An intelligent view of the Avant-Garde at the end of 1955

Unattributed
Potlatch #24, 24 November 1954

URBANISM. In Paris today we recommend visits to: Contrescarpe (Continent); Chinatown; the Jewish Quarter; Butte-aux-Cailles (the Labyrinth); Aubervilliers (at night); the public gardens of the 7th Arrondissement; the Medical-Legal Institute; rue Dauphine (Nesles); Buttes-Chaumont (play); the Merri neighborhood; Parc Monceau; Ile Louis (the island); Pigalle; Les Halles (rue Denis, rue du Jour); the Europe neighborhood (memory); rue Sauvage.

We do not recommend visits, under any circumstances, to: the 6th and 15th Arrondissements; the grand boulevards; Luxembourg; Champs-Elysees; Place Blanche; Montmarte; Ecole Militaire; Place de la Republique; Etoile and Opera; the whole 16th Arrondissement.

DECORATION. Project by J. Fillon for decoration of a living room: three quarters of the room, occupying the part that one crosses on entering through the only door, are elegantly furnished and have no particular purpose. At the far part of the room there is a barricade, partitioning off the functional part of the room, occupying one quarter of its total area. The barricade is absolutely authentic, built from cobblestones, sandbags, barrels, and other objects commonly used for this purpose. It is approximately as high as a person is tall, with several peaks and a few gaps. Loaded guns may be laid across the top. A narrow passageway leads to the functional part of the room, which is tastefully furnished and laid out in such a way as to provide a pleasant place to receive friends and acquaintances.

This living room, which of course also requires the appropriate lighting and ambient sound, could be used as a departure from the standard layout of a run-of-the-mill house, merely introducing a superficially picturesque element. Nevertheless, its true purpose is to form a part of a wider architectural complex where its decisive value in the construction of a situation comes to the forefront.

EXPLORATION. In the near future, a team of Lettrists, operating from a base on rue des Jardins-Paul, will undertake a thorough exploration of the Merri neighborhood, which has not yet appeared on any psychogeographical map. WE INVITE ALL AND SUNDRY JOIN THE LETTRIST INTERNATIONAL. We will keep a few.

EDUCATIONAL GAMES. A recent development, "ideological debate structured as a boxing match," seems to have a brilliant future among the intellectual elite, for whom it seems ideally suited. (IDEOLOGICAL DEBATE STRUCTURED AS A BOXING MATCH WILL HELP TO INCREASE YOUR PRESTIGE WHILE WASTING TIME.) Here are the rules:

The two opponents and the referee, whose decision is final, sit at the same table, separated from each other by the referee. The length of the match is decided beforehand along with the number of rounds and their precise duration.

When the referee declares the match has begun, the two opponents size each other up for a moment and then the first to go on the attack makes a statement on whatever subject he feels is appropriate. His opponent then responds, either with a vigorous rebuttal of the argument just formulated, or by making some statement on a related or unexpected topic, or -- best of all -- with a combination of the two. The referee makes sure that the opponents do not interrupt each other. nevertheless, any contender speaking for too long loses points. A chronometer marks the end of the round with an appropriate signal and the debate is broken off immediately.

The referee then awards the round to one of the opponents or calls a draw. During the break, the contenders' fans and trainers may bring them alcoholic beverages or cups of coffee (and in some cases, drugs). The match begins again when the order is given. The referee calls a knockout when either of the opponents, surprised by the vehemence or subtlety of an attack, is unable to continue the debate. Should no knockout occur, the winner of the match is decided at the end on points, depending on the number of rounds won. Cheating, even when obvious, is not penalized.

Already noted as favorite topics are Zen, the New Left, phenomenological ontology, Astruc, Gallic coins, censorship and the intelligence of chess.

The Lettrists, who would be unbeatable, do not play this game.)

above copied from: http://www.notbored.org/1955.html

The Lettrists disavow the insulters of Chaplin, Jean-Isidore Isou, et al.

The members of the Lettrist movement are united on the basis of new principles of knowledge and each keeps his independence as far as the details of the application of these principles. We all know that [Charles] Chaplin was been "a great creator in the history of the cinema" but "the total (and baroque) hysteria" that has surrounded his arrival in France has embarassed us, as does the expression of all mental instability. We are ashamed that the world today lacks more profound values than these, which are secondary and "isolatrous" of the "artist." Only the Lettrists who signed the tract against Chaplin are responsible for the extreme and confused content of their manifesto. As nothing has been resolved in this world, "Charlot" receives, along with applause, the splashes [eclaboussures] of this non-resolution.

