AZIMUTH: Writing On Walls

There are several collaborative sources of inspiration for this installation. In 2007-2008 I was a frequent visitor to The Land/An Art Site and created a long poem or "map" of the site. An outtake of this was installed as a sculpture "Laundry Line Koan." But as in many creative experiences, there were leftover images, poems and ideas about the site. When E. Nuevo asked me to create a text that could be written on the walls of the LAND/gallery I went back to the original experience. Since boundary lines and directions were important, I focused on the four directions for four sections of poetry. As in a planetarium, these directions are both actual (the walls of the gallery) and a metaphoric closed system with each other.

I then set up a collaborative process with four small teams of poets. The North team was given the last line of my North section, etc. The poets added a link or stanza in turn, passing the poem by e-mail. This process was a lose version of the Japanese renga or renku, where all poets involved see the entire work as it evolves, unlike the surrealist exquisite corpse poem where much of the work is hidden until the end. Essentially the teams of poets were writing free verse renga, or linked verse. Of the fifteen poets, the majority are from Albuquerque but are also from throughout New Mexico, the country, and the world.

The last part of the project is a scroll which has one final remaining stanza of the group poem. Visitors to the gallery can add a link or stanza to the scroll at will. Metaphorically, the poem can then roll unfettered into the world. The final collaborative element is the actual writing on walls. Kim Arthun has designed the typography so that the text had its own visual integrity. In this way it goes from being words to being environment, or back to the original source of the poem in the first place.