Alain Arias-Misson (born 1936 in Brussels, Belgium)In: De Gruyter (Ed.): AKL Online General Artist Lexicon Online / Artists of the World Online . De Gruyter, 2009 is an American-Belgian poet, writer, critic and visual artist whose multimedia literary works range from typewriter poetry, sound poetry, concrete and visual poetry to stories and experimental novels. He is particularly known for his three-dimensional poem objects and the so-called public poems - happenings with performers who carry life-sized letters through the streets of various cities.
Life Born in Brussels to a Belgian father and an American mother, Arias-Misson was influenced by European and American cultures from an early age. In 1940 the family fled the Nazis to New York City, where he grew up. After school, Arias-Misson attended Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1959 with a degree in classical Greek literature, philosophy and contemporary French literature . During his studies he developed an interest in experimental poetry . After completing his studies, he first went to North Africa, where he worked as a teacher in Ben Aknoun in the Algiers province after the Algerian War . In 1963 he married the Cuban-Asturian painter Nela Arias, who had studied with the painter Hans Hofmann . The couple settled in New York City.
Until the outbreak of the Vietnam War in 1965, Arias-Misson published literary reviews and stories in American literary magazines such as Chicago Review, The Paris Review, American Book Review, Fiction International, Partisan and OARS . To avoid Arias-Misson's conscription into the army, the couple moved to Barcelona and built an international and cross-generational network of poets and artists that included, among others, Joan Brossa, Herminio Molero and Ignacio Gomez de Liano . He also briefly collaborated with the legendary Spanish avant-garde group Zaj and its members Walter Marchetti, Juan Hidalgo and Esther Ferrer. His artistic contacts also extended to other European countries, with the friendships with the British experimental poet Dom Sylvester Houédard and with Carlfriedrich Claus, who lived in the former GDR, being particularly significant.
Through the Zaj Group and the New York gallerist Emily Harvey, who organized several exhibitions with Arias-Misson, he came into contact with many Fluxus artists, including Dick Higgins, and with collectors of the Fluxus scene such as Francesco Conz, Luigi Bonotto and Hanns Sohm, who had a great interest in experimental poetry as well as concrete and visual poetry and collected his work.
Together with the poets Jean-François Bory, Julien Blaine, Paul de Vree,Jan de Vree: "Even where we don't live, we are at home!" In: Ediciones Asimétricas (ed.): . Madrid 2019, , p. 68–73 Eugenico Miccini and Lucia Marcucci, he was a member of the Lotte Poetica group initiated by the Italian poet Sarenco . He was co-editor of the magazine of the same name, in which he regularly published articles. His work has also been featured in many other important experimental literature magazines: De Tafelronde (by Paul de Vree, also co-published by Arias-Misson) and Phantomas in Belgium, in Henri Chopin's legendary revue OU, Luna Park, Ne coupez pas, Approches and L'Humidité in France, Logomotives in Italy, ASA and Geijutsu Seikatsu in Japan, Ovum in Uruguay, El Urogallo in Spain and Tlaloc in the UK. He compiled the first anthology of concrete poetry in the USA, which was published in 1967 by Eugene Wildman as Anthology of Concretism in the Chicago Review magazine (Volume 19, No. 4).
In 1967, Arias-Misson conceived the first of his performative-actionist poems in public space entitled The Vietnam Public Poem, intended as a poetic protest against the Vietnam War. Performers carried the human-sized white letters V, I, E, T, N, A, M splattered with red paint through the streets of Brussels. With this mixture of artistic happening and political demonstration, he created a poetic form that enabled him to inscribe texts into the social context of a city. To date, 28 such public poems have taken place in Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Venice, Los Angeles and New York, among others.Ediciones Asimétricas (ed.): Public Poems. 50 years of writing on the street . Madrid 2019,
During his life, Arias-Misson changed his place of residence several times and lived in different countries. In 1970 he and Nela moved from Spain to Antwerp for a few months and then to Brussels. In 1973 they returned to New York City. In 1983, after separating from Nela, Arias-Misson returned to Brussels to work for the European Community, which became the European Union in 1992 . From 1991 to 2021 he lived in Paris and Venice with his second partner, the textile designer and author Karen Moller. Arias-Misson currently lives in Madrid and Miami. He is married to the novelist Edith Monge, who is originally from Colombia.
Works
Compositions The works in the Compositions series (approx. 1968–1979) consist of 5 to 7 transparent Plexiglas panes arranged one behind the other, which are decorated with letters, words or sentences from Letraset. While a sheet of paper only offers a two-dimensional surface to stage syntactic and semantic relationships between linguistic elements, the layering of transparent Plexiglas levels enables the use of spatial depth as an artistic element of poetic text conception. There are two different models of compositions : In one, the transparent Plexiglas surfaces are attached one behind the other in a wooden frame so that they can be hung on the wall. In the other model, the transparent Plexiglas surfaces are attached one behind the other in a wooden base, so that they become free-standing objects. This unconventional sculptural (text) form became known through John Cage's multiples Not wanting to say anything about Marcel (1969). It has been used previously by other artists, including by the British visual poet Tom Edmonds in 1966,Tom Edmonds: Positions. In: Astropoems and Vertical Group Exercises. Chelsea College of Arts, 2018, accessed June 23, 2023 (English). Arias-Misson's first work of this type dates from 1968.
