry.

1967/68.

MANIFESTO OF SIGNALISM
(REGULAE POESIS)
(Theses for a general attack on the current poetry)

1.1. SCIENCE
1.1.1. The world of science is not, according to some, a world of beings either, but only of quantified regularities, skilful linguistic constructions and hopeless squaring of human mind.
1.1.2. If science is a language then it is a language of the very essence of the world.

1.2. CURRENT POETRY
1.2.1. The things and beings of the current poetry do not speak in their own language. In the dialogue with the world and time they use language of poet exclusively.
1.2.2. Laws of the language of poet are laws of the things and beings of current poetry.
1.2.3. The fact that that language is modified immediately after establishing its relationship with reader's conscience does not diminish the importance of the former conclusion. In the vertical and horizontal hierarchy of languages, (languages of readers, languages of the moments of reading), the language of poet spoken by things and beings of poem serves as a basis for all future linguistic superstructures conditioned by establishing a relationship between that language through things and beings of poem and consciousness of each reader separately.
1.2.4. This language, originated by mixing the language of poet through poem and the language of readers through their intensified consciousness, means a language of a moment, hard determinable temporally and spatially, basically a language with atomized and exclusive impact only on the senses of one subject, we mark as a language of the current poetry.

1.3. PRIVATIZATION OF POETRY
1.3.1. The language of the current poetry is not universal.
1.3.2. The language of the current poetry is private and exclusive.
1.3.3. From Romanticism until today poetry has been becoming more and more private.

1.4. POEM
1.4.1. Poem is outside of poet: in processes, in relationships of things and beings of the universe.
1.4.2. Poem is in the world. Poem is a happening of the world.

1.5. POETRY
1.5.1. Poetry is the highest form of the world's existence.

1.6. FREEDOM OF POEM
1.6.1. New poetry demands an absolute freedom of poem.
1.6.2. This freedom is implied in relation to poet as well as to the world the poem originates from.

1.7. LANGUAGE
1.7.1. Language is anything this facilitates the creation of a poem.
1.7.2. By means of language the poem leaves the formlessness of things and processes in the nature, and begins its dialogue with the universe.
17.3.The language of the signalist poetry must be a product of two combined forces: the poem as a way in which the world occurs, and of the poet as being inhabiting that very world, a \being without whom the poem cannot become independent and begin its dialogue with the universe.

1.8. THE LANGUAGE ENERGY
1.8.1. Signalist poetry will mean total release of the language energy.
1.8.2. In the existing poetry, the process of releasing this energy is slow and oxidative. The breaking of the basis of language matter down to its molecules (words) and atoms (letters), will bring about reflexive processes of fission and fusion of the different elements of the language being (additive, graphic, and other manifold radiation of words) as well as total release of the language energy.
1.8.3. The potential language energy is measurable

1.9. THE ROLE OF THE LANGUAGE
1.9.1. The inexpressible in objects, beings, matter processes and their mutual relation attempts to be transmitted by a language arising from the symbiosis of the poet language, the machine language and the not-yet-realised poem language.

1.10. A POSSIBLE DETERMINATION FO SIGNALIST POETRY
1.10.1. Signalist poetry can be determined either as a combined activity of the poet and the machine, or as an activity of the poet only, enabling the poem to go out from the formlessness of things and processes with the world by means of the language (and the graphic form).
1.10.2. Objects and beings in signalist poetry must speak the language of the universe.
1.10.3.In the subsequent process between the being of the poem and the essence of the world, the poet and the machine are but catalysts.

1.11. THE LIMITS OF THE LANGUAGE
1.11.1. The poet must continuously expand limits of the existing language, for to expand the limits of language is to expand the limits of the world. And the poem is imbedded in the very structure of the world. It is a way in which the world occurs.

1968.

1. SIGNALISM

a) The term signalism derives from the Latin signum (sign). Signalism is an avant-garde creative movement whose aim it is to affects and revolutionize all the arts, introducing the kind of thinking that is common to exact science and initiating new processes in the field of culture by means of radical experiments and method within a permanent creative revolution influenced particularly by the technological civilization, the sign civilization, the increasing use of science and scientific methods and the emergence of the computer. These factors are considered as new creative instruments, inspirers of creative ideas and aids in their implementation.b) Signalism stands for absolute experimentation in all the arts.c) Signalism requires the experimenting artist to base his thinking and activity on postulates and method of the exact science. It is only in so doing that we can reinvest the art with its original concreteness and truthfulness, while at the same time destroying all the sediments of mystique and mystification that have been gathering on it for centuries, finally to render it completely unable to follow the increasingly rap [id development of human society,d) The fact that the avant-garde of our times is based on a scientific and not artistic approach (contrary to certain previous epochs) must by no means discourage the artists; still less must it make him resist or fight science and the new technological civilization. Any struggle against science is doomed in advance, for it is struggle against man himself.

1.1.SIGNALIST POETRY
a) In the general inflation of the spoken and written wore, of writing and thinking in the form of linguistic cannonade and babble, in the general inflation of linguistic myth mania and mystification, signalism will - in literature, and, more specifically, in poetry - aim at an utter linguistic reduction go the word to the bare sign. (This referees to signals poetry in the narrow sense of the word).
b) In the rejuvenation of poetry and the language, signalism will make use of all available means offered by the technological civilization, from the computer, through application of mathematical and other exact method to disintegrate the current linguistic system and way of thinking, to the abolition for the language itself (language being a written, national, closed system of communication),gradually introducing mathematical and other exact-science symbols as the solely universal and solely possible language of the new civilization.
c) By abolishing national language and the present-day flood of the written already worn-out, imprecise and non-informative work, and by introducing the graphic ideogram based on mathematical and other exact-science symbols whose meaning has not been devaluated, signalism will - in the field of literature in general and poetry in particular - make for totally new and unforeseen faculties of expression.

1.1.1.METHODS AND CLASSIFICATION OF SIGNALIST POETRY
1.1.1. Signalism in the narrow sense
1.1.2. Computer poetry
1.1.3. Aleatoric (or stochastic) poetry
1.1.4. Statistical poetry
1.1.5. Permutational, combinative and variative poetry
1.1.6. Scientific poetry
1.1.7. Technological poetry
1.1.8. Signals kinetic and phonetic poetry
1.1.9. Signals manifestations

1.1.1.Signalist poetry in the narrow sense dispenses with the word and takes up the letter as the basic means of expression. By breaking the language down to its atoms (i.e. letters), signalism endeavours to release the new and hitherto unknown language energy.
1.1.2. Computer poetry results from co-operation with a computer. Depending on the degree and manner of co-operation between the artist and the computer, there exist several methods and kinds of computer poetry, thus:

1.2.1. CP without the author's final intervention
1.2.2. CP with interventions of varying degrees
1.2.3. non-mechanical mathematical creation based on computer produced language material
1.2.4.poetic creation based on computer produced language material
1.2.5.Visual CP based on programming of letters and signs.

1.1.3. The following three categories of poetry may be jointly defined, in terms of this classification, as mathematical poetry. Such poetry is inspired or created by the application or with the aid of certain mathematical methods and means of creation. Of the three, the closet o computer poetry is aleatoric or stochastic poetry, which is the result of computer and mathematical methods being applied (in combination with each other) on language material

1.1.4. Statistical poetry is created by the application of certain basic principles of statistics and the theory of probabilities; specifically, it is created the use of random-figure tables in breaking the current poetic-language systems.

1.1.5. Permutational, combinative and variative poetry is created by the use of methods of mathematical combinatory.

1.1.6. In scientific poetry, the poet uses data from various sciences and presents them to the reader (or spectator) either verbatim or with slight poetic interventions. The result thus presented is an entity in its own right, a sum of not only scientific but also aesthetic information.

1.1.7. Technological poetry. In his endeavours to freshen the poetic language, the poet may utilize certain external phenomena and signs common to the consumer society (abbreviations, advertising slogans etc.) his poetic interventions invest them with new meaning.

1.1.8. Signalist kinetic and phonetic poetry dispenses with the word and the letter as a means of expression and introduces pure sign, mime, movement, light effects, sounds, objects, colored surfaces.

1.8.1. Aesthetic manifestation of the poetic machine Zvezdozor (Star Refractor).
1.8.2. Products of the poetic machine Signatvor (sign Maker).
1.8.3. Signalist projects
1.8.4. Signalist objects

1.1.10. Signalist manifestations. All kind of group or individual manifestations of signalist poetry.

1969-70.

COMPUTER POETRY

COMPUTER POETRY is obtained collaboration with electronic calculators. Depending on the degree and way of collaboration between artists and calculator there can be more types and methods of this poetry.Course of working with digital computer:
1. Preparation
2. Program
3. Food-entrance organ
4. Machine creation
5. Machine production
6. Poet's intervention
7. Poet's creation

Preparation:
Preparation as the first phase of working with digital computer consists of collecting the words and texts required for fabrication of poetry. Group of words can contain varied quantities of: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, conjunction etc., or it may contain quantity and types of words already determined in advance, which suits some exact measures and preceding tests of the language in which the poetry is going to be fabricated. group of words prepared for fabricating the poetry can be just accidental (selection from various texts without any advance established idea, words taken from dictionary in a order or by random selection, words suggested by collaborators : technicians, operator, stenographer etc.) Most often, that group of words and symbols is determined in advanced, first of all as per the poet's idea he has fort the final machine product.

.... Programme:
Digital computer works only with programmed. Without programme machine cannot execute any operation. It is dead. Program is group of orders on the basis of which machine solves the problems. "Programming represents process of jotting down algorithm in form of final group of orders (instructions) of the universal automatic." (Gluskov)

Food-entrance organ:
The machine can not receive its "food" required for creation in form of words, series of words of sentences, as we use them in speech and writing. Data given to the calculator for processing relate to logical mathematical forms. The numerical system of solving problems is universal, because with its help can be codified visual, sonic or any other information.A part of this translation from language and repertoire of symbols, we have already signified as "programming". Calculator, however, does not operate the numbers in the literal sense of the term, In computer there are numbers, that is words, put as electric impulses, and all operations are executed thorough leavi9ng the current through the network of conductor and circuit breaker. That is why the next operation in the working of computer which we have called as Food- in coming organ, consists of translation, that is coding, of food which we deliver to the computer in form of programmer, of perforation on the paper tapes with the help of special machine. /Only in the form of perforations on paper tracks the food can be put into the entrance organ of the computer, where it will be changed into electric impulses, "electrical language", which the machine alone can " understand" and with the help of which alone can be solved given problems.

Machine creation:
If the preceding action of collecting the material. formulation of idea, processing of programme. Feeding of machine, it means all that depended on the creator, on the man, was relatively long and painstaking, computer does its part in creation of work (machine creation) quickly and faultlessly. There is no delay; no indecision all is played in short period of time, as per the precise formulated laws of machine's logic.Immediately on entering the machine the perforated tracks passes through the "reader" (photocells) which translate the perforations into electric impulses? Electric impulses then got the memory of the machine where these are put to be used later during the work.Arithmetical organ is the part of the machine which performs calculating and logical operations. All these operations are performed on the basis of so-called binary mathematical system and are carried out as per basic calculation work.Controlling and commanding organ regulates the automatic work of computer and sends results to the exit organ.

Machine production:
Under the machine production is understood whole lingual material (all variants), which the computer, after machine creation (permutation and joining of words, groups of words, parts of sentences, words) throws out. Before the author, in that connection, remain two alternatives. First is to choose one part, one or more variants of machine production and that presents them as finished worked or art without any intervention, the final collection of aesthetic information.In such a case, the artist's work would be exhausted in preceding task : collecting words, repertoire o symbols, groups of works, programming and in the final phase choosing the variants of parts of machine product.

Poet's intervention:
Second alternative to the artist is intervention. Here we will talk of intervention taken in the strict sense of the term so as to differentiate with other types of poet's interventions in the computer's lingual material : out of machine mathematical creations and poet's creations. This type of intervention limits itself, first of all, to selection of one variant of machine production or de-variant, combining of parts of various variants, throwing in of successful connections of words from the rejected variants into the selected variant, throwing in of conjunctions, here and there now wooers and connections which didn't pass through the machine, transfer and reason of words and connections, changes in grammatical forms and genders of words and eventual classing into lines. (verses).

Poet's creation:
In this method of work poet is inspired and creates by and with the lingual material which the machine has offered him. Here, primarily, the machine appear as a helper in breaking the language, in breaking those flowing-poetic and usual - logical sequence of human thoughts. The machine breaks the language and warns the poet of all possible after-effects or a total experiment. Its warning is in fact invitation and demand for such an experiment. By the method of machine the poet, again from the broken language, whose improbability has been considerably enhanced, organizes a new language sharpening its aesthetic-informative value.

September – December 1969.

SIGNALIST POETRY PROPER
(VISUAL POETRY)

1. One of the principal tasks of signalist poetry proper (visual poetry) is to overcome verbal poetic expression.
2. This kind of poetry aims at a gradual de-verbalisation and de-semantics of poetry.
3. Given the new communication system where the written (national) language loses an increasingly great deal of its importance, it is quite natural for the poet, facing a language incapable of ensuring universal communication (the kind required by the electronic era),to resort to the more universal and considerably more communicative visual language.
4. Abolishing the current languages with all their shortcomings, signalist poetry will, in the new technological era, come to exercise a direct effect through purely visual and phonic means.

5. Although cases of visualized poetry and texts in general can be found earlier in the history of many nations cultures and literatures (in this country : the highly expressive mediaeval manusripts, Zaharije Orfelin and other mannerists of the Serbian baroque, Djordje Markovic-Koder in the 19th century, Secession early in this century, and, between the two world wars, Dadaist Dragan Aleksic, Zenitist Ljubomir Micic and surrealists Marko Ristic and Dusan Matic with their poetic collages), signalist poetry is in fact a phenomenon and a mode of expression peculiar to our times and to the man of the new technological civilisation.
6. What makes certain artists - notably writers - view the new poetry with much hesitation and suspicion is its hybrid nature, for signalist poetry is no longer poetry, in the usual, traditional sense of the world. Abandoning language (write, national language) and seeking a mode of expression in the use of signs and vocal - visual elemeents, signalist poetry approaches, and consumes a great deal of, design (graphic and otherwise),music and - not frequently - other art forms.
7. the rapprochement between the new poetry and other art forms has made for its gradual transcending of traditional forms of literary communication. In addition to appearing on the pages of books and magazines, signalist poetry is printed in the form of posters, exhibited, performed (signalist manifestations), recorded on tape and wax (signalist phonetic and phonic poetry) and produced by means of lighting effects of machines constructed specially for the purpose (signalist kinetic poetry).
8. In view of all this, the new poetry requires a new type of reader: not a passive consumer of finalized poetic messages, but an intelligent and congenially creative player of a spiritual game in which final results depend, among other things, on the possibility of combining given elements and on the "reader" himself being inspired.
9. The letter, space and their interactions are the basic operative units of the new textual structures.
10. The blank space becomes a special reading value (verbal-visual value) in experimental texts.
11. The living space of signalist poetry is three-dimensional. As different that of the current (traditional) poetry, which is one-dimensional.
12. The communicative - and at the same time, poetic-value of the letter in the new verbal-visual structure of a signalist text, where space also becomes a principal parameter of semantic determination, equals (and often surpasses) its sign value in the current language.
13. In addition to letters or whole words as surpassing structures, the expanse of a signalist poem can also be filled with other signs, electronic, technical and other symbols, drawings, collage, photographs etc., which exist in the defined space of the poem creating verbal-visual meta/linguistic constellations.

1969-70.

GESTURE SIGNALIST POETRY

Signalist manifestations, action poetry, poetry in process, poesia publica, happening poetry, gesture poetry - call it as you will - is one of new modes of poetic expressions. Within the spectrum of the various currents collectively termed SIGNALISM, gesture poetry would be situated at the extreme avant-garde left.The gesture poet creates freely in space, making use of various elements - from verbal and visual through to sonorous - in the process. What becomes poetic language here is a conglomeration of verbo-voco-visual elements in process. This kind of signalist poetry abolishes all boundaries between poetry, theatre, happening and concrete everyday action. In and buy means of it, the poet becomes an inalienable part of his act of creation and his whole being becomes indulged in the informative effect (or radiation) of the poem.As a means of communication in its own right, gesture signalist poetry cannot be interpreted in terms of current poetic-linguistic categories. Being based principally on gesture and sign and expanding the boundaries of language considerably above and beyond the fixed, defined and partially already explored areas of poetic speech, gesture signalist poetry calls for broader semiological interpretations as well.

1971.

SIGNALIST VISUAL POETRY - A NEW LITERARY DISCIPLINE

Signalist visual poetry is now well-established as a separate new literary discipline, not only within signalism as a broader movement but also within literature as a whole. This has been possible for various reasons, First of all, signalist visual poetry - despite a certain historical continuity (the existence of visual texts and visual poetry in ancient Greece and Rome as well as in mediaeval literature, European baroque literature, Apollinairre's Caligrammes and the work of Dadaists, futurists and surrealists)- is a product of the electronic civilization, the civilization of the image, the sign, the poster, TV, the video cassette, the new printing techniques, the telecommunication satellites and other forms of the technological society increasingly drawn together no planet-wide basis, a society that knows of no linguistic or national borderlines and the artificial barriers put up by the small, closed-in and neurotic literatures burdened by traditionalist myth manias.While we have seen that is has been presents in man's mind ever since the very dawn of civilisation, signalist visual poetry proper was born in the civilization of our times, which abandons the old and slow modes of communication in favour of mass media. In other words, this kind of poetry comes into being at a crucial point in the development of technological and social forces, and that it is precisely this new society - less and less concerned with the national and more and more with the planetary - that will make for its full expansion the almost immediate future.Other reasons making for the emergence of signalist poetry are to be found in the elements that have replaced the language. In visual poetry these are letters, signs, various graphic symbols, photographs and collage. In phonic poetry, these are the sound and the voice. In gesture poetry, these are action and gesture.Breaking the ossified, molecular structure of the current poetic language, this type of poetry takes us away from the linguistic strata of the partially explored and known picture of the world and into more profound areas of a still-closed, still-unexplored universe of the sign and semiology. Thus-by destroying and removing the intermediary of language - it draws us closer to objects and beings, or rather to their essence. At the same time, it serves as the sole ray of hope in times saturated with repeated verbal explosions, more-of -the same times leading towards non-identity which threatens to throw us, at any moment, into the teeth of absence and tedium, into death itself for there can be no real life in the monuments when "reality turns literary" while "literature degenerates and turns unreal". In these times and in this moment, the sign is perhaps the sign of the being itself at its still unpredictable semiological level. Visual facts and the increasingly exact structure of the new planetary and signalist thought are profoundly and necessarily opposed to all that is semantic and mythical in man's multi-stratum being.Numerous questions have multiplied in the quasi-prophetic ecstasies of traditionalist literature while no answers have been supplied. Man has already reached the point of resignation where he is compelled to stop speaking and thinking, thoroughly entangled in his own network of verbal mystifications. It may be well be that only the art of such people as will with their entire complex rational and sensory structure and without waste of energy be fused together into a single planetary Being made more exalted by powerful impulses of thought infinitely more vibrant and senses infinitely more receptive, will be able to furnish answers to some long-posed questions and to express certain more relevant truths.Turned now to the logos, for "logo is always in the existence, and as such it is the source of discovering the truth", leaving behind all the former paraphernalia of literature (particularly its language, since language "autonomies and becomes an independent realm - a world within the world - constituting a reality into itself; discoursing, in turns its black to the universe"),signalist visual poetry and other forms of signalist literature are the first heralds of a future mass-media art transmitted by powerful means of information whose principal aim will be to expand human sensory consciousness and which will cease to be the privilege of certain classes and elites.The old aspects of magical -religious art and the present aspects of reality-presenting art, created for centuries and transmitted by one -directional and inefficient means (oral transmission followed by Gutenbergian alphabet-civilization) will soon disappear. Already the thought processes are determine by an exceedingly rapid development and efficiency of man's aids-machines-in an in intercommunicative civilization which adopts the image as its fetish and its principal language of communication. The currents of images, the currents of a new iconic language of the unified and all-embracing electronic civilization will flow together to form a phantasmagorical river of future planetary and signalist thought.

1972.

COMMUNICATION-BEING-THOUGHT

Communication (1.communication) transmitting, transmission, connection. Behaviour, intercourse, contact, traffic, traffic artery. communicative (1.communiativus) transferable, which is easily transmitted to others, communicable, giving information readily; talkative, accessible. Community (1.communitas) fellowship, inclination for fellowship; common good. Communicate (1.communicare) communicate, communize, make common, report, impart, announcement, present (or reveal) to the public; be in touch with someone, correspond, interchange, Communicatio idiomatum (1.communicatio idiomatum) juncture of divine and human characteristics.Communication is contained in the very essence of the being. It is one of the basic elements and factors of its existence, and undoubtedly the measure of the evolution from primary, rudimentary consciousness on a powerful consciousness on a planetary scale. I communicate, ergo I exist, ergo I create. The nature of communication is multilateral in the most profound sense of the word. It is socio-historical as well as exact and artistic and - and its most intimate and human aspect - subjective.Its methods, its strength and its weakness are the closed circles of cummunities, of societies interconnected in terms of time, space, religion, language and technology, of oases of beings bound firmly together by invisible but well-nigh unbreakable threads. Is the lifeblood and nervous system of a highly complex organism, but at the same time its insidious disease which will destroy it immediately upon realising that the organism has become self-sufficient, thereby preventing further expansion of communication. Its means are individual stairs in the staircase of civilization. Communication is the foundation stone and nutriment of man's discoveries, a fairly-tale monster that devours itself only to be reborn ever-larger and ever more insatiable.In signalist communication, whose principal air it is to make it possible for us to explore the being in disagreement with the entropic coldness of all that surround us (time, objects, establishment and laws) is the purpose of signalism as a particular way of thinking.The signalist is being of the future, the being of a future permanently conquered anew, of the very same future awaiting it on the border posts of the blue planet, or the already visible future in the planetary orbits, or thee still dreamed-of future hidden in the dark depths of the frightening galaxy. Where are then the limits to this growing communicability of the signalist phoenix that feeds on the ashes of its own soul and whose thought is engaged in a never-ending dialectical play? Where are the boundaries of that being relentlessly driven towards new conquests and caught in the neurotic convulsion of the information explosion working on a feedback basis? They do not exist, or rather they are unpredictable just as the boundaries of thought are unpredictable.Thought paves the way for the being. It is the perpetual explorer penetrating beyond the borders of the visible and the tangible, beyond the borders of comparative peace and order, to reach the worlds yet to be conquered. The crisis of traditional and classical art is primarily the crisis of thought. The inability to break out of the vicious circle of definite systems of values and knowledge, the inability to "create new propositions of art" (Kosuth), confine the being of the artists to the futile spaces of the known, expected, unthought-of and repeated. The artist's consciousness becomes in this case a machine reproducing superseded thinking - or rather, reproducing what used to be thinking until it lost the ability to explore and discover.The signalist thought opens the say to a new-civilization visual and total-communication being, a being of the play and signs, of planetary consciousness and profoundly intuitive an highly intellectual capacities. It is the power of informative and conquering communication radiating the multi laterality of its progress towards things and truths not only given but also marked by our hard patient exploratory experience.Herein lie the endless possibilities of this being in the sphere of the arts, a sphere free from any strict purposefulness of limited space, perishable material, dull historical curiosities and the reducible moments of the commonplace. Art dematerializes and begins to occur; more goes out into the world - what fits in the picture of the visible world of facts and things (this has hitherto meant objects of, i.e. art given modelled in any material) - is now only a document, an instruction project, a verbal, visual, auditory, or tactile description of the artist's thought process.This is where we reach the moment the signalist thought identifies with what we had termed as art; the two find a common point in the permanent exploration of the nature of being and the nature of art in the depth of the uncertain and the vague, progressing towards and invisible destination which is blurred but the watchful eye of the death, but which may well turn out to be only a new and exciting beginning crowned with a chaste halo of infinity.

1973.

EXACT LANGUAGES AND BIRTH OF VISUAL POETRY IN SIGNALISM

In the manifesto "Poetry - science" (Manifesto of poetical science) in the year 1968, basic assumptions of early phase of Signalism (Scientism) were emphasized: antitraditionalism, antisubjectivism, striving for a synthesis of poetry and science, researching work in language. Some of this also represents essential innovations in our poetry in general.Anti-Romanticism is a basis of militant signalist activism, its opposing to disguised and renovated traditionalism in Serbian poetry.For Signalism, time of Romanticism in literature is past irreversibly, along with Surrealism as its peak. In that sense poetry must be desubjectivized, and the emphasized I of previous schools and directions must appease itself considerably and lose some of its conspicuous narcissism.Poet is not a prophet (vates) any more who calls upon gods and utters in high voice "the most profound truths" of this world. He is just one of particles of the universe, gifted with consciousness, thinking, desire for cognition and imagination whereby he reveals gradually secrets of the universe. He can not go alone to the way to the unknown any more, he must couple with scientist, and rely his imagination on scientific discoveries and cognitions. Only poetry and science, scientist and poet, can conquer, build up, think through planetary and start set off to the cosmic, to the unpredictable.The cosmic is still a darkness, abyss, death. Behind the curtain of darkness and cold enormous and unconceivable torments of matter and energy, cosmic radiations, destroying and building forces, frozen or hot unknown worlds are awaiting. Death is as real there as space and time are, the latter two not representing just a Kantian a priori form of comprehension. They ceased to be abstract and absolute, a spiritual construction. They become a place of building, wandering, life. They are a part of human experience and not some "function of universe". Space and time are not defined any more, they are researched. One sets off to a researching campaign with a newly conquered language. It has been found partly in the language of science.Language is a main factor of that synthesis, of that action of wandering and researching. Fresh and unspent, turned to the future, a language that multiplies itself along with spaces. Keys and ways are found to revive formulas, symbols, in order to imagine into a new poetical and linguistic being. Suddenly all becomes so wonderful behind the darkened curtain of light years, under evasive events in micro world.The language of exact sciences is vivid and changeable. It grows with every new thing, new particle of universe. Created are new words, new notions, marked and named are new, just observed inhabitants of that invisible world. Firstly proton and electron, then neutron, antineutron, neutrino, ka-meson, pi-meson, collide, wander in their little closed spaces. They are alive, they move, their behaviours should be monitored. Every their new movement, state, is a relationship and new word, notion, mark, information. The grammar of science changes continually as well as poetical grammar.Languages of poetical science conquer spaces, the cosmic ones as well as those spiritual. But not languages (words, sentences, speech) only and exclusively. For science and poetry are not just arranged syntactically and by grammatical, imaginative and other rules determined chains and sequences of words any more. They are also graphs, drawings, signs, descriptions of paths, graphemes of dissipated letters, explosive syntagms, a chaos of roads, the knitting, pictures, meanings. Language of poem and language of research has widened, extended, drawn out from its tight suit of words, sense, order, negentropy and stepped into the yet non investigated kingdom of sign and semiology.Its drawing out from verse, from word, happened gradually, with stuttering and with troubles. There were firstly calligramm pictures, then numbers, mathematical symbols, function graphs, equations. Word was condensing, disappearing and reappearing like a transformed exact symbol, a graph that flows windingly and freely in all directions instead of verse, of sentence. The entire space of page is being conquered for a poem. Poem becomes free completely in that space where it is enabled to radiate its energy in all directions.Poetical language has, therefore, spread considerably having penetrated and seized exact linguistic systems, permeating with diagrams, numbers, exact symbols, with all that science operates and communicates with. Here one would look actually for the roots of signalist visual poetry and the first steps of shattering the language into the letter and sign totalities, where poem loses its previous basic existential-semantic structure. Language is split in a radical, but precise, refined chemical process of spirit and consciousness. Its foundation are breaking down. The elements joined closely thus far tear away slowly and begin to hover freely and radiate in space, poem, joining into new, unpredicted and unpredictable totalities, quite opposed to previous linguistic and poetical experience.The things have not stopped, however, just on this and such widening of poetical language. Already in the second manifesto of Signalism it was emphasized explicitly that language is all that makes a poem possible. Thus, it seems, the notion of languages usable for building of poetry has been extended to ultimate limits. It will later on, in the third manifesto "Signalism" (1970), get more precise formulations, when also signalist kinetic, phonic, object and gesture poetries are formulated beside the visual one.

1975.

FRAGMENTS ON SIGNALISM (I)

1. TECHINCAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS
According to Max Bense technical consciousness in our time replaces Hegel's historical consciousnes, for beside the classical world of mater and energy also information and communication has been opened to the world.

2. ON THE NEW FUNCTION OF ART
In the new technological era art will not disappear; its function, however, will be radically transformed. From the primary magic-religious function, through the modern-age reality-presenting art of the future, with all the things that the electronic civilization offers as well as the completely new technological reality, it will become "an instrument for the modification of human consciousness and fort the organization of new kinds of sensibilities".

3. SIGNALISM AND TRADITION
Avant-garde (signalist) art is in such a position that is completely dispenses with tradition. What is this reflected in? Primarily in a different comprehension of the function of art. Signalist are, besides presenting new ideas, especially concerned with widening the human sensory awareness. For these reasons this new art is in its being non-didactic and experimental, in the sense in which exact sciences are experimental.If we notice the claim of some philosophers and theorists that man is a being of tradition and that he will, as such, allways oppose fiercely to a radical denying of tradition, for he considers every change and attack of such kind to be an attack on his spiritual and real existence and conformity, than ubnderstandable are, to an extent, also the frontal and severe attacks on Signalism and new revolutionary ideas brought by it, first of all, in the area of using machines and mathematical models for creation of art.

4.THE BEING OF SIGNALIST ART
The phenomenon of signalist art as total art leads us into a labyrinth of new visions of planetary absoluteness of a being liberated from everything which we characterize as traditionalistic and didactic art. A being whose sensory apparatus is turned to the reception of the subtlest impulses and tremors of the aero-cosmic and ecological vitality. A being unburdened by formal-materialistic and linguistic impossibilities. A being-consciousness whose meta-lingual communication exceeds everything we are able at this moment to imagine. Being-and-not only-that wave-signal intertwined interdependent, logically imperceptible and inexhaustible aesthetic information. A being-universe.

5. ON LUDIC BASIS OF SIGNALISM
The basis of Signalism is Ludism. That Ludism has its two essential aspects in Signalism. It can be mathematical programmed Ludism (theory of probability, cybernetic machines, statistics, mathemaical tables of accidental numbers), mathematical combinatorics and intuitive Ludism of spontaneous creative mind.We consider, however, that to Signalism and signalist creative methods the closest is a combination of intuitive Ludism with mathematical one, where initial impulses and even particular products of the latter can serve outstandingly well as a basis for further superstructuring combinations of intuitive Ludism.

6. CURRENT (TRADITIONAL) AND SIGNALIST (AVANT-GARDE) POETRY
Basic difference between current (traditional) and signalist (avant-garde) poetry is based on the fact that traditional poetry starts from already settled and established poetical values, while avant-garde poetry tends to affirm new values and especially itself as a value.

7. BASIC AIMS OF SIGNALISM IN POETRY
1. Demistification of poetical act and poet.
2. Acceptance of the new realities of technological civilization and especially of the role of man in electronic-planetary space of existence.
3. Abolishing of present poetical languages as means of literatural manipulations and mistifications.
4. Making use of all possibilities given by exact sciences beginning with using machines and special mathematical models and methods in creativity, to using already generally accepted exact symbols for creation of one universal meta-language.
5. Poetry must include and become a means of mass communication.

8. ON CREATION OF A NEW SPIRITUAL CLIMATE IN LITERATURE.
In its essence, signalist poem makes, at least partly, feverish efforts of all kinds to express aesthetical state of language whose perimeters have been drawn i the special atmosphere of technological and consumer civilization. (signs, abbreviations, instructions, advertisements). In negating grammar and syntax, negating some previous important stimuli of poem, emphasizing more and more constructivist elements kombined with certain dose of intuitive Ludism, signalist poem creates a ground for a quite different climate in literature.

9. SIGNALIST WORK
A signalist work is an open work. It is an entire galactic system ready to endure all interventions without being destroyed.This self-creative characteristic of a signalist work is reflected not only in the case when different elements are added to expand it, but also when these elements are taken from it and it is reduced to a gesture, an idea a concept, even to "blank" whiteness of a sheet of paper or an empty unmarked space. A signalist work, even in these extreme cases of dematerialization, destruction, de-verbalizitaion, de-phonization etc.., depending on the kind of art we are talking about, radiates its totality and indestructibility.On the other hand, by the indestructibility and self-creative characteristic we mean its multivalence, its plenitude of aesthetic values, hence the possibility offered to future epochs, by its inexhaustibility, multitude of meanings and associations and different, constantly new ways of widening the human sensory awareness, of attracting permanent attention.

10. CLASSIFICATION OF SIGNALIST POETRY
Signalist poetry represents a set of various experimental poetries and methods. All those poetries and methods we can classify into two main groups. In the first group are those that experiment in the frames of language and the verbal, not including visual and other elements.
There belong:
1. Aleatory or stocshastic poetry
2. Statistical poetry
3. Technological poetry
4. Permutational, combinational and variational poetry
5. Scientistic poetry
6. Phenomenological poetry
7. Slang poetry
8. Computor poetry (the part realized by means of machine but in language)

In the second group are those poetries and methods that include some linguistic elements, operating with signs, or inlude not only the verbal but also visual and vocal elements. That part of signalist poetry we can also call semiological poetry because of its radical steps out beyond the limits treated by current literature so far, abandoning linguistic area and entering an area almost completely unexamined from a literatural standpoint, an area of sign and semiology.Kinds and methods of semiological poetry:1. Signalist visual poetry2. Sonic and cynetic poetry3. Computor poetry (the part operating with letter-sign elements)4. Signalist manifestation (gestual poetry)

11. ON THREE-DIMENSIONAL SPACE OF VISUAL POETRY
Verbal-visual phantasy of signalist poem exceeds much the limits we are used to in language. Learning to read in all directions we enter gradually new three-dimensional spaces of signalist visual poetry.

12. ON SUPER-NATIONAL METALINGUISTIC STRUCTURE OF SIGNALIST VISUAL POETRY
One of basic characteristics of signalist visual poetry is its non-national metalinguistic structure. This poetry does not know for the limits of national languages, a problem of translation does not exist for it any more, its language is universal and understandable to all poets of the world. It is opened and right because of that opening to the world , according to the well-known Italian poet Adriano Spatola, "new poetry has its first and enormous obstacle in national poetry. Various national poetries live off prejudices and are based, above all, on the opinion that translation is the only instrument of expansion to the othe side of borders and customs. New poetry, as this poet says, is entrusted with an enormous task: to destroy naionalisms, to destroy every "private" concession of culture..."

13. ON THE SPECIAL WORLD OF SIGNALIST (LINGUISTIC) POETRY
Signalist poetry realized in language, out-textual, external and object world supposes more and more its own inner linguistic world whose poetical space is determined with language itself, that becomes an exclusive object of poetry in this case, as well as with the special world created by that language.In that sense signalist poetry establishes also specific laws in the newly built space, based first of all on the modified laws of the used language.

14. ON RESEARCH IN THE NATURE OF POETRY
Entering the essence of language, and even abandoning some of its valid and most expressive functional-communicative elements in particular moments, Signalism researches the nature of poetry itself most comprehensively and essentialy so far.

