The Festival of Poetry-Shaped Art is having its 5 year anniversary in 2026! A great opportunity to celebrate the previous editions with artists who participated in Fopsa before. And also to invite young & new artists to join in!

This year we are exploring the TABULA RASA theme: language as technology, technologies of language.

Is there such a thing as 'natural language'? The way we talk is informed by the cavities of our mouths, throats, lungs. The way we write is closely linked to the abilities of our hands. New technologies such as Brain Machine Interfacing seem to bypass the language we are accustomed to, or are new languages being created?

Language is human in every way: a social construct as much as tied to our bodies. Being human means anthropomorphizing the world around us. Seeing signs and messages in the natural as well as artificial phenomena we encounter. Being human also means using technology.

'The most profound technologies are those that disappear' is the opening line of Mark Weiser's The Computer for the 21st Century essay. With 'disappear' he means that we no longer perceive them as technology. As an illustration he mentions the technology of writing.

In our digital age, the most successful new technologies are those that let us communicate with one another, such as the internet, email, chat, social media. Their success has become so huge, that it now distorts the social fabric that it was built on.

So it is time to go back, start with a clean sheet. See how language emerges inside as well as outside of ourselves.