Signalism ( sr-cyr, Сигнализам / Signalizam; from: lat. Signum – ''sign, signal'') represents an international neo-

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

literal and art movement. It gathered wider support base both in former

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...

and the world in the late 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s.

The origins and methods of Signalism

The beginning of Signalism dates back to 1959 when its founder and main theoretician

Miroljub Todorović Miroljub Todorović ( sr-cyr, Мирољуб Тодоровић; born 5 March 1940) is a Serbs, Serbian poet and artist. He is the founder and theoretician of Signalism, an international avant-garde literary and artistic movement. He is also edito ...

started with his linguistic experiments. His main belief was that there can be no significant leap forward in poetry without revolutionizing its main medium – the language. The birth of Signalism in

Serbian literature Serbian literature ( sr-Cyrl, Српска књижевност), refers to literature written in Serbian and/or in Serbia and all other lands where Serbs reside. The history of Serbian literature begins with the independent works from the Nema ...

and

culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tyl ...

, with its tendency to revolutionize other arts as well (visual, theater, comics, music and movies), came from the need to eliminate the spent models carried on by poetic and cultural traditions, as well as from the necessity to take on the challenges and spirit of the modern technological and electronic civilization. In its program ("Manifesto" and other guiding texts) as well as in its art pieces, Signalism made a clean break from the principles of neoromantism and late

symbolism Symbolism or symbolist may refer to: Arts * Symbolism (arts), a 19th-century movement rejecting Realism ** Symbolist movement in Romania, symbolist literature and visual arts in Romania during the late 19th and early 20th centuries ** Russian sy ...

still governing Serbian literature. Its goal was set to radically change poetry both through content and form, and make it compatible with the contemporary times. Revolutionizing of the poetic language started with the introduction of the symbols, formulas and linguistic forms of the "hard" sciences (physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, biochemistry and astronomy). Furthermore, the language was made visual by dispersing words and sentences into syllables and letters forming visually recognizable patterns, as well as by introducing non-verbal symbols into the text (drawings, photographs, graphs.) for the purpose of creating a collage of verbal and visual elements. This first phase of Signalism is often referred to as ''Scientism'', with the most prominent examples including the books "Planeta" (Planet, 1965) and "Putovanje u Zvezdaliju" (A trip to Starland, 1971) as well as poetry cycles "Belančevina" (Protein), "Kiseonik" (Oxygen), "Ožilište" (Nursery) and others in which the topics are Space, Time and Matter. In there for decade long research and creative pursuit that followed, Signalists significantly expanded cognitive boundaries and genre profile of modern Serbian poetry. Signalist poetry can be divided into two main forms: verbal and non-verbal. Verbal poetry consists of scientist, aleatoric (random), stochastic, technological, phenomenological, slang and apeironistic poetry. Non-verbal poetry subtypes include visual, object, sound and gestual poetry. Signalism made significant advances in prose (experimental novel and short story). There is also a number of significant Signalist children literature accomplishments. In visual art strides are made in body art, mail art, performance and

conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...

. Three manifestos helped define Signalism as a neo-avant-garde movement that negates literal, artistic and cultural heritage, poetic and aesthetic conventions and canonical ways of creativity by insisting on creative experimentation – "Manifesto of scientific poetry" (1968), "Signalist manifesto (Regulae poesis)" (1969) and "Signalism" (1970). The movement was significantly boosted by the international magazine "Signal", inaugurated in 1970. Nine issues of "Signal" appeared between 1970 and 1973, presenting a number of domestic and international artists, as well as printing bibliographical data about the avant-garde publications all around the world. From 1973 until 1995 magazine could not be published, mainly for financial reasons. From 1995 to 2004 another 21 issues of "Signal" appeared. The new release of "Signal" revitalized the Signalist movement and brought an army of young artists into the movement in 21st century. On the work of Miroljub Todorović and Signalism movement that he had founded, three doctoral dissertations have been defended: Dr. Julian Kornhauser, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, 1980; Dr. Živan Živković, Faculty of Philology in Belgrade, 1991 and Dr. Milivoje Pavlović, University of Kosovska Mitrovica, 2002. Twenty monographs have also been published on the same subject.

