© Dieter Roth Estate Courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Fr 17.10. 17:00 Saal 2
With Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer (The Institute for Theory, Institute of Book Arts at the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig), Friedrich Block (Stiftung Brückner-Kühner, Kassel)
Dieter Roth (1930–1998) seems to have made use of every available medium, and also introduced new materials to art, such as foodstuffs. One constant in this heterogeneous, sprawling oeuvre, which he created in accordance with his motto »quantity as quality«, is the experimental engagement with language and script. At the beginning of his occupation with the relation between writing, language and script are his fundamental 1950s investigations in the style of experimental, concrete poetry. Script?/?image relations become a central object in the 1960s in »Mundunculum« (1967), while the literary engagement with language in extensive cycles – such as the »Shit« Poems (beginning 1966), amongst others – continued until the 1980s. Roth’s poetry film »Dot«(1960) and »Letter« (1962) are part of his reflection – pursued between different media – on script and language. Kept technically simple, they utilise the potential of film to reflect complex relationships between speech, writing and reading.
Kindly supported by the Deutscher Literaturfonds e. V.
Films: © Dieter Roth Estate, Courtesy Hauser & Wirth