Monday, January 28, 2008

Dieter Roth
«Black page with holes (poetry machine)»

From Media Art Net:

Dieter Roth developed this piece as a contribution to the Fluxus publication «An Anthology,» which appeared in 1963. When the book was first planned in 1961, he sent to George Maciunas a black page with holes in it and the following instructions for use: «please take the sheet with holes in, but do it like this: take any printed matter, for instance pages of book, catalogs, logocats, folders, posters, newspaper, emballage cut in size of fluxus make the holes there in to through, put in to fluxus, loose (as the black sheet) would have been; loose, i mean : don’t take black sheet, take pages of book, catalogs, logocats, folders, posters, newspaper, emballage, tricotage camouflage, cut as fluxus in size, make the holes therein, put into it fluxum, i mean put the loose sheet then into fluxus.» In other words: the black page is intended as a master for perforating found printed material through which changing views will then be available. On publication, «An Anthology» included a «white page with holes» but not the associated printed matter.

«Black page with holes (poetry machine)»