1969 -1972

FRAGMENTS ON SIGNALISM (II)

CYBERNETICS
The bases of cybernetics were posed by Norbert Wiener immediately after the World War II with the works: CYBERNETICS or control and communication in the animakl and the machine and THE HUMAN USE OF HUMAN BEINGS (cybernetics and society).The very notion (term, name) cybernetics is derived by Wienner from the Greek word kybernetes = helmsman .The domain of interest of this science are not only living, but also non-living systems where mechanisms of an exchange of messages, information function. Cybernetics would be, according to generally accepted definition, a universal theory of steering and connection. There conditions of commanding machines, plants, producing and social processes are studied, and even the motion of living beings. So this theory has been posed in very wide aspects and it is enabled to cover almost all areas of human thought and action.*Cybernetics has not been created accidentally. It can be said it has rather long history and that it represents a result of overall developmentof science sinse the ancient cognition all the way to the most recent manifestations and courses in scientific thought. Cybernetics makes use of the experiences of previous reearches in order to formulate quite new views and try to solve some of the fundamental questions of science and society. The most conspicious are the experiences from the turn of the century, when mathematical theory of systems wuth a feedback as well as mathematical logic with an elaborated logic of discrete schemes. At that time Gauss' theory of probability gets an opportunity to be applied also in natural sciences and technics. An eminent role is played also by Markpff's theory of web, whereas the significance of Gibbs' idea of probability of the universe in the system of statistic mechanics will be noticed considerably later on.*There are two basic ideas and interpretations that cybernetics is based on, not only as a new exact science, but also as a specific view of the world with far-reaching effects on social sciences, philosophy and arts: an idea of a general theory of governing and relation, and an interpretation of cybernetics as a theory of organization, ie of a struggle with the cosmic chaos incarnated in the monstrous and continual growth of entropy.

GIBBS' UNIVERSE
American scientist Gibbs is especially meritorious for breaking down Newtonian solid and compact universe, where everything happens according to certain law and "where all future depends strictly on all past". Gibbs' universe id characterized by disorder. It is not liable to some strict and eternal laws valid for all existing forms. It is determinable only by statistic criteria, probability and chance. Strict determinism has lost its ground here. Foundations of physics, and thereby also of entaire world and universe are set on chance. Exact sciences have thus approached the sources of the irrational.

MESSAGE
We comprehend society, all the world and universe by means of studynig messages and means of commumications. Future of man has been already determined in a way by development of system opf messages and communication.Message is in basis of cybernetics. According to Wiener there is a broad area that emcompasses not onla study of language, but also study of messages as a means for governing machines and society with certain reflections on psychology and nervous system.A circumstance where a command (instruction, algorithm) is communicated to a machine is not different substantially from the state where a commandment has been said to a person. The one who directs commandment, if his conciousness is in question, is aware of the message he has directed and the signall returned to him. Quite irrelevant is whether the signal passed through some machine or person. It does not changes at all the relationship of the emitter and the signal. Therefore, Wiener conludes, theory of governing in technics, whether it relates to men, animals or machines, represents just one chapter of the theory of message.

ENTROPY According to the laws of thermodynamics, where principle of entropy holds, all the universe is approaching a thermal death.

Closed systems like universe tend to pass to a state of highest probability. From the state of organization and differentiation to a state of chaos and formlessness.

Statistics sheds a new light on the principle of entropy. Its laws determine general features of multitude, erasing individual destinies of constituent parts.

Thermodynamics is specific in its irreversibillity of physical processes, ie the fact that thermodynamic processes proceed only in one direction. A course of the process in opposite direction is made impossible ba the law of entropy.This one-wayness represents a basis of the Second law of thermodynamics.

As a substitution for thermodinamical one-wayness we take statistic probability.

The princiople of entropy is a border, a borderstone separating the past from the future.

In an experiment known as Maxwell's demon a continual motion takes place whereby the Second law of thermodynamics is violated. Maxwell's demon has overcome here the tendention that leads to an increase in entropy.

Relating thermodynamic entropy to biological notion of organization, Schrodinger marked entropy as a measure of desorganization and opposed to it his own notion of negative entropy (negentropy) as a measure of order and organization.

Striking is the similarity of this Schredinger's ordinances of negative entropy with Shannon's entropy of information. By further observing of these analogies scientists have concluded that Maxwell's demon actually transforms informaton into negative entropy, into an order of system.

Deep is negenthropic sense of the process of metabolism.

With exchange of matters (metabolism) a living organism begins its desperate struglle against desorganization.

Death is a state of maximal entropy of a being.

Entropy is measure for disorder, chaos, desorganization.

Negative entropy (negentropy) is a measure for order.

By metabolic processes, which are, in fact, processes of life, organism absorbs negative entropy realizinga high level of order (organization) in that way. It fights at the same time against positive entropy, that struggle enabling it not to fall for a time into the state of maximal entropy.

HEURISTIC PROGRAMMING AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
In domain of study of automatics first of all are analogies existing between living beings and machines, processes that happen in different systems, whether they are mechanisms created my man, living organisms or human society as a whole.
*
Reactions of living beings are based on a very complex system of signalization and automatic regulation.
*
Homeostasis is an ability of organism to adapt itself to environment, establishing a constant equilibrium between organism and environment. The process by which we as living beings resist the universal current of corruption and decomposition dictated by entropy.
*
Homeostat - a machine that posses an ability of selforganizing, ie that itself is able to study and chose a solution depending on it.
*
Heuristic programming in modern cybernetics marks examination and attempt of creating an algorithm of functioning of brain and complex forms of psychic activities.It is a new discipline formulated in 1958 in Great Britain at a symposium for mechanization of thinking process, by scientists Minsky and McCay, who had posed the "problem of neccesity of looking for new ways for examination and modelation of creative forms of brain work".
*
In his work "On the Road of Creating Artificial Intellect" Minsky tries to answer the basic problem of heuristics: what thinking is and what the specificity of creative forms of brain functioning consists of compared with the in cybernetics known processes of processing information.
*
Scientists predict construction of machines capable of self-reproducton in a very near future. So on the basis of the fact that computor is a machine that, given an instruction and a finite sequence of numbers, can continue infinitely the development of that sequence accoeding to the added instruction, mathematician Neumann conludes, expanding the notion of universal automaton, that these will in a very near future, on the basis af appropriate program and other parts of machines, elements and aggregates, be able to produce automata similar to themselves.A British genetist has perfected the notion of reproductive machine, producing models that represent numerous analogies, but this time in the area of chemistry and biology, with living organisms.According to scientist Edvard Moor, in several decades will already be created machines with capability of propagating, being economical at the same time.

GAME
Game is, in a mathematical sense, a formalized model of complex conflict situation.
*
Theory of games is a mathematical theory of conflict situations. It analyzes situations and deal with production of rules, algorithms for most favorable tactical action of player.

FEEDBACK
Feedback is considered to be a basic category of automatics. It represents a method of governing some system with using results and experiences of his previous actions.
*
Already has been noticed the coincidency of physical action of a living being (man) and some communication machines with rregard to the endevours that entropy should be controlled by feedback.
*
The science dealing with analogies between biological and technical processes is bionics. It studies regulative systems in living organisms in order to apply their principles in machines.
*
Messages by which we act upon the environment we live (work) in are nothing but some kind of information we, as senders, direct to that environment. But we not only radiate, direct) information, we also recieve the. External environment acts upon our senses by means of light, sound and other signals. These stimuli are transferred into the main center wher after gathering information, their processing and selection man responds to the stimuli with certain reaction. Thus the mutual interaction between man and his external environment is realized on the basis of transfer, coordination, storing and using of information. To live efficiently, according to Wiener, means to be informed.

MACHINE AND THINKING
Very important is the fact that cybernetics is not a dogmatic science. The world it tries to explain by its own methods and principles has not been given for it once forever, but it is liable to dialectics of eternal becoming, to infinity of organized actions and reactions.That science emanates from an essentialy different process of human thinking, entailed by electronic civilization. The latter also makes a maximal use of something that already exists in the very nature of man, so that it exceeds enthropic inertion enabling him to act dinamically with attempts to create in his consciousness a picture of integrated, but not finite space, time as well as the world of facts and things.
*
Functionality of technological world is provided by products of "artificial thinking". In its global structure (but still only in socio-economical) the world functions like a machine construed according to mathematical principles to which at times, but in ever shorter intervals, more and more perfect and complicated parts are added.
*
In the area of thinking, machines will first of all have a role of an instigator of thinking and creating, ie of a reinforcer of intelligence. They can be understood also as very complicated tools for realization of certain ideas and production of new aesthetic information. Machin will influence substantially on thinking in the future.

THEORY OF INFORMATION
Under information we imply all that gives data, or informs about some fact or some event. It shows itself to us as a "basic magnitude", its quantity is measurable and can be expressed mathematically. It is mathematical models that the processes of information courses are studied by. Measure unit of information is bit, and it represents an "atom of communication". It would be the least quantity of elements in one information arrived through channels to receptor (reciever), needed to be transformable to certain perception.Norbert Wiener calls information the contents of what we exchange with external world while we adapt to it and influence it by our adaptation.
*
Theory of information originated at solving the problem of electrical communications, transmission technique, especially photography. At the beginning it was related exclusively to st
udy of transmission, procession and using signals in channel for communication, but later on its application has been expanded, by means of cybernetics, also to biological and social systems. Finally, information theory and cyberneric methods penetrate aesthetics too.
*
For information is characteristical that it is transferred by communication channel. Material bearers of information are actually signals. By means of encoding, ideas, thoughts are transformed into a system of communication signals. Decoding process is reverse and goes from signal (languge, numbers, signs, letters, gestures, sounds) toward picture and thought. On that road through the channel of communication to the reciever where it is decoded, signal can be exposed to hindrances, white sounds, distortions. Understandability of the information will also depend on the degree of distortion.
*
Signal is a product of an event, object or phenomenon. Information, in fact, can not exist in other way than in a form of signal about something that has happened. Events, happanings are source of signals. They are, thereore, of a physical nature and are related to certain mass or energy. For Roland Barthes signal belongs to a group of "relates without psychical idea", it is "immediate and existential".

ENTROPY IN INFORMATION THEORY AND NEW AESTHETICS
Applied in information theory entropy denotes disorder, danger, chaos tending to destroy message, its meaning, to make ompossible information, ie establishment of relation of emmiter's world with that of receiver. It is noticed first of all in communication channel where the message is influenced by various hindrances, white sounds, actually the entropy principle that tries to destroy it.As such, entropy is opposed to information. Informaton is actually a measure of order, where the informative contents of a message is given by the degree of its organization. By a greater organization of the message according to "a special order", where it would go far, by means of "improbable systematization", from probability, uniformity and "elementary chaos", tended to even by the universe as a closed system, its informativity is also conditioned.>From this one could conclude that to a total information corresponds a zero entropy, and to increasing entropy a vanishing information. (As we will see later on the things with artistic works, when aesthetical, ie poetical information is in question).
*
The notin of entropy has not remained just in thermodynamics, ie physics and mathematics, beside cybenetics and information theory. This notion has been expanded recently also to lingustics, and also poetry. Significan place it holds also i new aesthetics.
*
New aesthetics uses mathematical and empirical working methods, it starts from some basic attitudes of cybernetics and information theory, orientating, mainly, to objective problems of art.
*
Aesthetical perception is marked, from the standpoint of new aesthetics, whose fundamental assuption have been elaborated by Abraham Moles, as a transfer and processing of information.This process is more complicated than with other kinds of perceprion and registering phenomena in receiver's consciousness. First of all, with aesthetical perception the participation of consumer is considerably more active. Although the quantity of information after the transfer by a communication channel is always lesser at the exit than at the entrance, the received signals can cause with the receiver greater quantity than that whose bearers, actually, they are. It is, according to Mol, made poossible by previous information placed in the receiver's (consumer's) memory, activated and combined with the existing experience.

REDUNDANCE
Redundance shows itself as a measure of understandibility of information. In fact, it is that excess, abundance of probabilities by which we burden an information at the very sourcin order to enable the message to reach the receiver complete. Understandibility is here, therefore, a "quantitative notion". Maximal unpredictability (originality) of message makes it nonunderstandable. Understandibility, repetition, using always same sign, makes it equal with triviality.
*
All messages, especially artistic ones, represent a compromise between a maximal information of the unpredictable, original but non-understandable and the predictable, repetition, non-originality that is trivial and understandable. This would be, according to Abraham Moles, a fundamental dijalectics of communication.Within certain limits of a linguistic system according to Umberto Eco, "redundance is given by the entire totality of syntactic, ortographic and grammatical rules that begin to make up obligate intermedial points of a language".Goals of Signalism would be, therefore, determined in advance by breaking down those linguistic rules within their official conditionings, but at the same time also in the frame of new systems and subsystems in building a signalist poet retains certain redundancy lest he make impossible comopletely aesthetical informativity and communicativity of his work..

SPACE OF SIGNALIST ART
The space of art will become a space of game. Of intuitive and algorithm one, where the latter will be a basis for an intuitive superstructere. Moving from the spheres of emotions toward the spheres of intelligence, significance of art as of discovering will be increased.
*
Basis of signalist art we see in a synthesis of intellectual-experimental function with its social-communicative function.

CREATION OF NEW FORMS
Creation of new forms is the aim of signalist art. Of concrete forms, not only of void forms. It is an art of this time (its time), its expression.Efforts are not directed just to express, but also to arrange, mould, create. If signalist art is an expression of one time, then the world is also an object of its arranging. Paradixal is, however, that in that arranging the world it is partly helped also by it subversive (destructive) function.Hegel pointed rightfully to this necessary dialectics of future, that covers what exists just in order to destroy it better, replacing it with new forms.
*
New (signalist) literature pointed to the three-dimensional properties of words and language (verbal,vocal and visual). The idea about a linear sequence of words and letter structures has been shattered. Syntax could be sdestroyed at the moment when significant visual possibilities of particular linguistic elements showed themselves. Text is structured so that in its meaning, reading, all the newly discovered linguistic properties act. Its improbability has been increased, and thereby also its polisemanticity. A script of linguistic signs in a multi-dimensional field of action is being created, that can engage whole thinking and sensual (visual, tactile and sonar) system of comnsumer (reader - watcher), including him into the game of thinking and discovering.

IDEAL LANGUAGE
Search for logical perfection of languge in modern philosophy coincides, at least in its effort, with the search of some previous literatural directions for its aesthetical perfection.
*An ideal language is exausted in monosemantic naming simple things.

NON-EUCLIDIAN SPACES OF BEING AND LANGUAGE
Picture of the world will be complete if we determine its basic elements, facts and things. Facts and things are material of picture of the world.
*
The bulding of the world like an idea of totality and compactness has been broken down. It is a bulding of destroyed syntax whose basic elementshave been liberated from the tightly bound foundations of one-dimensional totalities realize non-euclidian spaces of being and language.
*
Being in denying. Being in language. Language of being as a picture of concrete world of facts and things. New world as a denying of language.
*
Science and technology produce a new world. The purpose of Signalism is not a theory with a determined action and defined limits, it is first of all a permanent activity.

PICTURE
Differently from language (words), phonic segments that have not a perceptive similarity with the object they represent, picture as a special kind of denoting has it.
*
Although it is just a shadow of what it denotes, just one of the relations of the sonsciousness leading to object, picture is not independent and separated from the world of facts and things. Its action does not end just in relationship of a certain thing with another. It communicates with all surroundings entering so a very jagged web of semiological meanings.Play of pictures and their various, itertwinned and interdependant actions is a play of a just born world which tempts us with its multiple possibilities.

DUAL CIVILIZATON OF LANGUAGE AND PICTURE
We do not notice visual codes in visual message exclusively. Visual message is often permeated by language, not only internally, but also inside in its very visuality.
*
The fact is, yet, that we can not interpret different forms of communication just by linguistic categories. Our civilization is more and more determined by the visual as by a set of specific visual systems.It is, to be true, still a civilization of language and picture where picture takes more and more significant and dominant place. The world of language and the world of picture are not separated so strictly as it could be concluded at first on the basis o theoretical discussions. Noticeable are very broad fields of mutual intertwinning and action showing that the visual in our civilization has still not taken hold of "the totality of materially visible messages".
*
By semiology of visual communications we research the roads to semiological defining of new phenomena of meaning in particular systems developed or just being created by technological society.

COMPLEXITY OF SEMIOLOGICAL EXPERIENCE
Semiological experience is a complex one. As if there were not limits, in the world we percieve, to application of its possibilities. System of signs encircle us from the moment we open our eyes: gestures, sounds, pictures, things, bomb our senses, engaging entire our being in receiving various information and deciphering their meanings.Great are spaces where all those "systems of meanings" are placed, produced and discovered by our global civilization by means of its informative media. Information, complexes of signs and meanings, have become a nervous labyrinth of modern society, and thereby they are also liable to a comprehensive analysis by means of the methods of new scientific disciplines originated or developed in this time of explosive communication.It seems, actually, that very that width is what makes impossible to semiology a deeper and more systematic penetration into some of the basic questions of our time, and at the same time a definition of the limits of its own research.

LINGUISTIC SIGN
Linguistics enters the field of action of semiology covering a greater, more significant and perhaps the most systematized part of the general science of signs - language.Semiology is still in a search of its "genuine language" as well as its methods and possibilities. For the present it relies almost entirely on linguistics and represents, as it Barthes says, "a copy of linguistic knowledges".
*
Ferdinand de Saussure is one of the first linguists that tried to explain the nature of sign, especiall of verabal one. To him sign represents a "unity of what it denotes" with "what is denoted". The denoting and the denoted arem therefore, united making a sign. According to Barthhes, the point is an essential attitude that is to be always returned to, "for a tendention exists that sign is considered to be "denoting", while a two-sided reality is in question.
*
Penetrating deeper into the nature of linguistic sign, followers of de Saussure have discovered, beside dichotomy, also its "double articulation".According to them, we discern among lingustic signs semantic sentences each of which is loaded with sense (monems) from discinctive units that make up parts of form, but have not meaning expressionally (phonems). Monems would form the first and phonems, and phonem the second articulation of linguistic sign.

AESTHETICAL SITUATIONS
To learn looking, to replace the outdated "technique of interpretation" ba a "technique of perception", where in an immediate touch of our conasciousness and the world radiating information the factual exparieances become necessary, needed not only for the usual, normal communication, but also for a comprehension of that special kind of so-called "aesthetical information".
*
Determining an aethetical measure of artistic art, abd starting thereat from some mathematical principles noticed on probability theory, the well-known researcher of modern art Max Bense says that works of art are as bearers of aesthetical situations are complete creations that in a sense create three kinds of situations: first of all the exact physical situation of the material system the work of art is made of; secondly, the conventional semantic situation achieved in such a physical system and, finally, an undefined aesthetical situation relating to the both previous ones.
*
For an artistic work, according to this theorist, it is not necessary that it, in order to achieve aesthetical situations, gives primarily the semantic, ie meaning in its material. Aesthertical situations can (and do not have to) emanate from semantic ones, but in any case they build the material. Development of modern art points to us that it strives to rrealize aesthetical situations ommediately in a physical, material transfer system renouncing an introduction of mediatory semantic stadium, ie object and meaning.

VISUAL SYNTAGMS
Visual syntagms of particular forms of signalist visual poetry can show themselves to us, but to a lesser extent, as iconic signs.
*
According to Morris' definition an iconic sign is a sign that has certain properties of the presented object, ie which represents properties of its denotates.
*
Thedefinition by Umberto Eco is rather wider but mre precise as well. For him, iconic signs reproduce some perceptive condition of the object, but not before they are chosen on the basis of the codes of recognition and after they are recorded on the basis of graphic conventions according to which an arbitrary realized sign denotes the given sign of perception.
*
In a greater part of signalist visual poetry, however, there is not such a relationship of coincidence with things. Elements in the frame of poem, and even the poem as a whole, are determined and special material events with which we notice mpre rarely an iconic relationship with obkect.

TEXT IS BODY
In Signalism for the sake of determination and distinction of visual poetry and other visual texts (visual novel and others) from the created originated in language exclusively, we have to take account of certain distinction in the way of communication abd reception of the aesthetical information. The both texts (visual and verbal) are given to us most frequently in a same medium, book, realized with similar, or same letter (slovnim) ie sign symbols. And where then would be a difference?We will notice, first of all, that in a visual text the word printed on paper acts first of all by its materiality. That word is not an "abstract, verbal notion sign", but a concrete visual sign having its spave, its corporality. A text is a body. Realization of the communication between an artist and reader/watcher by means such a text implies not only a knowledge about a conditioned system of signs like a script is, but also an already formed visual thought ready to receive these new hybrid artistic products.
*
It would be necessary to ascertain once forever to which an extent signalist visual poetry owes to media and art disciplines such as: photography, comics, film, television, graphics and design. Likewese one should ascertain to which extent it has fulfilled the vacuum, as it has been already said, that had existed between those disciplines. Where they are in touch with visual poetry and where and how they permeate each other.

GESTURE POETRY
In the case of gestual poetry (signalist manifestation) artist would communicate with recipients by so-called natural means (information channels): voice, gestures, immediate and realized natural or contact communication. Of course, it does not exclude also another type of communication by means of technical devices and aids (technical communication).The way of communication between artist from one side and recipients (consumers) from the other is essentially different with these two types of communication. Immediativeness and orality of information, as well as certain real audience is characteristic for natural communication. That is why some theorists can speak about its distributivity.Gestual poet is at the center of events, in a focus of his work. Very frequently the audience itself becomes an inseparable and constituent part of artistic work and gestual action by its reactions, participation and orientation. Communication is determined here and therefore unique feed-back situations can take place, since the consumers themselves (being now participants too) can influence further creative development of the work. Yet, basic source of aesthetical information still remains the poet himself, the performer of the action.

GUTENBERGIAN GALAXY
With Gutenberg's Bible (1455), the first work published in the just invented technique of printing, a beginning of so-called "Gutenbergian galaxy" was announced, where culture of print and book dominates. According to many theorists, this was one of revolutionary leaps of mankind that later on, through book as the most accesible and mass culture medium, has led to "immediate exchange of experiences, ideas and knowledges" and to an universal cultural and social growth.*Book has become one of the basic comunication channels, medium of individuals, groups, entire nations. Thereby the past is illuminated, history is concretized whose facts become accesible to the widest classes of people, present time is marked and future movements are tried to be viewed. Its influence on society and human psychology is enormous. Book is such a medium that it promotes psychology of individualism, removes oral communication. (McLuhan). One works with it, and communictes trhrough it, in silence, without direct dialogical struggle, in the warm uterus of room or fights in an improvized arena of that very room, that limited and closed world, with an invisible opponent.
*
Print and book experienced their real explosion and expansion in last century with an abrupt development of industrial civilization. Technological civilization we have entered has produced new mass media: film, electronic machimes, television, videotape. In these media printed letter, word, language do not dominate, but picture in cooperation with the oral and other ways of communication.

SIGNALIST GALAXY
According to McLuhan speech as a communication medium has widened the sense of hearing, script and book extended the sense of sight, and electronic media represent extension of all human senses, entire central nervous system.It has been already showed that the appearance of book has influenced human psychology in the sense of reinforced individualization. Man secludes with printed word, avoids action, meditates, communicates indirectly. One sense becomes dominant - the sense of sight.New media of our civilization establish a balance of all senses. A indirect communucation is excluded. Man is again at the center of action, of events. All his senses are bombarded equally by information. Experience is direct and active one.
*
Does the end of an epoch and of the rule of one sense mean also an end of all those established, by that rule promoted and produced "thinking models", behaviour, creation? What are ways of creation in the new electronic civilization that deepens and expands our experiences even more through a simultaneous and equal activity of all senses? That deepening leads us to the very subconsciousness, liberated and threatening. It draws us out from the choking three-dimensional spaces of script and eye, narrative comsciousness, homogenous fortresses of the abslolute, metaphysics and myth and throws us into an avelanche of rebelled senses, into relativized, non-dogmatic and multidimensional spaces of planetary and signalist art.
*
Signalism tries to mobilize for creativity all senses moved and activated by the media of our epoch. It establishes their continuous interaction in creation of aesthetical information. The doors of subconsciousness are not just opened slightly, they are wide opened. Signalism has abolished, by liberating and engaging all senses and creative forces in man, all limits, all boundaries, and even space and time, directing its own researching being to the unpredictable planetary and cosmic.

1969 – 1975.

(From M. Todorovic book Signalism, Nis, 1979)

Poetical Diaries (1959–1968.)

2009-07-30T11:09:00.001-07:00

Miroljub Todorović

WORDS AND COLOURS

To take a great sheet of paper from sketching pad, or a large white cardboard, and draw words on with ink, then join them associatively and make a poem. It is possible to draw these words in various colors. Say the words that would mark constant, i.e. permanent symbols in the next poems are to be colored in red, the others in other way, their poetical intensity being graded by the colors at the same time.

A POEM AS A NATURAL PROCESS

To exclude the real world from the poems. The world of things and the world of beings. To tend toward a poetry of complicated inorganic amorphous forms. Something similar to abstract (non-figurative) painting. An inspiration for all that is to be looked for, first of all, in exact sciences. A poem would be identified with sound and vague picture, of non-precise contours where objects lose their identity.* The constant the universal-individual relationship to be viewed through a poem as a natural process.

THE PLAYS OF MATTER

Matter often sets witty traps to human intellect. Those are skillful hydra of the abstract language of Matter. They are a product of its hot temper and desire for play. All matter is permeated with a desire for play. That is where the essence of its dialectic nature is. Various forms in which the Matter displays itself are obvious examples of its spiritual games: a special structure of elements, compounds, aggregate states, the variety of the structure of the Universe. The apparent optionality of those games can be a serious obstacle that will often lead a scientific and systematical mind to a dilemma, but by the same token it can never confuse a poet, his imagination and sense for the wonderful. A poet is a player himself and he can accept the game at any moment. Therefore the key of a final cognition of the essence of Matter and Space is not only in the hands of scientists, but also in the hands of poets.

LINGUISTIC MACHINE

1. THE WORDS ARE CHOSEN AND COLLECTED IN A SPECIAL CHAMBER. THERE THEY ARE EXPOSED TO VARIOUS PRESSURES. 2. IN THE NEXT PHASES THEY ARE ACCELERATED. THEY MOVE MORE AND MORE RAPIDLY IN A GROWING SPIRAL. THEIR ENERGY IS BEING ACCUMULATED AND INCREASING CONSIDERABLY. 3. FINALLY AT CERTAIN VELOCITIES THE WORDS GET AWAY FROM THEIR SPIRAL PATH AND ARE SHOT AT A HUGE SCREEN. ON THE SCREEN QUITE UNEXPECTED LINGUISTIC AND POETICAL CREATIONS ARE FORMED GRADUALLY.

DISINTEGRATION OF LANGUAGE

LINGUISTIC STRUCTURE IS MOLECULAR. IN A DEEPER SENSE IT IS ATOMIC TOO. WORDS ARE MOLECULES OF PARTICULAR LANGUAGE. THE LETTERS THAT MAKE UP WORDS ARE ATOMS. MIXING AND JOINING MUTUALLY THEY BUILD COMPLEX LINGUISTIC COMPOUNDS.

RELATIVITY OF SPACE AND TIME IN AN EINSTEIN IAN SENSE ENTAILS ALSO A RELATIVITY OF LANGUAGE. APPARENTLY FIRM LOGICAL AND SYNTACTICAL LINGUISTIC BUILDINGS BREAK DOWN UNDER THE IMPACT OF IMAGINATIVE POETICAL AGENTS. THUS FREEDOM OF POEM IS REALIZED. LANGUAGE DECOMPOSES INTO HIS ELEMENTARY PARTS WORDS AND LETTERS READY TO CREATE A DIFFERENT PICTURE OF THE WORLD UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF NEW BUILDING ENERGIES.

DECOMPOSITION OF LANGUAGE IS SIMILAR TO DECOMPOSITION OF STARRY MATTER.

EXPLOSION OF UNIVERSE
EXPLOSION OF LANGUAGE

EXPLOSION OF UNIVERSE - A CHANGE OF THE FORM OF MATTEREXPLOSION OF LANGUAGE - A QUALITATIVE CHANGE OF SENSE (MEANING)DISTURBED LANGUAGE RADIATES LIKE SHATTERED MATTERLINGUISTIC PARTICLES (LINGUATRONS.....) DISSIPATE IN ALL DIRECTIONS

LANGUAGE – WEAPONS

Wave motion of words in closed circular path. Complex, intermingled moving of linguistic particles, of imaginative projectiles. Birth of poem under influence of starry forces, radiation of matter and radiation of spirit.

Language (words) melts into a fluid meaning. That is the intangible energy of language that penetrates our consciousness, arms it. Language is a basic weapon of man in universe.

SCIENTISM

Scientism represents a crown of Antiromantism in poetry, of negations of the subjective and subjectivist, of the poetry based on exclusivity of emotions and emotional states.

Matter and Energy are outside the subjective.

Scientism looks with its staroscops not only into the endless depths of Space and Time, but also into abysses of Poem and Language.

Poem is a galaxy of spirit filled with poetical matter and energy. In that galaxy one builds and demolishes by means of creative imagination.*Secrets of atom - Secrets of poemparticles of matter - particles of language

LANGUAGE OF SCIENTIST POETRY

Science is language. Poetry is language. Science is a language of the core and structure of Matter and Universe. Past poetry is a language of the relationship of Man and the exterior wrapping, the shell of Universe. New (scientific) poetry will be a language of Man, core, structure of Universe and Matter, as well as of their mutual permeations. In the language of scientific poetry we will be able to interpret and decipher better the nature's messages.

THE RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL

Rigidity of scientific laws must not discourage a scientistic poet. No scientific law, as well as theory, and even less so a hypothesis, except those most universal, can aspire to a distant future. It can be viewed better in a broader history of sciences. The changes in those exact areas are almost similar to the changes in domain of poetical forms.

The most recent interpretations by linguists teach that language did not originate first of all as a means of communication but of cognition. Primordial man gave name to thing in order to separate and discern it.

Realization of a unity of poetry and science we see, first of all, in formation of a new poetical language.

Scientific poetry relies mostly upon the experiences of exact sciences. It has object and process before itself. It is a poetry of object and process.

Scientism will be always in trouble between two basic ways of learning and accepting the world - the rational and irrational one.

IMAGINATIVE ENERGY AND SPECTRUM OF POEM

Language and Poem are not an unchangeable and forever given mechanism, they renovate and recreate themselves perpetually. In that The dialectics of Nature and Matter is almost identical to dialectics of Poem and Language.

Imaginative energy gathers and holds linguistic elements as particular poetical totality by its attractive force. The potential of that energy is what the number and quality of the elements will depend on, as well as the strength of the poem.

Every element of poetical totality radiates its own energy. Semantic length and the strength of that poetry is different. Radiation of all elements of poem makes up its spectrum.

Although it is multilayered, multiradial and multimeaning the language of poem is a compact one. Only with special methods and analysis we can separate radiations of particular elements.

NEW LANGUAGE

1. Tasks:
a. Penetration into linguistic system of science
b. Systematical poetization of scientific symbol
c. Poetical prequalification of scientific vision of the world

2. Light of language
a. Motion of language b. Linguistic inertion c. Aggregate states of language d. Linguistic shades e. Radiation of scientific language f. Wavelength of language g. Linguistic tension h. Linguistic impulse i. Linguistic core j. Light of language k. Linguistic photons (linguatrons) l. Breathing of language

3. Abyss of language
a. The fourth dimension of language b. Graphical display of linguistic units c. Sonic currents in language d. Being of language e. Linguistic space f. Limits of language

TRACTATES

ON POEM

Poem as an emotional and intellectual category does not opposes to Matter. They make up a unity in their common disrespect of Death.

ON POSSIBILITIES OF LOGICAL AND MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSE AND POEM

„The Universe is logical“, claims British astronomer and astrophysicist Fred Hoyle, creator of the most recent very interesting hypothesis about origin of the Universe. What can we draw from his claim? First of all that the Universe is liable to a logical and mathematical analysis of our consciousness. From this it follows further on that the discovering of its essence is possible depending on the conditions of research and possibilities of theoretical generalization. Logicality of the Universe is „higher“ in a sense than that we meet in our daily relationship with things. Irrelevancy of physical and chemical laws on cosmic scale has been already proved, especially at the examination of its origin and essence. Laws are posed and notions are ascertained that are valid until certain limit of theoretical generalization. Then on the basis of those laws new ones are discovered that eliminate the previous ones. One sphere has been overcome, one enters a new one that demands other notions and wider theoretical explanations for their final cognition. This „higher“ logicality of the Universe is identical to the logic possessed by our poetry. As a universe in miniature, the new poetry hides in itself a cemetery of the already known poetical and even physical and chemical, and moral and legal laws and canons. Yet, that hiding does not help it at all to avoid the ruthless logical and mathematical analysis of our consciousness. As well as in researching the Universe, we will pose new rules instead of the broken ones, make generalizations, enter new spheres, move deeper and deeper to the heart of Poem. If in that mathematical analysis we also asses the energy of its language, it is very important to determine the number showing how much the valence of the poet's mind (consciousness) has been increased in the moment of creation. This holds if we understand valence in a broader sense than chemistry does, as an ability of poet's mind to assimilate different notions of external and internal world, building stabile compounds with them, called poem by us.

ABOUT MOTION OF MATTER

The movements of blood plasma at the timid orders of reasonable cells are similar to touching of my consciousness liable to radiations of certain galaxies, evasive for ambitious lens of staroscops. The shape of this set of granular Matter, always changeable both quantitatively and qualitatively, discouraged by the immeasurability of Space it exists in, creates new demonic deities of life. This is that creative process (effort) of living Matter being yet something more than a „substance gifted by Form“, as it is defined dreary by Descartes, having emphasized first of all its geometrical qualities, and neglected, by his non-metaphorical assessment, its most significant property, motion (a thing not to be missed in this case).For Matter is a motion, an escape from abyss, like a flight of a night bird conditioned by peculiarities of its instincts, that bird being not permitted by the stoic cosmology of its own being to succumb to the deceitful sensual deception of Space and to the floral odours of Death being opened by darkness even in its most innocent moments.

ON TIME UNITS

Time units are lead walls separating us from the radiation of other worlds. Time should be identified with death, for it kills imagination and destroys the logic of common sense. Ruthless in its eloquent assumptions, it shows to us clearly our disability in our overcoming the micro- and macrocosmos. While I stand in front of abyss looking at stars, in my eye, in the staroscop, there is a little patch of the galaxy 500 000 light years away. Five thousand years light travels in order to mirror its source in my consciousness and leave a proof of our weakness in relation to Time. Logic and common sense are completely lost before the horrors of time distances. Only mathematics is still able to endure all their weight. By ruthless, poetical and metaphorical and almost horrible scenes it measures precisely and dissects the huge body of the time animal our imagination has already got exhausted before.