Object Poems Along with the Public Poems and the Compositions, the Object Poems (approx. 1966–1982) are among Arias-Misson's best-known works. They were shown in some of the first exhibitions dedicated to experimental poetry and are documented in their catalogs and in various avant-garde literary magazines of the late 1960s and 1970s. The Object Poems consist of Plexiglas boxes with integrated transparent plastic elements on which words or sentences made from Letraset letters are distributed. The poem in the sense of a printed text becomes a sculptural object that must be viewed from different perspectives - whereby the viewing angles change the visual appearance of the text elements and they look very different from different directions. By making reflections, superimpositions and distortions of letters integral aesthetic qualities of these works, Arias-Misson expands the traditional rhetorical stylistic devices of poetic work. Accordingly, the texts cannot be written and printed on paper, but must be designed in three dimensions.
Photo Poems The Photo Poems consist of sequential sequences of photographs of varying length. Arias-Misson posed in front of the camera and in many cases supplemented the photographic prints with handwritten texts. In 2021, the Galeria Estampa in Madrid dedicated an extensive exhibition to this cycle of works and published the portfolio El autor.... casi / The author... almost (30 copies), which includes reproductions of the Photo Poems Merde (1973), Raincoat day ( 1973), Punctuation (1973/74), Uncovering... it (1973/74), I'm in, inner, into! (1973/1974), Then... (1973/1974) and Fire (1974).Alain Arias-Misson: El autor... casi. In: Galeria Estampa. Galeria Estampa, accessed on June 23, 2023 (English).
Public Poems In 1967, Arias-Misson realized the first of his public poems, entitled The Vietnam Public Poem, in Brussels, where he was living at the time . To protest the war in Vietnam, he had several friends carry the human-sized white letters V, I, E, T, N, A, M splattered with red paint through the streets of the city. The Public Poem G D followed in 1968, which was also performed in Brussels. The Public Poem A Madrid, performed in Madrid in 1969, proved to be influential in the development of this series of works in that he had the performers form new words from the letters of the title as the action progressed. Following an anagrammatic poetic principle, various words from the pool of letters were put together at central locations in Madrid's urban space: In front of Parliament, the word ARMA (weapon) was formed and transformed into AMAR (love) when the Guardia Civil approached . In 1972, The Public Punctuation Poem was realized in Pamplona as part of the Encuentras de Pamplona festival, the first avant-garde art festival in Spain, which at the time was still under the rule of the fascist dictator Francisco Franco. Even though in later years Arias-Misson was occasionally invited by public institutions to realize public poems, he usually refrained from obtaining the necessary official permits to be able to hold such events in public spaces. In this sense, the actions bear characteristics of artistic guerrilla tactics . Arias-Misson sees the fact that the ephemeral text inscribed in the city can provoke unpredictable reactions and set incalculable processes in motion as a poetic challenge. Over the years, numerous poetological texts have been written on the theory of the public poem as a literary form.Alain Arias-Misson: . Ed.: Factotum Art Edition. Calaone-Baone 1978. The first public poems were documented with photos, which Arias-Misson often provided with handwritten comments. He later also resorted to film and video for the documentation.
List of Public Poems 1967–2022
The Vietnam Public Poem. Brussels, 1967 The GD Public Poem . Brussels, 1968 The A Madrid Public Poem . Madrid, 1969 The Knokke Baptismal Public Poem . Knokke, 1970 The Palabras Fragile Public Poem . Madrid, 1971 The Punctuation Public Poem . Pamplona, 1972, in the context of the Encuentras de Pamplona festival Alain Arias-Misson: The Punctuation Public Poem. In: YouTube. 1972, accessed June 30, 2023 The Chomsky Generative Grammar Public Poem . Brussels, 1972 The Cat & Mouse Duo Public Poem . New York City, 1974 The Beethoven Bicentennial Public Poem. Bonn, Germany, 1975, at the invitation of the city of Bonn The Proust Public Poem. Paris: Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés, 1975 The Fallen Angel . Verona, 1977 The Proust Public Poem . Paris, 1988Alain Arias-Misson: The Proust Public Poem. In: YouTube. 1988, accessed June 30, 2023 . The Teutonic Public Poem. Berlin, 1991, invited by the Literaturhaus Berlin; and Bielefeld, at the invitation of the Kunsthalle Bielefeld The Hollywood Monsters Public Poem. Los Angeles, 1991 The Public Shamanic Chapel Sistine Public Poem . Vatican, 1998Alain Arias-Misson: The Public Shamanic Chapel Sistine Public Poem. In: YouTube. 1998, accessed June 30, 2023 . The Surveillance Public Poem . Paris, 2003Alain Arias-Misson: The Surveillance Public Poem. In: YouTube. 2003, accessed June 30, 2023 . The Gan(t)d Public Panties Public Poem . Ghent, 2007, invited by Krikri FestivalAlain Arias-Misson: The Gan(t)d Public Panties Public Poem. In: YouTube. 2007, accessed June 30, 2023 . La Derniere S(c)ene Public Poem. Nice, 2008Alain Arias-Misson: La Derniere S(c)ene Public Poem. 2008, accessed June 30, 2023 . The Last Supper Public Poem . Marseilles, 2009Alain Arias-Misson: The Last Supper Public Poem. In: YouTube. 2009, accessed June 30, 2023 . The Public Linguistic Poem of Antwerp . Antwerp, 2013Alain Arias-Misson: The Public Linguistic Poem of Antwerp. In: YouTube. 2013, accessed June 30, 2023 . The Public Linguistic Poem II . Antwerp, 2014