Important international contributors of the "Signal" magazine

* Raoul Hausmann, dadaist, the founder of Berlin Dada in 1918. *

Augusto de Campos Augusto de Campos (born 14 February 1931, São Paulo) is a Brazilian writer who (with his brother Haroldo de Campos) was a founder of the Concrete poetry movement in Brazil. He is also a translator, music critic and visual artist. Work In 1952 ...

, one of the initiators of the

concrete poetry Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has now developed a distinct mea ...

. * Michele Perfetti, mail-artist, critic and theoretician of neo-avant-garde, wrote about Signalism on numerous occasions. *

Adriano Spatola Adriano or Adrião is the form of the Latin given name ''Hadrianus'' commonly used in the Italian language; the form Adrian is used in the English language. Notable people with the name include: * Adriano Banchieri, Italian composer, music theori ...

, Italian poet, editor of the experimental poetry magazine "Tam Tam". * Clemente Padin, visual poet and theoretician, wrote about "Signalism" numerous times, editor of the neo-avant-garde magazine "Ovum 10" in Uruguay) * Julien Blaine, visual poet, performer, mail and conceptual artist. The editor of one of the best neo-avant-garde magazines "Doc(k)s" * Sarenco, visual poet, performer, anthologist, founder and editor of the Italian neo-avant-garde magazine "Lotta Poetica" *

Eugenio Miccini Eugenio Miccini (b. Florence 1925 – d. Florence 2007) was an Italian artist and writer, considered to be one of the fathers of Italian visual poetry. Biography Eugenio Miccini (1925 in Florence – 2007 in Florence) is considered to be one of the ...

, one of the most prominent Italian visual poets and theoretician of neo-avant-garde * Richard Kostelanetz, visual poet, theoretician of neo-avant-garde, anthologist, editor of the "Assembling" * Guillermo Deisler, Chilean visual poet, critic and anthologist * Bob Cobbing, English concrete poet and theoretician of sound poetry * Eugen Gomringer, concrete poet and theoretician, one of the founders of concrete poetry *

Pierre Garnier Pierre is a masculine given name. It is a French form of the name Peter. Pierre originally meant "rock" or "stone" in French (derived from the Greek word πέτρος (''petros'') meaning "stone, rock", via Latin "petra"). It is a translation ...

, concrete poet and theoretician, founder of French

spatialism Spatialism ( it, Spazialismo) is an art movement founded by Argentine-Italian artist Lucio Fontana in Milan in 1947 in which he proposed to synthesize colour, sound, space, movement, and time into a new type of art. The main ideas of the movement ...

, the space poetry * Enzo Minarelli, main representative of the Italian "poesia visiva"—the visible poetry *

Keiichi Nakamura Keiichi is a masculine Japanese given name. Notable people with the name include: *, Japanese photographer *, Japanese manga artist *, Japanese diplomat *, Japanese music director *, Japanese molecular biologist *, Japanese butterfly swimmer *, Ja ...

, Japanese visual and mail-artist."Manifest of Signalism"
(Japanese, English, Serbian), Signalism @ Project Rastko, e-library *

Dick Higgins Dick Higgins (15 March 1938 – 25 October 1998) was an American artist, composer, art theorist, poet, publisher, printmaker, and a co-founder of the Fluxus international artistic movement (and community). Inspired by John Cage, Higgins was a ...

, visual poet and theoretician of neo-avant-garde, editor of the publishing company "Something Else Press" * Dmitry Bulatov, Russian visual poet, theoretician and anthologist *

Sol LeWitt Solomon "Sol" LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism. LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he pref ...

, one of the most prominent American conceptualists *

Shozo Shimamoto was a Japanese artist. Having studied with Jirō Yoshihara, the future Gutai leader, from 1947, Shimamoto was a key founding member of Gutai along with Yoshihara and fifteen others in August, 1954. He was close to the leader Yoshihara and activ ...