ON COSMIC DISASTERS

I expect destruction of our Universe in fifteen milliards years. I imply thereby first of all a change of form, and perhaps also of magnitude in relation to today's scale, and by no means also a destruction of its creative strength of Matter. Matter will be both main bearer and initiator of destruction of today's form of Universe. This emanates from the depth of its dialectic nature. Prone to very frequent, excessive changes, Matter seldom retains only one form. With physical processes it changes just externally, passes from one aggregate state into another, with molecules mixing, condensing or diluting, but remaining same qualitatively. With chemical processes firm molecular structures are being shattered and atoms of elements mix and join into compounds according to chemical laws, changing the Matter qualitatively. Science knows one more essential and deeper change of the forms of Matter that is not taking place in molecule any more, but in atom itself, in fact in its nucleus, where by changing the number of particles constituting it some elements are being destroyed and the other ones created. It has been known that basic substance (elements) differ just by the number of protons in their nuclei. If we take hydrogen nucleus, consisting of one proton, and add one more of these particles we will get a helium nucleus. Adding a proton to helium we get lithium etc. Matter can be continually changed in this way to the heaviest elements containing in their nuclei several dozens of neutrons. This change is possible only in certain conditions of temperature and pressure. In order to overcome the hostile electrical force resisting to allow connecting of protons, for they are of same (positive) electrical charge, one needs enormous temperatures and pressures. Such temperatures and pressures occur regularly in cosmic disasters. At this moment the Matter of our Universe is in an expansion. Its conquering efforts are directed to unforeseeable Spaces beyond stars and Time. Yet the Energy of its expansion is not infinite. At one moment the Universe gets exhausted, almost before the very goal, having spent almost all Energy, but not renouncing its intentions it contracts concentrating the Matter for new conquests. By the concentration the form of previous Universe changes (that is where its defeat is), Matter contracts and condensates, Energy increases. In the condensed magma of total cosmic Matter unconceivable temperatures and pressures reign, as a consequence of combined actions of gravitational forces and thermonuclear reactions. Under their influence atoms of elements change continually, giving newer and newer forms of Matter. At a moment, under the impacts of the accumulated Energy, this huge cosmic egg explodes, and the concentrated Matter with a great élan expands again, building new worlds. One universe finished, another lasts until consumption of the concentrated Energy. The defeat of the Universe I am in and from which I have grabbed this little Matter, transformed into its most genial form, the living substance gifted by consciousness, for its worthless existence, is my complete defeat as well. For at the moment when in fifteen milliards years molecules and atoms, making up my physical and conscious being, are made formless (changed qualitatively) in the universal chaos of cosmic disaster and when after the explosion of all Matter they are bounced from each others for milliards light years, also the last particles of my apparition will cease to warn the Universe that I existed, that I was horrified at it, opposed to it and threatened it, I will experience my final defeat plunging to the deepest end irreversible whirlpools of Nothingness.

Niš 1962. Belgrade 1966.

(From Miroljub Todorovic book Signalism, Nis, 1979)

Courses Of Signalism

2009-07-30T11:08:00.001-07:00

Miroljub Todorović

The beginnings of Signalism¹ are connected with the year 1959 and with the attempts to introduce into our poetry, where up to that time the principles of Neoromantism and late Syimbolism reigned, some new tones adequate to electronic and technological civilisation.

Those beginnings were connected with the language and the attempts to revolutionise the poetry by introducing some fresh, still literary unworn language amalgams of the exact sciences: physics, biology, chemistry, astrophysics and mathematics. Therefore the original name of these movements was - Scientism.

Already in the next year the scientistic poetry steps out from the language and gives the first visual fruits inspired by Apollinair's calligrams. In the years 1962 and 1963 it insists ever more on the exact. Science is defined as a means of poetry and it is pointed to „how artificial and absurd was separating poetry from science“. Einstein's theory of relativity is proclaimed to be the greatest poem of our age, sung to the glory of man, and the basic mathematical formula of that theory E=mc2 is marked as a supreme metaphor. Structural analogies between poetry and the above mentioned branches of exact sciences are being found, thereat a sign of equity is being put between the words of a poem and electrons in a physical sense, and a protoplasm in biological and planets in an astrophysical sense. A poem is equalled to an atom, cell and Solar system. To the rhythm of a song correspond the forces which hold the electrons, they being life and gravitation. Mathematical and other formulas are being introduced into poetry and a geometrical-algebraic analysis of the poetry, life and death as of basic and given magnitudes is done. A poem, thus, becomes a magic formula of life and Universe and its meanings at this moment exceed far the narrow literary frames. It wants to return finally the lost unity with science, the unity of singing and thinking of antiquity and of the great poems of Empedocles, Hesiod and Lucretius. It strives for a comprehensive picture of the world in whose basis it will be itself as an analogue to an atom, life and Universe.

That original course of Signalism (under the name Scientism) lasts lonely and in an ocean of revived Symbolism and Traditionalism of those years, almost unnoticedly in our literature. The years 1968 and 1969 are crucial for Signalism. MANIFESTO OF POETICAL SCIENCE was published („Polja“ no 117-118, 1968) which summarises in itself all experiences of the previous period. In the same year the text MANIFEST OF SIGNALISM (REGULAE POESIS) was written, and in the next one it was published, giving a basis for forming a militant avant-garde movement aiming to reach and revolutionise all branches of art (especially literature and fine arts), having opened new processes in culture by radical experiments in a permanent creative revolution influenced especially by the new technological civilisation. Those premises were elaborated even more in detail and made more precise in the third manifesto SIGNALISM („Delo“, no. 3, 1970), where a first broader definition of Signalism, as well as a detailed classification of new poetical forms are given.

Signalism widens its basis which thus far relied only upon several already mentioned branches of exact sciences and includes: cybernetics, theory of information, phenomenology, theory of games, structural linguistic etc. While in the first phases evident is an endeavour to introduce particular parts of scientific languages into poetry, the second is characterised by breaking, by means of certain mathematical models taken from statistics, theory of games, combinatorics and cybernetic methods (machines), the clichés of the colloquial and current poetical languages and by opening new, still unforeseeable possibilities of experimenting in the verbal, visual and phonic. Language becomes in a true sense of the word a material used by a poet who sometimes in a programmed poetical fervour uses it to produce his works. This phases is also characterised by an abrupt development of visual poetry, which thus far existed only rudimentary in the movement.

In those years Signalism goes out finally from anonymity imposed on it by our literary situation. Cultural public began to get interested in the movement. Signalist groups were being formed, and there were ever more young people: poets, painters, designers, art historians who created applying Signalist ideas in revolutionising the art. Signalists got linked with the avant-garde artists from all over the world and participated in numerous exhibitions of visual and concrete poetry. They published in magazines, and were represented in international anthologies.

In the year 1970 an international review SIGNAL was started as a newspaper of the movement. The journal already in the first issue published a choice of foreign concrete and visual poets and Yugoslavian signalists. The program of the journal was based on an active struggle for an affirmation of new ideas in literature and art. The appearance of SIGNAL was greeted in the world as a doubtless contribution to avant-garde movements².

The first Signalist anthology appeared in 1971. in edition of Hungarian magazine „Uj Symposion“ of Novi Sad in Hungarian and Serbian languages, and presents works, visual poems, by twenty authors.

Already in this anthology visible are efforts, and also achieved results, in one of the branches of Signalism, in Signalist visual poetry. The most of the authors found themselves in a new art and literary discipline and operated very self-confidently with its material elements, letter, graphic sign and space, as with one of constituent parts. Visual poetry destroys language and traditionalist understanding of literature and art. It goes, it could be said, from a meaning to a sign, destroying the semantic fortresses of script and Gutenbergian civilisation. The linear syntactic and grammatical chains of texts are shattered, „textual surfaces“ are being created, where their multidimensionality is expressed. Thus sign has been discovered as a basic model not only of new poetry, but also of the entire civilisation it can account with. Semiotics has replaced semantics. Semiotic analysis has became a key for solving specific poetical messages.

Presenting that choice of our poets, Chilean avant-garde poet Guillermo Deisler says: „An absolute distance is, in main features, assessed in relation to the possible problems of our society, as are war, sex, terrible contradictions between the developed and undeveloped, between mass consumption and manipulations with masses. Almost with the most of the artists there is a deep striving for getting out from the system of a linear, exclusively literary communication, for a realisation of advantages of a more open communication. That preoccupation is more evident in a system of signs as of media for destruction of idioms where the established is being ascertained. A great usage of letter as of a visual element, not of an audible one is present (Andrić, Jevtić, Đorđević, Paripović, Janković, Jovanović, Stojiljković, Matković), nor of a literary one, although we meet it also offering sounds, as if in concrete poetry (Todorović, Rošulj). Calligram poems (Rešin, Todorović), poems in a process (Magyar, Vukanović, Matković, Todorović, Poznanović) always move, more than anything else and in a very intelligent, intellectual line, an alternative of poetical language... „That alternative of Yugoslav poets“, this author concludes, „would show itself to be, definitely, an intelligent chance of escape from the linear manipulations of writing and a chance of securing different possibilities, in a best case as a defender of reading for today's and future readers. „During the following years Signalism developed and achieved a respectful affirmation, but exclusively on an international level³. Domestic cultural public is still skeptical, and in part resists strongly and attack severely all marked as a Symbolism.

In the movement itself, a kind of differentiation takes place. Some artists are more and more approaching land art and conceptual art. That differentiation, however, is, more or less, of a formal nature, for those artists too in fact just elaborate in their further engagement some of the basic premises of Signalism. For some of them (Zoran Popović, Marina Abramović) is characteristic that not before this phases they insist on technological and exact moments in their actions, that having not been the case in their original poetical-visual phases.

One of very interesting works in the frames of Signalism was realised by Vlada Stojiljković. Using the elements of collage, design, graphic and drawing ingeniously, he, freed from taboos and conventions, creates a quite new and exciting sign script. In his text Signalism as an Avant-garde Movement (1971) Stojiljković emphasises that a Signalist „does not write about certain theme but presents it, or shows its essence by means of different arrangements of letters and symbols. A purpose of such a work is first of all that the author break the frames imposed on him by poetical, semantic, syntactic and even grammatical rules, and use a non-verbal material to be able to express himself totally.

The syntax of Stojiljković's script, especially in the visual poems: Horoscope; A Sketch for a Mechanical Bird; Transplantation I, II and in the anthology work Upper case/Lower case has been raised to a metalinguistic level. Its elements are in a semiological field. His basic communication channels and bearers of aesthetic messages are sign and image with a readible and concrete result.

For the poetry of Žarko Rošulj a visual understanding is also very important, since in certain moments in a poem the fragile connection with the verbal is completely broken and an absolute domination of the sign is established. Its visual syntax, by which the poet determines the courses of his thoughts and associations in the space - that determining becoming also a part of an all-including and unrestrained typosignalist plays with signs, letters, parts of words and words - requires a synthetical-ideographic understanding instead of the analytical-discursive one.

In his first signalist poems Žarko Rošulj was very close to some realisations of the baroque and manirist European and Serbian poetry of XVIII and XIX century (carmina figurata, the poems in the form of things and animals, especially: peacock, horse, bird and others). Here this poet found inspirative roots obviously in graphic experiments of one, in our literature still neglected and insufficiently examined current of Serbian baroque poets: Orfelin, Trojičanin and Venclović.
In the next phases Rošulj ever more accepts modern researching experiences, those of Brasilian school of concrete poetry as well as, to a most extent, those specific experiences and features of signalist poetry that enabled Signalism that, as a special creative movement, which developed in Yugoslavia in somewhat different theoretical premises, takes a high and significant place in the world's avant-garde movements. The appearance of the „White Book” by Milivoje Pavlović, a young poet, signalist researcher and publicist, rose a doubtless attention of our cultural public. Published in just 50 copies, as a signalist edition, with the volume of 300 pages of the finest print paper, in which not a word was printed (except brief prefaces and conclusions, that book provoked different and often very emotional reactions of those who had a chance to see and „read“ it.

Imagined in the beginning as a provocative gest and an effort to indicate the critical condition of book and literary critics in our country, this book-sign, a play of white rectangulars of an open world, exceeded son its original and culturological intents and frames. By it, to use Macluanian vocabulary, the doors to abolition of linearity and consecutivity of human consciousness and of finding a non-linear logic has been opened even more, as freely as non-Euclidian geometry had been built. „For consciousness is not a verbal process, and the phonetical literacy in the previous development of human culture was giving an exclusive advantage to „a chain of inferring as to a mark of logic and reason.“

Attributing to the invisible and mute sounds the dark crevice between being and language, „White Book“ by Milivoje Pavlović records at the same time its disbelief in communicativeness of the closed language systems of the Gutenbergian galaxy at its close. It is a book-frontierstone there, on the border of two civilisations, that of script and that of image. Instead of the removed language there is a language of the very being of book, an explosion of whiteness, of the space not burdened with script, a script of the immediate and visible, of the nonabstract world of facts and things. The challenge is in its mute readability. The irony is in an interpretation of a rewritten world. For it is at the same time a book-world that multiplies its ironical entity in thousands opened eyes.

Where do the metaphysic horror and reality of the historical and mythical cease? Where do the irony and play of the ludic man of the technological era begin?

The „White Book“ vanishes as a product composed of paper and of lead impressions, and returns to us as a complete art form, a work whose only outside, surface veil is woven from silence. Its experience is an experience of a vanishing script. Its pages ere unrepeatible like still unwritten pages of Universe. There, where is not a trace of script and writing, where we are being defeated but an apparently innocent cleanness of the intact paper, an exciting juncture of signs and meanings is being born on the screen of a new universe.

The researches by Bogdanka Poznanović move in a wide spectre, from those, for me, poetical-visual in her booklet „Stellata“, up to the land art and conceptual interventions („Feedback Mailbox“, „Breath-breathing“ and others). In the action „Cubes-Rivers“ signs and words are still visible and still have an important role. In the basis of the „Feedback Mailbox“ project is a communication, actually an informing (the mode is left to the choice of participants) about one perhaps not crucial, but also mot so unimportant part (means) of an informative system). Very important is also the work „Computortapebody“ where, using a computer tape, diaprojector as a special medium and the bodies of the participants in the action with visible scenic effects an unique informative-sensible and gestual-poetical total has been realised.

Zoran Popović began his researching work on the Signalist plane with typewriter poems in 1969. During 1971 in Zagreb he, working on one short film, draws out a series of suggestive literal-visual structures with a project of so-called „Signalist Clock“. In the following years, the work of that author, especially in the „Axioms“ project, penetrates into the realms of the spatial, corporal (Body art) and conceptual.

Marina Abramović likewise begins with Signalist visual poetry (Smoke and A from 1970), and with a series of projected letters Entering a Square, Going out from a Square, B Projection and others). Especially important are her Sound Ambients where she tries to realise a synthesis of the spatial-visual and sonoric, and recently also of the action of gestual poetry.

In the work of Neša Paripović there were not spectacular slew’s and breaks as with previous artists. From the very beginnings he investigates, calmly and thoroughly, the sign and functions of the sign in its most diverse forms.

The first researches of Slavko Matković are in the domain of visual poetry. Later on, his interests have been widening substantially. Significant is also Matković's work on signalist comics, they being also especially explained theoretically by him. The literary critic Ostoja Kisic has been following the signalist movement already for years. In recent years he announces his voluminous study on Signalism under the title GREAT DISCUSSION. In that book (in several hundreds of pages) especially the beginnings of Signalism are studied, as well as the relationships of this our avant-garde movement with Traditionalism which had seized the Serbian culture in the beginning of the sixties. Especially interesting are Kisic's visual works under the title „Themes from History of Literature“ where he presents in a humorist way particular problems, themes and myths from our more recent and remote literary history.

Ljubiša Jocić, a poet of older generation (formerly a follower of the surrealistic movement), joins Signalism in 1975 with this book MOONLIGHT IN TETRA-PACK, where some of the premises of the Signalist technological poetry were almost completely realised. Critic Aleksandar Petrov, presenting that book, says that „ Ljubiša Jocić writes in a language of tetra-pack“. And that is „a language of the modern consumer society and of media of mass communications“, in a word a technological language.

Discussing Signalism in his text „The Signs Bound to the Reality Itself“ („Politika“, 7 August 1975) Jocić starts from the fact that „Signalism, as well many other „isms“ already confirmed by history, has a significant place in the development of human creation, theory and practice“.

In his opinion this our avant-garde movement was born „In the fires of electronics and thundery powers of atom, in a double nature of electron (material and spiritual one), in the curved spaces of the four-dimensional world. Signalism explores a way for moving the human brain, whose capability is being used just ten per cent, to use those its uninvestigated areas, those other ninety per cent for the movements in those new areas foreshadowed by the technological society.“

Interesting is also the case of Spasoje Vlajić, who started in Signalism as early as 1969 with a still insufficiently ripe and unwhetted scientific poetry, undertaking thereafter, as he says himself, inspired by the discoveries from the primordial phases of Signalism, especially those in the book „PLANET“, a studious investigation of language from exact standpoints.

Examining the intensity of voice meaning in our language, and in some others too, Vlajić learned „that the relationship of a language and a phenomenon described by it is based on a mutual imbuing of the energy whereby that phenomenon acts on senses and places of the phenomenon in a mental and physical picture of the world“. In fact, Vlajić succeeded to come to some laws, correlative equations, on the basis of which one can determine frequency i.e. energy of a colour (e.g. red) on the basis of the very name of the colour. Thus, according to him, one of the basic premises of the second Signalism manifest REGULAE POESIS: 1.8.1 also has been proved: „Signalist poetry will mark a complete liberation of the language energy“. For „the energy of a designation is partly in a functional dependence on the energy of the state described by it. The cited facts point to real possibilities of a more complete liberation of the language energy.“ Dobrivoje Jevtić, Milorad Grujić, Rade Obrenović, Boda Marković, Zvonimir Kostić Palanski, Miroljub Kešeljević, Jaroslav Supek and Branislav Prelević work intensively on Signalist visual poetry. Young poets Slavko M. Pavićević and Miodrag Šuvaković explore the language as well as other opened and scattered areas of Signalist art. Slobodan Pavićević („Silicates of Flower“ 1973) and Slobodan Vukanović („Star Leathers“ 1975) are opened with their books to planetary and cosmic experiences of Signalism. Especially Slobodan Pavićević heads in this, who in his poems - junctions of the exact language of physics, chemistry, mathematics and an archaic colloquial idiom - establishes, builds and examines fantastic, non-earthly worlds. That is a poetry of a new era of explorers and conquerors of the universe, where, beside fancy and scattered imagination, the most recent scientific and technological cognitions and discoveries of sciences are used.

Predrag Šhiđanin, Lásló Szalma and Nikola Stojanović are interested in conceptual searches.

The results of Signalism and Signalist ideas, as we could see from this brief chronological survey, are most visible in fine arts and literature. Art and artistic act are demystified. The art has been marked as ludism, a play of man in cosmos under a permanent threat of an entropy avalanche, chaos and formlessness. Metaphysically, a theological order has been disintegrated, new multidimensional spaces have been established: freedoms, plays, researches. Art is a play and imagining, a human power to exceeds his own alienation and start on a way of „total expansion“ into cosmos, into the world.

A reality of the technological civilisation and a special role of man in the electronical-planetary space of existence has been accepted. Technology has offered new means to arts; to man, to an artist, it has offered new possibilities of conquering, of an intuitive superstructure over the things, the objects of his own production. Machines are, for Signalism, means whereby man liberates his fancy, his imagination even more. Processes of communication will be more and more intensive, the number of information, storehouses of knowledge, arts, greater and greater for advancing that achieved freedom, play, uncertainty of research. Information will flow without a mediator. They will not be lost in the channels of processors and in noises of resistors. They will be full and sudden in their radiation. Signalist art will become universal, with a complex, determinable but not a closed script. It will point to an „essential thinking“ as to a necessity in a cosmos of fight and conquering. Conquering a sense, a beauty of an organised disorder. There where the tension at any point of a body, text and work is huge and threatens always to explode and throw all again to the deadness of dehumanised entropy. It will be a play with things, universe, one's own death.

In Signalism the most of former (traditional) ways of expression is being abolished; changed are languages, systems, communication means according to the newly-marked functions of art. The art is being desubjectivized. In parallel with taking off the mythical and mistificatory aureole its massmediality and spendability is emphasised. But it does not mean also its banalization, its sinking in the daily, its end. Its present offering of „numberless possibilities of realisations“, its not being unique and sublime, sacralized, „its not giving final answers any more“, its experimentation, correcting, a continual searching for the new, its offering a mosaic, discontinued and not total structure and picture of the universe and the world, does not mean that it is not an art any more, that it is an anti-art. On the contrary, refusing to move in the circle: „Absolute - Transcendental - Myth; refusing to be „consecrated“, the art of Signalism takes off a mask from the face of the mummied traditional art and destroys its „holy“ impotence by a creative subversion and building action. In that way the Signalist art becomes much closer to the life. It is a part of that life, of reality, one of its forms, much more condensed, with clearly outlined contours, more organised but also more agonising, reflecting and critical than other forms; charged with a multitude of information, it is substantially more non-genotropic than the reality itself.

As far as experimentation is concerned, in Signalism one has gone furthest in poetry. There the results are also very diverse.

The first scientistic phases, as we could see, has conditioned a synthesis of exact languages with the language of poetry. Science is defined as a language of the core and structure of matter and universe; the former poetry as a language of the relationship between a man and an outer wrapping, shell of the universe. The new scientistic poetry would represent a language of man, core, structure of the universe, matter and their mutual imbuing. The language of that poetry is an amalgam substance where we can already see the contours of a different structure of the world. That is a world of the planetary and cosmic, of the wonderful laws of a restored life, of inexhaustible energies on the dying stars.

Matter, energy, play are basic elements of this poetics and of the worlds just established by it. Covetous games of celestial bodies in which a beginning of any birth is. Love plays of planets attracted by universal (cosmic) law of love, gravitation. They can not resist that call, the spasm reinforcing in them a thirst for conquering some new spaces. Their language is a language of energy that is just to lead up to the disastrous, destructive, in order that a liberation of powerful building methaenergies take place in that newly originated chaos.

The destructive, chaos, wandering. The language is all now, for a word has four dimensions in the Signalist universe. Even life can originate from it, just as it originates from proteins. The amalgamated, synthesised language of poetry and science is a basic food for that universe. But not a fetish either. It must not be sacralized, it is itself liable to destruction, subversion, an apparent chaos of its enthropical being. The love energy in words, voices, monems and phonemes of that poetry became an explosive one, and it, „disarming the logic“ disintegrated into lonely, suspending, wandering words, signs, graphics, lines that curve the space. In that disintegration, destruction of the just born stellar language, one should look also for real rudiments of Signalist visual poetry, that having been by no means introduced from outside, but originated in the very tissue (body) of Signalism.

Destruction of language and reducing of poetry to a sign itself will become a basic feature of Signalist visual poetry. That disintegration of language, the reducing of its semantic values, can be followed from the first attempts in scientistic period, all the time to the great visual cycles in the second period, when visual poetry comes to the fore of Signalist experimentation.

Firstly a connection and meaning between words and syntagmic parts of sentence and verse is being broken. The words isolate themselves, they search for a sense in space, the latter becoming an inseparable and readable part of text now. The verbal and visual are interweaving in unexpected plays of blanks and lingual meanings. A liberated lingual energy inundates a poem. To the fore are put material properties of language. One insists on turnovers, varying, amassing of particular elements. Words are separated freely from broken wholes, often becoming just signs arranged in space, and not real bearer of contents. They are objects of a intuitive and ludic process advanced sometimes by a previous use of mathematical models and methods of creation. Individual words disintegrate into their final, atomised structures of letters and interweave by thin invisible treads with all surrounding elements filling the space of a visual poem: with signs, remaining words, exact symbols, collages. Text flows divergently, in all directions, it is scattered, linearity and one-wayness of script is destroyed. We note its polyvalency and multidimensionality. Syntax is abolished. Semantics is muffled, it takes on different forms, or is abolished too. However, communicative functions of this poetry get new sources. Translinguistic and metalinguistic systems of relationships are established. Text can be still followed (read) in some poems, but with breaks and stops. The tissue of the text is examined freely. Its broadness is emphasised. Reading is related immediately with observing, separating and crossing of particular constellations into visual and verbal totalities. They provoke, further on, whole a net of associations. Visible are new dimensions of the meaning acquired by the language liberated in space. It is where the self-creative energy, insisted on in Signalism several times, achieves a full expression. Words in texts are much more independent now, and therefore more replaceable. They are not petrified in sintagms or verses and sentential sequences any more. Freedom, space and observer's (reader's) invention make possible a continuous, kaleidoscopic play of constituting, transforming and disintegration of meaning.

Beside visual poetry, as a significant novelty whereby Signalism enriched our literature, a computer poetry also appears.

Researches in art by means of computer are of a relatively recent date. They began about the middle and at the end of fifties, firstly in music and somewhat later in painting too. The results achieved in painting are rather well known. However, in literature one did not researched much in this way, and a few texts made by computer did not penetrate the public so aloud as machine experiments in other art branches did.

Machines, as creative instruments inspiring, among other things, an artist for work, and often realising an artist's idea too, were introduced by Signalism during 1969, producing computer texts by means of certain programs. In those first programs, and also in all later realisations of Signalist computer poetry, a generator of random numbers is used, said by particular scientists and theorists to be very similar to human intuition.
All such researches were done in language and by means of language. Certain number of words, groups of words, syntagms, was programmed and left to machine for realisation. Most often the words and syntagms were not chosen randomly, which can be, after all, seen also from the achieved and published results. In the working process of the machine that aleatory elements were expressed.

The obtained results could be presented without interventions, with greater or lesser interventions or, that being the case most frequently, they served as an inspiring matter for poetical work.

That work proceeded in two directions. Firstly: the computer material was undergone to a further processing by means of spatial tables of random numbers or, otherwise, of sequences of numbers being connected according to a mathematical scheme initiated by chance, but made with certain regular interventions. Mathematical combinatorics was of help in such cases.

In another case, different from the previous one where the freedom of poetical creation was limited, to an extent, by schematised mathematical tables and sequences of numbers, and where groups of words were being joined into totalities (lines, verses) according to all phenomena of mathematical chance - with subsequent understandable and necessary interventions - computer material served quite freely for perhaps more complicated, „mathematical“ plays of poetical consciousness and imagination. A fact is, yet, that those consciousness and imagination were conditioned not only by the computer lingual material (products of machine) but also by all those „methods“ of machine creation, by all that disrespecting a language, linguistic norms, common human and current poetical logic, shown by machine in its work, and which became gradually, during the work, to a greater or lesser degree, a constituent part of poet's efforts in liberating and restoration of language.

Visual and computer poetry are not only poetical forms Signalism manifested through, although thanks right to them it perhaps reached the consciousness of a certain number of readers and followers of our modern literature. Those are the most prominent, visible and, as it were, loudest forms of Signalism. Because of their novelty they acted in a shocking manner, and by that itself they attracted a greatest attention of public and critics. But Signalism as a whole can not be related exclusively to visual and computer poetry, and it is especially impossible to identify it just with visual poetry, that having become common with some critics.

Signalism is a complex and scattered creative movement where whole a fan of researching methods and steps manifested and several new literatural and artistic disciplines have formed. One of them is permutational poetry. It is, in a way, similar to the computer one, although in the work on permutational poems computers are not used, but one operates according to certain mathematical model with just a couple of words and syntagms. Lingual elements can be varied until a complete exhaustion of the numerical combinations of the model. If we take four elements, that possibility is exhausted with sixteen variants each of them containing four verses. It means that out of four words we can, by their permutation, changing their positions and relationships, make sixty four verses. It is clear that in a permutational poem the words lose many of their functions and properties they otherwise have in a standard speech and current version. It seems to us that by varying it is possible to exhaust almost all nuances of meanings of some words and of notions they can take on in different contexts and bracing with other words and notions. Of course, that proceeds in the frames of a given (little) number of words and a determined mathematical model whose number of variation is not unlimited. By such step the language is being denuded completely, one by one of its shells of meaning, or sense, are stripped off, all possibilities are examined in order to achieve finally the very core of a language.

A poet need not adhere to an exclusively mathematical model. The number of variations can be lessened or increased. Often by lessening of variations one increases an aesthetic efficaciousness of the originated verses, for too great repetitions can cover completely a high informative value of individual lingual bracings. Sometimes just an opposite happens, that an amassment and rather long combinations of that small number of lingual elements not before the end of the permutational chain leads to a sudden liberation of the all thus far carefully kept lingual energy.

In phenomenological poetry something is expressed mostly which was insisted on by Signalism, at least in its main course, by its very beginnings - a desubjectivisation of a poem and of a poetical picture. The language in phenomenological poems is metaphoric one, any subjectivity is neglected, one tends to a description of phenomena, beings, things, without any burdening with the universal and transcendental. In audible poetry a voice substance of particular words is stressed, with an attempt to express by it the meaning of all a poem. That meaning is formed on a phonic level, but at the same time it is in an immediate connection with its morphological mark. Voice units are separated and multiplied:

I loveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

and they begin to function as a transferring sense mechanism of one, by voice grouping formed, source of associations, not only of audible , bur also of verbal and visual ones. Voice becomes there a bearer of meaning, of sense. Its acoustic, intonational, visual properties, emphasis, place in words, possibility of collaboration with and influence on other parts of a poem (word), are used for creation of quite new poetical forms.With slang poetry Signalism shows a deeper interest in eccentric variants of our speech. From that inseparable are also a humorist and protest note observable before too, especially in computer and stochastic poems.

Gestual poetry is marked as a most radical discipline of Signalist poetry. There a poet writes by its body through a gest and action. Body becomes a „means of expressing“, a language of total being. Together with surrounding elements it creates a space of a poem. Body is „our general means for possessing the world“ (M. Merleaux-Ponty). All sets forth starts and returns to it.

A gestual poem is created, most commonly, by combining of different elements. It is a dynamic action of body, speech, sound, visual, kinetic and other means of semiotic expression. Sometimes even the audience itself influences the course of a gestual poem by its immediate participation. Thus a tighter symbiosis between the performer of the action and its consumers is realised.

Object-poems have also abandoned a printed page of a book. By the usage of „things as signs“ we are directed toward a non-lingual (in a narrower sense) communication and experiencing of poetical message and contents. Words are objects of poems, as well as, after all, in cynetic and, partly, in visual and gestual poetry, are not elements whereby one communicates any more. Basic bearers of ideas and messages are now objects, things most often taken over from a technological fund of used and discarded items. Emptied great boxes of washing powder, rings of perforated computer tapes, plastic bags with impressed advertising texts, drug bottles, boxes of used creams, baby powder and lotions, fragranted shampoo bottles, packs of computer cards, various package, plastic glasses and dishes for yoghurt, milk, meat, fruits etc. become here a material for a poet. He intervenes in them, processes them, changes their objectness, establishes an interactive core, although most frequently not abolishing semiotic manifestation of the item from the previous advertising and consumer discourse.

Object of a song are material facts that stimulate, irritate, inspire us with their visual, tactile, spatial and temporal and sometimes also their use values. Their function, however, is not a symbolic but a syntagmatic one.

In recent years a new work began, on a creation of Signalist child poetry. (Stojiljković, Palanski, Rošulj, Obrenović). Further experimental and researching effort of Signalists is more and more directed toward a revolutionising of two significant branches of literature. Those are the attempts to create new essayistic and prosaic forms. Less liable to radical interventions than poetry, these two disciplines resist Signalism strongly, and thus the results are less visible so far. Yet, some results appeared, especially by a penetration of the visual into traditional scopes of novel and assay and by its successful connection with the verbal.

From the previous discussion we could notice that Signalism is an utmostly open and very complex art system. Its living tissue is made of a sequence of events, actions, works, in a synthesis of programmed and intuitive ludism. The sources of informative energy arrive to this system in the most various forms, transforming themselves, through a producing ludic process, into an aesthetic energy (information).

Signalist art sees its basic function in an „introducing of the new into the word“, in creating the forms and revealing the contents that will change human consciousness. „Success of an idea“, as Jacques Moneau says it, „will depend first of all on its power to invade, that being doubtlessly related to its own structure, to its ability to master other ideas or to assimilate them, but is without an immediate relation with the selective value the idea has for a man or a group accepting it“.

Crucial tasks of Signalism we see in overcoming the boundaries of the real, in moving the existing borders and searching for new languages of art.

Although confronted to all tradition and traditionalism, Signalism has never been on positions of anti-art, and still lesser on the positions of an anarchist, non-building negation of art. The motto of Signalism was always a permanent revolutionising of the art being, for, as it has been already said several times: Art without an experiment is dead“, and without radical restorations its spirit becomes barren.

Our civilisation has offered to artists new means of communication and expression as well as vast spaces where one can experiment with those means. Accepting those new means and entering new spaces, Signalism tends to express itself, first of all, as a planetary art. It bases its aesthetic attitudes on some results of exact sciences, information theory and sign (signal) as an important mark of the planetary epoch. Accordingly this our movement is turned to the future where it see an ever bigger increase of non-genothropicity, informativness and a creation of massmedial forms of synthetic and hybrid art and sensibility adapted to a different more scattered consciousness and sensibility. The communication chains in such conditions of the system, regulating themselves under the pressures of total informativeness can not be broken nor closed. In the mechanism of communication there is a return-bracing that makes impossible a creative passivity. The consciousness and all the being of an artist is permanently irritated by the flows of inspirative information. The circle of „a being in a play“ is opened. A man, an artist, is in an immediate contact with all the universe. That universe of information is now in a function of creation, of a continuous research.

At this moment the information theory appears as an important factor for a further viewing of Signalist art. In a broadest sense, that theory analyses processes of emitting and receiving information, as well as the reactions following its courses. The information itself has become a physical value and taken over an universal mark similar to the notions of mass, energy and matter.

A measure unit of information is a bit. It is a „communication atom“, i.e. a least quantity of elements in one information that is to come to a receptor (receiver) in order to be transformed into a perception. The principle of the information transfer is the same with living beings and machines. Right that analogy has made possible and opened some of new spaces for action of Signalism. That reflected and gave results especially through a combination (symbiosis) of intuitive and programmed ludism.

An information is an universal phenomenon. Beginning from genetics, whose basic postulates „are based on the process of a information transmission“, through elementary and highest life forms, all living beings can, as „phenomena of self-organising and self-regulation“, be observed through the complex notion of information.

French theorist Abraham Moles has been one of the first who applies the mechanisms of information theory also in aesthetics. Seen from such a standpoint an artistic work radiates certain information. That is a special kind of aesthetic information. The originality of an aesthetic information depends on its unpredictability and grows with unlikelihood. The more predictable an information is, the more trivial is it . A complete „originality“ of an artistic work, however, would make completely impossible „understanding of its aesthetic information“.

Sign is the next element the Signalist art is based on. According to Max Bense, a theory of signs has been already elaborated as a basis for a new aesthetics. That theory starts from a general semiotics, and its conclusion is that „realisation, communication and codification“ constitute a triple function „of something that is expressed as a sign. The sign itself is „in a function of communicativeness, and as such it is founded in every human activity, especially in arts.

Famous Russian theorist L. S. Vigotsky starts from an idea that a sign is a cause provoking a psychological development, a basis ensuring a thinking process. All mechanisms of learning, action, interaction, would function through a sign. What makes distinction between a man and an animal would be actually an ability of producing and using the signs, called by Vigotsky signification, and defined by him as a creation and use of signs i.e. artificial signals.

