“No nook, no cranny, no activity, landscape, or thought stands outside the pale of poetic subject matter.”
Roman Jakobson, “What Is Poetry,” 1933.

“…poetry – more precisely poetic language – reminds us of its eternal function: to introduce through the symbolic that which works on, moves through, and threatens it.”
Julia Kristeva, “Poetry That Is Not a Form of Murder”, 1974.

“…I am trying to think about the process of emancipating language and affects…”.
Franco Beradi, “The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance“, 2012.

In his talk, critic and poet Jeff Derksen will give historical insights into the relationship of documentary poetic practices from the 1930s and contemporary documentary practices and emphasize the recent crossovers between conceptual poetry and conceptual art. He will speculate on the potentials and and differences between of artistic and poetic research. How can the poetic inform the visual? How can post-conceptual practices inform poetic practices?

Jeff Derksen lives and works in Vancouver and Vienna. His research resides at the intersection of poetry, art, urbanism. His critical books include „Annihilated Time: Poetry and other Politics, After Euphoria“, „How High Is the City“, „How Deep Is Our Love“ and his poetry books include „The Vestiges“, „Transnational Muscle Cars, Dwell, Until, and Down Time“. He works with the artists Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber in the research collective Urban Subjects: their bookworks include „Autogestion, or Henri Lefebvre in New Belgrade, Momentarily: Learning from Mega-events“, „The Possibilities Are“, and „The Militant Image Reader“. Derksen was a research fellow at the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics (CUNY Graduate Center) where he collaborated with the geographer Neil Smith. He works at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

The lecture will be in English.