Readings, Listenings, Viewings
Kurt Schwitters, Ursonate. Listen to performances by Jaap Blonk, Christian Bök, Schwitters himself, and the Robo-Ursonate. Consult the score as well, and print out the first page to bring to class.
Mark Applebaum, Aphasia. Listen to the performance by Michael Compitello; consult the score, and print out the first page to bring to class.
Some nonsense poems: Christian Bök, from Eunoia; Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky; Donato Mancini, Ligature.
Reflections
Mladen Dolar, The Linguistics of the Voice.
Daniel Heller-Roazen, The Apex of Babble.
Brandon Labelle, Gibberish, Gobbledygook.
Susan Stewart, Reversals and Inversions.
Questions
As you read, consider what nonsense is, where it comes from, and how it gets made. Does it have rules? (Stewart might say so: pay particular attention to the first ten pages of her chapter; the rest is optional.) Or is it necessarily anarchic? What relationship does it have to babble? To noise? Are these articulations, if that’s the word, original, the bottom or beginning of voice? Or belated, something voice descends into? Is there a nonsense or a babble of gesture, as there is of words? (See Applebaum.) All these questions can be put to Schwitters et al., and Schwitters et al. can put them right back to our theorists.
Exercise
Make a new kind of nonsense-voice, and demonstrate its usage in the medium of your choice. You may write a text or script, for performance by one voice or more; you may make an audio or video file; or any combination of the two. Feel free to experiment with notation. You should produce, by whatever means, at least one minute of nonsense (or babble; they’re different, in ways we might discuss). Accompany your submission with a 200-300 word, sensible or at least intelligible prose description of what you did and how you did it. (Is there a method to your madness? A meaning?) Please submit your work by email to us both before class by 9pm on Monday evening, and also bring a paper copy of anything that can be copied on paper. If you expect to enlist classmates for a performance, bring enough scripts.