>What it is - I am thinking about performance of sound / visual texts and the
>importance of gesture as a factor in and part of the utterance - Cobbing,
>bpNichol, McCaffery, Dutton are examples - and recently seeing Alistair Noon
>doing very subtle scored gestures
In theatre, Brecht in particular talked about the importance of gestic
language, or gestus - that is, language which grows out of action, or is
action, or begets action. The idea of gestus is also linked to orality
(certainly writing for live performance is predicated on a the actual
physical presence of a performer and what that means for utterance) and
therefore a literal idea of presence: and this quality of language is one
that poetry plays with. If you think that a poem is a text in which the
bodily nature of language is foregrounded - its relation to breath,
tongue, lips, muscle, its visual and audial qualities - they are also
qualities of gestic language.
Best
Alison
Alison Croggon
PO Box 186
Newport VIC 3015
Australia
Masthead Online: http://www.masthead.com.au
Home Page: http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/bronte/338
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