, a member of the famous Japanese neo-avant-garde group "Gutai" * Dr.

Klaus Peter Dencker Klaus is a German, Dutch and Scandinavian given name and surname. It originated as a short form of Nikolaus, a German form of the Greek given name Nicholas. Notable persons whose family name is Klaus *Billy Klaus (1928–2006), American basebal ...

, visual poet and theoretician who put together one of the cult anthologies of visual poetry "Text-Bilder" *

Ruggero Maggi Ruggero (), the Italian equivalent of Roger, may refer to: * Ruggero I of Sicily (1031–1101) Norman king of Sicily *Ruggero Berlam (1854–1920), Italian architect *Ruggero Bonghi (1826–1895), Italian scholar, writer and politician *Ruggero B ...

, Italian visual poet, painter and mail-artist *

Daniel Daligand Daniel is a masculine given name and a surname of Hebrew origin. It means "God is my judge"Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 68. (cf. Gabriel—"God is my strength"), ...

, French visual poet, mail-artist and critic * Willi R. Melnikov, Russian visual poet, mail-artist and performer * Kum-Nam Baik, South Korean mail-artist * On Kawara, American conceptual artist * Klaus Groh,

neo-dadaist Neo-Dada was a movement with audio, visual and literary manifestations that had similarities in method or intent with earlier Dada artwork. It sought to close the gap between art and daily life, and was a combination of playfulness, iconoclasm, a ...

, the founder of the neo-dadaist center in Germany and author of numerous anthologies and collections of visual poetry, mail-art and conceptual art.

International anthologies containing works of Signalists

* Maurizio Spatola «Poesia Sperimentale», Turin, Italy, 1970 * Guillermo Deisler «Poesia Visiva en el Mundo», Antofagasta, Chile, 1972 * Klaus Peter Dencker, «Text-Bilder Visuele Poesie International Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart», Koln, Germany, 1972 * Klaus Groh, «Visuel-Konkret-International», Gersthofen, Germany, 1973 * Fernando Millan and Jesus Garcia Sanches, «La escritura en libertad», Madrid, Spain, 1975 * Alan Riddel, «Typewriter Art», London, England, 1975 * G. J. De Rook, «Historische anthologie visuele poezie», Brussels, Belgium, 1976 * Josep M. Figueres and Manuel de Seabra, «Antologia da poesia visual Europeia», Lisbon, Portugal, 1977 * Sarenco, «Poesia e prosa delle avangardie», Brescia, Italy, 1978 * Julien Blaine, «Mail Artists in the World», Paris, France, 1978 * Julian Kornhauser, «Tragarze zdan», Kraków-Wroclaw, Poland, 1983 * Enrico Marscelloni and Sarenco, «poesia totale 1897-1997: Dal colpo di dadi alla poesia visuale», Mantua, Italy, 1998 * Dmitry Bulatov, «Точка зрения. Визуальная поэзия: 90-е годы / Točka zrenija. Vizualnaja poezija. 90-e godi", Kaliningrad, Russia, 1998 Three anthologies were also published in Serbia: "Signalist poetry" (1971), "Concrete, visual and signalist poetry" (1975), "Mail-Art Mail-Poetry" (1980), as well as several collections and almanacs.

The most important authors and works of Signalism

Many poets, writers and painters accepted the basic concepts of Signalism, further developing and spreading the ideas of this Serbian (Yugoslav) neo-avant-garde movement. Besides the founder of Signalism

(''Kyberno'', 1970; ''The Pig is an Excellent Swimmer'', 1971; ''Bumpkin Shows Off'', slang poetry, 1974; ''Insect on the Temple'', 1978; ''Algol'', 1980, ''Textum'', 1981; ''Chinese Erotism'', 1983; ''Knock-Out'', 1984; ''I Mount Rocinante Again'', 1987; ''Water-Snake Drinks Water'', 1988; ''The Diary of Avant-Garde'', 1990; ''Electric Chair'', slang poetry, 1998; ''I’ve Just Opened my Mail'', 2000; ''It Walked Into my Ear'', slang stories, 2005; ''Blue Wind'', 2006; ''Slang Stories'', 2007;) important contributors to the theory and practice of Signalism include Marina Abramović, Vlada Stojiljković, Zvonimir Kostić Palanski, Slobodan Pavićević (''Flowers’ Silicates'', 1973; ''Roadworks'', 1984), Milivoje Pavlović (''White Book'', 1974; ''The World In Signals'', 1996), Zoran Popović,

