Non Plus Ultra finds
Today, I received a long-awaited package from Non Plus Ultra, a Copenhagen-based micro-press. I’ve been following them for a while now, since I discover they feature typewritten art. For someone who has only recently enter the world of such art, their pieces are rare gems.
I got Kevin Stebner‘s chapbook Two Sides, which features typestracts typed on a Remington Performer. This is by far the most inspiring piece for me because it encourages me to sit at my typewriter and experiment with typewritten forms.
For the same reason, I also love Charlotte Jung‘s Final Figures and Danni Storm’s Intruding Madness. The simplicity and esthetics of their art have a surprising effect of conveying so much.
Another notable work is Ragnhild Christiansen’s Tegn, a collection of asemic writings. They remind me so much of Japanese writing, that I still consider to be more of an art form than it is writing, when I practice calligraphy.
Finally, Imogen Reid’s Text(ile), in which she manages to give a textile look to pieces of text in some magical way that I still can’t comprehend. Here’s how she describes her work:
“While making the work, I utilized chance interventions such as misprints and misalignments, as well as techniques such as cutting, turning, erasing, repeating and overprinting, as a means by which to rearrange the components of a single page of writing. Utilizing these techniques enabled me to gradually transform a once legible text into a printed text(ile) lodged within the texture of the page. Resisting the Western European convention of writing from left to right, each text(ile) attempts to yield an alternative physical, tactile kind of readability, within which the eye can move freely and in multiple directions at once.”
Anagrammatic concrete poems by Danni, typestracts by Kevin, minimal concrete poems by Charlotte, asemic writing by Ragnhild, or text(iles) by Imogen are forms that I’ve just started discovering, but they feel so familiar at the same time, so longed for… I admire the artists' bravery in challenging traditional usage and form of text, as well as the freedom and playfulness with which their art is executed.
Each piece is numbered and printed in limited edition. They are made with great devotion and attention, both by the artists as well as the publisher, creating a visual as well as tangible experience (achieved by using different textures of paper) that you are meant to remember for a long time.