Thus sign appears to us now as a crucial tool of a man and an artist against the destructive forces of entropy. The world and the universe are shined by the sign as an act of manifesting of an unique researching being and of giving a sense to it. The experience of a sign is an experience of that being itself, liberated from gods, existential uncertainty in front of the threatening silence of nothingness. By a sign we are opening the locked cells of consciousness, sub-consciousness, we are searching for our own ontic mysteries, the hidden potential energies of the spirit. It is one of the main instruments of Signalism for conquering new languages, regions and forms of art in overreachable and still unfoerseeable spatial and temporal relations of the planetary and cosmic.

1974-76.

(From Miroljub Todorovic book Signalism, Nis, 1979)

Notes:

1) I came to the designation „Signalism“ in 1968 working on the second manifesto: MANIFESTO OF SIGNALISM (REGULAE POESIS). I derived it from Latin word signum - znak. Previous designations scientism i poetry - science (the second having been used in the first manifesto) seemed to me too narrow and inadequate for marking a complex set of ideas, crystallised out in about ten last years first of all in my own work and creative experience, those ideas being ready for a global revolutionising of arts, especially literature. Of course, this derivative, already in the moment of its origin, broke through and far exceeded the boundaries and frames imposed to it by its etymological determination.

2) Here we will cite just some shorter excerpts from those reviews:

„SIGNAL“ is a Yugoslavian journal published in Belgrade. Its purpose is to adapt poetical experience to technical possibilities of our time, to cybernetics and computer technics.“ „El popular“, 11 April 1971, Montevideo

„An excellent newly established review devoted to visual, concrete, cybernetic and signalist poetry. This issue contains also the texts by international visual poets, including: Hausmann, Perfetti, Clavin, Blaine, Bory, Gerz, Carrega and others: a manifesto of Signalism (in Serbo-Croatian and English) and a choice of Signalist poetry of Yugoslavian authors...“„Kontexts“ no. 3, 1971, Exeter, Devon, England

„Literatural avant-garde of Belgrade, Zagreb and other Yugoslav towns is composed of groups calling themselves Signalist ones, has now its newspaper, the review „SIGNAL“. Stuck to the orientation illustrated by the new review, Signalist movement is reflected especially in visual poetry whence traditional means of expression have disappeared, instead of which certain linguistic and visual rearrangements or a fruitful synthesis of poetry and fine art appears. „La fiera letteraria“, no. 22, 11 July 1971
„The experiences of this poetry have destroyed completely the poetical „system“ codified by tradition. That destruction has been achieved on all levels. In any case, a word as a bearer of communication (in a traditional sense) is not sufficient any more. It often transforms into a signal, while a poet resorts to all means in order to return it in a form of sign...“Michele Perfetti: SIGNALIST POETRY, „Corriere del giorno“, Taranto, 27 September 1970

„A new and very valuable contribution to the international scene of concrete poetry. Yugoslavs call it Signalism instead of concrete poetry and emphasise the differences regarding the use of machine technique (especially computers)...“ „Second Aeon“, No. 14, 1971, Cardiff

„A very interesting publication containing various critical discussions about Signalist experiences and experiences of other poetical and visual currents. In one part international poetical texts are compiled, while the second is devoted to Yugoslav researches... The third part of the journal is a bibliography of the most famous publications in that area...“„Le Arti“ No. 6 1971 Milano.

3) Signalism is written about by: (Clemente Padin): LA NUEVA POESIA (SIGNALISMO), „El popular“, 16 October 1970, Montevideo; Godehard Schramm: SIGNAL INTERNATIONAL REVIEW FOR SIGNALIST RESEARCH, „Literatur und Kritik“, Heft 61/72, Wien; Danuta Straszinska: SIGNALIZM NA CENZUROWANYM, „Literatura na swiecie“, No.3, 1972, Varszaw. The famous Polish poet Zbigniev Bienkowsky also writes in the Warszaw magazin „Poezija“, presenting his views on avant-garde, with a special review of our movement. Likewise, in foreign publications, my following texts regarding Signalism were published:

1. POESIA-SIGNALISTA, „Ovum 10“, No. 4, 1970, Montevideo (in Spanish, with a voice of visual poems).

2. SIGNALISM (RECENT YUGOSLAV ACTIVITY), „Second Aeon“, No. 14, 1971, Cardiff. With the text there are supplements by: Žarko Rošulj, Vlada Stoiljković, László Szalma and Bogdanka Poznanović.

3. POESIA SIGNALISTA, an exhibition catalogue, „Tool“ gallery, Milan 1971.

4. O POEZJI SYGNALISTYCZNEJ, „Litery“, No. 5, 1973, Gdánsk (with several visual poems by Yugoslav and foreign poets).

5. COMMUNICATION - BEING - APPREHENSION, in „A conceptographic reading of our World thermometer“ anthology, Calgary, Canada 1973. (With Signalist supplements).

6. COMMUNICATION - BEING - THOUGHT, in „Kontrapunkt“ anthology (Wroclaw 1973, with Signalist supplements).

7. VISUELE POEZIE IN JOEGOSLAVIE (VERSCHIJNING EN ONTWIKKELING) in the book by G. J. de Rook: „Historiche anthologie visuele poëzie, Brussels 1976.

Interesting is also the fact that Signalists had their first exhibition abroad, in TOOL gallery in Milan. Titled POESIA SIGNALISTA YUGOSLAVA from 17 to 31 July, the works were presented by: Vlada Stojiljković, Tamara Janković, Zoran Popović, Miroljub Todorović and Marina Abramović.

Planetary Communication (My mail art activities from 1970 to 1987)

2009-07-30T11:07:00.001-07:00

Miroljub Todorović

I have been dealing with mail-art since about 1970. when I was mostly engaged in poetical-visual research and was in permanent contact with a number of artists and poets from all over the world.

One of the first mail-art major actions was registered in the journal Signal No. 2/3 in the following way: „Miroljub Todorović: SIGNALIST MANIFESTATION 1), 20.3.1971, Belgrade.(1)

New type of communication. Basic element of communication is the punched (used) card for an IBM computer. Name of the sender, date and place of the information source, its name and indication are typed on the blank back of the computer card by a typewriter. Thus prepared card is put in an envelope and sent to the consumer by post.

„Names of 63 artists, galleries and publishers from abroad are cited as receivers of the first signalist manifestation. Among others, A. de Campos, C. Padin, M. Perfetti, J.Valoch, J. Blaine, J. Gerz, Sarenco, E. Miccini, E. Jandl, P. Garnier, M. Bense, S. J. Schnidt, B. Cobbing, D. Higgins, Ben Vautier, Art Intermedia, etc. have received such a communication computer card.(2)

The card was sent to thirty Yugoslav poets, critics and scholars: Dušan Matić, Marko Ristić, Oskar Davičo, Petar Džadžić, Eli Finci, Radomir Konstantinović, Branimir Donat, Sveta Lukić, Novica Petković, Tomaž Brejc, Boža Bek, Taras Kermauner, Želimir Koščević, Veselin Ilić etc.

I did not note responses to these letters, neither can I remember any of them at this moment, although I am certain there have been some.

I repeated similar mail-art actions the same year and later. Circle of potential consumers changed, broadened or narrowed. Used punched cards of different colors and of standard dimensions were applied all the time. Interventions on the cards were most frequently made by a marker. Punched positions were encircled or some words or messages written, several times the word SIGNALISM appeared, or later on the message: THINK ABOUT SIGNALISM.

I remember a series of cards on which I pasted small rectangular photographs of teeth, which I had obtained quite an amount of from the dental clinic in Ranke street. Computer cards with coloured stickers bearing pictures of animals, from prehistoric dinosaurs, through fishes, birds, mammals, all the way to our direct ancestor - the anthropoid monkey were also interesting.

I started working on an artist book at the beginning of 1972. (3) This action and the book itself were described in the last volume (8/9) of the review Signal as follows:“

Miroljub Todorović: FORTRAN (signalist book), Belgrade, February 1972. Signalist book FORTRAN is made of six, white used (punched) computer cards in 47 copies. Already cited data (name of the author, title of the book and the date of publishing) are on the first card. The next four cards are filled with marker interventions. Interventions are identical. Stamp of Signal is on the back of the last page with the signature of the author, ordinal number of the book and the total number of copies produced. The signalist book FORTRAN was sent to the following artists, artistic archives, galleries and editorial boards: Clemente Padin, Hans Clavin, Edgardo Antonio Vigo, Jiri Valoch, Julien Blaine, Jochen Gerz, Sarenco, Galleria Sincron, David Briers, G. J. de Rook, Michael Gibbs, N. Zurbrugg, Bob Cobbing, „Art Media“, Edition Kimmel, Ben Vautier, J. Van der Wolk, Janos Urban, Klaus Groh, Guillermo Deisler, Stedelijk Museum, Hans Werner Kalkmann, „Ganglia“, Archille Bonito Oliva, „Grab Grass“, Nachl Nucha, Alvaro de Sa, Archiv Sohm, Bukowski, Marc Poinsot, Horst Trees, „Pfirsich“, „Avalanche“, Joseph Kosuth, Carl Andre, Paul Berry, Josepf Beuys, Jan Dibbets, Allain Kirili, Richard Long, Sol Lewitt, Peter Kenedy, Janez Kocijančić, Franci Zagoričnik, Boda Marković and Dobrivoje Jeftić.“

A number of artists reacted to the book.(4) I emphasize post cards sent by Richard Long on April 27. 1972 from Bristol and Joseph Beuys who sent his post card Fluxus Zone West: Joseph Beuys BRD, Fluxus Zone West: Ken Friedmann USA, Edition Hundrtmark, Berlin, with the well-known stamp Fluxus Zone West and the following text:

„Dear Todorović,

Many thanks for your small signalist book

Y.S. Joseph Beuys“.

Janez Kocijančić, poet from Novi Sad, reacted by reproducing a copy of FORTRAN (No. 24/47) as a „Special Edition“ in his column „U-R“ in INDEX, journal of students from Vojvodina, No. 246, March 23. 1972. A short note with bibliography data was published beneath the reproduced pages of this book.

Kocijančić gives the following information in the same column „U-R“ of the next volume of INDEX:

„Not long ago, the newest (signalist) book FORTRAN (name of one of the computer languages) by Miroljub Todorović appeared in Belgrade. Miroljub produced 47 copies of the book, and then distributed them to his 47 friends throughout the world. Every copy consists of six used computer cards with poets marker interventions. In the previous edition of „U-R“ you had the opportunity to see one of the unique copies, reproduced in a number of copies equivalent to the circulation of „Index“.

„In the same year 1972, I produced my first stamp with the same message which I used to write: THINK ABOUT SIGNALISM.(5) Apart from this message which I impressed by my own stamp on my communication post cards and letters, along with other (official) stamps of the review SIGNAL, Signalist Documentation Centre, Signalist Artists’ Society, I used it for creating different visual forms, in which its basic message lost or gained in intensity.(6) Two works created in those rather exciting stamp games appeared later in the proceedings STAMP ART,(7) edited by a Dutch poet and investigator, G.J. de Rook in Amsterdam.

In March 1972, a text named „Cosmic hieroglyphs“ about the flight of American space ship „Pioneer 10“ whose mission was to investigate the Asteroid Layer and the planet Jupiter, was published in newspaper Politika. According to predictions „Pioneer 10“ was supposed to pass by Jupiter in December 1973. and emit new data about this giant mysterious planet to scientists. After the emission, which, as we know, was successfully completed, the space ship started its flight deep into the Universe leaving the Solar system behind. „Pioneer 10“ carried the first human interstellar message for beings from other worlds. This coded „cosmic letter“ was engraved on a gold coated aluminum plate, which, as scientists believed, would endure a flight lasting a hundred million terrestrial years or interstellar distance of 3000 light years.

I considered the text in Politika which included a drawing of the coded „cosmic letter“ ideal for further continuation of my personal (mail-art) actions, especially for its coincidence with my earlier interests within the framework of Signalism (scientism, natural sciences, planetary art, cosmology). I copied it a few times by a photocopier and printed it by offset technique (lithography) on A4 format paper. This text soon replaced computer cards in my communication within international communication network which I joined. A photocopy of the text was sent to different artists, galleries and archives, for numerous exhibitions, sometimes without any intervention and most frequently with interventions.(8) Interventions in fact consisted of encircling certain words in the text, those which seemed to me to be key words, such as: space ship, star, hieroglyphs, Jupiter, first, hydrogen, Earth, origin, generator, message, thus, Sun, infinity, marked, cells, signal, decoding, uncertain, beings, etc. I connected frequently thus encircled words by straight lines with the lifted hand of the man whose picture was on the coded letter. A radial, verbal-visual constellation was created, rather impressive for me, full of meanings, which was somewhat different in every achievement because different words were encircled and by different ways (lines) assembled in the focus of the man's hand.

A series of these texts with interventions, which besides the existing title Cosmic hieroglyphs got another indication Signalist Project, was the framework of my first mail art exhibition Signalist Research 1 (communication - eye) in the gallery of the Students Centre In Belgrade from February 26 to March 9 1973.(10) Apart from this project, photocopies of letters, envelopes and other selected mail material which I received in the period from 1970 to 1973 were exhibited along with photocopies of flight itineraries of German airlines company Lufthansa. The whole project, including a medical description of the eye as one of the basic communication organs, I named „Total Communication”. On the occasion of the exhibition, in this sense I also wrote a manifesto which was published in the catalogue titled COMMUNICATION-ENTITY-THOUGHT.

According to the attitudes expressed in the manifesto: ”Communication is at the very basis of the entity. It is an element and the fact of its existence. A positive measure of its pace and growth from primary, rudimental to the powerful planetary consciousness. I communicate, thus I exist, therefore I create. The essence of communication is ambiguous in the deepest sense of the word. It is social-historical and exact, and artistic and subjective in its most intimate, most human aspect. Its means are the levels of civilization. Communication is the basis and nourishment of human discoveries.”(11)

This Manifesto shows the significance I attribute to communication (i.e. to mail-art as art, which directly emerges from certain communication models), since I consider it to be the basis of almost all research during the past twenty years in painting and even literature. I printed a series of eight postcards in the beginning of 1973. Almost all of them contain works from broadly taken field of signalist research. Those are: Anagrams 1968 (visual poetry), Lunometre 1969/70 (verbal-visual poem), Alphabet 1969/70 (visual poem), Gordian Knot 1971 (gesture poem), and Signalist Manifestation 1971 (gesture poetry). Cosmic Hieroglyphs were reproduced with the following project interventions on the card: encircled words connected with the man’s hand by straight lines are given as photonegatives, so that the text, coded letter, drawing of a man and a woman, and the interventions are shown on black „cosmic” background, which thus underlines the character of this cosmic informative communication operation. Mail-art work Communication made by collage technique and photocopying international mail coupons was published in 1972. The sign „Signal”, i.e. the emblem of Signalism with a short information about the Signalist Documentation Centre is printed on the last (eighth) card. The series appeared in about 5000 copies (cards).(12)

In the beginning, the post cards were sent most frequently together with the previous material of the Signalist Project: Cosmic hieroglyphs , and they were in this way exhibited on exhibitions and reproduced in proceedings, catalogues and anthologies of conceptual art, visual poetry and mail-art as: LA ESCRITURA EN LIBERTAD, by Ferdinand Millan and Jesus Garcia Sanchez, POST DOCUMENTS(13) by Juna Muzukami etc.

In the course of the following years, at certain time intervals, I sent series of my postcards to artists, writers, scholars and public persons in our country and abroad. The stamp with the message THINK ABOUT SIGNALISM was most frequently stamped on each card. Some of the sent cards returned, mostly for the wrong or changed address of the receiver. The post regularly stamped its official stamp on the returned mail. This gave me the idea for a mail-art action named Unsuccessful Communication, which I went into much later.

Interest for mail-art suddenly increased in the world about 1976/77. Visual poetry slowly disappeared. Even the last significant journals specialized in this branch were disappearing. Conceptual art drowned into statistical documentation of its own material and ideas, in bizarre language tautology. Mail-art appeared suddenly as a „fresh and lively framework for certain artists”, a new motive power which started gathering all the energy of restless, investigative and unconventional spirit.

In the period from 1971 to 1978(14) , based on mail-art and artistic communication on the whole, I established closest co-operation with German artist Klaus Groh and his I.A.C. (International Artist’s Corporation), who had for several years already published INFO (Information Bulletin) with most significant contemporary information, connecting in this way a great number of artists from many countries.

Groh published my second artists book (bookwork) within his well known edition Art Booklets .

This was a small book, format 7.5/10.5 cm, in fact a A4 format paper folded eight times so that it has 16 pages with the „covers”. Klaus Groh published more than fifty such booklets by visual poets, mail-artists, conceptualists and other researchers in the wide space of art.(15) Mine, entitled APPROACHES appeared under number 25, in 1973.

Fourteen scientific symbols which are applied in physics and mathematics were written on the pages of APPROACHES with a marker. The book begins with the symbol of approximation (flow) and finishes with the symbol of infinity.

Reviewing the whole edition of Art Booklets in London journal Art and Artist’s the critic David Zack(16) noted in September 1974:

„Miroljub Todorović’s Approaches is one of several masterpieces in the I.A.C. series. It signals artists, which is to say individuals, approaching their goal, points out pitfalls, and concludes Entropy equals infinity.”

Besides postcards, in 1973 I published two more mail-art posters with the same title Communication in offset technique.(17) On one of them are maps of central parts of the following cities with main roads: Vienna, Sofia, Budapest, Athens, Bucharest and Rome, while on the second there is again the American space ship „Pioneer 10” in the foreground. But, besides the drawing of the „Pioneer” and the „cosmic letter” there is a visual representation of the whole itinerary of the aircraft from the Earth through the Solar System near Jupiter and Saturn towards outer planets and cosmic infinity.

Numerous photocopies of official post stamps published previously in our newspapers with high circulation on the occasion of significant philatelist editions, or representations of the post or postal system should certainly be added to the mentioned works. For example: „Yugoslavia 1972”, stamps with cosmic motives in the world, and similar. I have also copied and distributed one page of the American journal Playboy with posters reduced to the size of a stamp bearing the advertising text „Mail coupon today”. On all of these photocopies, besides the name and address, I added only the words: Communication or mail-Art.

I started producing my own stamps towards the end of 1978. Up to now few series with different motives were produced: parts of maps, postal coupons, countenance of the author, circling of a satellite or flight of a rocket around the Earth, surface of the Moon, a clipping of the „cosmic letter” (few variations), series of pictures of poets, scientists, statesmen and cosmonauts, radiation, picture of electron movement in the atom, picture of the globe with continents, etc. Most frequent inscriptions and messages on the stamps were: Signalist Post, Signal, Communication, Think about Signalism, Signalist Poetry, The Moon Sign, Trip to Starland, Communication, Signal Art, Mail-Art, Think about Mail-Art, etc. Most of these stamps were published in a few volumes of the French journal DOC/K/S.(18)

I producing whole series of postcards out of smaller pieces of cardboard, dimensions were 10.5/15 cm, as required by postal rules. These cards were unique (one copy of each) with different names and messages such as: THINK ABOUT SIGNALISM, READY MADE POETRY, with collages on both sides except for the space for the address of the receiver.(19) I put official and my own stamps on these post cards and sent them by mail. Some of them are mentioned by Polish poet and critic Julian Kornhauzer in his PhD thesis SIGNALISM-PROGRAM OF SERBIAN EXPERIMENTAL POETRY, chapter Stylistic Approach to Signalist Poetry („... 17 post cards the author of which is Miroljub Todorović, each with a title of the work, some with stamps given by the author, all addressed to me...”).(20)

In February 1979, I finally achieved previously conceived mail-art action „Unsuccessful Communication”. I sent my post cards (series printed in 1973) with the basic message THINK ABOUT SIGNALISM to a few domestic poets, writers and critics dead long ago, to two leaders from the time of the First and the Second Serbian Uprising, and two living outstanding writers. The cards were mailed as registered mail, some of them as urgent. The addresses were arbitrary, of course, but there was a „system” in it, too.

A registered post card was sent to Đura Jakšić with the address Skadarska number 47. Besides two ordinary stamps another appropriate one was sealed with a reproduction of his famous painting. This stamp,(21) at least twice as big as the ordinary ones, with nominal value of 1.20 para did not have any title, but Đura Jakšić was printed in its upper right corner in clear, large gold letters. The card was mailed (according to a rather visible stamp) on February 10, 1979. It was returned to me after two days (February 12) with the postal stamp -inconnu . The postman even wrote with a ball pen, above the stamp: „In Skadarska 47 unknown”, put the date 12. II. 79 and signed it.

A registered card was also sent to the poet Vojislav Ilic on 9.2.1979 from Belgrade Post office 6, to the address Makedonska street number 30. The next day, a postman noted on the upper part of the card: ”10.II 79 unknown, mark with whom he lives” (assuming probably that a subtenant was involved), and signed. A stamp inconnu (underlined) was put below everything and signed. The card was returned to me on February 13 by morning mail.

An urgent, registered post card with a message „think about Signalism” was sent to Dr Milan Skerlic addressed to Milana Rakica street number 17 on 10.II 1979. Since he could not find him, the postman stated in the upper left corner of the card: ”Delivery attempted, according to statements of tenants, unknown - 11.2.79 at 11.10 h” (signature).

A card for Bora Stanković was addressed to Knez Mihajlova street 14. An appropriate stamp was sealed, with the picture of the writer and label Bora Stanković 1876-1976 . Above it was written in Cyrillic alphabet „Centenary of Birth”. A stamp produced in the mean time „SIGNALISM 1959-1979 think about signalism” to mark the anniversary, was stamped only on the postcard mailed to this writer. The card returned on February 12 with the already customary mark: unknown.

A post card with a reproduced part of a signalist poem called Alphabet and the message THINK ABOUT SIGNALISM, was mailed to Jovan Jovanović Zmaj in Laza Kostić Street number 4 in Novi Sad. It was returned a couple of days later with a big stamp, which occupied more than half of the available space left for writing. The stamp differed from those on previous cards, because it comprised a variety of reasons for which mail could not be delivered. It was not only stated that the receiver is unknown-inconnu. First of all, it was written return - retour in the upper part of the stamp in somewhat bigger letters. Beneath this, the following words were written in two columns - left in Serbian and right in French: unknown, moved, does not receive, on a trip, does nor exist, deceased... I could not make out the last two words because of illegible printing. A small square is placed between the Serbian and French words for the postman to encircle or mark in some other way, showing thus the reason which prevented him to deliver the mail. It is interesting that on this card the postman marked the square related to moved-demenage and signed over it.

A post card with a reproduction of gesture poem Gordian Knot was sent to Laza Kostić, the founder of modernism in our poetry. The address on the card was Jovana Jovanovića Zmaja street, number 7, also in Novi Sad. The number of registered delivery on it was 768. On February the twelfth the card was returned to me with the stamp differing from the one on the postcard sent to Zmaj. The stamp was smaller, the letters quite smeared, difficult to read. There were no more words in French, (on the other hand, Laza knew French, he even wrote his secret diary of dreams and love cravings for Lenka Dunđerski, dead for some time already, in this language). Contents of the stamp: upper part in bigger letters: RETURN, beneath this in two series: does not exist, unknown, on a trip. Second series: deceased, left... I could not decipher the third word. There were two more statements beneath everything: Incomplete address and Does not exist any more. The postman marked the square referring to unknown and signed, probably as required by rules.

A card was mailed to Miloš Obrenović with the address Karađorđeva street number 6, and another one to Karađorđe Petrović with the address Miloševa street number 32, both streets in Belgrade. I unintentionally wrote the wrong name of the street in the second case. Instead of the official name of the street Kneza Miloša, I put Miloševa ( name Miloša Velikog is in everyday use as well), possibly led by the street which got its name for Karađorđe without stating his title - „Leader”?. The card was mailed as urgent and registered. At 32 Kneza Milosa street, the postman established that Karađorđe Petrović was unknown on 11. II 79. The same day another postman tried to deliver the post card to Karađorđe at 32 Miloševa street. His statement was: „Delivery attempted, does not refer to Miloševa”, signature.

Signalist post cards could be delivered neither to: Vladislav Petković Dis at 36 Baba Višnjina, Milorad Šapčanin at 3, Aberdareva street nor to Sima Milutinović Sarajlija at 28 Njegoševa street, all in Belgrade. A registered card was sent to Augustin Ujević at 87 Ilica 87 in Zagreb, returned with a stamp similar to the one on the card mailed to Laza Kostić. The postman marked the square beside the word unknown by a green ball pen and additionally underlined the word itself. Since the stamp on the card for Tin is clearer than on the card sent to Laza, I could now read easily (decipher) the third reason (in the second series) for not having the mail delivered. It said: DID NOT SEARCH.(21)

After „Unsuccessful Communication”, some time in spring 1979, I came to the idea to offer a selection of mail-art, which would include theoretical texts beside works, to one of our journals (Delo and Koraci had priority). This idea was accepted by Muharem Pervić editor-in-chief of Delo , so that I soon set out to do it. By mid May I had already made an invitation letter in English, printed and sent 300 copies. In this letter framed by my artistic stamps, I demanded artists to send me their works concerned with mail-art: catalogues, books, bibliographies, as well as theoretical texts. I emphasized that I was working on a voluminous anthology of mail-art which would appear in journal Delo. I mentioned at the end that the received material would be presented at the exhibition titled THINK ABOUT MAIL ART. (I counted here on the Happy Gallery at the Students Cultural Centre).

By the end of May already, first packages for the anthology began to arrive. Among those first sparrows were Pawel Petasz, from Poland, a known mail-artist, founder of the Commonpress international mail-art journal and Guillermo Deisler from Chile now living in exile in Bulgaria. Soon afterwards, Klaus Groh, Sarenco, Daniel Daligard, Michelle Perfetti, Eugenio Miccini, Jacque Lepage, Ulises Carrion, G. A. Cavellini and others wrote to me.

During the entire summer an almost unbelievable amount of avant-garde journals, letters, post cards, original works of variable forms and sizes, photos, artists books, stamps and similar material arrived. Among others, the following artists wrote to me and sent their works: Romano Peli, Adriano Spatola, Timm Ulrich, E.F. Higgins, Dick Higgins, Endre Tot, Ray Johnson, Toshiro Saito, Carl Andre, Julien Blaine, Gino Gini, Lon Spegeman, Lamberto Pignotti, Ben Vautier (who sent plenty of catalogues and material of the group Fluxus, apart from his works), Vittore Baroni, Clemente Padin, S.J. Schmidt, Anna Banana. American Ken Friedmann, along with his works sent a huge package of catalogues, books, manifestos, photocopies of newspaper articles and reviews, copied material from which a whole study about American after war avant-garde, fluxus and conceptual art could have been made.

The invitation letter titled „Think about Mail-art” was published in extenso in one of the summer volumes of the Canadian artistic journal Parallelograme, in the column „Classified Abroad”. The invitation was also published in the American journal Art monthly and in some English art magazines as well. I have learned about this from the letters of some authors, who refer to these magazines, and some of them, like for example Mike Dyar from San Francisco, who, along with his works, sent a clipping from a newspaper (journal) in which he read about my invitation for the anthology and exhibition without mentioning the name of the newspaper (journal) in question.

All that voluminous material had to be arranged and a selection made. Selection had to be rigorous, because it turned out that this time I had only eight to nine sheets (16 pages each) at my disposal instead of over 200 pages which I had in Delo number 3, March 1975, when I published the Anthology of Concrete, Visual and Signalist poetry. This significantly changed and deranged my original vision of this project.

Anthology of mail-art was delivered to the editorial board of the journal about the beginning of January 1980. Meanwhile, the idea to exhibit the received material in the Happy Gallery of the Students’ Cultural Centre within the framework of the planned exhibition THINK ABOUT MAIL-ART failed to develop. Delo was quite late, and I thought that the selection would appear in its December volume (previously agreed on November volume was already in print). But, as it often happens, there was a little delay and postponing and the anthology was finally published in the February 1980 volume of Delo.(22)

Publishing of this volume has contributed quite a lot to bring mail-art, as a new and challenging artistic field, closer to our artists who, owing to works and numerous theoretical contributions, could comprehend the significance, seriousness and breadth of mail-art which successfully avoids all the possible barriers of language, nationalism, ideology. Direct result of the appearance of the anthology was an increased interest in mail-art, the fact that a few of our artists joined the international communication network, starting new actions, exhibitions, mail journals, bulletins, etc.(23)

Publishing of my new bookwork Signal Art was the next project, which marked the beginning of my continuous mail-art activity. This booklet appeared in November 1980 as a signalist edition in 77 copies and it is in line with my previous artists book. Although mostly mail-art works are reproduced in it, the book was made by a printing, silk-screen technique which greatly corrupted the original and on the other hand, under a new graphic tension, acquired certain properties of the original, i.e. its „originality and uniqueness”.(24)

Besides pages printed by silk-screen technique Signal Art included one photocopy sealed on the next to the last cover page. In fact, the text What is mail-art - mail-poetry? , published in my column „Information” in the newspaper Književna reč in 1979, was photocopied here. Prints of the stamp THINK ABOUT SIGNALISM and THINK ABOUT MAIL-ART are found on a certain number of copies.

It is interesting that this book was a subject of polemics which I had with young poet Branko Čegec from Zagreb. Being insufficiently informed, having a rather amateur view of mail-art and after-war avant-garde in general, this poet poured malice on Signal Art in journal Oko.(25) There was nothing left for me to do but oppose sharply this ignorance united with malice and transparent conceit under the mask of avant-garde and so-called radicalism.(26)

My one-man exhibition titled MAIL-ART took place in Happy New Art gallery of SKC in Belgrade From May 21 to 31 1981. A small exhibition area caused rather strict selection of works. Central place was taken by the „Unsuccessful Communication”, which, in fact attracted greatest attention of the audience and caused disputes and comments. A voluminous catalogue was published on the occasion of the exhibition. Slavko Timotijević, among other, paid special attention to the „Unsuccessful Communication”, in the introductory text titled Miroljub Todorović - Mail-art.(27) Apart from this, the following texts were published: a text Authentic Protagonist of Yugoslav Avant-garde by Michaele Perfetti, my two texts about mail-art, detailed bibliography and quite a number of mail-art works with an emphasis on works from the „Unsuccessful Communication”. Postcards sent to prominent poets and figures from the past, Vojislav Ilić, Đura Jakšić, Jovan Skerlić, Bora Stanković, Karađorđe Petrović, Miloš Obrenović, Laza Kostić, Jovan Jovanović Zmaj, Vladislav Petković Dis and Augustin Ujević were reproduced (as photocopies).

Along with the catalogue, the Gallery published a special invitation card printed in silk-screen technique with a reproduction of one of my unique post cards as well as a very successful poster of the exhibition.

In 1980 and 1981 few significant exhibitions, in which I participated, were organized. Here, I distinguish especially MAIL ETC., ART (traveling correspondence art exhibition), which began in January 1979 at the Colorado Boulder University, traveled around American universities all through the year and finished at Boulder again, in February 1980. My art stamps and the post card Cosmic Hieroglyphs were published in the beautiful and colorful catalogue. Besides this, in the introductory text, the critic Jim Field emphasized my, as he said „art manifesto” Fragments about Signalism , along with a review of the works by Canadian Chuck Stake, American Richard Kostelanetz and Frenchman Jean-Paul Thenot.(28)

Exhibition MISLAID INFORMATION organised as well by students this time in the place WAGA WAGA in Australia was also interesting. Selected material (which included my artistic stamps entitled „Signal Art”), was published in a special issue of the students’ magazine Race , devoted entirely, to this project.

Within the edition „Factotum-Art, Verona 1980, Sarenco, Eugenio Miccini and Franco Verdi, printed a collection of essays devoted to the book as a work of art titled Liber (practica internazionale del libro d’ artista). Work on this project began back in 1978, when these avant-garde poets demanded by letters quite a number of artists to send them one artists’ book each for the planned exhibition and book (collection). There were 141 artists (poets, avant-garde researcher) from a few countries who participated in this project, with Italians predominating.

In his inspiring introduction Eugenio Miccini said that the book, in the new artistic practice, from a mythical object had become a „subject, anti-book, allegory”.

Among many artists’ books in the collection there was a reproduction of the single copy of my signalist book Cobol which was made of used computer cards with interventions with a marker. Dimensions of the book was 8.5x19 cm, and the reproduction showed that it was produced in Belgrade in 1978.(29)

I co-operated most frequently and most successfully with the Italians from the very beginning, ever since I joined the courses of avant-garde movements in sixties and seventies. I took part in many exhibitions in Italy, I was represented in their collections and anthologies of visual poetry and mail-art. With the exception of the Julian Kornahuzer’s study in Poland, Italians have shown the greatest interest in signalism. The number of authors who wrote about our avant-garde movement witnessed this fact: A. Spatola, M. Perfetti, M.D. Ambrosio, A. Lora Totino, E. Minarelli.

This co-operation continues with the new generation of avant-garde authors, i.e. the third wave of mail-artists, with Nikola Frangione as one of its leading representatives. Frangione included my works in the book Snapshot (collective work of mail-art), which was published in only 100 bibliophile (I own the 44th copy) copies in January 1980. That same year, the same author edited and published the international mail-art magazine Commonpress no. 26 with the leading topic „Zen and Art”, in which few of my artistic stamps from the series Self Portrait were found.

In the beginning of 1980, American Jane Ellen Gilmor edited and published Commonpress no. 25 with the topic „Ruins”. One visual poem, which I reprinted later in the collection Brain Soup (1982) was published in this issue.

The name of Belgian Guy Schraenen from Antwerp was known and respected in avant-garde circles a long time ago. In October 1980 this organizer and theoretician began a project which will certainly be noted in large letters in the history of mail-art.

Namely, Schraenen initiated mail-art party named ANTWERP INTERNATIONAL MAIL-ART FESTIVAL (exhibitions, lectures, projections), which would last all the year long, in the Internationaal Cultureel Centrum in Antwerp. Within this festival Schraenen also published Libellus the first monthly publication for mail-art. Various works concerning mail-art, concrete and visual poetry, manifestos, messages, sentences, information and invitations for participation in exhibitions, collections, anthologies and other projects of avant-garde artists from Brazil to Japan, and from Finland to Australia were published in Libellus, 12 issues of which appeared from October 1980 till October 1981. Starting from the second volume of his magazine, Schraenen began writing his specific diary of received mail with the names of senders, which gradually grew from one issue to the other. From the first issue he published stamps (stamp prints) with the imaginary countenance of one or two mail-artists. A few of my visual poems and mail-art works appeared in Libellus. Stamp (blue stamp print) with my imaginary countenance(30) was published in issue no. 12, and at the same time, Schraenen sent me prints of these stamps on special paper as well as a special envelope of his ICC (small press archive communication) with a stamp.

Apart from the mentioned actions initiated and achieved by artists, as we have seen, it is significant to mention actions of an official institution. Metronom (Espai del Centre de Documentacio d’Art Actual) from Barcelona organized a great mail-art exhibition from October 13 to November 21, 1980, with a voluminous catalogue in which one work of each participant was printed. A year later, this institution arranged an exhibition devoted to artists’ books, also in October and November. As Rafael Tous, director of Metronom, informed us, about 2000 books by more than 800 artists arrived for this exhibition. In the voluminous catalogue, critics and theoreticians tried to define „artists’ books” and determine their role in new trends. For Hubert Kretschmer, the form of the book is a message itself.(31) Jose Luis Mata started from the fact that production of special books, object-books, anti-books and everything that can be connected with the idea of a book, is in fact a „spark of revolt” against customary, often one-dimensional living and creative practice.(32) For Guy Schraenen, artists’ book, together with dadaism, has revolutionised the artistic world of the twentieth century.

