Fopsa'22
The Festival of Poetry-Shaped Art had its first edition on June 26th 2022. It was held at the spaces of Baltan Laboratories and Broet at the Natlab building in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. It was organised in cooperation with Baltan Laboratories. On this page you find photos of the event (by Jacques Linssen) and descriptions of the participants.
Jaap Blonk - sound poetry
Jaap Blonk is a composer, performer, poet, and visual artist. As a vocalist, he is unique for his powerful stage presence and almost childlike freedom in improvisation, combined with a keen grasp of structure. At Fopsa'22 he performed as a sound poet, bringing a selection of sound poetry from its rich history combined with some of his own works.
link to Jaap's website
DAY Collective - Tête-à-Tête
DAY Collective is an artist duo consisting of Dorota Radzimirska and Yulia Ratman, based in Amsterdam. Their artistic research involves (participatory) performances and tactile forms. It deals with relations between people, as well as between people and their environment in modern societies, characterised by lack of trust, categorisation, disconnection from nature, and from ourselves. They see how these phenomena manifest through the manner of language and representation. At Fopsa'22 they performed Tête-à-Tête, a participatory performance about connecting with each other in an intuitive way. The participants in the performance communicate through drawing on their own skin. Only one rule - no words. Explore your body as a medium for an open dialogue.
link to DAY Collective's website
Sarah Prescimone - lumen
Sarah is a Sicilian choreographer, dancer, and performer. Her affinity with movement reaches out to many realms and genres, including Butoh, Experimental, and Urban styles. She found an interest in the functionality and intelligence of the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu movement practice, which she integrates in her work - thus developing a new movement language in her own personal laboratory of movements. At Fopsa'22 Sarah performed lumen, a solo she created in cooperation with Jeroen van den Heuvel. It is based on energies found in the brushstrokes, curves and shapes of asemic writing. The performance explores two tensions in art: the tension between the permanent and the volatile on one hand, and the tension between showing and hiding on the other.
link to Sarah's website
Astrid Lampe - workshop collage poetry
Astrid is one of the most interesting Dutch poets of our times. Her poetry is conceptual, vibrant, unconventional, and controversial. Apart from publishing poetry collections, she is more and more involved in creating collages of words, paintings, cutouts, photographs, dolls, and anything she can find, really. She is also a teacher at the Department of Language and Image at the Rietveld Academy. At Fopsa'22 she hosted a workshop about creating collage-poetry.
link to Astrid's website
Marta Beauchamp - Workshop Disentangling Text
Marta Beauchamp’s work focusses on translating scientific publications into visual and auditory experiences, bringing theoretical knowledge to an experiential space. She works as an installation and sound artist in Salzburg, using her background in music, neuroscience, design and media arts. At Fopsa'22 she hosted a workshop on translating the structure of a text into tangible structures of ropes.
link to Marta's website
Sven Staelens - workshop visual poetry
sven staelens is Flemish poet-writer of visual poetry, asemic poetry, pwoermds, poemics (the combination of poetry & comics) and collage. During Fopsa'22 he hosted a workshop on visual poetry.
link to Sven's website
Daniël Labruyère - Elektrobloem
Daniël Labruyère is a multidisciplinary artist. During Fopsa'22 he created drawings based on his impressions of the afternoon. He also launched Elektrobloem, his new book of poems, drawings, collages, and mathematical scribbles.
link to a recording of the launch of Elektrobloem during Fopsa'22
link to Daniël's facebook pagina
Exhibition – sonnet in extremis
The sonnet has a long and rich tradition in Western poetry. Since the rise of modernism and blank verse its popularity has wained, but many contemporary poets make use of it again. The poetry-shaped artists that shun traditional writing somehow feel the need to use the structure of the sonnet. This exhibition investigates why they do so: is it to ridicule the sonnet and its lyric tradition? Or to pay attribute? Or to connect to literary history? Or to show the struggle to break free from traditional structures? At Fopsa'22 a collection of 'extreme sonnets' was exhibited, including works by K. Schippers, Ted van Lieshout, A.H.J. Dautzenberg, Jürgen Smit, Mary Ellen Solt, Mark Meyer, Paula Claire, Emilio Lopez Gelcich.