We, the Lettrists who were opposed to this tract of our comrades from the beginning, smile at the maladroit expression of the bitterness of their youth.

If "Charlot" must receive mud, it won't be us who throw it at him. There are others, who paid to do it (the Attorney General, for example).

We thus revoke our solidarity from the tract of our friends and we associate ourselves with the homage rendered to Chaplin by the entire populace.

In their turn, the other Lettrists can explain themselves, in their own journals or in the press.

But "Charlot" and all this only constitutes a simple nuance.
JEAN-ISIDORE ISOU, MAURICE LEMAITRE, GABRIEL POMERAND

(Published in Combat on 1 November 1952 and reprinted in Internationale Lettriste #1, December 1952. Translated from the French by NOT BORED!)

above copied from: http://www.notbored.org/lettrist-disavowal.html

Excerpts from "The Force Fields of Letterist Painting" Isidore Isou

From Les Champs de Force de la Peinture Lettriste (Paris: Avant- Garde, 1964).

I recall quite well this period of experimentation which I passed through in a special way, thanks to a personal creative method: "doubts," "partial certainties," "perplexities...... disenchantments," "discoveries...... assurances;" in summary all those states of mind defined by an outmoded vocabulary and run over in a quick new way now come to mind.
I had been wondering how a letter could be just as beautiful as a figurative or non-figurative object in art, and how a work composed of Roman letters could touch or even overwhelm an ordinary viewer as much as the mass of works based on real "things" or qualities conventionally accepted in the minds of the refined.

For months at the beginning my whole concrete system consisted of the most banal alphabetic writing. This could naturally be raised up easily in theory - as was the case later with my first manifesto - by deep, provocative considerations or by metaphors, but in practice it was nevertheless limited to being a printer's specimen book or just pages filled with words - bound together by some theme, critical or poetic or whatever, which ignored my artistic effort.

No concern for the composition of the line of vowels and consonants, no care for the arrangement of sentences on the page, and naturally no interest in color - an easy and underhanded secondary value in my definition of painting - were present to disrupt my limited task as scribe, my arid research on the emotive powers of letters, pure letters, letters ripped out of all context, unimproved by extrinsic values.

For a certain period of time the only innovation came from my poetry, because instead of transcribing word-texts, I copied phonetic verses, which allowed me to put my arrangement in the middle of the page instead of filling up the whole page, isolating certain phonemes or clusters of phonemes according to the oral impulse, then adding some new signs from the Greek alphabet or my imagination, which corresponded to sounds that did not exist in the Roman alphabet. Naturally when I exhibited these pages and called them "works of art" all I got was disdainful or knowing smiles, as if I had pulled off a good joke. Not only in Bucharest, but even in Paris the defenders of "figurative" and "abstract" modern art always assured me that these creations "were not paintings." . . .

Metagraphics or post-writing, encompassing all the means of ideographic, lexical and phonetic notation, supplements the means of expression based on sound by adding a specifically plastic dimension, a visual facet which is irreducible and escapes oral labelling. . . .

Even from my first metagraphic efforts - because examples can be found in The Diaries of the Gods and then more conclusively in the self-portrait and painted photos of Amos - I had noticed that when held up among former 11 objective" or "non-objective" forms my original form was stronger, since it assimilates all the others.

Experiments on "the test of forms" demonstrate that the particles of the Letterist domain are stronger and more important than the particles of the figurative and non-figurative domains.

If one places an abstract composition - which is simply a fragmentary purification of the former object - in (or alongside) a figurative structure, this second composition digests the first one - transformed into a decorative motif - and then the whole work becomes figurative. However if one places a letterist notation on (or beside) a realist "form," it is the first one which assimilates the second to change the whole thing into a work of hypergraphics or super-writing.