Ljubiša Jocić Ljubiša ( sr, Љубиша) is Serbian masculine given name and a surname. It may refer to: *Ljubiša Beara (1939–2017), Bosnian Serb who participated in the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina *Ljubiša Broćić (1911–1995), Serbian football manage ...

(''Moonshine in Tetrapack'', 1975; ''What’s the Time'', 1976: ''Essays on Signalism'', 1994), Jaroslav Supek, Zvonko Sarić (''Overcoat until the Dawn'', 2001; ''Soul Catcher'', 2003), Bogislav Marković (''Altai Dust'', 2006), Ilija Bakić (''Prenatal Life'', 1997; ''New Babylon'', 1998; ''Protoplasm'', 2003; ''The Autumn of Gatherers'', 2007; ''To be Continued'', 2009),

Slobodan Škerović Slobodan Škerović (born 27 September 1954 in Belgrade) is a Serbian author, painter and philosopher, and a member of the international neo-avantgarde Signalism movement. Biography Škerović studied painting at the Faculty of Applied Arts ...

(''Indigo'', 2005; ''All Colors of Arcturus'', 2006; ''Chimera or Borg'', 2008), Žarko Đurović (''The World of Signalism'', 2002), Dušan Vidaković, Dobrivoje Jevtić, Dejan Bogojević, Andrej Tišma, Dobrica Kamperelić, Milivoj Anđelković,

Zoran Stefanović Zoran Stefanović (, sr-cyr, Зоран Стефановић, born 21 November 1969 in Loznica) is a Serbian author, publisher and cultural activist, best known as the founder of several cultural networks, including Project Rastko. His works w ...

and others.

Critical reception

Numerous domestic and international critics and theoreticians hold Signalism in high regard: Prof. Miloš Bandić: "Signalism is – after Zenitism,

Surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

and the movement of social literature – the next and autochthonous literary and artistic movement in Serbian literature of 20th century. At the same time, in contemporary Yugoslav literature and culture, Signalism is confirmed as an exclusive modern dimension and a separate artistic form and production. Without it all would probably be poorer and who knows how deprived." Oskar Davičo, famous writer: "For the first time from the appearance of Surrealism in the twenties, we can joyfully confirm that with exploration of Miroljub Todorović, Serbian poetry can again catch up with the genuine worldwide avant-garde explorations." Zoran Markuš, visual arts critic: "Signalism is our parallel phenomena within the brackets of the most extreme avant-garde and that explains its international expansion, approval and importance in certain artistic and intellectual circles." Dave Oz, Canadian multimedia artist: "True essence of Signalism is that it expects appearance of planetary consciousness."

Gillo Dorfles Angelo Eugenio "Gillo" Dorfles (12 April 1910 – 2 March 2018) was an Italian art critic, painter, and philosopher. Biography Born in Trieste to a Gorizian father of Jewish descent and a Genoese mother, Dorfles graduated in medicine, specializ ...

, Italian arts theoretician: "Signalism means a step forward, in relation to concrete poetry, visual poetry and the art of the sign." Prof. Milivoje Pavlović: "Thanks to Miroljub Todorović and the group that follows him, Signalism with its mainstream represents the arc which connects in a creative manner avant-garde aims from the period between wars with the contemporary epoch, bringing valuable innovations and connecting Serbian art with the modern world’s processes." (From the book ''The Keys of Signalist Poetics'')

The origins and methods of Signalism

Important international contributors of the "Signal" magazine

International anthologies containing works of Signalists

The most important authors and works of Signalism

Critical reception

See also

References

Further reading

Some works in English

Works in other languages

Signalism in lexicons

External links