Katalin Ladik Phonopoetics

""phonopoetics" is the first ever survey of seminal hungarian artist katalin ladik's sonic efforts. a thing of beauty, drawing from the period between 1968 and 1993, its two stunning sides shatter the lines between performance, the spoken word, fine art, and experimental music, offering the terms to rethink how each is understood. born in 1942, katalin ladik has lived a wild and multifaceted creative life - beginning primarily as a poet of the written word, expanding into experimental theatre during the mid-1970s, and ultimately becoming an artist whose practice also incorporates sound and visual poetry, performance art, experimental music, audio plays, happenings, mail art, collage, and photography, built around visual and vocal expression, as well as movement and gesture. "phonopoetics", alga marghen's remarkably diverse survey of ladik's audio work, is a refracting lens into this dense and dynamic world - a totem which belongs to a sprawling puzzle of highly nuanced personal, social, political, and existential themes, springing from the feminist and gender neutral concerns of eastern europe during the 1960s and '70s. the totality of ladik's practice, particularly as it unfolds across the two sides of "phonopoetics", can be understood as a radical rethinking of the potential, manifestation, and application of poetry, as well as the fundamentals of vocalization. delving toward the very origins of consciously created sound -- spoken or otherwise, her efforts unseat the divisions placed between literary, musical, theatrical, and visual disciplines, joining them through the fundamental need and right to express. in the words of visionary sound poet henri chopin, ladik is "a great, magical voice." alga marghen's issue of "phonopoetics" places this little heard, and profoundly important artist into the center of you consciousness where she will no doubt remain. a vital entry in the field of sound art, historic eastern european experimental practice, and sound poetry."