Pursuing the experiments on the "test of the force of elements" one can affirm that "a little bit," or "a few drops" of figuration placed anywhere on a canvas can transform an entire abstract mass into a figurative work and that "a little bit," or "a few drops" of Letterism placed anywhere on any canvas metamorphose a whole figurative or abstract composition into a Letterist work.

above copied from: http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lettrist/isou-m.htm

Manifesto of Letterist Poetry, Isidore Isou

MANIFESTO OF LETTERIST POETRY
A Commonplaces about Words

by Isidore Isou, 1942

Pathetic I The flourishing of bursts of energy dies beyond us.
All delirium is expansive.
All impulses escape stereotyping.
Still I An intimate experience maintains curious specifics.
Pathetic II Discharges are transmitted by notions.
What a difference between our fluctuations and the
brutality of words.
Transitions always arise between feeling and speech.
Still II The word is the first stereotype.
Pathetic III What a difference between the organism and the sources.
Notions - what an inherited dictionary. Tarzan learns
in his father's book to call tigers cats.
Naming the Unknown by the Forever.
Still III The translated word does not express.
Pathetic IV The rigidity of forms impedes their transmission.
These words are so heavy that the flow fails to carry
them. Temperaments die before arriving at the goal
(firing blanks).
No word is capable of carrying the impulses one
wants to send with it.
Still IV WORDS allow psychic alterations to disappear.
Speech resists effervescence.
Notions require expansion to equivalent formulas.
WORDS Fracture our rhythm.
by their Assassinate sensitivity.
mechanism, Thoughtlessly uniform
fossilization, tortured inspiration.
stability Twist tensions.
and aging Reveal poetic exaltations as useless.
Create politeness.
Invent diplomats.
Promote the use of analogies
Substitute for true emissions.
Pathetic V If one economizes on the riches of the soul, one dries
up the left-over along with the words.
Still V Prevent the flow from molding itself on the cosmos.
Form species in sentiments.
WORDS Destroy sinuosities.
Result from the need to determine things.
Help the elderly remember by forcing the young to forget.
Pathetic VI Every victory of the young has been a victory over words.
Every victory over words has been a fresh, young victory.
Still VI Summarize without knowing how to receive.
It is the tyranny of the simple over the long-winded.
WORDS Discern too concretely to leave room for the mind.
Forget the true measures of expression: suggestions.
Let infrarealities disappear.
Sift without restoring.
Pathetic VII One learns words as one learns good manners.
Without words and manners it is impossible to appear in
society.
It is by making progress in words that one makes progress
socially.
Still VII Kill fleeting evocations.
Slow down short-cuts and approximations.
SPEECH Is always vice-versa for not being identical.
Eliminates solitary individuals who would like to
rejoin society.
Forces men who would like to say "Otherwise" to say "Thus."
Introduces stuttering.
Pathetic VIII The carpentry of the word built to last forever obliges men
to construct according to patterns, like children.
There is no appreciation of value in a word.
Still VIII Words are the great levellers.
Pathetic IX Notions limit opening onto depths by merely standing ajar.
Still IX Words are family garments.
Poets enlarge words every year.
Words already have been mended so much they are in stitches.
Pathetic X People think it is impossible to break words.
Still X Unique feelings are so unique that they can not be
popularized. Feelings without words in the dictionary disappear.
Pathetic XI Every year thousands of feelings disappear for lack
of a concrete form.
Still XI Feelings demand living space.
How remarkable the poet's disheartened absorption in words.
Things and nothings to communicate become daily more imperious.
Pathetic XII Efforts at destruction witness to the need to rebuild.
Still XII How long will people hold out in the shrunken domain of
words?
Pathetic XIII The poet suffers indirectly:
Words remain the work of the poet, his existence, his job.



B Innovation I

Destruction of WORDS for LETTERS

ISIDORE ISOU Believes in the potential elevation beyond WORDS; wants
the development of transmissions where nothing is
lost in the process; offers a verb equal to a shock. By
the overload of expansion the forms leap up by themselves.
ISIDORE ISOU Begins the destruction of words for letters.
ISIDORE ISOU Wants letters to pull in among themselves all desires.
ISIDORE ISOU Makes people stop using foregone conclusions, words.
ISIDORE ISOU Shows another way out between WORDS and RENUNCIATION:
LETTERS. He will create emotions against language, for the
pleasure of the tongue.
It consists of teaching that letters have a destination
other than words.
ISOU Will unmake words into their letters.
Each poet will integrate everything into Everything
Everything must be revealed by letters.
POETRY CAN NO LONGER BE REMADE.

