Asemic writing is a wordless open Semantics form of writing. The word asemic means "having no specific semantic content", or "without the smallest unit of meaning".From Greek language: asemos (ἄσημος) = without sign, unmarked, obscure, or ignoble. With the non-specificity of asemic writing there comes a vacuum of meaning, which is left for the reader to fill in and interpret. All of this is similar to the way one would deduce meaning from an abstract art. Where asemic writing distinguishes itself among traditions of abstract art is in the asemic author's use of gestural constraint, and the retention of physical characteristics of writing such as lines and symbols. Asemic writing is a hybrid art form that fuses Writing and image into a unity, and then sets it free to arbitrary subjective interpretations. It may be compared to free writing or writing for its own sake, instead of writing to produce verbal context. The open nature of asemic works allows for meaning to occur across linguistic understanding; an asemic text may be "read" in a similar fashion regardless of the reader's natural language. Multiple meanings for the same are another possibility for an asemic work, that is, asemic writing can be polysemantic or have zero meaning, infinity meanings, or its meaning can evolve over time. Asemic works leave for the reader to decide how to translate and Exploration an asemic text; in this sense, the reader becomes co-creator of the asemic work.
In 1997, Visual poetry Tim Gaze and Jim Leftwich first applied the word asemic to name their quasi-calligraphic writing gestures. They then began to distribute them to poetry magazines both online and in print. The authors explored sub-verbal and sub-letteral forms of writing, and textual asemia as a creative option and as an intentional practice. Since the late 1990s, asemic writing has blossomed into a worldwide literary/art movement. It has especially grown in the early part of the 21st century, though there is an acknowledgement of a long and complex history, which precedes the activities of the current asemic movement, especially with regards to abstract calligraphy, wordless writing, and verbal writing damaged beyond the point of legibility. Jim Leftwich has recently stated that an asemic condition of an asemic work is an impossible goal, and that it is not possible to create an art/literary work entirely without meaning. He has begun to use the term "pansemic" too. In 2020, he also explained: "The term 'pansemia' did not replace the term 'asemia' in my thinking (nor did 'pansemic' replace 'asemic'); it merely assisted me in expanding my understanding of the theory and practice of asemic writing". Others such as author Travis Jeppesen have found the term asemic to be problematic because "it seems to infer writing with no meaning."
In the 1920s, Man Ray, who was influenced by Dada, created an early work of wordless writing with his poem Paris, 1924. Later in the 1920s, Henri Michaux, who was influenced by Asian calligraphy, Surrealism, and Automatic writing, began to create wordless works such as Alphabet (1925) and Narration (1927). Michaux referred to his calligraphic works as "interior Gestures". The writer and artist Wassily Kandinsky was an early precursor to asemic writing, with his linear piece Indian Story (1931) exemplifying complete textual abstraction.
In the 1950s, there is Brion Gysin (whose calligraphy was influenced by Japanese and Arabic calligraphy), Isidore Isou (who founded Letterism), Cy Twombly (a former US Army Cryptologist), and Morita Shiryū/Bokujin-kai Group (Ink Human Society) all of whom expanded writing into illegible, abstract, and wordless visual mark-making; they would help lay the foundation for asemic writers of the future. Mira Schendel was an artist from Brazil who created many illegible works over the course of her life, for example her piece Archaic Writing (1964). Mirtha Dermisache is another writer who had created asemic writing since the 1960s. Dermisache actively said that even though her graphisms have no meaning, they still retained the full rights of an autonomous work. Angus MacLise was a musician and poet who also created asemic calligraphic works in the 1960s. 1971 was the year when Alain Satié released his work Écrit en prose ou L'Œuvre hypergraphique which contains asemic writing throughout the entire collage graphic novel.Alain Satie, Écrit en Prose, Éditions PSI, 1971. León Ferrari was another artist/poet who created many asemic works in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Escritura (1976). 1974 saw the release of Max Ernst's work Maximiliana: The Illegal Practice Of Astronomy: hommage à Dorothea Tanning; this book is a major influence on asemic writers such as Tim Gaze, Michael Jacobson, and Derek Beaulieu.Kenneth Goldsmith, Uncreative Writing, Columbia University Press, 20 September 2011 Roland Barthes was also involved with asemic writing; he titled his asemic works Contre-écritures. Irma Blank was another important contributor to asemic writing.
A modern example of asemic writing is Luigi Serafini's Codex Seraphinianus (1981). Serafini described the script of the Codex as asemic in a talk at the Oxford University Society of Bibliophiles held on 8 May 2009. In the 1980s, Chinese artist Xu Bing created Tiānshū, or A Book from the Sky which is a work of books and hanging scrolls on which were printed 4000 hand carved meaningless characters. The 1980s also saw artist Gu Wenda begin the first of a series of projects centered on the invention of meaningless, false Chinese ideograms, depicted as if they were truly old and traditional. One exhibition of this type was held in Xi'an in 1986, featuring paintings of fake ideograms on a massive scale. Also in China, during the 1990s, an abstract calligraphy movement known as "Calligraphy-ism" came into existence, a leading proponent of this movement being Luo Qi. Calligraphy-ism is an aesthetic movement that aims to develop calligraphy into an abstract art. The characters do not need to retain their traditional forms or be legible as words. In Vietnam during the 2000s, a calligraphy group called the Zenei Gang of Five appeared. To this group of young artists, "Wordless" means that which cannot be said, that which is both before and beyond the specificity of naming. To be without words is saying nothing and saying everything.
Satu Kaikkonen, a contemporary asemic artist/writer from Finland, had this to say about asemic writing:
Bruce Sterling comments about asemic writing on his Wired magazine blog Beyond the Beyond:
|
|