Vispro (Visual Prose)
Abstract:
All borders are open, the textual shadowlands are inhabited by any and every word and image.
There are no structures, no rules, no places to gain a firm foothold.
The author is inconsequential, artwork/writing is open to any and every interpretation, after all – it appears only ‘The Great I’ matters.
And it’s got boring.
Few will stand by what they stand for alongside any sort of definition. Sadly, even the word ‘definition’ has become outmoded, outdated and apparently ‘limiting’. To produce and produce in any and every situation with any and every means possible, without any foundation and very little purpose – except to produce – well, that’s just the way it goes – it seems.
Not to say the word-images one views are not immediately appealing, but in the long term, where is the ‘Mona Lisa’ or ‘The Great Wave’ or ‘Earthrise’ in the visual-word world today?
From where I stand now, the how (asemic writing/ text – in all its manifestations/ the image – be it original/begged/borrowed/stolen) is not the important question it seems. Rather, the why has become a fundamental area of interrogation in processing the plethora of visual-word images I view every day.
This article seeks to explicate some parameters in which to frame various artworks one could term visual prose (hereafter termed vispro) and through visual examples elucidate a philosophy for the existence of vispro. Most research (from Étienne Mallarmé, Ezra Pound and all the other great critics and writers reframing the visual-word) has concentrated on the poem in all its various manifestations.
Through the use and discussion of unusual and everyday examples of vispro, I wish to test if vispro can exist within a valid theoretical framework.
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