poems from the dictionary - 1996
Durational performance
The Window Gallery - Charing Cross Road
Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design

For one working week I sat inside a window on Charing Cross Road, writing poems in English, my recently acquired new language. The poems were plagarised from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English. The dictionary definitions I chose to plagarise broadly referred to notions of authority, properness, order and stereotypes. I guess it was my way of winning over the impossibility to communicate sophisticated ideas in a language I did not master.

From every dictionary definition I composed a poem without making any personal (i.e. original) addition, other than some editing necessary to mimic the poetic genre. Each poem was typed in a square of brown paper, and a copy made on tracing paper. The originals were left in the street for people to take away, whilst the copies were stuck to the inside of the window, gradually obliterating the view from the street. During the week I wrote over 800 poems that were taken away by the passerbys.

Inside the window I set up an office-like environment in which I performed for at least three hours a day. I played with the local context of Soho, the sourrounding area where prostitution, bookshops and media businesses coexist with one another. Within that framework I presented myself as a female figure on public display, busy at work.

introduction

leaving a stain on the paper
making a crease on the page
writing poetry
in a foregin language
typing with two fingers
remaining without master
waiting
for the marvellous moment
of unruliness
and disorder
the marvellous moment
of Caetoano Veloso singing
'if you have an incredible idea
you'd better write a song
it is well known
one can only philosophy in German'
the marvellous moment
of Diego Armando Maradona spitting
in the face of
immaculate glory
the marvellous moment
of Ilona Staller sitting
in the Italian Parliament
dressed in red
flowers on her hair
the marvellous moment
of an unknown artist writing
'this is not a drawing
nor a painting
but the sedimentary deposit
of suffering'

the poems - examples

if you lie on your back
you can look up to the sky
You can't cut with the back
of the knife
You can't see
the back of your head
You write the address
on the front of the envelope
not on the back
in return

if I hit you
would you hit me back?
a table and four chairs
learning to read and write.
A knife and a spoon
my father and my mother
my father and my uncle.
Five and twenty
work hard and you will pass
(If you work hard
you will pass).
for hours and hours

for miles and miles
better and better
we knocked and knocked.

Try and come early.
Go and buy one.