According to this critic, artists’ book, has contributed to this revolutionizing not only by searching for new forms or contents, but by spreading works of art which was as significant, and one could add by broadening the limits of art.(33)

The front page of my signalist book Fortran, Belgrade 1981 (one more book from the family of fortran) was published in the Metronom catalogue on page 117, as item 624. Its basic characteristics: „libre original, 8 pag.-8x19 cm” were given on page 187 with the same number.

Towards the end of August 1981, Peter Jorg Splettstosser organized an exhibition of art stamps STAMP = QUOTATION QUOTATION = STAMP for the Festival of Culture in Bremen. After Splettstosser’s invitation, 123 artists, poets and composers sent their ideas (designs) for artistic stamps of size not bigger than 8x5 cm. The catalogue of the exhibition was in fact produced manually of stamp seals in different colors and represented an exceptionally interesting collection in which variety of artistic possibilities of this form of mail-art could really be recognized. After the exhibition, Peter Jorg Splettstosser sent stamps to all the authors, which he had made according to their designs. This is how I obtained the stamp with the message THINK ABOUT MAIL-ART which framed a drawing typical for my fine art interventions.

In my Diary , which I kept intensively at the time, there is a note dated 24.9.1981 (Thursday): „Letter from Japanese city Kobe with the catalogue and two photos from the exhibition Portopia ‘81. The exhibition was opened in mid March and lasted till September 15. It was visited by 14 million people. Mail art named „Letters to Kobe” was as well very successfully presented together with the this grandiose exhibition. According to the organizers, this part of the exhibition was seen by three million people. In Kobe, mail-art was really „seen”.

Young Belgian artist Guy Bleus, organized an international mail-art exhibition ARE YOU EXPERIENCED? in Brussels in October 1981. Specialty of this exhibition, i.e. of its catalogue, was the fact that works in it were not printed as usual, but transferred to microfilms and then attached to the printed part of the catalogue.(34)

Most spectacular and certainly most significant mail-art exhibition in 1981 and not only then, was staged as part of XVI Biennial in Sao Paolo. This performance contributed a great deal to further recognition of mail-art and its striving to become „some sort of cultural capillary network of cosmic art”. Biennial is so well known in the world that I was quite surprised when a letter arrived from Walter Zanini, president of Biennial Counsel and one of its main organizers inviting me to participate at the exhibition „Nucleus I - Mail - Art” which was designed as a part of XVI Biennial.

I have known Zanini earlier since I participated in the exhibitions Prospectiva (1974) and Poetica Visualis (1977), which he had very successfully organized as a director of the Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of San Paolo. This time, for the Biennial, I mostly sent him previously copied and printed materials with interventions on some of the works, the material that I participated with at other exhibitions of similar kind. Zanini informed me by a letter of July 1 that he received the works, thanked me and said that he would send new information about the exhibition he prepared in due time.

XVI Biennial in San Paolo lasted from October 16 to December 20, 1981. On December 6, I received another letter from Walter Zanini informing me about some details of this great performance. According to his words, more than six thousand documents were presented at the mail-art exhibition in a space of 2000 cubic meters. Among other foreign mail-artists the following artists attended personally this exceptional mail-art celebration: Cavellini, Ulises Carrion and Jonier Marin. Zanini ended his letter with a promise that he would soon send the catalogue of the exhibition. The catalogue which arrived afterwards confirmed all the grandeur of this mail-art performance in Sao Paolo.(35)

I will finish describing exhibitions that I took part in during 1981 which was extremely rich in mail-art happenings, with a note about ARTISTS’ POSTAGE STAMPS exhibition which I organized together with Slavko Timotijević, historian of art and fine art critic, at the Happy Gallery of SKC where he was director, in November 1981.(36) At the exhibition, 93 artists from several countries participated. Quite a good catalogue was printed with reproductions of stamps in black and white as well as two post cards with reproduced artists’ stamps.

In the following few years my interest in mail-art did not diminish significantly, but I became considerably more choosy and selective concerning exhibitions, and I participated only when I evaluated and judged from the invitation or some other means, that certain aesthetic quality and research improvement in this new artistic field would be expressed, that it would not be reduced to mere communication.

Fine art critics could not remain indifferent to mail-art and its experimental improvements any longer. On this occasion I would like to mention our outstanding fine art critic Zoran Markuš who, besides interest in Signalism,(37) showed a lively interest in mail-art. In 1982 Markus among other included, a few of my mail-art works in his IZBOR ‘82 (Selection). Some of them - letter On Kawari and a manually produced post card were published in the catalogue of the exhibition. I assume that this was one of the first inclusions of mail-art in a first-class exhibition in our country.(38)

In the introductory text of the catalogue, Zoran Markuš talked about mail-art with plenty of understanding, especially analyzing „Unsuccessful Communication”. According to his words „post cards were returned with notes by postmen and those concerning Unsuccessful Communication form a series of social, professional and linguistic data broadening the sense of the basic message”.(39)

From 1982 till the moment when I am writing this (October 1987), I had three one-man exhibitions and participated in more than ten collective mail-art exhibitions in the world. Among them, INTERNATIONAL MAIL-ART EXHIBITION OF VISUAL MESSAGE ‘82 at Kwan Hoon museum of fine arts in Seoul 1982 and SEOUL INTERNATIONAL MAIL-ART EXHIBITION in the Art Centre of Korea in the same town next year should not be forgotten. On the occasion of both exhibitions well prepared catalogues were published.(40)

Peter Kustermann from Minden (West Germany) published some sort of poetical-mail-artistic collection titled Kein Krieg in meiner Stadt! It is printed on the occasion of the exhibition with the same name organized by the same author.(41) The same year, I received a catalogue TIMBRES D’ARTISTES from Jean-Marc Rastorfer, published after the international exhibition of artistic stamps organized by Rastorfer in Laussane back in 1980.

In autumn 1982, my one-man exhibition THINK ABOUT SIGNALISM was organised as part of the XX October Meeting of Writers. The exhibition included works in the field of visual, gesture poetry and mail-art. Besides some visual works, texts Particularities and Convergences in Signalist Poetics (Matteo D’Ambrosio) and What is Signalism (Dave Oz) were published in the catalogue.(42)

My following one-man exhibitions were: SIGNALIST RESEARCH, (visual poetry, mail-art) in the gallery KOV, in Vršac in 1983, and SIGNAL ART, some kind of retrospection of my complete work in the Gallery of the Contemporary Art Museum in October 1984.(43) Both exhibitions included mail-art works.

Signal Art was the last one-man exhibition I had. In the meantime, I have exhibited my mail-art works at international collective exhibitions: INTERNATIONAL MAIL-ART EXHIBITION in Budapest 1984, L’OBJET CULTUREL in Pon-a-Mousson, Lorraine 1985, THE SCROLL UNROLLS in Janco DADA museum Israel 1985, INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS’ POSTAGE STAMPS EXHIBITION in Weddel 1985, ARTISTS’ BOOK in Oldenburg 1986, LA COCOTIER (International mail-art exhibition) in Noumea, New Caledonia 1986, BELEGKEPEK (Stamp Images) in Budapest 1987 PAISATGE (Exposicio Internacional de Mail-Art) in La Carrotxa, Portugal 1987, etc.

Bernard Lobach, outstanding German conceptual artist published a voluminous catalogue named „The Bible of Artists’ Postage Stamps” on the occasion of INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS’ STAMPS EXHIBITION which he organized in Wedel in 1985. The organizer of the ARTIST’ BOOKS exhibition in Oldenburg was Klaus Groh. Although Lobach rightfully called his publication „The Bible of Artists’ Postage Stamps”, it seems to me, that Groh had even more right to name the catalogue of his exhibition „The Bible of Artists’ Books”. This catalogue contained few significant theoretical contributions, and answers to the question „Why artists’ books?” by authors themselves, and finally numerous reproductions of works.(44)

Apart from one-man exhibitions and participation at international mail-art exhibitions in 1983, I sent a few post cards to Aleksandar Flaker, an excellent expert in Russian avant-garde from Zagreb, as part of the project SIGNALIST COMMUNICATION, which I practiced under different circumstances and on different occasions from the very beginning of my dealing with mail-art. Stamps Think about Signalism and Think about Mail-art were stamped on these cards with artists’ stamps and small collages, etc. Finally, a SIGNALIST BOOK was mailed, made of computer cards with indication saying that it is unique, made especially for professor Flaker.(45)

During June and July 1984, at certain time intervals, I mailed a series of eighteen postcards to literary critic Živan Živković.(46) This series included three types of postcards. In the first group were photo cards with motives from Visual poems Lunometre, I will Tell you with Strawberries or Robin in the Cage, Alphabet and one fragment from the visual essay Geometry of the Poem.

Five of such cards were mailed to Živković: two were bore stamps with Think about Mail-Art and the date when one was expected to think about mail-art was indicated. On one postcard the determined date was 3. 7. 1984 and on the other 27. X 1984. On the remaining three cards stood the stamp THINK ABOUT SIGNALISM. The dates suggested for thinking were 14. VI 1984, 16 VIII 1984 and 7. XII 1984.

The second series of seven postcards included in fact processed computer cards. They were of different colors. Most of them included the message Think about Signalism, this time without a suggested date for thinking. On many cards there were artists’ stamps with different interventions made with a blue marker. The third series were hand made postcards, made of cardboard. There were six of them. Three were made of black cardboard, two of green and one of white. Contrary to the previous ones, all six cards were mailed as registered letters and five had indication - urgent . Drawings, visual poems and copied or for that occasion especially made artists’ stamps were on the cards. Countenance of Goethe and a handmade message „Think about Signalism” (in English) beside it are on one of the cards made of black cardboard. On the other one, there are deformed letters, etc.

Two-way communication was achieved with the poet Slobodan Pavićević. In autumn 1984, we exchanged a few postcards of different appearance and design with different messages. Among others, Slobodan treated two sentimental postcards from the thirties by putting his stamps and collages on them and changing in this way the very essence their trash appearance and message. Here are also treated cards of Zmaj Children Festival and Children Sparks , one ancient postcard from Paris and a more recent postcard with the face of a Massai girl from East Africa.

Postcards I sent to Slobodan Pavićević were made of computer cards, cardboard and already existing picture postcards published by the National Museum in Belgrade. These picture postcards with faces of Archangel Gabrielle, an unknown saint from Gradac, a miniature from Miroslav Gospel, a sculpture from Lepenski Vir and antique motives were treated by drawings, artists’ postage stamps and stamps.

Pavićević and I planned to publish our mail-art action, i.e. its material (postcards) in a book. Unfortunately this idea was not effectuated so far.

I have noted previously that I have become more choosy and selective concerning participation in international mail-art projects. I have established some rather strict criteria for such participation and I do not deviate from them. A few days ago, in my mail-box which was by the way made especially for the needs of mail-art back in May 1970, for mail-art purposes, a letter arrived from Galantai-Artpool archives in Budapest. They are inviting me to send my mail-art works for the Exhibition „Duchamp Spirit in Contemporary Art”. The exhibition is being organized on the occasion of hundredth anniversary of the great Dadaist magus Marcel Duchamp (1887 -1987). I will certainly participate in such a project.

(From Miroljub Todorovic book Diary of Avant-Guard, Belgrade, 2000)

Notes:

[1] I think that the difference should be emphasised between Signalist manifestation as understood here in communication mail-art sense and Signalist manifestation as I defined my actions in the frame of gestual poetry at he beginning. In the new issue of Signal, besides photos of a gestual action there an explanation Signalist manifestation I defined then signalist manifestation (gestual poetry) as „new, open communication system, in which the artist (poet, producer of art), and frequently the consumer of the work still I creation both become integral parts of the final artistic creation.” On the published photography, I hold a poster with parts of my computer poem With noodles certainly, created in the Mathematical Institute in Belgrade 1971 in two series. In the first series the action is performed with the poster with the mentioned computer poem sealed on it, and in the second, my playing with computer cards is recorded by a camera. Part of this action (three photos) is published in the book Algol (1980) entitled Gestual Poem.I have performed first signalist manifestation of this type (action, gestual poetry) on April 14 1969 with the poster Hotbed. I have printed 80 copies of this poster-poem size (36x52 cm) on cardboard in several colours with one of my friends, half illegally in the great printing company „Privredni pregled” in the beginning of April 1969. After that, the mentioned day, I sealed the biggest part of the poster poem in Belgrade, mostly in the centre of the city, in public places, on walls, windows and accesses to certain cultural institutions. I remember well the excitements I felt while placing two poster-poems (red and black) on the wall of the long, at the time dark corridor of Publishing house „Prosveta” in Čika Ljubina street 1. The posters disappeared from „Prosveta” (they were removed) during the same day, as I convinced myself later.I have performed a similar action on July 3 1970, during IV Belgrade triennial of Yugoslav fine art, in which I participated. During the opening of this exhibition I distributed to the visitors and participants poster-poem Signalist poetry and talked about the contents and meaning of this communication action. There were four visual poems on the front page of this poster poem, and six variations of the computer poem With noodles certainly on the back cover. One computer card was attached to the poster. I remember a conversation with Oto Bihalji Merin and his half humorous question, why do I give him the poster-poem with the red computer card, when he noticed that the cards were in different colours and the red one was the rarest. One should neither forget here, the gestual action Head Movements performed the same year 1970 in one of the devices for express photography in Bezistan, Terazije. Part of these photos was published on the cover of my collection Staircase (1971) without any note about their meaning.

[2] It is interesting to mention, that Michele Perfetti, known Italian visual poet, mail-artist and critic has mentioned, in his text Poesia e violenca (Signal) in the journal „Corriere del giorno“, October 21 1971, the Signalist Manifestation I have organised in Belgrade as an international exhibition of experimental poetry probably due to insufficient knowledge of language.

[3] This could be translated as „book of the artist“. The following phrases are used as well: „book as work of art“ (G. Celan) and „bookwork“. According to the opinion expressed by Ulises Carrion critic and mail-artist in his essay The New Art of making Books, (see Second Thoughts, Void, Amsterdam 1980, pp 6-22), a book is not only a box containing words and even less a „luggage with words“. A book might as well exist as an autonomous self sufficient form, including maybe the text, but the text which emphasises the form, the text which is an functional part of that form. In traditional literature says Carrion the writer writes a text. This text (poetry or prose) ignores completely the fact that the book is not only a carrier of words, but an independent space-time sequence. In the new art, a writer does not write a text, he produces a book. Richard Kostelanetz, American poet, critic and avant-garde artist joined this effort to define new a artist book (bookwork). In his essay Book-Art he determines the new book, book as art work, as „imaginative book“ as well. According to Kostelanetz sentences in a conventional book are arranged in rectangular blocks, uniformed looking like soldiers in battle. In the imaginative book an effort is made to do something with syntax, format, pages, cover, form, size, sequence, structure, binding, i.e. with all the elements which should be changed to create a somewhat different book. This artist says that the artists book is produced with the aim to communicate by imaginative phenomena, „in this way something completely different from the experience of reading is created.

[4] About mid 1972 Guillermo Deisler, visual artist and athologist from Chile, sent me from Atofagasta a letter and a short review of Fortan. This review was later translated and published in the book Signalism in the World (edited by M. B. Šijaković), Belgrade 1984. In this text Deisler sees Fortran in the following way: “Application of the punched cards, previously treated by a computer, as pages of a signalist book brings us a series of meanings from the world in which we transform ourselves into figures, codes which should be „read“; world of programming, punching, interpreting of data; world which is discovered from research of numerals produced by a machine able to achieve even the most complicated operations with the speed of light as an only restriction. This is not a protest, it is simply stated. There are hand written characters on these cards, graphism of Todorović, in a juxtaposition which shows a paradox of our personal existences which are confined in a very complicated world full of contradictions. We are there discovering ourselves captured in the network of speech from the simplest family or individual decisions to the moment in which our choice turns into something unpredicted.“(See Guillermo Deisler: Fortran - Signalist Book by Miroljub Todorović, „Signalism in the World“, p 18.)

[5] On the occasion of this stamp and its message, on of our critics states that it represents a real „mini manifesto of signalism“ and that the receipt of a card with this stamp excites and inspires him whenever he receives it. On the other hand, Radivoj Cvetićanin would note somewhat cynically and humorously in his text Signals above Poetry, Omladinske novine“ No. 34, July 6 1974: “Do not be surprised if one day a postman would leave a post card with one single gentle command „Think about Signalism“, in your post box. First and natural question after arrival of such mail would be - What does Signalism want again. Those who are informed know about the „aggressiveness“ of this movement in modern art creation; postcard which is usually mailed to such people, bothers them. It reminds that one should think about Signalism without interruption as was the case with „Prodixan“ at certain time.

[6] Later (1979) I would make my second stamp with the text of Jubilee character: SIGNALISM 1959 - 1979 Think about signalism.

[7] Proceedings was published by Daylight Press in 1976, on the occasion of STAMP ART SHOW exhibition (where material from the proceedings was represented) in the bookstore Other Books and So, Amsterdam, from April 27 to May 1976.

[8] Some of the treated photocopies are mentioned by Dr Marvin Sackner, known American collector of concrete and visual poetry, in the Catalogue of his Archive. “TODOROVIĆ, MIROLJUB, photocopies in envelope, signed and inscribed to Avalanche Magazine“. According to the date, Sackner purchased these photocopies from the journal Avalanche in 1983. (See catalogue The Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry 1984, p.811).Photocopy of the text Cosmic Hieroglyphs (different variations) with caption Signalist Project, was published (the list is not complete) in the following publications:-Jan Chwalezyk: COUNTERPOINT, Wroclaw 1972 (Besides Cosmic Hieroglyphs one work from the series The Eye, gestual poem Lunar Sign, two letters from the series Signalist Communication and the manifesto Communication - entity - thought, in English).- J.H. Kocman: LOVE, Brno 1972.- Ida Biard: FRENCH WINDOW, Paris 1972-1973.- Bill Vazan: CONTACTS, Montreal 1973. (Besides a photocopy of Cosmic Hieroglyphs, postcards Cosmic Communication and Gordian Knot were published as well as a part of gestual poem Lunar Sign.

[9] Official fine art critic, (even the one which gravitated towards SKC) has of course avoided this exhibition. Three shorter notes were published (in Politika on February 26 and 27 and Ekspres Politika on February 27 1973 entitled Communication. Belgrade Student published on March 13 1973 with a title Reinvestigations a very brutal attack against the exhibition and my creative work on the whole and even the gallery itself because of the exhibition. The attack was signed by pseudonym Ivan Fazetna. It is interesting that Felipe Ehrenberg registered the exhibition, i.e. its catalogue in the English avant-garde journal Contexts No. 5, 1973.[10] Official fine art critic, (even the one which gravitated towards SKC) has of course avoided this exhibition. Three shorter notes were published (in Politika on February 26 and 27 and Ekspres Politika on February 27 1973 entitled Communication. Belgrade Student published on March 13 1973 with a title Reinvestigations a very brutal attack against the exhibition and my creative work on the whole and even the gallery itself because of the exhibition. The attack was signed by pseudonym Ivan Fazetna. It is interesting that Felipe Ehrenberg registered the exhibition, i.e. its catalogue in the English avant-garde journal Contexts No. 5, 1973.

[11] Material from the exhibition and the manifesto Communication - entity - thought itself, translated into English, were published in the following publications (incomplete data):- Clive Robertson: A CONCEPTOGRAPHIC READING OF OUR WORLD THERMOMETER, Calgary 1973. (Two works from the series The Eye and the Manifesto were published. The whole material was shown on Canadian television.)- SIGNIFYING, Kyoto, Japan 1974. (Communication - entity - thought, in English, new improved translation).- ORGON No. 3, Madrid 1977. (The Eye with the text from the catalogue, about the eye, in English and Spanish).-DOC(K)S No. 12, Paris - Ventabren 1978. (Communication - entity - thought, in English).Foreign critics and theoreticians cited and commented on the Manifesto. Klaus Groh cited it and took it as a basis for a debate about Signalism in his essay Miroljub Todorović and Signalism. Based on the statements from this manifesto, in his essay Particulars and Convergence in Signalist Poetic Matteo D'Ambrosio established that Signalism approached conceptual art. (See these texts in the book Signalism in the World, Belgrade 1984.)

[12] Besides these printed postcards I produced by photographic technique 250 copies of a series of eight picture postcards. On these picture postcards there were parts of visual poem Labyrinth (from the book Kiberno 1970), Lunometre, With strawberries I will tell you or robin in the cage, Alphabet, and a visual poem which will later be published in the book Algol (1980), in which all these poems will be published joined to the cycle of permutational poetry Winter snow runs the horse.Visual poems (parts of poems) from the picture postcards were published in the following journals, catalogues and anthologies:- MIX MAGAZINE No. 6, Woleville, Canada 1974.- FUNF OSTERROPPAISCHE KUNSTLER, Institut fur Moderne Kunst, Nurneberg, 1975.- Joseph M. Figueres, Manuel de Seabra: ANTOLOGIA DA POESIA VISUAL EUROPEIA, Lisabon 1977.- DOC(K)S, No.12, Paris - Ventabren 1978.- KALDRON No. 11, Grover City, USA 1980.- INTERSTATE No. 14, Austin 1981.- NEMEZETKOZI, „MAIL ART“ KIALLITAS (catalogue), Budapest 1984.- Andrej Tisma: PRIVATE LIFE (catalogue), Novi Sad 1986.

[13] Jun Muzukami: POST DOCUMENTS, Nagoya 1975. (Emblem of Signalism, Lunometre, Gordian Knot and Signalist manifestation with the text „Fragments on Signalism“ were published). Fernando Millan, Jesus Garcia Sanchez: LA ESCRITURA EN LIBERTAD, Madrid 1975. (Lunometre was published).Besides previous the postcards were published in the following:- MIX MAGAZINE No. 3, Saskatoon, Canada 1973 (Emblem of Signalism and Gordian Knot).- MIX MAGAZINE No. 5, 1974 (Signalist Project Cosmic Communication).- Terry Reid, Gwen Stainton, Geoff Tenant: MASK PRODUCTION, Mildura, Australia 1976. (Signalist manifestation).- Walter Zanini, Julio Plaza: POETICAS VISUAIS, Sao Paulo 1977. (Signalist manifestation).- Romano Peli: MANTUA MAIL, Mantua 1978. (Signalist Project Cosmic Communication).- SPRACHEN JENSEITS VON DICHTUNG, Munster 1979. (Anagrams and Gordian Knot).- VERICALISMO No. 21/22, Catania 1982. (Signalist Project Cosmic Communication).- Julian Kornhauzer: TRAGARZE ZDAN (antologia mlodej poezji serbskiej), Krakow - Wroclaw 1983. (Alphabet together with picture postcards Labyrinth, Winter snow runs the horse and five other visual poems).

[14] In this period I participated in many projects and numerous exhibitions of mail-art in the world. List of these exhibitions together with collective exhibitions of concrete and visual poetry is found in my book Algol, Belgrade 1980 and in the catalogue Mail-Art, Belgrade 1981.

[15] Here are the names of only few authors and book titles: J. H. Kocman: CHROMATOGRAPHIC BOOK, Yutaka Matsuzawa: VANISKINGS (1922 - 1975), Richard Kostelanetz: AD INFINITUM - A FICTION, Bogdanka Poznanović: STELLATA, Endre Tot: EXERCISE, Luciano Ori: LOVE STORY, Robert Filliou: DEBUT ET FIN D'UN LIVRE SANS FIN, Klaus Groh: RELATIVITIES, Ken Friedman: COMPLETITION BY KEN FRIEDMAN, etc.

[16] This Canadian critic would later publish an essay about Signalism and Signalist Documentation Centre in the journal Mexican Art Magazine (October 1982), using the pseudonym Dave Oz. It is interesting that he internationalises my term signalism in this text, i.e. he tries to include mail-art in it. This is not accidental. About seventies David Zack sent me his works (visual poems and drawings), by cordiality of Klaus Groh, with the note that they are signalist works. So Zack was the firs and only author (artist) who joined Serbian (Yugoslav) avant-garde movement Signalism.

[17] Enzo Minarelli analises Communication in the text Poetic of Communication (see the book Signalism in the World p.47).

[18] This French journal, that I have wrote about separately (see Književna reč, July 10 1979), besides visual poetry paid special attention to mail-art. The whole issue of Doc(k)s (December 1978) would be devoted to mail-art, and later, in the next issues, Julien Blaine, its founder and editor in chief, will regularly devote more than tens of pages for publishing mail-art works. Blaine will not stop at this, already in 1979 he will organise a very successful mail-art exhibition Expediteur ... Destinaire Paris, in the Paris gallery „Lara Vinci“. Catalogue of this exhibition is in a fact a box including works of participants, reproduced on postcards. So, each participant received a post card with his work. Among mail-art actions and exhibitions by the end of seventies it is necessary to emphasises and mention Cabaret Voltaire, publication which is edited and published by Steve Hitchcock from San Diego. I participated with several works in two topical issues of this publication MISTAKES & ERRATA (1977) and NEW MUSIC INTERNATIONAL (1978).Spanish avant-garde artist Mata organised successfully presentation of mail-art in Madrid and Segovia in 1978 with the name Black on White. At the same time Judith Hoffberg and Joan Hugo pointed out artist' books in the frame of mail-art by the exhibition Artwords and Bookworks in Los Angeles and later in New York, Indianapolis and New Orleans, in the „museums without walls“, as they say. Ken Friedman and Mike Crane, are most deserving for organising the exhibition Lifhtworks Envelope Show in July 1978 in Ann Arbour, and later in May 1979 in Detroit. The journal Lightworks, sponsor of this exhibition printed a special catalogue with theoretical supplements by Friedman, Crane and Charlion Burch, addresses and selected works of certain participants. Two of my visual poems are published in this catalogue which was itself designed in the form of an elongated mail envelope.

[19] Part of this mail-art material was published in my book Knockdown, Belgrade 1984.

[20] Kornahuzer will express his opinion about mail-art in the section Gestual poetry of the same study: “Iconography of pop-art, related in some extent to visual poetry was replaced by communication sphere of conceputalism which took advantage of all the results and projects, exhibitions, systems for registering the nature (seismic records, encephalograms), instructions, collections of slogans, final prints. Therefore, citing Žmegač, everything that we could at the beginning mark as discovered texts, or everything that imitates them. This includes as well mail-art (communications with different contents sent to persons chosen by the artist), initiated by Japanese Kavara (from New York), who in 1968, informed daily receivers of his postcards and telegrams at what time he wakes up. Signalist manifestation of Todorović is the same kind of communication action. These manifestations are based on presenting a series photocopied envelopes, letters and postcards sent to his address by avant-garde artists from all over the world. Todorović’s „book” named „Fortran”, Belgrade 1972, produced of six white used computer cards in 47 copies can be included in mail-art. Data about the author are on the first card, certain interventions performed by marker are on the following four, and the stamp of the review Signal is on the last card with the authors signature and number of the copy. Fortran was mailed to 47 artists. Artistic material applied by a conceptualist is only a carrier of a priori established idea. This statement is important since most of the conceptualist achievements apply linguistic texts which could point out their natural connection with literature (i.e. poetry. When we have posed a question in this way, we have not made our task easier. In fact, Todorović’s achievement Cosmic Hieroglyphs (series of photocopied articles from Belgrade Politika about the destiny of space ship Pioneer flying towards planet Jupiter), with smaller interventions - underlined text by marker, lines - is nothing but linguistic (completed) text, but first: Todorović is not its author, and second: it is not the text which is important but the manner how it is applied. This, for example, refers as well to Kosuth’s definition exhibited in the gallery. There are no deformed verbal signs here, as in the concrete poetry, but complete texts having a meaning. Still they participate in the action, artistic manifestation, they do not have their ordinary meaning (definition of art, cosmic expedition out of solar system), but mark as well the communication which represents antiaesthetic reaction against conventional art. It seems here that a different articulation of treated texts is in question. Term from the dictionary, fragment of an article as well as authors instruction are transferred in the same way as ready mades from their context (Encyclopaedia, newspapers, preparatory phases for artistic reality.

[21] As mentioned previously, besides long ago deceased writers and leaders, postcards were sent to at that time still living eminent writers: Marko Ristić and Miroslav Krleža. Postcard Communication sent to Marko Ristić with the address Pariska 12, Belgrade returned with a note unknown. Postcard sent to Miroslav Krleža, Zagreb Augusta Šenoe 15, with the stamp THINK ABOUT SIGNALISM, did not return. I suppose that was the only card from this series that was delivered to the receiver.

[22] This issue appeared in book stores only in May.

[23] Right after appearance, Delo with mail-art as an attractive phenomenon of avant-garde art would be reviewed in our papers. Notes were published in Večernje Novosti (May 21 1980), Politika (May 24 1980, with several mail-art contributions) and Prosvetni pregled (May 30 1980). Ranko Igrić and Milorad B. Pavlović made more extensive reviews of the anthology in Oko (July 24 1980) and Omladinske novine (May 24 1980) respectively.

[24] This will be noted as well by Denis Poniž, poet and critic from Slovenia in his review of this book, entitled Signal Art in Književne Novine No. 627 on June 4 1981. “Since the book was printed in silk screen technique, in black colour, some of the most successful projects look like graphics. The new book of this artist has appears unified and its special value is certainly that it is the first book by a Yugoslav author devoted completely to mail-art. “It is interesting that Poniž equalises here mail-art and concrete poetry: “Mail-art is a form of concrete poetry, which the author most frequently created, in the shape of postcards, and sent by mail. “Poniž developed further his attitudes. (See section entitled „Concrete poetry and mail-art“ in his study Concrete Poetry , „Literary Lexicon“, Vol. 23, Državna založba Slovenije, 1984.)

[25] Branko Čegec Booking of Mail consignments, „Oko“ No. 235, 19.03.1981. My polemic texts written on that occasion, see in the book Step za šumindere Belgrade 1984, pp. 7-11.[26] Poet Ivan Jeličić Merlin wrote a most confusing and very superficial review with similar amateur comprehension of mail-art as „private correspondence“, in Revija No. 3, Osijek, Svibanj-Lipanj 1982. In his half illiterate text this reviewer even asks in one moment „what the poet really wanted to say“:“ ... a question arises, what one would like to say, what is the moral, what is wanted to be built, ruined, excluded.“

[27] Timotijević published this text in Omladinske Novine No. 295 (May 23 1981) untitled Đuro javi se, with reproductions of postcards mailed to Đura Jakšić and Vojislav Ilić, and one work from the series Think about Mail-Art.

[28] MAIL ETC, ART: on introduction by Jim Field, in the catalogue Mail etc., Art, Art, p.19, University of Colorado, Boulder 1980.

[29] When dealing with artists' book and Italians it is important to state the following. A complete history of what the Italians name „la poesia visiva“ is given in the extensive catalogue LA POESIA VISIVA (1963 - 1979), Firenza 1980, (editors Gillo Dorfels, Vittorio Fagone, Filiberto Mena, Ermano Migliorini and Luciano Ori). In the catalogue, besides the reproduction of the front page of the anthology Concrete, Visual and Signalist Poetry, “Delo“ No. 3, 1975, p.148, Section „Libri“, numbered 373 it is written: „Miroljub Todorović, THE TOWN, Belgrado 1975, 8.3x18.8 cm pp 10. Esemplare unico.“ I would now like to have look at this artists' book, to see what it was made of and what this Town, that I have completely forgotten, looks like. The book is probably owned by Luciano Ori, since among other mentioned editors I was in contact only with him and Gillo Dorfles.

[30] In the same issue (12) a stamp with the countenance of avant-garde artist Chuk Stake was published as well.

[31] Hubert Kretschmer: What are Artist's Books?, Catalogue LIBRES D'ARTISTA/ARTIST'S BOOKS, „Metronom”, Barcelona 1981, p.25.

[32] Jose Luis Mata: Empiric Manifest, same catalogue pp 28-29.

[33] Guy Schraenen: The Book of an is Artist is a Work of Art., Same, pp. 30-31 (All the texts in the catalogue are printed in Catalan and English).

[34] Guy Bleus would later have a few more projects. On of them was WORLD ART ATLAS 1983 (exhibition and catalogue). My work is reproduced rather poorly in this catalogue, I do not have its photography nor a photocopy. In September 1984, this Belgian artist edited and published Commonpress No. 56. In this issue, besides a very instructive essay about mail-art, he published as well a retrospection of the journal Commonpress (1977-1984),and the works of the participants in the exhibition Aerogrammes, that he organised in meantime. All the works, as Bleus underlines, more than 800 pages in A format, are transferred on four microfilms size 10.5x15 cm (standard size of a postcard) and attached to Commonpress.

[35] One of my works from the series Think about Mail-Art is published in the catalogue. The same work is reproduced as well in the catalogue of my exhibition Mail-Art (Happy New Art Gallery, 1981), and later, somewhat changed and complemented with artistic stamps, in the book Knockdown (1984) on page 98. One of the works from this series was published the same year in the French journal Sphinx No.14/15, Hiver (Winter) 1981, p.21.

[36] Note that this is just a partial description and list since a rigorous selection was done.

[37] See the texts Signalism and Zenitism, „Gradina“, No. 18, 1980 and Signalist Painting, proceedings Signalism Avant-garde Creative Movement, Belgrade 1984.

[38] I would participate a few times in Golden Pen / Zlatno pero (invited) and in 25th October Salon, 1984.

[39] Zoran Markuš, IZBOR '82, catalogue of the exhibition, Art pavillion „Cvjeta Zuzorić“, 1982.

[40] I published a work created especially for the occasion, from stamps THINK ABOUT MAIL-ART, in the catalogue of the first exhibition. Part of the work Signal Art was published in the catalogue of the second one.

[41] Two Artists' Postage Stamps are published in the catalogue.

[42] Already mentioned Canadian artist and critic David Zack is hiding behind this pseudonym. As mentioned previously Zack/Oz is trying, in his text, to expand the term signalism to mail-art on the whole, and it is evident that he considered mail-art as one of the signalist activities. Zack/Oz explains his attitude more explicitly in the text Report about Signalist Action, in which he writes about the work of Lona Spiehelman, known American mail-artist, as signalist activity and about him as a signalist artist.(See Mexican Art Magazine, October 1982).

[43] In reviews of Signal Art exhibition, Zoran Markus (Politika, October 26 1984), Dušan Đokic (Borba, October 26 1984) and Balša Rajčević (Književna reč No. 244, November 1984), among other subjects write separately about mail-art.

[44] I participated in this project with, certainly more recent signalist book FORTRAN. Data concerning biography with notes about exhibitions, photography of the book and its description are on pages 1266-1269 in the catalogue.

