Henri Chopin
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Henri Chopin (18 June 1922 – 3 January 2008) was a French avant-garde poet and musician.


Life

Henri Chopin was born in Paris, 18 June 1922, one of three brothers, and the son of an accountant. Both his siblings died during the war. One was shot by a German soldier the day after an armistice was declared in Paris, the other while sabotaging a train. Chopin was a French practitioner of
concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement (cement paste) that hardens (cures) over time. Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most wid ...
and
sound poetry Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging literacy and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words". By definition, sound p ...
, well known throughout the second half of the 20th century. His work, though iconoclastic, remained well within the historical spectrum of poetry as it moved from a spoken tradition to the printed word and now back to the spoken word again. He created a large body of pioneering recordings using early tape recorders, studio technologies and the sounds of the manipulated human voice. His emphasis on sound is a reminder that language stems as much from oral traditions as from classic literature, of the relationship of balance between order and chaos. Chopin is significant above all for his diverse spread of creative achievement, as well as for his position as a focal point of contact for the international arts. As poet, painter, graphic artist and designer, typographer, independent publisher, filmmaker, broadcaster and arts promoter, Chopin's work is a barometer of the shifts in European media between the 1950s and the 1970s. In 1966 he was with
Gustav Metzger Gustav Metzger (10 April 1926, Nuremberg – 1 March 2017, London) was a German artist and political activist who developed the concept of Auto-Destructive Art and the Art Strike. Together with John Sharkey, he initiated the Destruction in ...
, Otto Muehl,
Wolf Vostell Wolf Vostell (14 October 1932 – 3 April 1998) was a German painter and sculptor, considered one of the early adopters of video art and installation art and pioneer of Happenings and Fluxus. Techniques such as blurring and Dé-coll/age are c ...
,
Peter Weibel Peter Weibel (; born 5 March 1944 in Odessa, USSR) is an internationally known Austrian post-conceptual artist, curator and new media theoretician. He started out in 1964 as a visual poet but soon jumped from the page to the screen within the sen ...
and others a participant of the
Destruction in Art Symposium The Destruction in Art Symposium (a.k.a. DIAS) was a gathering of a diverse group of international artists, poets, and scientists to London from 9–12 September, 1966. Included in this number were representatives of Fluxus and other counter-cult ...
(''DIAS'') in London. In 1964 he created ''OU'', one of the most notable reviews of the second half of the 20th century, and he ran it until 1974. ''OUs contributors included
William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...
, Brion Gysin, Gil J. Wolman, François Dufrêne, Bernard Heidsieck, John Furnival, Tom Phillips, and the Austrian sculptor, writer and
Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Pari ...
pioneer
Raoul Hausmann Raoul Hausmann (July 12, 1886 – February 1, 1971) was an Austrian artist and writer. One of the key figures in Berlin Dada, his experimental photographic collages, sound poetry, and institutional critiques would have a profound influence on ...
. His books included ''Le Dernier Roman du Monde'' (1971), ''Portrait des 9'' (1975), ''The Cosmographical Lobster'' (1976), ''Poésie Sonore Internationale'' (1979), ''Les Riches Heures de l'Alphabet'' (1992) and ''Graphpoemesmachine'' (2006). Henri also created many graphic works on his typewriter: the typewriter poems (also known as dactylopoèmes) feature in international art collections such as those of Francesco Conz in Verona, the Morra Foundation in Naples and Ruth and Marvin Sackner in Miami, and have been the subject of Australian, British and French retrospectives. His publication and design of the classic audio-visual magazines ''Cinquième Saison'' and ''OU'' between 1958 and 1974, each issue containing recordings as well as texts, images, screenprints and multiples, brought together international contemporary writers and artists such as members of Lettrisme and
Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...
, Jiri Kolar,
Ian Hamilton Finlay Ian Hamilton Finlay, CBE (28 October 1925 – 27 March 2006) was a Scottish poet, writer, artist and gardener. Life Finlay was born in Nassau, Bahamas, to James Hamilton Finlay and his wife, Annie Pettigrew, both of Scots descent. He was e ...
, Tom Phillips, Brion Gysin,
William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...
and many others, as well as bringing the work of survivors from earlier generations such as
Raoul Hausmann Raoul Hausmann (July 12, 1886 – February 1, 1971) was an Austrian artist and writer. One of the key figures in Berlin Dada, his experimental photographic collages, sound poetry, and institutional critiques would have a profound influence on ...
and
Marcel Janco Marcel Janco (, ; common rendition of the Romanian name Marcel Hermann Iancu ; 24 May 1895 – 21 April 1984) was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect and art theorist. He was the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Const ...
to a fresh audience. From 1968 to 1986 Henri Chopin lived in Ingatestone, Essex, but with the death of his wife Jean in 1985, he moved back to France. In 2001 with his health failing, he returned to England, living with his daughter and family at Dereham, Norfolk until his death on 3 January 2008.


Aesthetics

Chopin's ''poesie sonore'' aesthetics included a deliberate cultivation of a ''barbarian'' approach in production, using raw or crude sound manipulations to explore the area between distortion and intelligibility. He avoided high-quality, professional recording machines, preferring to use very basic equipment and ''bricolage'' methods, such as sticking matchsticks in the erase heads of a second-hand tape recorder, or manually interfering with the tape path.


Books

*Chopin, Henri. 1979. ''Poesie Sonore Internationale'', edited by Jean-Michel Place. Paris: Trajectoires.


Films on Henri Chopin

*''De Henri à Chopin, le dernier pape'' by Frédéric Acquaviva and Maria Faustino, DV, 3h10mn, 2002–2008 *''Henri Chopin, reflecting on OU'', by Silva Gabriela Béju, DV, 28', 2001, published in 2016 in "CRU"n°2 magazine (La Plaque Tournante, Berlin, dir. Frédéric Acquaviva and Loré Lixenberg)


References


Further reading

*Jamet, Cédric. 2009. "Limitless Voice(s), Intensive Bodies: Henri Chopin's Poetics of Expansion". ''Mosaic'' 42, n. 2 (June): 135–51. *Lentz, Michael. 1996. "'Musik? Poesie? Eigentlich …': Lautmusik/Poesie nach 1945". ''Neue Zeitschrift für Musik'' 157, n. 2 (March–April): 47–55. *Matter, Marc. 2014. "Revue OU Disque" (Editorial). ''Fabrikzeitung'', n. 298 (February): 2–3. *Norris, Andrew. 2005. "Projections of the Pulseless Body: Don van Vliet and Henri Chopin". ''Chapter & Verse'', n. 3 (Spring). *Oehlschlägel, Reinhard. 2008. "Henri Chopin gestorben". ''MusikTexte'', n. 116 (February): 87. *Zurbrugg, Nicholas. 1994. 'Electronic Arts in Australia' Continuum Vol 8, No 1 (p129-132) Interview with Henri Chopin. *Zurbrugg, Nicholas. 2001. "Programming Paradise: Haraldo de Campos, Concrete Poetry, and the Postmodern Multimedia Avant-Garde". In ''Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language'', edited by Brandon LaBelle and Christof Migone, 7–35. Los Angeles: Errant Bodies. .


External links


Archivio Conz

The History of ASCII (Text) Art by Joan G. Stark.
* Henri Chopin Papers. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.


Listening


UbuWeb Sound: Henri Chopin
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chopin, Henri 1922 births 2008 deaths 20th-century French poets Sound poets French composers French expatriates in the Czech Republic Writers from Paris French male poets 20th-century French musicians 20th-century French male writers