'what the book‽'
an exhibition by gorjeoux moon
at retramp gallery
1-3.9.23
'what the book‽' is a set of six 105mm square book shaped poetry sculptures, 'what the book‽' delves deep into the possibilities of what book can be, what being book can mean, and what can be said when freed from the binds of convention
what is a book when its pages are unbound? what does that do to the stories within? what happens when words are no longer fixed, instead moving around and through pages? or when lines of letters phase in and out of each other? or when a book unfolds in different directions, instructing the reader how to constantly reorient themselves to it and its content?
six books, six concept, six bindings containing dozens of novel technical and poetic techniques', 'what the book‽' is a library of conceptual concrete poetry 'books' which the reader must haptically engage with and perform themselves in order to experience what book, page, and poem can be outside of normative expectations of form
'i remember this one time' is a collection of memories that are re ordered dependent on the context of their recollection this is a selection of poetic vignettes from my life since coming out as trans in early 2018. they’re as true as I can write them, there’s a loose chronology, though there isn't a convenient start or a natural end, like memory they are associated and reassociated - ordered and reordered - each time they are remembered
'dreamworld - a liberello' is a response to my involvement in the Dreamworld immersive art project between the 20th of december 2019 and the 5th of january 2020. the poems and musings are a response to both my interaction with the space and to life outside of the space in the time I spent there dealing with love, identity, family, sexuality, trauma and the associated existential meditations, I found myself in need of a new approach to language and expression
'sometimes the best beginnings' cracks open wide the very concept of page itself, incepting a poetic form in which words dance across the page - appearing, disappearing, and morphing into new ones as they move through and within the paper they are printed upon
'i am from my self' continues in this form and becomes a collection of deeply personal experiential and relational poetry. poetry which discovers self, heals trauma, battles addiction, and overcomes abuse
'palimpsest' consolidates the playfulness of this new form and imbues it further with hard won wisdom whilst tempering the abject beauty of being with the utter absurdity of consciousness
'imagine dancing' completes the set as the most 'conventional' book of them all. approximately 200 haiku printed and bound in chronological order, chaptered with the names and dates of the notebooks they were written in. taking the 5 7 5 form and pushing it frequently past it's breaking point, these poems are the doodles, meditations, bases of kinetic pieces, and crystallisations of thought and understanding that punctuated and accompanied my life between Dec 19 and Jan 23.