[45] In his text Historical Sources of New Creativity („Književna reč“, No. 220, 10. XI 1983 and in NOMADS of BEAUTY) pp. 17-23, Zagreb, 1988) Aleksandar Flaker would note the following: “If avant-garde called today „historical“, although its heritage in different forms still causes resistance whenever public assembly occurs around theatrical or cinematography achievements of its premises, if avant-garde nurtured on one side literature in collage form and on the other „picture poetical“ efforts of visualising verbal texts, then it is evident that we have inherited these intentions of new syncretism which also demands strongly new communication routes outside institutional aesthetic space. When we receive today Lunometre (1969-70) or Cosmic hieroglyphs (1972) on postcards sent by Miroljub Todorović, this must remind us of the times when Oskar Kokoska produced (lithography) and distributed his coloured picture postcards in Wienar Werkstatte (1908), Franc Mark arranged his mail-art for printing, and Kruconih Russian author of „subconscious“ verse published a series of 12 picture postcards painted by brothers Mihail and Ivan Larionov, and Natalija Goncharova.“

[46] Živković is one of the first critics who performed deeper critical aesthetic analysis of the mail-art phenomenon in our culture. According to him: „It was frequently emphasised in literature that mail-art is the art adequate with our moment of civilisation conceptually as well as by means of achievement, and that it marks transfer of art (classical understanding of the word art) into communication media. More complete description of mail-art can be achieved in reference to social circumstances as well as formulation of its basic poetic principles on the basis of concrete creative practise, i.e. analysis of achieved works.(Živan Živković: Mail-art - Art of Communication,, Proceedings of the works of Pedagoška akademija za vaspitače, No. 8, Belgrade, 1984.) Živković will practically demonstrate his attitude by analysing „Unsuccessful Communication“: “Besides different definitions of mail-art, it is not difficult to understand the „Unsuccessful Communication“ as art which is materialised in something different, not only in the act of „institutionalising mail exchange“ as Jean Marc Poinsot said. In the complex of signalist research, mail-art „committed violence“ against audience (receivers), the same way as other forms of art work when pushing back others, but since in the case of Todorović „violence“ failed (receivers do not exist), the total of the poetical action of the „Unsuccessful Communication“ is demonstrated in communication of the author with the Post Office, i.e. poets acceptance of all the rules and constraints of the system (postal) applied, leaving traces (stamps, notes, etc.) as return information on the postcards. From this, twofold conclusion can be drawn: post office is the basic means (transmission) for sending messages in mail-art, but with Todorović, it is something more than that, because it enables appearance of so called unintentional contents, unintentional news on the mail, as official signatures, stamps, notes, time, etc.“ (Živan Živković: More than a Game, in the book Orbits of Signalism, Belgrade 1985, p.24.)

ESTHETICS AND ETHICS OF SIGNALISM

2009-07-30T10:58:00.001-07:00

Slobodan Škerović

All creation is impermanent

Buddha

Esthetics originates from the nature of things. One should not look for it within the effect, within the feelings of pleasant and beautiful, or within the consummation. Esthetics is the expression of the subject’s functionality, it is the image of creative energy which exists in the expressed form. And by the nature of things, energy is the indestructible and eternal, while form is empty as such.

Signalism as movement does have this function to apparently destroy form, aiming and searching for the “new”, and actually, by exposing the change of form, points out to what is always here, independent of the form. The esthetic momentum lies in that act of expressing the force which eternally creates – that’s where all beauty and pleasure come from, all intensity, all joy.

By pinning the look to the buildings of spirit one cannot reach the esthetic. Questioning: how does spirit create – are futile. Search for order within the created only results in false ideology which sees the cause of existence in projection. The analysis of the creation of art may result as a mathematical formula – as an alchemist’s receipt for the “golden mean” – but no one has yet, by applying that formula, ever created a piece of art.

What is nice and pleasant, is wrong to understand as esthetic – esthetic originates from undisturbed action of force, expressed as free movement of perception. As soon as the need for conservation arises, for freezing the seen, for preservation of the image, esthetical moment disappears. Conservatism always has a problem of energy source deficiency. Freedom of movement suddenly becomes orderly movement of the ray of light forever reflected within the given system. This is why conformism appears as the ideal in which the esthetical is traded for the feeling of beautiful, i.e. pleasant.

Exchange of the decorative for the esthetic is frequent – of psychological function for the existential one. While esthetic appears as a gesture of spirit, or a gesture in honor of spirit (as Castaneda would say), the decorative appears as a replacement for spirit, i.e. as a compensation for the absent spirit. Decorativeness puts to sleep, benumbs, while esthetic forces people out in the open, into that realm where the force is the only law – and more than sufficient shelter from all suffering.

Esthetic means perceptual, but knowing that is same as knowing the nature of perception – as emanation of the incomprehensible. How else would it be possible to always listen to the different music, and at the same time enjoying the music? One enjoys the joy at the source, not in the memory of it. Esthetic, i.e. the consciousness of the esthetical, is a sign of fullness, of state in which nothing is missing.

Esthetic is inseparable from ethical, not because these two are interconnected, but because their cause is the same – how can the singing one think evil[1]? Thinking about art, as of esthetic practice, separate from the ethical, opens doors to all kinds of intentions which will inevitably be expressed as self interest – i.e. as its final expression – conformism. The oblivion characteristic for conformism, for false esthetic, is the oblivion of that which is common to all, and so from it originates the fall of human being into alienation. And this relationship of man towards his own self is the expression and the cause of the ultimate immorality.

And while psychology deals with the infinite list of causalities, ascribing the constant refocusing to the effect of one thing upon the other, art does the opposite – it shows that the change of things doesn’t have the cause in itself. Psychology which acknowledges the reality of the manifestations, unavoidably rushes into the conformism, and by doing so into the immorality, because it takes away from man responsibility for his condition, it pronounces causality for the basic principle – human animal, social animal – man-instinct (where instinct is a genetic program), man-member (where man is just a function in society) – and comfort of survival is the highest goal, Platonic “good”, which in history constantly realizes itself as the highest evil – totalitarian system.

And the word comfort itself, which in modern times stands for pleasant, originally means to sooth in distress. Comfort for the one who suffers, but the state of suffering is caused by the loss, and personality which allowed itself to possess what is impermanent, doesn’t have another choice but to suffer. In esthetic experience there is no suffering.

Modern time is the apotheosis of comfort – the age of all-out soothing, therefore the overwhelming presence of the non-esthetic in human lives. While in mythical times the emphasis was on the urge to enrich one, for one’s ascension, by one’s deeds, up into the gods’ spheres, in modern time all effort is directed to bringing down gods into the tangible world, to the switch of thesis, to the creation of the idée-fix of the right to live comfortably. With the appearance of Christianity, the esthetic was dethroned from the list of priorities – instead of the esthetic, the idol of hope was established – a confirmation and enthronement of suffering as human inevitability, and a tiny ray of hope which is just about to asphyxiate in such reality. If from esthetic only hope was left, then actually everything is lost.

Science didn’t contribute much to overcome this disaster, it mostly avoids to face the problem of morality, it hides within the objectivity which is apparently partial. Only art emphasizes this priority and this in all human times, only, it was too often burnt on stake, as in “dark times”, and in this age of “illumination”, it is put away by a more elegant method – it is removed from the “consumer’s basket”. Art is not necessary, the esthetic is understood only to the highly educated people, and this masses are not. Masses need comfort – bread and games.

This struggle between conformism and art does not happen on the field of social classes’ battle. In known totalitarian societies, art was put in social function, but the result of that was not the art. In consumers’ society, the non-artistic, pop-culture, was pronounced as art – but it isn’t that. In the Information age, the very medium of art is pronounced as art itself – but it also isn’t that.

Where, then, survives the esthetic? Wherever there man exists, there exists the esthetic. Where man is deficient, there gapes the emptiness which needs to be filled. Art took the lantern from Diogenes – but the search is just a symbol for something already found. This search goes only in one direction – towards the divine. Both Odysseus and Descartes travel to Ixtlan – but Ixtlan is not a home on Earth.

Signalism clearly relates itself towards the esthetica and, thus, towards the ethical. In Signalism one can clearly distinguish the created from creative nature, but interstellar drive is powered by creative power. There are no dilemmas here – man in Signalism doesn’t appear as a tourist who travels through fantastic archipelagos in search for himself, but he creates those archipelagos with his own movement. The consciousness of this is clearly emphasized in Signalist works – “Verse should not invoke picture, but be picture”[2].

Maybe the best example in world literature for this tandem, esthetic-ethical, is Dante’s Divine Comedy. Dante, who like some tourist travels through various worlds-levels of consciousness, doesn’t only paint the world of human society, but he also especially points out the ethical moment, without which there is no way out of that hell. Esthetic value of Dante’s work goes shoulder to shoulder with his ethical position, and these two moments are clearly represented as originating from the common principle.

It is clear, also with Dante, that hell must be experienced to the last circle, and so in modern Signalism the contents of the work represents exactly the human world overcome by artistic position, i.e. by understanding of that apparition-medium in which man is losing himself (and because of that suffers) if he allows himself to be dissolved in it.

But it is wrong to think that art talks to the uneducated and lost. It can not reach them. Esthetic affects conformism in a destructive way, it rips away from people that for which they so much crave – comfort. Esthetic offers, instead of comfort, genuine joy – but where joy is replaced with comfort – there is no more room for joy. Here we deal with the decision that there is no joy – for joy to reach such a man, one must make a new decision. But how can one who is conditioned make decisions? He can only calculate and manipulate – and here again we have the switch of thesis, mathematics instead of esthetics.

Esthetic cannot overcome conformism. Esthetic is not turned outside of itself – it is a toponym, a boundless refuge. Here is also the realm of ethical, “yourself as others” – the sameness of subject which doesn’t allow differentiation by the formal. Michelangelo versus Michelangelo – an excellent work of pop-culture, the Sistine chapel, versus unfinished sculpture “Slave”. Although history did not hide the mentioned sculpture, it pushed it under the carpet – and pronounced it to be unfinished! This transformation of stone into man is incomparably stronger esthetic experience, which shakes the observer from his foundations, than the Sistine chapel or “David”, which fascinate by their perfectionism rather than by their clear sign of spirit. That force which was given to Michelangelo was not wasted in his interaction with the masses, but in this neglected creation, where dead mass transcends into life. But who will admire the slave, even sculpted by Michelangelo’s hand? That is simply uncomfortable.

The relation of esthetic and non-esthetic is the relation of the abstract and concrete. The abstract can not be concertized, and only the unfinished form, as wasted/non-consumable, finds its place within the concrete, but as rubble, as unneeded thing. This unfinished form is the abstraction. Unusable in the world of false modernity – the art itself.

[1] Serbian saying: :”The one who sings – means no evil.”

[2] I. Bakic and Z. Saric, “With Light Stroll in all Directions”, Beyond the Border of Millennium, FENIKS, Belgrade, 2005, p. 5.

(From the book "Chimera or Borg", Himera ili Borg, Tardis, Belgrade, 2008)

The Demon of Signalism

2009-07-30T10:47:00.000-07:00

Slobodan Škerović

What we are, and what we are not –
Man is a dream of a shadow.
Pindar

In the history of Signalist movement, path finding momentum is exceptionally expressed, and the search itself is about the unknown, the undiscovered, the truth. Great love for the search is apparent, love for the discovering and passing through unimaginable whirls of matter and energy on cosmic scale, while the thing that is being pursued always stays beyond reach, beyond the next step. Of course, this love is not a perpetuum mobile, because the superior force won’t allow endless movement. Although poet’s vision is all encompassing and all penetrating, it can not anticipate the unexpected, i.e. accidental, so all exactness and perceptivity which are being chaotically stirred or orderly set, stops when the realization pops out of nowhere, and the cosmos towards which the poet was unstoppably rushing now translates into the state of departure, and then poet stays here, together with the truth which so suddenly barged in and refusing to leave.

All stops at the sound of silence. Signal – the step beyond, the thing that saves the man from bad infinity of the unknown, because the number of unknown things is infinitesimal – one thing leans and connects with the other – this step beyond overcomes the movement, and so the Signalist movement itself becomes Signalism, “the one which stands where it is”, like the focus of Universe, like the axis around which there is nothing left unseen.

This kind of horizon is a conquered experience, and as such it overcomes the wish for searching – it discovers things and world around us, it discovers the connection between man and world. On that position poet himself doubts his own wish, and only then it becomes clear to him that this immeasurable wish was something more, something given from the very beginning – the power of faith which enables the contact with the unknowable, a step beyond the visible, the exact, the objective.

Signalist method itself, in accordance with the essence of signal[1], is a method of maintaining the tension between truth and lie, it is the force which will not allow that what falsely presents itself prevails and imprisons man into the dungeons of delusions, into the suffering of tolerating the inevitable decomposition of reality and final death – because death of matter, entropy, exists where there is no force, where the energy is exhausted. This method, used by the genius, is radically different from the manipulation method which is used by the authors whose goals are, also radically, different, whose purpose is not touching the truth.

If the Signalist method is – the method of force, then this other method is – the method of matter manipulation, which does not succeed in blowing life into the dead matter. Good example is the one from Borges, the absurd leap from the wall-maze into the maze of desert’s infinity, into the aporia – so the method of force overcomes desert, creating the world in every succeeding moment – new world, and doesn’t leave to the poet time enough to get lost in it. But Borges was a bad example to many – to the imitators of this inspired postmodern writer, who mistook his style for method, so instead of the force, the contents, and even the very means of story telling, got the primary importance. Drowned into its own contents, the postmodern eternally expires and is reborn into the helium circle of imprisoned energy.

In science Signalism is known as “Maxwell’s Demon”. This demon turns around the eternal aspiration of system to fall into lethargy, to freeze, to stop everything, and not to find the way out. By installing the order, so it is said, the entropy overcame. But, can the “installation of order” be understood as if it had the foundation within the matter it brings to order? Is the matter bringing itself to order?

In Signalism the order is the arbitrariness in relation to the perceptual – perceptual input are those which are being ordered, this is how they are experienced. What we see was ordered by the eye, what we know, was ordered by the spirit. Life did not come from the order of matter. Order in Signalism is exactly the action of the mentioned demon – the creation.

In religion, which sprung out directly from philosophy, priests get “ordered” – they are brought to order by extraction from the world, by becoming monks, by becoming the single essence. Those who know, don’t rush to the world any more, the world rushes to them. Such is also the Signalist method. The creator emanates, not just light, but the whole cosmos, which returns to him as his own perception. By exploring that perception one doesn’t go away from himself – such fall is impossible. This is the faith of Signalism.

In Signalism there is no making up things – that is the specialty of bad postmodernists. Imagine that, put yourself into that, swallow that, swallow yourself in that – this is how bad writers write. If a man who begins the step touches the ground with his foot again – that is bad poetry. Like cartoon movie – good poetry manipulates the impossible making from it ordered reality, perfect home for free spirit. But creation in poetry is not making up things – when one makes up, between the made up things there is no tension at all, there is no current which carries the reader, but debris is being thrown upon him, like earth on the dead man. In creative method the force is dominating, she is the one who carries, and what is seen is the matter by which and through which one passes without any resistance.

Signalism gave birth to visual poetry – poetry in which words and language syntax are replaced by visual syntax of signs, meta-words, visual rhythm, leaping movement through ether. Also body movement can be like that. Language itself, in poetry, is more like a whip, like electric shock, rather than just words in a line. Who cares about words? What one cares about is the whipping thing – Heraclites’ whip – about one and only dipping into the river – one and only. The traps of past and future which meet in the now, catch within themselves which would like to come in and out at will, from and into one and same. But in poetry of Signalism water-water does not flow, the one who knows things, does not see himself as a thing. Coming in and out, this is what bad heroes of even worse authors do, water soaks them, fire burns them.

Their reason makes them forget that the description is only a description, and before they realize it, human beings have entrapped the totality of themselves in a vicious circle from which they rarely emerge in their lifetimes.[2]

After facing-off the matter, suddenly, there was facing-off the apeiron[3]. One stood and faced the incomprehensible. Like Oedipus encountering the Sphinx, poet makes a somersault, leaves the world and there he finds the way out. The world is not what it was thought to be, and it is not correct to say “it was not”. But it is not the space in which one lives. What we are, and what we are not – asked the poet – man is a dream of a shadow – he said. All opinions go away, they are being replaced by knowledge.

Apeiron, which can not be revealed to the senses, reveals to the poet, in return, his true condition – the state of freedom. Knowledge opposed to opinions – that is Signalism versus making things up. Playing with the average reader’s intellect, worse than that, the intention to write for an average reader, this fatal sickness of postmodernism, into which literally everyone can be loaded, is motivated not by the creative force, but with small calculation, eternal adding up of units of universal social medium of exchange. But the infinite can not be added up or removed, it evades the calculation, it does not allow the calculation.

Making up man, evolution, falling prostrated in front of the god of progress, and establishment of an endless flow of time towards the beginning and end of human existence, as a buffer which should preserve fragile human being from the mighty blow of the force of truth, functions well only until the Apeiron speaks. When that happens everything crumbles down and the “other death” comes – the life beyond which does not suffer.

Which does not tolerate lies and nonsense, fun and boredom. Which life is not living, but life experienced.

Apeiron is not the other face – of the poet or of the world. The world without it is the world of phantoms, people without it – dreams of a shadow. It speaks with sign: (which) penetrates through all thickness of noise of the seen, heard, thought. When it speaks…

Man either is, or is not – speaks Signalism. If Apeiron loves human being, it loves him too in the anguish of hell, but woe to the one who, in suffering, doesn’t love the Apeiron.

The existential moment of Signalism reflects in the strictly anarchic order which rules among the creators. Tradition? – in Signalism there is no such thing. Which creator leans on tradition? – he leans on the creative force, not on the dusty roads treaded once by some. Relation towards the authority – there is no such thing in Signalism. If the creator bows to another creator, it’s as if he bows to himself, there is no distance, height or submission.

What is non-conventional, is the way out from the vicious circle, giving up the order of reason. Thus the suicide-poet, who once promoted marching only with the left, suddenly marched out with the right, led by the invisible force of Apeiron – and cut short the obsessive life chained into the ideological death. Why would a Signalist mourn him? The purpose of life is truth and it is experienced only in truth. And those who were pinned on crosses by ideology and who were burnt on stakes – they knew that God is pain, and that facing the pain, one such non-conventional thing for the life inspired by conformism – is the step-out which replaces lie for truth.

False non-conventionalism, making up the unusual per se – that is a man who makes his face up in front of a mirror so he would look. And then, self-satisfied, goes out into the world and imagines that others see the same he sees – the beauty itself, the beautified ugliness.

The problem with tradition is that it’s being ordered by conservatives, people who would live in the frozen world. From great authors opuses are picked those works which don’t stand out, Domanović is praised as a great satirical writer, but his works were not published during last sixty years! Because they all stand out. All that was said about Meša Selimović, is nothing compared with only one of his sentences, which directly and without anesthetic tells the truth: he thought that life was choice, not fate, because ordinary man lives as he must, and real man lives as he will: life at which one agrees without resistance is miserable life, and chosen life is freedom … [4] But, thinking itself is not enough, because it can not be the support for a man, from the quoted lines, who drops out from one social system, and immediately falls into another, by supposition, better social system, and which is, again, a system of enforcement, planted from the outside. Faith in society – this is something Signalism gives up. Apeironistically ordered society is an oxymoron – creators live in eternity. That’s why the tradition is important for Signalism as long as reading is critical, ant critical method is exactly the Signalist method: what survives the force, that is eternal. Even before the force of oblivion…

The idea of humanity is as old as humanity itself – not old at all! What is understood by humanity? A mass from which no one stands out? But we know that there are those who stand out. So how much humanity means to them? Here the signal is clear – the force does not exist within the humanity. And the very advancement of humanity is based exclusively on the acts of inspired individuals which radically changed human world by their activity. Humanity didn’t evolve at all – it kept dying in each Signalist! Those are those which were not cut in time, murdered, burnt, who evaded the eye of the great conservative brother, living on the margins of society and avoiding direct confrontation and disclosing of liars. The unmasking of black magic. How many professors Wolland are there who, invisible, live merging with the humankind, but are not like other humans? Which statistics has counted them? Humankind had died out the very hour it was born – genre is nothing. In how many examples lives Mr. Hide? In one and only one example, and he doesn’t make a genre. He is unique. For ordinary people his action is hidden. But of the effects of his actions people read from headlines. Who is that, how he does it? Humanity is a mass of ignorants – but they are not genre, they are breed. Passive beings who are always surprised by truth, and, most of the time, scared.

How a Signalist relates towards humanity, towards human society, ruthlessly, generously, or with contempt? It must be said that a Signalist has no relation towards humanity at all and this is something that might hurt someone, someone who cares that others see him as clever and beautiful. Signalist is inconsiderate towards humanity, but humanity is not at all his subject. Signalist knows better than to posses what the spirit created out of him – whose are the poems, the paintings, whose are the great engineering accomplishments? The author will never say – this is mine. But humanity will boast with it as with it’s own. This was done by our child, those are our progeny!

The basic problem for a creator is always the relation towards the society, i.e. the relation of society towards him – will the society accept what is being created? This false dilemma was deadly for many creative people, whether they were preoccupied with “pure” art or some other kind of art, invention, innovation, etc. The basic mechanism used by society against the creative individual is the existential murder. Since the decision is upon the creator, whether he will continue with his efforts despite everything or not – it turns out that he is committing a suicide, and society will easily wash its hands. So did Matija, an inspired sculptor, die from starvation, and after this sad death, the great grabbing for his work occurred. Pointing a finger at society is like pointing out nothing – no voice will be heard from there, no acceptance of responsibility.

What can a fighting individual do but kill the dragon for himself? – for others that dragon still spits fire and imbues fear into the bones. Signalist emanates, but humanity too must make an effort, to look up! Well, pulling out such an effort from the dead matter equals a miracle.

Reviving dead matter – this is a challenge for a Signalist. It has already been said that creator actually does not pay attention to society, nor is the society it’s subject. The contact between creator and society is possible only in the sphere of art, in that sphere in which the creator is allowed to announce his activity – in special spaces – in the media. For many people going to theatre is like getting through a hospital quarantine – there they will be infected and forced to think! To read a book – which is not just an empty adventure, where the tension is maintained by the simple sequence of problem situations which demand energetic solution – such a book would force one to think critically! To read ant get thoughtful over a poem! To be dissatisfied with bad food and bad culture – and say that aloud! To work for years and not getting paid… The existential fear, whose other name is cowardice, is the realm of human society, and Signalist bewares that dying beast.

I already said and I will repeat: humanity dies in Signalist. Creator is always a winner. The only way to survive, to correctly understand life, not as a change of natural cycles which lead towards natural death, but as a step out from those circles into eternity. This apparent nihilism is incomprehensible for non awakened man – the language itself does not offer true, decent word, but a description – asleep man, man in ignorance – it is easy using social manipulation to mark the creative as devil’s deed and force frightened stupid mass to lynch. The creator doesn’t care – he can be a member of society’s elite, shine like lighthouse, or he can be a hidden genius, dirty and in rags, asleep on an improvised bed made from cardboard boxes.

Signalist finds his relation towards society in interruption. Descartes built a fence and from afar watched society’s evolution, his life in this isolated house he considered provisional. Even more drastic, long before him, Diogenes lived in a barrel, searched for people with lantern in his hand and criticized the king for hiding sun from him. No respect emanates from such behavior. Informal relationship, critical look – that is all society can squeeze out from a Signalist. Just his presence is enough to trigger the activity of a black hole – the same one which exists in the middle of galaxy and sucks in what burning with pride falls apart and finishes itself. Creator does not reflect light, he emanates it. Science drags behind art’s vision – it looks at things in time, as if time were a medium through which one can move. Creativity does not produce history, creator has no time to be occupied by chronology – this is done by those who passively receive emanated signals and put them into their pantries preserving them for the black days. For a poet, black hole is the source of life, for a layman, she is the death of Universe. The death of something sentenced to impermanence, to change. Layman mourns the life, therefore this dark heart of galaxy is associated with the dead man’s pit.

But, things are not like that. Space in which “space” gets interrupted – and space is just a possibility in which one exists by means of movement – the charge which appears anywhere, and not where the interruption occurred – as a black hole. The potential of black hole, this is anticipated by scientists, but even more than them writers of science and speculative fiction – appears, just like that, anywhere. Interstellar voyages – this dream of the laymen humankind – will never be possible by the action-reaction laws within a system with defined quantity of energy. Voyage into new space, only that is possible – and movement within the old one is more in vain that Sisyphus’s work. Creation – always new space in which time does not flow, because it is always new. Admirers of the god of statistics can not comprehend this. They will twist, deform space, stretch it like a bubble gum, but will never accept that it can be canceled.

Signalism in art always opens these black holes, interrupts the chronology of language, and the same happens in regards to the society. Artistic method is a sequence of the created, but new thing does not simply shade the previous one, it does not push it into the more distant perspective, the book is read from any word, this is how we listen to music, body is in action every moment. Artist will do everything to break the convention, to show that causality does not exist in existence – what an absurd! – for many the existence is exactly that, the sequence of registered actions, family trees, social tradition, the history of ideas, piling up the furniture. What is looked for is the active principle which endures in time, responsibility is transferred to children and heirs, people die but their visions still live, etc. Is there more dangerous philosophy than this anti-intelligence?

One black hole cancels everything. She does not allow time to win, she does not allow space to spread endlessly. And that light, which has no mass, dives into the star abyss. Scientists search for the absolutely empty spaces led by the idea of space without mass – well, such space is exactly there where there is no movement, but unfortunately, there is also no courage to peek into that truth. The search goes on into the opposite direction and photon is the frontier which has been reached. The frontier which is breaking down. Is there anything more desperate than humanity which flies on light? It will not get far. At the end of the knowable world there is a black hole. Because it is incomprehensible for human mind that “photon without mass” is affected by force of gravity. For some scientists the “fifth”, creative force, is still the big mystery.

The principle of appearance, or maybe it is better to say – of speaking up – is the principle of movement inside the meta-space of Signalism. Whenever or anywhere, in every moment, stepping out is possible. This existential freedom is the end of society. This medium of noise dies in silence, from silence. Spectacular vision of noisy beginning of the Universe and paranoid fear of silencing down, of entropic death – the space between these two actively supposed and opposed ends, maximally stretched into billions of years, is the space of social existence, and this space of human existence is, for safety reasons, reduced to one relativistic nanosecond. And even there cosmic occurrences happen which can not be explained as sprung out of the observed order. How to interpret verse: all in front of the abyss of novelty [5]? Like death sentence to law and order. What is this step out into the novelty, what does it physically represent? – it is both sensual and exact step out into the new world. In reflection things can be observed as lining up, but the cause can not be seen in it – the emanating body. Novelty was not caused by staleness. Only the “masters” of dialectics could prove something like this.

So, art is long living and life is short… To reach the eternity while still alive, and not leave that accomplishment for the future generations, which will maybe be destroyed by some comet or horrible volcano eruption – really, is there a bigger cowardice from this giving up the eternity now? What is that which prevents man to clench his teeth and get rid of his damned mortality? What kind of shock should a Signalist shoot at his asleep siblings and direct them towards the unknowable? Is there, at all, a reason to be worried? Wise men say this – it is up to God. God who interrupts man’s steps, God who animates human body – but, where is here human freedom? – again the false dilemma jumps into defense of stupidity.

It is true. Decisions are not made by us. They are in eternity, we just rub our eyes to see them, we clean our ears to hear them, we shake off the dirt from ourselves so we can touch them. Shall we agree to that truth, it is our freedom, and then, it becomes clear that there was never really a choice. The sign was always here, it wasn’t running anywhere, it wasn’t hiding behind anything.

A warrior thinks of his death when things become unclear. The idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit. [6]

[1] Signal – is not the same as designation which someone attaches to some thing, it represents an announcement of something alive, existential.

[2] Carlos Castaneda, The Wheel of Time (Tales of Power), LA Eidolona Press, Los Angeles, California, 1998, pp. 136.

[3] Greek infinity, the first principle from which all emerges and goes back, term introduced by Anaximander.

[4] Meša Selimović, Circle, BIGZ, Belgrade, 1983, pp. 8.

[5] Miroljub Todorović, Poetics of obstacles, Prosveta, Belgrade, 2003, pp. 139.

[6] C. Castaneda, The Wheel of Time, (Separate Reality), pp. 39.

(Savremenik - Signalizam" nr. 146-147-148 / 2007)

(From the book "Chimera or Borg", Himera ili Borg, Tardis, Belgrade, 2008)

Teleology of Modern and Signalist prose: Departure from Reading into Creativity

2009-07-30T10:45:00.001-07:00

Slobodan Škerović

Second life – new temptation for classic narrative form – novel. Second life! The adventures of a virtual hero, of which will read – who? Virtual reader, avatar, yours, mine?

Cyber age brings with itself new artistic forms, new life forms. Ever since William Gibson, who reshaped science fiction into cyber-punk of the eighties-and-so-on, later more and more saturated with yapism and status defined, symbolical paroxysm of fragile darkers’ personalities in their uncertain squash-lives, until the growing of advertisement spots into full featured movies of the Matrix kind, and finally into the new involvement of philosophy into art by means of creating cyber-metaphors – exactly as was precognited by Phillip K. Dick – where digitalized essence of phenomena impulsively overcomes stressed, extinguishing physiological form of life.

Exchangeable reality, interpolated time, multiplied prints of personality on the virtual background of Darwinist pre-world. And the ambition of Signalism is above all to use all available elementary modes of articulation and prevent procreation of emotional-ideological discourse of reactionary quasi-traditionalist forces which look for their support inside too fast a change of fashionable communicant-receptor’s authenticity expressions, and so creating a monopoly over usage of “actual” phrases.

This kind of communicant-receptor i.e. NPC (Non Player Character), is actually being produced by postmodernist novel sprung out from the inertia of superficial, aggressive sensationalism of technological development tide. The position towards the science as is characteristic for consumers-information conglomerate is radically opposed to that of the Signalism; for the former, science is a resource from which the comfort of renewing identity is being extracted, and for the latter, Signalism understands science as a tool for redefinition (by means of recalibration) of simplified world elements, and by doing so, for opening new dimensions of life experience articulation.

The difference is essential. In the first case identity is being sold to the subject, and in the second, subject realizes its identity on the abstract level, as a Gnostic principle of mastering the media.

Virtual reality, and lets not forget that any reality is virtual – but this virtual reality for a change, as a new form, is probably best described in Philip K. Dick’s novel Ubik. Transition from real reality into second life is unnoticeable. Reader must go back and carefully read again in hope to detect the moment when Joe Chip dies and transfers into his afterlifedeath, virtual existence. Good luck reader!

Such a plot is attractive to both artists and philosophers – and to both of them: seriously. What if this real life of ours is no more but some… dream of a butterfly? This theme is completely unacceptable for traditional novel, since it is – fiction. But what if fiction turns out to be something real – as much of it moved from science fiction into reality by now – what will happen to traditional novel which places fictional heroes into the real world? Will traditional novel at one moment become fiction itself?[1]

What if fictional man from the novel is just a dreamer of a character which dreams the writer? And such a fictive personality reshapes the world in which writer exists, and finally from virtual space spills on us torrent of our creators who will, dead cool, at the end of working time turn us off and go to sleep, without even saving us?

In one of Roger Zelazny’s novels (This Immortal, 1966) mythical world of ancient age overcomes worn out reality. Chimeras and Nemean lions, gryphons and medusas, come to life again. It would not be such a miracle, aren’t we witnesses that our own multi-mythology dives on us from each and every pixel of monitors and TV screens, from each letter of printed text. Isn’t the whole comprehensible corpus of humanity’s virtual subject exactly a mythological space in which legends have magical, fatal power?

Who creates myths, he creates reality.

But which myth is our reality? Or, which reality – is our myth?

State of the art literature, and so Signalist, has critical attitude towards reality – that is the basic condition of artistic approach, condition which allows seeing phenomena through to its root, origin, not just as an apparent form. In Zvonko Saric novel Soul catcher, reality is seen as physiology of man mixed with his digitalized extension. While functionality of society retains all of its characteristics it had in the past, only the media of projection has changed. What suffers is material, the essence remains the same. So what is this essence to which art, Signalism, comes by analyzing the input of “reality” through the main character – a man who suffers it?

It is the myth of human society, myth of distribution of roles, myth of distribution of energy, of the resources’ manipulation – and realization of that myth is not just in definition of separate functions which redirect energy, but also in immersion of personality into that projection. Usually the main character is the one who until the end bears the struggle for preservation of his identity, his independence, but the very plot deprives him of it; main character has already lost his identity in interaction with the world, the only question is, since the conflict already exists, who will be the winner, who will be destroyed – or the final fusion will occur in which subject loses the “outside” which moves it.

World is the assigned enemy – the basic theme of myth. Anima or animus, spring out sometimes as aid, and the enemy is monstrously faceless, and often impersonated into an official of the social/religious/ideological system. And that is the human world, the human system. Nature, as enemy, can never posses its own purpose. Only humans, with their will, set purposes, and into the means to achieve those purposes they include other human beings.

In writings of Ilija Bakic experiment is an obvious thing, reduction of reality of existence onto simple elements of perception. With him the loss of language is the effect of fatigue and fall into oblivion. This is exactly the opposite to the poetical practice, in which the language is forced until it falls apart in its ripeness, while the unspeakable meaning is announced between words, as the strength of flow and emphasized rhythm. With Bakic, and it is similar with other authors mentioned in this treatise, reduction of language is part of general demutation. The sources of activity in environment are fewer, the being-perception, which lost its ability to produce impressions, i.e. the world, is made passive because it now reacts only to few inputs, which change with more or less regularity. This experiment is especially elaborated in Bakic’s stories published in his recent collection The Autumn of the Collectors, and it culminates in his novels Prenatal life, New Babylon (prosa brutalis) and Ice. In the novel Ice, which is written in fusion of three languages, main characters are not any more capable of distinguishing different fields of reality: human simulacrum, natural sensitivity, chemically induced perception, dreams, the world of hibernated brains. And acting of this novel’s characters itself unveils on all these levels simultaneously, and their comprehension of such realized reality is slow, inadequate, dim. The whole existence is reduced to energy death of Hegelian history of humanity – all the force of the Information age results in an, until now, unknown or unacknowledged phenomena – de-evolution.

One of the basic characteristics of Signalist novel is poetical wake, the wake – poetry is in essence the guardian of the creative method, it produces word, but this word does not depart from it, not into emotional or ideological systems in which one’s own origin is being forgotten. In prose writing is essential that poetry is used as light which permeates the matter of speech, which comes alive. Boring listing – that is the worst thing. Living prose is inventive in each sentence, and it owes that to the poetry. So is apeironic marrow the basic characteristic of Signalist novel, because in it story is not the purpose, but it is used as a string of an instrument to emphasize the strain of the relationship between existence and being. [2]

In Ubik reality “thins”, the source of energy which sustains it collapses, brings it down and turns it into a dream which parameters change as it is observed, so the subjects of novel must improvise and create the world ever anew in which they barely survive as such, and not to mention to fight each other. One and only element in this Dick’s masterpiece does not suffer from entropy – Ubik, “safe, when taken as directed”.

What in Ubik appears as different from typical is that dues ex machine does not any more function in an usual way. God from the machine doesn’t make the hero immortal anymore, so the strafes or whole wars miss him, or catastrophes. Here the hero dies/dies-not, and on the first place by importance appears existential focus, an attempt to define the subject outside the life-death as the circle of demarcation. In classical myth this theme is lightly touched by usual trip into the realm of the dead, but now these two worlds are in constant connection, they merged into one.