ISIDORE ISOU IS STARTING
A NEW VEIN OF LYRICISM.
Anyone who can not leave words behind can stay back with them!




C Innovation II: The Order of Letters

This does not mean destroying words for other words.
Nor forging notions to specify their nuances.
Nor mixing terms to make them hold more meaning.
But it does mean TAKING ALL LETTERS AS A WHOLE; UNFOLDING BEFORE DAZZLED
SPECTATORS MARVELS CREATED FROM LETTERS (DEBRIS FROM
THE DESTRUCTION);
CREATING AN ARCHITECTURE OF LETTRIC RHYTHMS;
ACCUMULATING FLUCTUATING LETTERS IN A PRECISE FRAME;
ELABORATING SPLENDIDLY THE CUSTOMARY COOING;
COAGULATING THE CRUMBS OF LETTERS FOR A REAL MEAL;
RESUSCITATING THE JUMBLE IN A DENSER ORDER;
MAKING UNDERSTANDABLE AND TANGIBLE THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE
AND VAGUE; CONCRETIZING SILENCE;
WRITING THE NOTHINGNESS.
It is the role of the poet to advance toward subversive sources.
the obligation of the poet to advance in the black and
burdened depths of the unknown.
the craft of the poet to open one more treasure-room
door for the common man.
There will be a poet's message in new signs. The ordering of letters is called:
LETTERISM.
It is not a poetic school, but a solitary attitude.
AT THIS MOMENT: LETTERISM = ISIDORE ISOU.
Isou is awaiting his successors in poetry!
(Do they already exist somewhere, ready to burst forth
into history through books?)
EXCUSES FOR WORDS INTRODUCED INTO LITERATURE
There are things which are existent only in the strength of their name.
there are others which exist, but lacking a name are unacknowledged.
Every idea needs a calling card to make itself known.
Ideas are known by the name of their creator.
It is more objective to name them after themselves.
LETTERISM IS AN IDEA THAT
WILL BE LAMENTED BY ITS REPUTATION
Letterics is a material that can always be demonstrated.
Letterics seeds already existing:
NONSENSE WORDS;
WORDS WITH HIDDEN MEANINGS IN THEIR LETTERS;
ONOMATOPOEIAS.
If this material existed before, it didn't have a name to recognize it by.
Letterics works will be those made entirely out of this element, but with
suitable rules and genres!
The word exists and has the right to perpetuate itself.
ISOU IS CALLING ATTENTION TO ITS EXISTENCE.
It is up to the Letterist to develop Letterism.
Letterism is offering a DIFFERENT poetry.
LETTERISM imposes a NEW POETRY.
THE LETTERIC AVALANCHE IS ANNOUNCED.
1942.

above copied from: http://www.391.org/manifestos/isidoreisou_letterist.htm

lettrism

Lettrism is a French avant-garde movement, established in Paris in the mid-1940s by Romanian immigrant Isidore Isou. In a body of work totalling hundreds of volumes, Isou and the Lettrists have applied their theories to all areas of art and culture, most notably in poetry, film, painting and political theory. The movement has its theoretical roots in Dada and Surrealism. Isou viewed his fellow countryman, Tristan Tzara, as the greatest creator and rightful leader of the Dada movement, and dismissed most of the others as plagiarists and falsifiers. Among the Surrealists, André Breton was a significant influence, but Isou was dissatisfied by what he saw as the stagnation and theoretical bankruptcy of the movement as it stood in the 1940s.

In French, the movement is called Lettrisme, from the French word for letter, arising from the fact that many of their early works centred around letters and other visual or spoken symbols. The Lettristes themselves prefer the spelling 'Letterism' for the Anglicised term, and this is the form that is used on those rare occasions when they produce or supervise English translations of their writings: however, 'Lettrism' is at least as common in English usage. The term, having been the original name that was first given to the group, has lingered as a blanket term to cover all of their activities, even as many of these have moved away from any connection to letters. But other names have also been introduced, either for the group as a whole or for its activities in specific domains, such as 'the Isouian movement', 'youth uprising', 'hypergraphics', 'creatics', 'infinitesimal art' and 'excoördism'.

above quoted from: http://wapedia.mobi/en/Lettrism

Manefesto of Letterist poetry:

http://www.391.org/manifestos/isidoreisou_letterist.htm

for more information see:

http://www.corvalliscommunitypages.com/why_lettrism.htm