Introduction to Allen Fisher at SVP 30th January 2001
I suspect that most here , if not all, know who Allen Fisher is and know
what he has done and does. Most of you have been saying "Hallo Allen" so
it's a reasonable guess.
Nevertheless...
Allen Fisher is a poet, painter, performer, editor, publisher, commuter and
art historian.
Just to list his publications would be quite an extensive operation; he's
been publishing for over 30 years; though just to list his publications
would not give anything like a full picture of his range and output, which
is both large and various. It is also challenging.
He links discourses and methodologies, bringing together science, art, play,
politics, poetry and, for want of other words, what I'll call general
cultural experimentation. He opens up ideas and formulations, he shows us
possibilities, he asks questions. Poetically, he does that with
concentration, assurance and skill. He is poet who, it seems to me, assumes
and accepts the imperative of innovation.
Any performance by Allen is worth seeing and, in my experience, reverberates
with its audience for long after it's been seen; it's been that way as far
back as I can remember.
Again and a (different) again, he makes the apparently unconnected and
random, relevant and appropriate, disconnecting what one might not have
considered disconnecting oneself, to see it more clearly. Though he revisits
areas of his concern, he does not repeat, finding new areas to explore in
what one might have thought fully-explored territory. He has the
disconcerting habit of taking his audience into disconcerting spaces even
though they thought they knew those spaces.
He would be hard to categorise, if one wanted to... He's always on the move
and always has been.
Ladies and gentlemen, Allen Fisher
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