Death is a motive, the motivator of life and life which is already dead has no motivation anymore. This is why in novels The Soul Catcher and Ice we have another kind of motivation: the very material of novel is a tool in author’s hands which aims and acts in subconsciousness, because historically observed, this variety was not appropriately addressed in literary tradition. If for the world one alternative is chosen, and make it an active alternative, which changes all the time and becomes, at least partly, a source of action, that conditions the appearance of a character which, as opposed to classical novel character, also changes, changes its direction, loses and gains traits, while death has been eliminated as the ultimate limit – then reader is also pulled into the machine and he too must deal with external changes, changing his own perception and the ability to anticipate.

If things are observed in this manner, it becomes clear that novel always played the role of confirming the existing systems, systems in becoming, fortifying, decomposition. Through literary production we can quite reliably understand the world in which we live and see the road on which that world moves. And in the age of cybernetics and information, the interaction between the world and man translates man into a different code – exactly at the moment human genome has been decoded the possibility of recoding it is being opened as well as possibility to translate it into different metric systems: nano-physical/chemical or digital form of existence.

The appearance of real alternative simulacrums pushed to the front line one earlier rarely used method of exposition, much more characteristic for music – the fugue. It is not unusual for fugue to appear in experimental poetry or prose, fugue is only conditionally possible in language because of the linear nature of the latter, as opposed to music or visual arts, where simultaneous sequences are possible. But what fugue was in psychedelic or speculative fiction, now gains new matter, gains mass, because the reality of cyber-reality in great measure comes to the bursts of information packages injected into consciousness with intention to just later (or never) get together in adequate wholes, systems of meaning and coherent contents.

In the latest movies production is this “information showering” best observed (lets keep in mind that it all begun with the appearance of TV commercials and video-spots). Information which reach us from movie screen build choreographic scenes which projections in time are very short, and because of the effort necessary to put those images together in the brains of spectators, the story itself, the action of the movie is totally abortive and turned into an unintelligible fiction. The effect, the impression, is what is today the most interesting in movies’ and other, especially visual, arts. Why?

The effect is a blow and it can only have strength if it is unexpected, unexplained at the moment of reception. The effect of such blow is the excitement (thrill), and that excitement is what is fun – the basic reason for going to the theatre, or entertainment as such – the reduction of need for having fun to a process which mostly reminds of a speedy prickling of tattoo needle, where the contents of a show is just a decorative moment. In such a “revival” of the most contemporary art any need for deeper contents, which demands contemplation, is absolutely eliminated.

The same burst method can be also used in literary media. Fugue is a sign of intelligence – without it there is really no story. Simple insertion of one sentence into another is already a fugue. But deformation of syntax, adding surplus meaning onto one word, enabling various logical outcomes, or even usage of several cognitive systems within one text, will build fugue which will alone start to produce an independent virtual world in which, and only then, the author may start to really test his creative ability.

To read a book, one must believe in what he reads. It is not the question whether one can believe in fantasy – people read fantasy as all other genres. What this is really about is whether the supposed reality contains enough energy to produce the effect – so we believe in what is being told us, because it really exists. This tautology exists only in the relation “me – other”. The reader identifies himself with the “other”, lives with it and through it – that is the definition of reality. That’s why fantasy is reality. But reality is something through which one passes, and when it is passed, seen through in totality, it is spent. The first sign of a reality’s weariness is its fatigue, reduction and inability to recreate. The reality of humanity, or simply human being, lies in the fact that worn out forms stack as history, and history as such will continue to be the reality only to the moment it has been thoroughly seen. Now is the task of literature to leave behind the seen through history and to transfuse its experience of understanding reality into a “new reality” – as the method of understanding reality itself which brings the pure intensity to the place of object, but also to the place of “rediscovered” subject. From the position of this intensity any form is possible, it shapes not only perception of the “other” but also of the subject which perceives it.

Now the subject is the one who crossed the limit of the speed of light, relativity has been seen as such and we have arrived at the general theory of relativity – which is a departure from the human form. Science fiction, which in great measure searched the answers to purely existential questions, on the individual and humanity level – is now dead. Not because it exhausted its source of energy, but because it transfused into reality, it conquered science and social theory, it stopped being fiction. Science still needs to confirm that subject left from the event horizon. But in art this has already happened. It has to happen. The end of childhood.

What means for realization of this happening offers Signalism?

In one part of social theory (say with Baudrillard) the symbolism of death has been explained. In novels from Zelazny, Herbert, Pohl, and many other authors, the possibility of man’s immortality is being explored. In most cases, this immortality is seen as a continued existence through centuries and millennia. There are many ways to make this “dream” come true: change of human shape, metabolism control, “moving” consciousness or soul into cyber-space, android bodies, etc. But the importance of the moment of insight into the essence of existence is also not overseen, as it removes the very existence from time-space continuum. What confuses the most is the identification of personal-historical contents with the individual which wants to live forever; that way the subject is limited to one line of existence without possibility to be “something else” – a lasting monument is being built which endures by constantly enlarging its mass – that is some kind of endless statistical existence.

Traditional literature follows exactly those steps. It idealizes one model of emotional and ethical being which survives as subject for centuries, while human specimens dress in it, last for a while and then leave this world with no serious consequences for the clothes. Here death is not symbolical, it is natural, justified by the model of existence, in the end properly mourned. Here it is about a symbolical exchange of life, not death.

And that mourning of death, seeing death as nonexistence, marks the spot on which Signalism finds another solution, the point in which Signalism irrevocably separates from “traditionalism”.

Death is not bad. What if death is not bad? To what extent such a view affects the idea of reality? What if the main character dies – why in such case everything becomes pointless? What is it that dies? Where did the active principle go?

In action novel hero is the one who suffers. Novel needs suffering. Life needs suffering, someone who strives to survive. Wild bunch needs victims, wolves need sheep. The whole world’s order goes down if no one is left to suffer – and salvation from suffering is death. That’s why death is cursed, denounced, banned. And death was smuggled into literature as the antithesis of good. Presumably, death is the source of suffering. We cry when someone dies. Someone’s departure leaves behind the vacuum, and that vacuum pulls us, tears us, moves us.

But, lets see now what happens in Bakic’s novel New Babylon. His hero is placed into a completed, closed world. It is not simply a world from which one cannot leave, it is a world which retrieves everything behind its limits into itself. All that one could possibly reach by leaving this enchanted city, already exists in that Babylon. There is no need to go anywhere, to aim for something, to plan. One should simply live, do what can be done, and so carry on. Death is always possible, there is nothing tragic in it, sometimes it is fun, maybe salvation is in it. This is still not known, but there is no strain, there is no unnecessary suffering.

All the might of this world forces man to suffer to get some food and other basic things. This isn’t about anything else. All is directed to this, to force man to suffer. Everybody is doing that to themselves and to others. And that is the reality – this reality from Bakic’s book really is the reality. For someone it is harder, for someone easier, but that’s how it is.

It is that curse from the Book, the expulsion from Eden, at the very beginning of the story of man. And that has been man’s reality since ever.

And from that enchanted circle there is really no way out, unless we start asking about death. I already see everyone bristle – no! not death! Better to suffer, not die. That’s better. Surely better. Must be better. Isn’t this the best of all possible worlds?

Until now, in my opinion, literature didn’t do its best. Past pollutes present. Present pollutes future. Maybe the outcome is in nano-poetry? Intelligence is under attack. Truth is death – that’s why fear of truth. False dilemmas develop, theories being patched. Calumniating. Like death.

But death can not be un-thought. If death would only run away from thought – but thought cannot touch it… It only produces it.

And so Bogislav Markovic writes a novel on death, that is Shadow, which is a description of the world. Life mixed with death, and is the opposite possible at all? Isn’t will for life – will for death?[3]

Deconstruction of life is language. Deconstruction of language – return to the source. But, let’s not get obsessed with purity. Purity is a clearing, empty, morbid. Production of deconstructed language seems like pulse, and that pulse prevails. What’s awaiting reader there? In deconstruction story is evasive, the subject of deconstructed story is indifferent towards the contents, his only problem is that he must talk. That story is rhythm, a carrier-wave and it, like Tesla’s resonance, deconstructs the reader.

De-protocolizing of language unveils on the level of existence – which means in action without motivation. In novel Shadow, Bogislav Markovic, by means of glorious fugue, describes such existence. Life is like a rag, a patchwork of dreams. The hero persistently tries to realize life, to connect perception, memories, feelings, wishes. But in death everything is apart – life in death is a consciousness deprived of consistency. And the world of inconsistence is a powerless world. The force is in subject, but it does not find its match in being. Corporeality is not the answer, it is always wrong, it always develops into outburst. The main character himself is not consistent, he appears in several forms, with many names, with many histories. He tries, from several points of departure, to encompass singularity, the wholeness of existence. But the world, life, like matter after Big Bang, goes away irreversibly. Returning into moments is distancing from the impulse by means of misinterpretation. The impulse-mover, does not move itself in order to depart from itself, to double. This doubling, typical for perception, is atypical for singularity of the subject. Subject must stay with itself, that’s why its experience of the world is decomposition – what is not subject, by force of subject – decomposes.

If the world is what is wanted, than it is wanted as destruction. God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah. Prophets curse human habits. Artists tear apart conventions. Love for the world is murder, betrayal, exchange of self for a handful of silver coins. Self preservation instinct is a delusion, it is the intent to destroy. Artist sees this huge map of parts, scrapes, which are moved by an invisible magnet, shaping inconceivable figures. That force which attracts – the attractor – relates to life as temptation. Life suffers incredibly from that relationship. It resists confluence with the inconceivable center and builds its zigzagging path by means of little icons thrown about into the past or the future – into the only thing in life that smells of poetry: a desperate sentimentality of seeing itself within the impressions. But the story of life is the story of movement within the memories room. Life is never now, in the unrealized. That which is death, this now, is ostracized from life. Because death refuses to fall apart.

Characteristics of life is that it is already – passed; that is why Markovic positions himself in death. Desperateness of life is reflected in an attempt to deny that. Continuity… Exactly what doesn’t exist in Ubik, in Shadow, and in Bakic’s stories it does exist, but in such a way that it would be better it didn’t – repeating of “familiar” which is the confirmation of “existence”. Mirroring. And this very continuity is the main target to blow in Signalist prose – which means, the very life is the target.

And now, a step further… behind the mirror, into the calumniated.

Signalist novel must clearly establish the opposition of the consciousness of the efficient and the consciousness of the ethical. Consciousness of the efficient establishes as its purpose the execution of protocol. In action novel the dominant element is the scheme, scheme is what needs to be made “alive”. Hero only lives if he follows the preconceived path. This is typical for postmodern production, that form which consumes the reality is essential. But in existentialist novel things stand differently. Here the efficiency is understood exclusively in the sense of destruction of form, hero doesn’t need superhuman physiological characteristics – hero stands in one place and the only action he undertakes is understanding. By understanding he destroys the world, that’s how he conquers it.

In postmodern novel the ethical is replaced by the “grammar” – the grammar of life, or society, if you wish so. But if the author is above all interested in the letter (like Jim Leftwich, for instance), what kind of prose is the result of such intent? Signalist text is parallel to the innate reality. The difference of these two texts produces tension. Reader, as the suffering subject, is crucified, but only if reading Signalist text. If he reads postmodernist text – then he is being used. What crucifies is the drift of Signalist text which takes the reader onto some other level of existence, from which critical attitude is possible. Reader separates from his Lebensraum and enjoys the opportunity to observe it from a distant point. And this separation is actually the place of ignition of subjectivity. In swimming against the main current, subject uses its own energy for creation of its own “world”.

Speech by letters does not become when there is nothing else left to say by words. It is the same as when letters become mail-art, and now letters speak as a sign of action, and not the language they are written in. Or when gesture replaces words. Signalism does not use symbols, into words, letters or images, it does not imprint meanings. Charge is not injected into form: what happens is the opposite to that, charge is taken away from form and returned there where it belongs – to the subject. From this originates the ethics of Signalism – as opposed to postmodernism as an expression of the consumable reality. Reality of Signalism is cessation of things and affirmation of principle, the apeiron – as Anaximander defined it: as the undissolved in which all the potency of cosmos is contained – the force.

The ethics of Signalism is the implication of apeiron – subject is being saved from usability. Subject is not part of the world, it is not being used so the world could be.

[1] Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism, “In this case the real is added to the picture as a subvention of terror, as a rigor more. It is now not just terrible, but it is also real. The violence of terror is not the first, and the rigor of picture is not added to it, but first comes the picture, and to it is then added the rigor of the real. Something like a fiction more, fiction which overgrows fiction. Ballard (after Borges) talked about reinvention of the real as the ultimate and most terrible fiction.”

[2] Zvonko Saric, “Intermediality is in Signalism and some postulates of Signalist novel”, Signal 22-23-24, Belgrade, pp. 41, “It is easy to understand that contents doesn’t need to have the assumed cultural norms and values, and contents based on Signalist poetics enables writing of Signalist novel. Signalist practice is based on poetics which originates from deeds created from experiments and existence of such Signalist poetics enables an intent to write a Signalist novel.”

[3] Mikailo Bodiroga, Manifesto of Cyanide Art, “Let music die! Let the world shut up! Underground rivers of words are our mighty watering places. Absolute sum of all harmonies gives chaos. Life is for slaves. Cyanide artists will on the day of Final Judgment before God easily bring back to life their image they have been building – Death.”

(From Slobodan Skerovic book CHIMERA OR BORG, Belgrade, 2008)

Quarter of century of Signalism

2009-07-30T10:42:00.000-07:00

Živan Živković

When on the pages of the first issue of Kragujevac journal „Koraci“ („Steps“) for the year 1976 they wrote down the lines of the text whose poetical role had been obviously counted upon much - that being also witnessed by the title „Some Assumptions of Signalism” - Ljubiša Jocić and Miroljub Todorović could already derive almost all of those assumptions from decennial creative practice of signalists. The Assumption under number 15, for example, was formulated entirely as a conclusion drawn out on the basis of available and testable material. That assumption can be simply taken as a literature or literature-historical fact that speaks about something existing, realized:

„Signalism is a complex creative movement. Signalist art is a complex art of new civilization. The complexity of Signalism is noticeable in its jaggedness, openness and non-dogmatism. Signalism is not just a method, and even less so a prescribed way of creation, a school. It is not just a visual or just a computer poetry, nor just a discarding the object and reduction of artistic text to a concept, idea, a reduction of text to a blank whiteness of page, nor just an abolition of language and introduction of sign, gesture and sound as communicative elements. Signalism is also in language, in its continuous research (jargon, slang, phenomenological, technological and other forms of verbal poetry), finding out of new contents and forms and, finally, in permeating of all these mentioned communicative elements.“

During that first decade of existence of Signalism, all was realized that is characteristic of a literary movement - in this case a movement with an avant-garde sign: published were several independent author books, organized several joint exhibitions and actions, published were three signalist manifestos, started was journal „Signal“ as a herald on the basis of which the movement itself would be formed. Before thee features are briefly illustrated, it should be said that in this decade the movement ceased to exist, but the idea and concept of Signalism have not - Signalism would continue to live until our days, transforming and enriching continually some segments of its own poetics, but never renouncing its basic principles, such as experiment, establishment of as close relation to the recipient as possible, ludism, planetary connections of artist and people in general, unity of the World (matter, time, space, energy) and language, etc. Thus, for example, two signalist books by Ljubiša Jocić - the co-author of some assumptions of Signalism, from which we have started in this work - were published, Moonlight in Tetra-pack (1975), whereby this author joined Signalism, and „What is the Time” (1976). The second co-author - the founder of Signalism, Miroljub Todorović, published during this decade several books of poetry (the first was „Plane”, 1965, the least „Fool Puts on Airs”, (1974), then tree signalist manifestos: „Manifesto of Poetical Science” (1968), „Manifesto of Signalism (Regulae Poesis)” 1969 and „Signalism” (1970). In this period he organized three joint exhibitions of signalist artists (Milan, 1971, Zagreb, 1974 and Belgrade, 1975), and exhibits independently several times, on Belgrade, Niš, Novi Sad, Paris. This marks period is also marked by blocks of critical texts about Signalism - these blocks were published in six journals, and from 1990 the number of the blocks doubles. It shows that Signalism becomes an interesting object of research both for foreign and domestic interpreters - literary critics, art historians, fine art historians, artists of various profiles, etc.

After the „Signal“, started in 1970, as an international journal for avant-garde art (the last double-issue 8-9 was edited in January 1973), ceased to be published, the members of its editorial of five in a narrower sense (Dobrivoje Jevtić, Tamara Janković, Vlada Stojiljković, Marina Abramović and Zoran Popović and co-workers of the journal in a broadest sense of the word, continue the artistic work deepening and enriching some of signalist poetical intentions (on global scale impressive is conceptualist and body-artistic activity of Marina Abramović, for example), or the find their own creative ways, without visible links to those traced by Signalism. But, the poetical principles of Signalism, formulated in manifestos as well as in other meta texts by Miroljub Todorović, attract attention also of the artists who had not belonged to the movement. Scientific phase of the movement was complete, or scientific poetry was continued Slobodan Pavićević, for example, (especially with collections „Silicates of Flower”, 1973, and „Magnetic Storms”, 1979) and Slobodan Vukanović (beginning from the collection „Kissbeing”, 1973 to „Spoon-boat”, 1990).

A special impulse for a further study of Signalism was the book of essayistic texts by Miroljub Todorović titled „Signalism” (1979). There many ideas were expressed, or - let us use the already used term „assumptions of Signalism” - exposed in manifestos or in accompanying texts with individual collection. On the other side, with this book an area more has been opened that will be creatively dealt with convincingly by Miroljub Todorović until our days - essayistic prose, funded well theoretically, and often communicated in poetic language, in a concise, fragmentary form. Todorović's fragment on Signalism or on occasion of any fact concerning Signalism, language, poetry, sense of art et sim. represent today an unavoidable reading for all those interested both in Signalism as a movement and concept and the opus of its founder: an ample, multilayered opus, inter medial from its very beginnings.

A greater interest in Signalism as in an authentic avant-garde phenomenon in Serbian poetry after the World War II was announced in the world and in our country by doctoral dissertation of Polish South-slavist Julian Kornhauser, defend at Jagelonian university in Krakow, in the year 1981. Its title is characteristic one – „Signalism - Program of Serbian Experimental Poetry” - and although he had had before himself just for a decade and half created poetry (ie, from Todorović's „Planet”, 1965 to 1980), its author done successfully exceptionally important stylistic research of signalist poetry as „a new and different one” (not only „experimental one” in the context of modern Serbian poetry. Translated on parts, not completely, Kornhauser's theory if published integrally in translation would have to say much more to the present interpreters of Signalism, and also of poetry written at the same time in Europe and in the world. Moreover, with this study the fact would be confirmed definitely that Miroljub Todorović stands at the beginning of the so-called „poetry of change” in Serbian literature.

A new zeal to this poet and to the interpreters that looked forward for the changes entered by him into the current Serbian poetry during seventies and eighties was given by a book of texts by foreign authors prepared by Miodrag Šijaković and published under the name „Signalism in the World” (1984). Signalist artistic practise has been already lasted for two decades, which means that it is monitored and studied in the world. Soon (actually in the same year, published by Cultural Centre of Belgrade) also the book „Signalism - an Avant-garde Creative Movement”, where reports from the symposium on Signalism, held previous year in Belgrade, by literary and art critics, historians, philosophers, publicists, poets etc, appeared. By these discussions the status of Signalism was confirmed as of an authentic and irrefutable avant-garde artistic phenomenon in our country that had inspired or would inspire younger creators for new searches and experiments, no matter whether they would consider themselves to be signalists or not. On the other side, and also in this compilation, the news has been emphasized that had taken place in Signalism, and especially communication established by Miroljub Todorović with artists worldwide.

Beside poetical books he writes continually (let us mention just two from this period: „Algol”, 1980 and „Textum”, 1981), essayistic prosa, diaries written by him and an active cooperation with artists and institutions from Europe and world (and especially with mail artists), Todorović published during the eighth decade two books more that he, simply said, had to write - books of polemics „Stitch for Morons” (1984) and „Cocks from Baylon Square” (1986). In the former he used also slang and entered into its covers - as he said himself in an interview - the texts published by him in several news, especially in Zagreb „Oko“ („Eye“) in 1982. The occasion was Todorović's attack on an exhibition in Modern Art Museum Salon. „Those were polemics within avant-garde itself. I enjoyed sincerely in the fight using, as I have noted in the introductory part of my book all possible gimmicks in destroying literary, artistic and bureaucratic stiff-collars“. For the book „Cocks from Baylon Square” Todorović says that therein he fought with traditionalists, neo-traditionalists and their satellites, various negators and slanderers of Signalism“.

To these two books one more should be added, although it contains texts of another kind - the book „Diary of Avant-garde”, published y Todorović in 1990. It would be, no doubt, after „Signalism”, one more precious source for history of Signalism, especially when some genres differentiated out in the years prior to its publication are concerned (apeironistic poetry, for example). With „Diary of Avant-garde” an octoteuch on Signalism would be completed, originated during its quarter-century long existence in Serbian culture (added this author's book „Orbits of Signalism”, published in 1985), but it does not mean at all that research on Signalist practice has been finished. The incredibly fruitful creative work of Miroljub Todorović and, then, the ample material gathered by him in Signalist Documentary Centre both inspire and oblige to further and poetically even more precise researches, not only of particular artefacts missed by the attention of previous interpreters but also of the genres originated in Signalism.

We will end this partial chronological review of poetical, artistic and, in a broader sense, essayistic creations, originated with a sign of Signalism and avant-garde in Serbian culture after the World War II, with pointing to what has been really introduced as an innovation (and as a value by Signalism into Serbian poetry and art - and in a broader sense of the word - into theoretical thought dealing with both poetry and art. Of course, the genres are in question where perhaps mist completely incarnated a thought about innovation and autochthony, on one hand, and whereby particular creators, headed by their founder, have confirmed belonging to the most creative movement in Serbian poetry and culture in our century, on the other. Since the genres in Signalism have been already written about by the author of this article, the attention will be kept just on the most essential facts in this respect.

The fifteenth of „Some Assumptions of Signalism” by Ljubiša Jocić and Miroljub Todorović, cited at the beginning of this work, is not only an illustrative material for the theses that followed, but can be taken as an expression of the consciousness of the two famous poets about what Signalism is and what it was intended to be reduced to by literary and fine arts critics, in order to describe and explain it „properly“ as a phenomenon, concept, movement (style formation?). In this assumption it is marked clearly that: (a) Signalism can not be identified with (1) visual, as well as with (2) computer poetry or, on the other hand, be understood (b) as a „discarding object and reducing an artistic text to a concept, idea, to a blank emptiness of a page, or, still, just to abolition of language and introducing sign, gesture and sound as communicative elements“. On the other hand, in the same assumption, it is emphasized that Signalism relies on language, on its continual research, i.e. on finding out new contents and form and, finally, on permeation of numerous elements that provide both communication and dialectic relation of those contents and forms. If one always keeps in mind what is spoken about in this assumption, and thereat does not forget the achievements of Miroljub Todorović and his followers either, ie, at least that part of material processed (ordered in theoretical/critical respect) in relation to this movement, he must emphasize that it is more than clear how Signalism has enriched both Serbian poetry and Serbian art (and sciences dealing with it) with new verbal and non-verbal genres.

No doubt that signalist achievements can (must?) be researched from at least two sides (judging to the books by Miroljub Todorović and the critical texts of both domestic and foreign student of Signalism): first of all, as achievements of a movement that has implied both verballyand non-verbally realized works (therefore works that belong both to traditional and new poetical practise), and then, that in this movement a work in language has been accented (sentences from quotation of Lj. Jocić and M. Todorović ended) where right verbal poetical work is emphasized (insisted on in traditional Serbian poetry where it was, moreover, was appreciated highly, but which was - if looked diachronically - not always giving good results.

Signalists did not hide their „Gogolian overcoats“ or roots (first of all and especially the founder of this movement) and right because they new the reaches of historical avant-garde (both in the area of the verbal and that of the visual), they could count on the reception that would await in publics and critics as well as assessing judgements that would come somewhat late, but would be far more just. The poems by the founder of Signalism would be found in the reading for elementary schools even before Signalism acquired legitimacy as a new invention in Serbian literature.

Miroljub Todorović wrote several times about the inspiring heritage of Dadaistic art, and also put Dada itself above Surrealism in speaking about the roots not only of Signalism, but also of artistic movements and phenomenon synchronous to it. (One should keep in mind that among the co-operators was also one of founders of Dadaism - Raul Hausman). The presence of Dadaist „methods“ in Signalism is noticed first of all in non-verbal signalist genres, although by denying word and its meaning, ie by its reduction to one of numerous possible signs for communication, it can be concluded that the ludistics and the experimental were basis of both Dada and our movement.

Visual, gesture and object-poetry, as non-verbal kinds, are certainly not a „pure“ signalist invention, but they have not been taken over as a mere heritage of historical avant-garde either (of Dada or Surrealism, or Zenithism in our country), or, still, South American Concretism and visual poetry developed on Europian soil somewhat before or at the time when Signalism did. These three genres are defined clearly in Signalism and, most important - confirmed creatively. Not only the founder of Signalism but also other co-operators of „Signal“ have achieved high goals in the areas of these genres where word has been abandoned (to which poets will be returning later on - let us rephrase a thought of Oskar Davičo regarding signalist art).

Another area where word is not primary, but has its place, was mail art. The first anthology of this art of remote communication was compiled by Miroljub Todorović in 1980, who thus initiated its rapid development and great popularity in our country. But, he played wittily with its „rules“ and „limitations“ in the project „Unsuccessful Communication”, 1979. Mail art experiences its great development in our linguistic and cultural space somewhat later on: signs of that development are the journal „Total“ started by Nenad Bogdanović, and then „Open World“, started by Dobrica Kamperelić. In the communicative Network, beside Todorović, Kamperelić, Bogdanović, also Jaroslav Supek, Šandor Gogoljak, Andrej Tišma and other, younger creators belonging to the second i.e. third generation of mail artists, have been taking until our days.

Yet, Signalism has achieved its greatest contributions, and at the same time greatest turmoil in Serbian poetry, by kinds of verbal poetry, mainly thanks to poetical works of Miroljub Todorović. The founder of Signalism not only described, but also was writing the texts that belong to the poetical genres where word has been retained and preserved.

Signalism was promoted by scientist poetry and this kind - as it has been already said - had, and still has, its followers (Slobodan Vukanovic). Phenomenological, technological and ready made poetry, come out from Todorović's creative laboratory, were accepted readily in the time when the movement was alive as well as later on (see the mentioned books by Ljubiša Jocić, for instance). In some forms they exist also in the letters of many poets our contemporaries, who do not declare themselves as signalist but often as post-modernists. Yet, stochastic poetry was whereby Todorović has made the most forceful impact on the language of modern Serbian poetry, and along with a subspecies (apeironistic poetry) - with this poetry he was scoring the highest poetical results (see the collections „Textum”, 1981, „Water-snake Drink Rainwater”, 1988, „Vid's Day” (Vidov dan), 1989 etc). The least attention during this period was paid by him to pure computor poetry. He experimented more on by the computer obtained „material“. Permutative (variable) and statistic poetry were the kinds in „inter phases“ of his experiments, and slang poetry, written only by him among signalists, is a unique genre in the corps of Serbian poetry and poetical experience in general. That feat (to write poetry in the hidden, substandard language) is inasmuch greater as Todorović used that „language“ also in writing the shortest poem in the world - in writing haiku.

Stochastic, apeironistic and slang poetry, beside other kinds, marked poetical peaks of Miroljub Todorović and true values granted to Serbian poetry by this poet at the set of this century.

1990.

(Published in International Review for Signalist Research SIGNAL, No. 10, Belgrade, 1995, and in Zivan Zivkovic book From Word to Sign, Belgrade, 1996)

Manifesto of SIGNALISM

2009-07-30T10:39:00.000-07:00

Keiichi Nakamura, Tokyo

シグナリズム宣言我々は宣言する。我々は宣言するということを宣言するのだ。私は今がシグナリズムの時代であると感じている。
カレル・タイゲは１９２３年春にポエティスムというコンセプトを発見した。タイゲは言う、現代のイメージは詩にそって読むことができ、詩は現代のイメージにそって読み解くことが可能であると。でも現代的なイメージとは何か？それは、たとえば現在では信号（シグナル）である。シグナルは現代的イメージを表出できている。信号（シグナル）は現代の強いイメージであるのだ。信号は詩である。我々はシグナリストでなければならない。
２００７年１２月８日
東京にて中村惠一

Manifesto of SIGNALISM

We now feel that we have to declare something. I feel now is the time of SIGNALISM. Karel Teige discovered the concept "POETISM" in the spring of 1923. He said that Modern Image can read along the poem, the poem can read along the Modern Image. What is Modern Image? For example, now it is the Signal. SIGNAL can stand for the Modern Image. So, SIGNAL is a strong image for the Modern. SIGNAL is a poem. We must be SIGNALISTS!

(Published in Project Rastko Signalism, 2008 and in Literary Magazine No. 91-92, Belgrade, 2009)

Signalisme et pansemiotique

2009-07-30T10:38:00.001-07:00

Daniel Daligand

Le signalisme né en Yougoslavie s'est développé, autour de la personnalité de Miroljub Todorovic. Le Manifeste du Signalisme, écrit en 1968, a été publié en 1969. J’en ai eu connaissance en France peu de temps après, dans les années 70 et je découvris alors ce mouvement caractérisé par la découverte de nouvelles possibilités de briser les stéréotypes du langage poétique à partir de modèles mathématiques, à base de statistiques, de combinatoires et de méthodes cybernétiques.

Dans le nouveau Manifeste du Signalisme de 1970 apparaît l'expression de "Poésie séméiologique", une poésie qui explore le visuel, le sonore, le cinétique, la création par ordinateur et la gestuelle.

Par ses objectifs et sa volonté d’objectivité, la démarche de la poésie signaliste s’apparente à celle de la pansémiotique, mais leur convergence ne m’est apparue que récemment.

Le Signalisme est une poésie qui s’affirme hors de la subjectivité, une poésie de la matière et de l’énergie, tout comme la Pansémiotique est une réflexion objective sur la matière et l’énergie cosmique.

Le Signalisme prend en compte l’univers comme une arithmétique dans laquelle le signe est d’abord mathématique avant même d’être signifiant ou esthétique. Le modèle mathématique de la Pansémiotique pour sa part fonctionne sur la base de l’arithmétique, et le signe s’il n’est pas nécessairement mathématique renvoi néanmoins à la structure arithmétique du cosmos.

Dans les deux cas, l’esprit s’affranchit de la pure subjectivité pour se connecter à la structure de l’univers à travers les signes et les phénomènes.

Le signalisme constate que dans l’ère moderne, l’art ne disparaîtra pas mais ses fonctions seront différentes. Échappant à la fonction magico religieuse, par l’utilisation des nouvelles possibilités offertes par la civilisation électronique et le développement technologique, il deviendra un instrument pour la modification de l’esprit humain et l’organisation de nouvelles sensibilités.

L’art pansémiotique qui s’attache à décrypter les signes, à les interpréter, intervient de la même façon en modifiant la perception que l’esprit humain a du cosmos et organise de nouvelles sensibilités. En reliant et en expliquant des phénomènes apparemment sans lien objectif, né du hasard, de simple coïncidences, l’art pansémiotique met en jeu de nouvelles perceptions et de nouvelles sensibilités

Les objectifs de base de la poésie signaliste sont la démystification de la poésie et des poètes, l’acceptation de nouvelles réalités de la civilisation technologique, l’abolition de l’actuel langage poétique comme moyen de manipulation et de mystification. Cela pourra se réaliser par l’utilisation de modèles mathématiques et l’utilisation de symboles (signes) pour la création d’un métalangage universel.

En pénétrant l’essence du langage, le signalisme vise à découvrir la nature même de la poésie, tout comme la pansémiotique, par la désarticulation créative du langage résultant du jeu des mots met en évidence la signification caché permet de découvrir les rouages de la poésie.

La Pansémiotique, par l’analyse et l’utilisation des signes et la formulation d’un modèle arithmétique universel, dévoile la nature même de l’univers et son fonctionnement.

Il y a dans le signalisme comme dans la pansémiotique une volonté d’échapper aux dogmes qui empêchent d’accéder à cette réalité que les signes nous permettent d’entrevoir.

Décembre 2007

(Published in Project Rastko Signalism, 2008 and in Literary Magazine No. 91-92, Belgrade, 2009)

EL SIGNALISMO:

2009-07-30T10:26:00.000-07:00

Clemente Padín

culminando el modernismo poético del siglo XX...

Uno de los mayores aportes de la poesía experimental de los años 60s. del siglo XX fue, sin duda, la puesta al día del material poético con respecto a los nuevos soportes que, día tras día, iba descubriendo la tecnología. Pero no sólo esos incalificables proyectos iban abriendo camino sino que, por sobre todo, iban imponiendo el concepto "experimental" (como se sabe la "empiria" fue la base sobre la que se fundó el modernismo en cualquiera de las áreas del conocimiento humano). En primer lugar atestiguó sobre la precariedad del concepto restricto de
literatura, es decir, la existencia de un único e inmodificable concepto de literatura basado exclusivamente en la semanticidad verbal. En los hechos este concepto deflagra por sí mismo pues, sobre todo en poesía, los elementos paralingüísticos o asemánticos son esenciales a la hora de establecer las significaciones (me refiero a los recursos estilísticos y a estructuras formales tales como la rima, la versificación, el ritmo, etc.

En segundo lugar proponer un concepto de literatura "ampliado" que tenga en cuenta los elementos pansemióticos (Jakobson), es decir, los elementos que operan, no sólo en el lenguaje verbal sino en todos los lenguajes conocidos. No sólo como mera "contraliteratura" transgresiva que la dejara afuera del "canon" sino como entidad fraterna en donde confluyan muchas y peculiares concepciones del arte literario, coexistiendo.

Lo nuevo necesita de nuevos conceptos para ser definido y asumido como "saber de la realidad" en tanto se extrae del "caos" o del "no ser". Esos nuevos conceptos hay que "crearlos", ya que, aunque pre-existen en los objetos integran lo "no conocido hasta ese momento". Las cosas existen socialmente cuando son nombradas, es decir, cuando adquieren un "formato de palabra" que representa aquel correlato objetual descubierto. Por ello el énfasis de la poesía experimental en escudriñar los vericuetos de esa tierra de nadie que bordea el "ser" del "no-ser", el "orden" del "caos", jugando a la filosofía o a la ciencia o a sí misma, intentado ampliar el escenario en donde los valores cobren su segura expresión simbólica (poética) a la luz de su propio tiempo y a la altura del avance tecnológico logrado hasta ese momento.

La aparición de las Ciencias de la Información y la Semiótica han sido fundamentales para establecer estos puntos de vista. Primero: el descubrimiento de la unidad supraestructural
de todos los lenguajes: las mismas leyes, procesos, estructuras, la funcionalidad de los signos, los soportes, la consideración del ruido, etc. Los pequeños matices formales marcan las diferencias entre los diferentes lenguajes. Luego, el establecimiento y necesidad de la actividad experimental a nivel de los lenguajes para examinar sus posibilidades expresivas y su grado de competencia a la hora de conceptuar lo desconocido a nivel poético. Después, en tanto instrumento de conocimiento. Lo que se descubre para uno lo será para los demás: no podemos separar las áreas de la actividad humana en estancos separados, son inter-influyentes. Y, aún, pudiendo constituirse en instrumento de cambio: lo nuevo, lo recién descubierto y nombrado, exige su lugar bajo el sol y suplanta y sepulta lo perimido en los repertorios del saber social provocando cambios irreversibles en todas las áreas del conocimiento, exigiendo nuevas conductas y modificaciones.

Necesariamente, tenemos que valernos de las formas conocidas para explicar las nuevas. Incluso sólo podemos describir los sectores de lo desconocido que limitan con lo conocido, no lo desconocido excesivamente alejado de lo que sabemos. La novela de ciencia-ficción perfecta no existirá nunca pues no podría ser comprendida, a veces será necesario que ondeen cintas de colores para que el viento se perciba, es decir, las señales deberán tener un referente para poder adosarle un designado. Las formas visuales que parece inaugurar Mallarmé siempre han existido en la literatura.

Siempre han existido ancladas en la dimensión visual del lenguaje, no sólo porque la direccionalidad de la escritura antigua hoy día nos parezcan conscientes y deliberadas formas expresivas sino porque, desde temprano, el recurso de la reiteración o redundancia para asegurar la comunicación se ha concretado en esas formas visuales que relevan y refuerzan el sentido de la expresión lingüística. En otras situaciones, muy puntuales, pudieron desarrollar formas propias de expresión herméticas o religiosas. Realmente, Mallarmé inaugura la conjunción de recursos que, hasta ese momento, permanecían separados: las formas visuales que impuso a los textos en "Un Coup de..." asignaban un plus de información imposible de ser trasmitidos verbalmente (mejor dicho, hubiera podido hacerlo pero a condición de llenar páginas y páginas de textos en códigos vigentes, lo que hubiera hecho imposible la poesía).

El predominio de la cultura escrita nos hizo olvidar aquel origen que el Modernismo nos devuelve a través del ingente incremento de la producción volcada al campo de la información. Mallarmé aplica en su libro el modelo periodístico de señalar y resaltar los títulos de las notas en un intento por llamar la atención sobre su índole y su importancia. Así, inaugura el papel primordial del espacio y lo visual en la poesía de los nuevos tiempos, la integración de lo visual a lo verbal en el poema (y, eventualmente, de lo fónico, si el poema fuera leído).

Ninguna esfera o dimensión del lenguaje pudo quedar fuera en esos textos llamados poemas, ni siquiera la escénica o representacional (o performática). Ni siquiera los soportes ya que, por su condición de continuum del área de la expresión, son inseparables a nivel del contenido. Cada nuevo canal suma nuevas posibilidades expresivas y abre el campo para el ingreso de los nuevos tiempos. Ni la más humilde comunicación dejará de teñirse con los atributos de los nuevos soportes, menos la poesía.

De todo esto trata la poesía experimental de Miroljub Todorovic, el pionero yugoslavo de los 60s., creador del Signalismo. Nada mejor que escuchar sus palabras: "El término signalismo deriva del vocablo latino signum -signo-; el signalismo es el conjunto de las poesías experimentales y sus métodos en el marco de una revolución creativa permanente influída, en particular, por la nueva civilización tecnológica, la aplicación cada vez más notoria de la ciencia y de los métodos científicos, sobre todo de las matemáticas en los diversos dominios del hombre y, al mismo tiempo, por la aparición de las computadoras como nuevos instrumentos de creación, inspiradoras y realizadoras de ideas artísticas.

Las poesía experimentales y sus métodos en términos signalistas:

1) Signalismo, primeras nociones
2) Poesía computacional
3) Poesía estatística
4) Poesía aleatotria
5) Poesía científica
6) Poesía signalística cinética
7) Manifestaciones signalistas.

La poesía signalista en sentido estricto excluye la palabra y utiliza la letra como medio esencial de expresión. Al atomizar el lenguaje en sus elementos -las letras- el signalismo trata de liberar una nueva energía del lenguaje hasta el presente indescubierta. Las poesías del signo ya conocidas son el letrismo, la poesía concreta, visual, gráfica y otras.

La poesía signalista se crea con la colaboración de las computadoras eléctricas. Se pueden distinguir varios modos y métodos según el grado y forma de esa elaboración: sin la intervención final del autor, con la itervención del autor, la creación matemática sobre la base del material lingüístico del computador, la creación poética permutativa -introduciendo en la máquina frases enteras o partes-, la poesía computacional visual -letrista- con la introducción de letras en la máquina, etc.

La poesía aleatoria aplicando los métodos de la computadora sobre la materia lingüística no pasible de ser computable. La poesía científica nace en aquellos casos en los que el poeta utiliza algunas partes y elementos de diversos dominios de las ciencias exactas, presentados directamente como un conjunto definido de informaciones científicas al mismo tiempo que estéticas.

La poesía signalista cinética excluye la letra y la palabras como medios de expresión e introduce el signio puro, la mímica, el movimiento, los efectos de luz, los sonidos, los objetos, las superficies coloreadas, etc. y otras manifestaciones estéticas como las que produce la máquina de hacer poesía -Zvezdozor- y las producidas por la máquina de crear poesía -Signatvor- como también los proyectos de objetos signalistas. Las manifestaciones signalistas son todas aquellas manifestaciones comunes o particulares de la poesía signalista."(*)

Al margen de la interesante discusión modernismo - postmodernismo, vanguardia - transvanguardia, lo perentorio, aquí y ahora, es avanzar, es decir, que la humanidad avance hacia mayores y mejores niveles de competencia existencial. De allí lo perentorio de experimentar con las posibilidades de expresión a los efectos de aislar la mejor forma de acuerdo al objeto (real o no): buscando la forma expresiva que asegure la comunicación por adecuación entre referente - referido. Hoy día, cuando muy pocas fuerzas de la humanidad están volcadas al erfeccionamiento de su índole, ningún otro medio podrá ser más eficaz que la poesía a la hora de servirnos a la realidad en bandeja de plata para nuestro deleite o su eventual transformación.

http://www.escaner.cl/escaner59/acorreo.html

(*) Publicado en español en el nro.4 de la revista uruguaya OVUM 10, setiembre 1970, Montevideo, Uruguay. Si usted desea profundizar en el estudio del Signalismo y la poesía experimental, le sugerimos conectarse con su propio creador, Miroljub Todorovic , en inglés.

(Published in International Review for Signalist Research SIGNAL, No. 28-29-30, Belgrade, 2004)

Signal

2009-07-30T10:21:00.001-07:00

Klaus Groh

SIGNAL, ein Wort, ein Begriff, national, international, medial und intermedial. Signale bestimmen unseren Alltag, Signale regeln unser soziales Fotbestehen. Kein Verkehrsfluß würde funktionieren, gäbe es nicht SIGNALE. Gezeichnete als Tafeln, Bilder, Hinweise, Zeichen oder auch als stille Informationen. Es ist halt so, es ist ein Signal. SIGNAL kommt von SIGNUM , das Zeichen. Ein Signal ist ein Zeichen, ein Mal, eine Marke. Signieren und malen meinen das gleiche. Ein Mnesch setzt ein Signal, ein Zeichen, ein Mal um an einem Platz, an einem Erlebnis, an einem Ereihgnis dabeizusein. Sich an einem Ort über ein SIGNAL zu verweigen. Erinnerungsmerkmale, Memories: auch das sind Signale. Signale aus Gegenwart, Vergangenheit und Zukunft. SIGNAL von Miroljub Todovoric, ist ein Zeichen, ein zeichen in der Kunst und in der Literatur. Poetische Male im Medienwald der Kultur. SIGNALE zu Kunst, Literatur und Poesie. SIGNALE sind auch die Werke von Miroljub Todorovic, zitierte Zeichen, ehemalige Signale, gewesene Hinweise und Symbole setzt er neu zusammen. Es wird KUNST. Eine Zitatensammlung aus SIGNALEN wird Kunst und die kann mit ruhigem Gewissen als das HYPERSIGNAL benannt werden. Miroljub setzt Zeichen indem er Zeichennders setzt, Zeichen verändert, Zeichen neu gestaltet aus Collagen, aus collagierten Zeichen. Archetypische Elemente werden individuell gültige Signale. Ein Magazin macht Geschichte. Ein Magazin setzt SIGNALE. Das ist die Kunst von Miroljub Todorovic Tradierte Gestaltungsformen vom CODEX Buch, avantgardistische Inhalte aus kreativem Denkergebnis. KUNST setzt SIGNALE. SIGNAL ist KUNST.

Edewecht, 08.09.1998

(Published in International Review for Signalist Research SIGNAL, No. 19-20, Belgrade, 1999)

Signalismus; mehr als nur Ein-Ismus

2009-07-30T10:19:00.000-07:00

Klaus Groh

Schon längst gibt es den Generationswechsel . Signal ist älter als eine Menschengeneration. 1973 stand auf der Umschlagseite der ZS SIGNAL ein poetisches Werk von mir „SAND!“ und da war ich bereits mitten drin im signalistischen Geschehen. SIGNALISMUS ist mehr als nur !“einfach“ Kunst, oder Literatur oder Poesie oder sogar Soziologie. SIGNALISMUS ist alles zusammen und jedes für sich im Zusammenhang mit dem anderen. Obgleich es etwas ganz neues war, für mich war es nur manifestierte Selbstverständlichkeit. Nur so kann das weite Feld der kreativen Aktivitäten, wenn man sie wirklich ernst nimmt, formuliert, verstanden und praktiziert werden. Miroljub Todorovic ist einen Weg beschritten, der der damaligen Zeit voraus ist und auch noch lange Zeit absolute Avantgarde bleiben wird. Nur so kann und wird es weiter gehen.

Die Welt besteht aus Zeichen, Signalen. Malen, Hinweisen, Symbolen, Blitzen und Momenten,: kurz, treffend, wirksam und weiterweisend.

Wie ein Sammeltrichter kamen vor ca. 30 Jahren aufgeschlossene Künstlerinnen und Künstler über diesen signalistischen Sammelort zusammen. Marina Abramovic, Bogdanka Poznanovic, Walter Focke, Anna Banana, Marek Koniescny und viele andere. Kontinente kamen sich näher, Entfernungen rückten zusammen - es gab noch kein Internet und noch keine e-mail; Die IAC (international artists’ cooperation), das erste Network überhaupt, wurde gegründet , das Mailing-System wurde stärker benutzt und mehr aktiviert denn je. Es entstanden weltweit Knotenpunkte der Kunstkommunikation. Belgrad war immer einer der ersten intensiv kooperierenden Zentren. Signale wurden gesetzt. Etwas Neues wurde geboren. Signalismus per Correos, Mailings; Postale, - die Mail-Art gab es noch nicht, sie war noch in den Kinderschuhen.

Gearbeitet wurde kreativ weltweit. „Nur wer kreativ ist, lebt“ und „try is life“ und „Mail Art not Jail Art“, das waren Slogans, die ihren Sinn nie verfehlten. Sie gelten heute wie je zuvor.

1987 entstand etwas bewegend Spektakuläres. Die BLACK PANEL WORLD FOUNDATION wurde in Edewecht und Hamburg (Deutschland) gegründet. Wieder war Miroljub Todorovic einer der ersten, der eine konstruktive Zusammenarbeit nicht nur versprach, sondern auch praktizierte. Die Idee war, Kunstwerke oder dokumentierte Relikte von Aktionen und Events nach den jeweiligen Ausstellungen auf Mikrofilme zu bannen und als interplanetarische Flaschenpost ins Universum zu schicken, damit sie dort von Findern und Entdeckern fremder Zivilisationen aufgefischt und als irdisches Kulturgut bestaunt werden können.

Alle Ideen und Gedanken um den SIGNALISMUS herum begleiteten nicht nur die jeweiligen NEWS der Kultur, sondern SIGNALISMUS hat ständig und immer aktiv und konstruktiv zum Fortbestand aller Ideen beigetragen.

Die Mail Art , die Correspondence art und fast alle Rand- und Rahmenerscheinungen der Avantgarde finden sich im SIGNALISMUS wieder. Daß die visuelle & konkrete Poesie als fast übergreifende künstlerische Spielform hier auch ihren festen Platz hat, beweisen die vielen Publikationen , die über Miroljub Todorovic und seine Freundesgruppe weltweit publiziert worden sind und ständig publiziert werden.

January 2000

(Published in International Review for Signalist Research SIGNAL, No. 21, Belgrade, 2000)

Three dissertations about Signalism

2009-07-30T10:18:00.001-07:00

The Serbian experimental movement Signalism had the luck that three doctoral dissertations were defended on it.

The first dissertation with the theme SYGNALIZM - PROPOZYCJA SERBSKIEJ POEZJI EKSPERIMENTALNEJ (SIGNALISM - THE PROGRAM OF THE SERBIAN EXPERIMENTAL POETRY) was defended, at the famous Jagiellónski University of Krakow, by Julian, Kornhauser (born 1946), in 1980. The University published the Kornhauser’s thesis as a book in 1981.

Julian Kornhauser, a noted Polish poet, critic and prose writer, is now a professor at the department of Yugoslav studies of Krakow University. In his dissertation he interprets the manifests of Signalism very cleverly, and gives an outstanding. stylistic analysis of all genres (both verbal and visual ones) of signalist poetry.

The Second doctoral dissertation about Signalism was defended by Živan Živković at the Philological Faculty of Belgrade in 1991. His thesis SIGNALISM: GENESIS, POETICS AND ARTISTIC PRACTICE was published in 1994. Živković (1952-1996) is was docent at the department for modern Serbian literature of the Philological Faculty of Belgrade. In his voluminous dissertation (340 pages of great format), this theorist analyzes carefully the genres in Signalism, as well as numerous works by signalist authors (artists). Besides the dissertation he also published two books devoted to this Serbian creative movement: ORBITS OF SIGNALISM (1985) and TESTIMONIES ON AVANT-GARDE (1992), and at soon his book FROM THE WORD TO THE SIGN devoted to a new investigating of Signalism, Visual Poetry and Mail Art will be published by Signal.

In this thematic block of our journal, several prominent Serbian theorists and critics of older and middle generation elucidate the versatile creative person of dr. Živan Živković with a special regard to his dissertation (study) SIGNALISM: GENESIS, POETICS AND ARTISTIC PRACTICE.

The third doctorial dissertation AVANT-GARDE, NEO-AVNT-GARDE AND SIGNALISM was defended by Milivoje Pavlović (born 1947) at the Faculty of Philosophy, Kosovska Mitrovica in 2002. Before this dissertation this author published two books on Signalism: “The World in Signals” (1966) and “The Keys of Signalist Poetics” (1999).

Biserka Rajčić

KORNHAUSER'S STUDY

The study by Julian Kornhauser, a poet, critic and professor of Yugoslav literature of XX century at Jagiellónski University in Krakow, ‘'Signalism. Program of Serbian experimental poetry’’, is a result of several years of study of Serbian avant-garde poetry, especially of its direction Signalism. It has been published as a 47th volume of the edition of Jagiellónski Universuty Habilitation discussions. Kornhauser's study on Signalism consists of three chapters: Convention of Artistic Experiment, Signalism of Miroljub Todorović - Programs and Manifestos and Stylistic Approaches to Signalist Poetry. In the first chapter the author deals with the notion of artistic experiment, kinds of experiments, notion of avant-garde and neo-avant-garde, treating Signalism as an avant-garde, i.e. as a direction originated after the World War II, with the problem of convergence in experimental verse. This chapter is, therefore, a theoretical ascertaining of the problem he deals with in the next chapters. The second and main chapter, dedicated to Miroljub Todorović, follows the development of European avant-garde poetry after the World War II and connections, i.e. similarities and differences of Todorović's signalist poetry with avant-garde directions in the world. Then it gives a cross-section of basic phases of his poetry: Scientism, from Scientism to Signalism, classification and typology of Signalism: phenomenological, stochastic, concrete, visual, computer, kinetic, slang etc. The third chapter is dedicated to a stylistic analysis of signalist poetry according to the types cited, ie verbal and visual aspects of that poetry, on the example of Todorović's poetry as well as that of other Yugoslav poets, linked in different ways to Signalism: Rešin - Tucić, Despotov, Rošulj, Lj. Jocić, V. Radovanović and others.

In short, Kornhauser has dealt primarily with the question of how a new quality of poetry influences a change of mind, and whether there is such an influence at all. For, as we have known, the notion themselves have not changed, but a different "speaking" about them brings new contents in poetry. The awareness of a change of literal material brought about changes in the theory of literature area. The basic preoccupation of that awareness is dealing with action, i.e. with how a work originates. Kornhauser's approach to signalist poetry belongs right to that school, uses its methodology and terminology. It does so very consequently. In that sense his study is the most serious work on the most essential questions of Signalism, a work that could serve to other students of the most recent poetry as an example how an artistic work can be studied in a strictly scientific way.

Dragoljub P. Đurić

DISSERTATION ON SIGNALISM

Živan Živković: Signalism: Genesis, Poetics, and Artistic Practice, “Vuk Karadzic”, Paracin, 1994.

The study of Dr Živan Živković ‘’Signalism: Genesis, Poetics and Artistic Practice’’ is a somewhat summarized version of his doctoral dissertation he defended at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade on April 29. 1991. where he is a lecturer at the department of Serb Literature.

While working on this study, Dr Živković had two significant advantages which in the best sense of the word reflected on the quality of his work, i.e. the level of his scientific approach to Signalism and the truly impressive exhaustive information he has mastered as its author.

The first Živković’s advantage is the result of the fact that, being a literary critic, he was compelled to follow the highly dynamic creative practice of Signalism, which could be marked as continuity of novelty, and which implies continuous changes of creative methods and artistic instruments. Founder of Signalism, Miroljub Todorović alone, published about thirty books of poetry, hardly two among them by applying the same method. This means that a critic must first assess each book of a signalist creator from the point of view of theory of literature, to determine its true determinants and define its aesthetic status, in order to be able to evaluate it as a work of art. Moreover, this cannot be done without a previously determined criterion adapted to the new genre of artistic creation, but this criterion must be narrower, but at the same time a more precise measuring instrument of a general aesthetic criterion. In other words, Dr Živković first had to be a literary theoretician and a scientific interpreter of Signalism, defining its criteria, and only then a literary critic, and as such, a good mediator between the new work of art and the reading public. It should be emphasized that Dr Živković has acted like this for ten long years before he defended his doctoral thesis. Literary theoretical, aesthetic, criteria and critical experience acquired in this way was presented in a large number of reviews, essays, articles and in two absolutely unavoidable books: ‘’Orbits of Signalism’’ (1985), and “Testimonies on Avant-garde” (1992).

Scrupulous as a literary critic, in his text “Anatomy of Anathematizing Avant-garde” (foreword to the book by Miroljub Todorović “Cocks from Bajlon-Square”, Belgrade, 1986) Živković energetically defended Signalism against malevolent, in fact plagiaristic claiming of the achievements of Signalism by the so-called “poetry of change” in Serb literature. In yet another text, more expressive than in the others, ”Mixing Quicksand” (1988), Živković raises his voice in defense of Signalism, against misconception, negligence and misinformation. It refers to a paradox - a text full of praise which, due to ignorance, lack of knowledge and light-mindedness of its author, is harmful because it presents the creative spirit of Signalism in a distorted light. Based on data, incontestable procedure of producing evidence for his arguments, Živković saved Signalism from the “praise”. This is just another instance which shows that Živković in a certain sense acts as a co-creator of Signalism. In fact, that is what enabled him to write about this movement with most directly experienced knowledge, which is by no means a negligible advantage when speaking of avant-garde experimental poetry which he always had a subtle hearing and a reliable eye for.

If Živković has acquired the described advantage solely by his own self-sacrificing diligent work which made him a mature literary critic and scholar, he owes the second advantage greatly to the founder of Signalism Miroljub Todorović, actually the Signalist Documentation Centre in Belgrade, a treasury of comprehensive data on Signalism which was put at Živković’s disposal during his entire writing of this brilliant book. This was a colossal time- saving opportunity for its author, which enabled him to devote the time and energy which would have been necessary for collecting material entirely to writing. It is self-understood that the data and documents from this treasury demanded selection and classification, which Živković made expertly and faultlessly.

As evident from the title of the book – ‘’Signalism: Genesis, Poetics and Artistic Practice’’ - Živković set out to illuminate these three fundamental properties of the movement from the aspect of literary history, literary theory and aesthetics.

The first part of the book is devoted to the issues of genesis and explicit poetics of Signalism. Introductory notes in the first chapter, Genesis of Signalism, is a conditio sine qua non of further studying of the movement: they are introductory, but they are also a strong foundation of this scientific creation. This chapter discusses post-modernism or neo-avant-garde and denial of tradition, among other. The second chapter is actually a very careful determination of demarcation defined by its title: Signalism in Relation to Historic Avant-garde. Here too, Živković is on solid ground of scientifically verified facts. His previous book ‘’Challenges of Avant-garde’’ published in 1986, made him quite familiar with this sphere. The chapter which follows, Appearance and Development of Signalism is devoted, among other, to manifestos of Signalism, their meaning and reflection on the artistic practice of the movement. The journal “Signal” deserved, according to Živković’s assessment, a whole chapter. All nine volumes of this journal which was published for three years, are carefully studied and their significance objectively evaluated. The last chapter of the first part of the book, Poetics of Signalism (manifestos and others meta-poetic texts) is a synthesis of explicit poetics of the movement. All conclusions reached here are convincingly explained and properly verified.

The second, longer part of this book titled Genres in Signalism deals primarily with artistic practice of the movement, but also with implicit poetics of this avant-garde creative orientation. An abundance of genres, types and subtypes (small groups) of artistic creations illustrates the impressive creative energy of this movement. The best creations in each genre are minutely analyzed with the stress on essential characteristics of the type they belong to. Živković manifested an understanding for novelty and innate gift for observing aesthetic values of complex artistic creations in the analysis of works of art belonging to each genre. His excellent knowledge of aesthetics and broad culture helped him to establish quickly and reliably an experienced aesthetic attitude to each work of art, regardless of its being verbal, visual or complex.

Poetics of each individual genre was determined by Živković partly in reference to manifestos of Signalism and adequate meta-poetical texts, and partly in reference to minute analyses of representative artistic creations for each individual genre. Chapters in this part of the book follow each other in the following sequence: Signalist Scientific Poetry, Phenomenological, Technological and Ready-Made Poetry, Stochastic Poetry, Apeironistic Poetry, Computer Poetry, Permutational (Variational) and Statistical Poetry, Slang (Jargon) Poetry, Haiku in Signalism, Visual, Gesture and Object Poetry, Mail-Art in Signalism.

And finally, as a conclusion: by its approach to the subject, profoundness of analysis, synthesis, joint effects of adequate scientific methods, composition, presentation of evidence, systematic, and excellent choice of appendices, the doctor’s thesis of Živan Živković, “Signalism: Genesis, Poetics and Artistic Practice” is an exceptionally valuable scientific work. It is not just a brilliant foundation for further studying dictated by historical changes. It is much more than that: it is a deeply founded scientific synthesis on Signalism as an avant-garde creative movement in Serbian poetry and culture.

Radovan Vučković

RADICAL DISPROVAL OF TRADITION

The monograph (dissertation) entitled AVANT-GARDE, NEO-AVANT-GARDE AND SIGNALISM by Milivoje Pavlović, is a synthetically and, at the same time, analytical scholarly and critical work. Pavlović synthetically sets out basic data on the avant-garde and neo-avant-garde and various modifications of the term, which called for theoretical and literary-historical construal of their essence and classification period-wise. Deriving from previous synthetically accounts on the avant-garde and neo-avant-garde a definition of Signalism as a form of neo-avant-garde in the second half of 20th century, influenced by socio-cultural factors, primarily a technological boom and an expansion of communication systems, in a second, more comprehensive part of the monograph, Pavlović analytically depicted a variety of genres of Signalist poetry. In order to present and essential aspirations of the Signalist neo-avant-garde to forge a new poetic language, the author was also coerced to deal with the literary genres problem – so as to present the diversity of a radical disproval of the previous tradition.

As expected, in the light of the inter-disciplinary and meta-textual character and openness of Signalist poetry, Pavlović interpreted it in an international context and in relation to the interaction between and close intertwining of various arts (primarily visual arts and literature). To that end, he referred to a vast number of works by domestic and foreign authors and invested extensive efforts into portraying, in the comprehensive manner, the creative phenomenon which is still to be fully comprehended and construed in the future. Pavlović did so competently and knowledgeably so that, owning to its comprehensiveness as well as his lengthy and studious research, in-depth analysis and sound assessments and inferences, his extensive monograph will be an unavoidable point of reference for further research into the topic and a reliable guide for the literary-minded public to the subject which is by no means simple to fathom and embrace.

(Published in Miroljub Todorovic book Signalism Yugoslav Creative Movement, Belgrade, 1998)

Signalism in lexicons

2009-07-30T10:16:00.001-07:00

Signalism - an avant-garde creative movement born in Yugoslavia, with aspiration to include into art creative work the exact way of thinking, in harmony with today’s science and its methods. Especially insists on application of mathematics and on computers as instruments suitable for inspiration and realization of artistic planes. In the literature besides experimentation with a word (stochastic poetry, tehnological poetry, computer poetry and others kinds of poetry’s) insists on including visual, touchables and others elements (signalist visual poetry, signalist scientific poetry, gestual poetry and ecc.). Born earlier, at the end of the sixties, it was formed especially by the merit of Belgrade signalist group headed by the poet Miroljub Todorovic. The voice of the movement was the review Signal.

(Mala enciklopedija / Little Encyclopedia Prosveta - The Universal Encyclopedia - fourth edition, volume 3, Prosveta, Belgrade 1986, pag. 357.)

SIGNALISM - interdisciplinary art movement of international character, born in Yugoslavia around 1960. The founder and theoretician of the movement is Miroljub Todorovic. The members were poets, painters, historians of art, scientists and designers. Signalism supports the exact way of thinking and extreme experiments (Conceptual Art, Concetre Poetry, Mail Art). In some researches they use computers as a creative instrument. The manifestos of signalism were published in 1968, 1969, 1970. The members of the movement published the review Signal (1970 - 1973) and established Signalist Documentation Centre in Belgrade. Five signalist exhibitions were held (Milan 1971; Zagreb 1974; Belgrade 1975; 1982; Odzaci 1981). Following yugoslav artists took part in the movement: Marina Abramovic, Nesa Paripovic, Zoran Popovic, Milivoje Pavlovic, Ljubisa Jocic, Spasoje Vlajic, Jaroslav Supek and Vlada Stojiljkovic.

(Opća enicklopedija / The Universal Encyclopedia - complementary volume, Yugoslav Lexicography department, Zagreb, 1988, pag. 588.)

SIGNALISM is a new artistic movement, with the aspiration to apply exact method of thought in art. It’s inspiration and support is found in the civilization of technology and sciences: physics, biology, astrophysics, and especially mathematics. Besides experiments in the verbal domain in literature, it insists on introducing visual. vocal, tactile and other elements. poetry is inspired by Appolinaire’s calligrammes and Einsteine’s theory of relativity is considered the best poem of the modern era. At the time of it’s beginning (1959) it’s name was Scientism. It has achieved greater zeal in 1968 when Manifesto of Poetical Sciences was published, in 1969 when Regulae Poesis (Manifesto of Signalism) appeared and in 1970 when the Third Manifesto of Signalism was published. Cybernetic methods were emphasized in this second period, and then a stronger development of visual poetry occurred. Letters are used not as sound but as visual elements and the writer “does not write about a certain subject, he represents it, or represents it’s essence by different arrangements of letters and symbols”. The movement obtains it’s journal Signal in 1970. The program of the journal is the recognition of signalist ideas in literature and art in general. The first anthology of Signalism appeared in 1971 in Novi Sad in Hungarian and Serbo-Croatian language, in the scope of Hungarian journal Uj Symposion. In 1971 signalist artists organized an exhibition of their works in the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, and had a few exhibitions abroad.The founder and theoretician of Signalism is Serbian poet Miroljub Todorovic. He is also the editor of the journal Signal.

(Jugoslovenski književni leksikon / YUGOSLAV LITERARY LEXICON, Second revised edition, Matica Srpska, Novi Sad, 1984, pp 740-741.)

SIGNALISM (lat. signum - sign) -An experimental creative movement, originated in Serbian poetry in the middle of the sixthies, which acquired its followers in a wider Yugoslav space by the end of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh decade of this century. Its beginnings are being linked with the year 1959, when the founder and theorist of this movement M. Todorović began with experiments in language, convinced that there was not revolution in poetry unless it was performed in the basic medium of the latter - in language. The birth of Signalism in Serbian literature and culture and its strivings for the other arts (fine arts, theatrical, music and film) also to be revolutionized, resulted from a need to negate the worn models preserved by poetical and cultural tradition in general and to respond creatively to the demands and “spiritual situation” of modern technological and electronic civilisation. In the program texts (manifests and other texts of special purpose) and in concrete art works of S. a determined break with the “principles of Neoromantism and late Symbolism” is expressed, which still rule in Serbian poetry, as well as an endevour to change the code of Serbian poetry by radical operations both on the level of objectness (contents) and on that of expression (form), and to bring it into accord with the modern time. The revolutioning of the poetry language was begun by its scientiation - by entering symbols, formulas, lexemes and qreater lingual statements from exact sciences (physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, biochemistry, astrophysics) and by visualisation of text (graphical disassembling of words, sintagms and statements into syllables and letters as signs and their spreading on the space of a page; entering non - verbal signs in text, like drawings, graphs, photographs and other elements that are being collaged), so that the first phase of S. is marked by the term scientism, and it is illustrated best by the books of M. Todorović Planet (1965) and The Travel to Astroland (1971) and the cycles of poems Protein, Oxigen, Hothouse as well as others, in which the boundaries of the object’s field are set by the categories of Space, Time, Matter. To the constitutioning of S. as an experimental movement which, negating the poetical and cultural heritage of the poetical and esthetic convention and canonized form-making actions, insists on experiment in realisation of the new, a remarkable contribution was made by three manifests: The manifest of poetical science, 1968, The manifest of Signalism (Requlae Poesis), 1969, and Signalism, 1970, as well as the starting of the journal Signal (1970). The journal Signal was published in nine issues in period 1970-73; in it, besides the supplements of domestic and foreign artists, also bibliographic data about the experimental publications in the world were published.The works of our S. have been represented in several anthologies of concrete and visual poetry throughout the world; two domestic antologies were also published: Signalist Poetry (1971) and Concrete, visual and signalist poetry (1975). The poetical principles of S. were accepted also by numerous poets, artists of fine arts, playwrights, mathematicians and physicists, respecting them even after S. as a movement ceased to act. Besides the founder M. Todorović (Kyberno, 1970, Pig is an excellent swimmer, Fool puts on airs, 1974, Insect on template, 1978, Algol, 1980, Textum, 1981, Chinese erotism, 1983, Knockout, 1984, J am mounting Rocinante again, 1987, Water snake drinks rainwater, 1988, Diary of avant-garde, 1990), significant contributions to the theory and practice were given by: M. Abramović, S. Pavićević (Silicates of flower, 1973, Works on roads, 1984), Z. Roshulj (Typosignalist variations, 1973), S. Vukanović (Star feathers, 1975, The snapshot of the ship diary casette, 1978, The space migration Montenegro, 1985. Boat, spoon, 1990), M. Pavlović (White book, 1974), M. Kesheljević (Ship X, 1982), N. Paripović, Lj, Jocić (Moonlight in tetrapack, 1975, What is the time, 1976), S. Vlajić (Light formula, 1984), J. Supek and others. Lit. M. Todorović, Signalism, 1979; J. Kornhauser, Sygnalizm - Propozycja serbskiej poezji eksperymentalnej, 1981; Signalism - an experimental creative movement, coll., 1984; M. B. Shijaković, Signalism in the world, 1984; Ž.S. Živković. The orbits of signalism, 1985; M. Todorović, The cock from the Bailon Square, 1986; Signalism - Poectics of signalism, Koraci, 1-2, 1976; The fragments about signalism, Književna reč, 55, 26.IV 1976; The postwar Serbian avan-garde, Gradina, 8, 1980; L’avant-garde en Yugoslavie, Doc(k)s, 12, 1978; Signalism - guestions and answers, Koraci, 1-2, 1982; Signalism, Književna reč 184, 19.III 1982; Signalism, Književne novine 641, 4, II 1982; Signalism Književna kritika 2, 1984; Signalism - a Yugoslavian creative movement, Tok, 13-14, 1985/86; Ars poetica (Signalism), Povelja, 3-4, 1987; 1-2, 1988; The signalist controversies, Književnost, 1-2, 1989; The fragments about Signalism, Polja, 363-364, May-June, 1989 Ž. Živković, The genres in Signalism, Knjizevna kritika, 4, 1989; Signalism, Savremenik, 1-2-3, 1990. Signalism after three decades, Stremljenja, 2-3, 1990; Signalism, Gradina, 5, 1990.

(Rečnik književnih termina / The Dictionary of literary terms 2 nd amended addition, The Institute for Literature and Art in Belgrade, Nolit, Belgrade, 1992 p.p. 766-767.)

(Published in International Review for Signalist Research SIGNAL, No. 11-12, Belgrade, 1996, and in the book Signalism Yugoslav Creative Movement, Belgrade, 1998)

SIGNALISM - ESSAYS

Signalism

Signalisme

Naissance et objectifs du signalisme

Les collaborateurs étrangers éminents de la revue „Signal“

Travaux de nos signalistes dans les antologies étrangères

Les auteurs et les oeuvres significatives du signalisme

Des présentations critique du signalisme

Littérature

Signalisme dans les lexiques

Relations extérieures:

Manifestos and other Essays

Poetical Diaries (1959–1968.)

Miroljub Todorović

WORDS AND COLOURS

A POEM AS A NATURAL PROCESS

THE PLAYS OF MATTER

LINGUISTIC MACHINE

DISINTEGRATION OF LANGUAGE

EXPLOSION OF UNIVERSEEXPLOSION OF LANGUAGE

LANGUAGE – WEAPONS

SCIENTISM

LANGUAGE OF SCIENTIST POETRY

THE RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL

IMAGINATIVE ENERGY AND SPECTRUM OF POEM

NEW LANGUAGE

TRACTATES

Courses Of Signalism

Miroljub Todorović

Planetary Communication (My mail art activities from 1970 to 1987)

Miroljub Todorović

ESTHETICS AND ETHICS OF SIGNALISM

The Demon of Signalism

Slobodan Škerović

Teleology of Modern and Signalist prose: Departure from Reading into Creativity

Slobodan Škerović

Quarter of century of Signalism

Živan Živković

Manifesto of SIGNALISM

Signalisme et pansemiotique

Daniel Daligand

EL SIGNALISMO:

Signal

Klaus Groh

Signalismus; mehr als nur Ein-Ismus

Klaus Groh

Three dissertations about Signalism

KORNHAUSER'S STUDY

Signalism in lexicons

EXPLOSION OF UNIVERSE
EXPLOSION OF LANGUAGE