Browse by Artist: SCHWITTERS, KURT

Artist:	SCHWITTERS, KURT
Title:	PPPPPP: Poems Performance Pieces Proses Plays Poetics
Label:	EXACT CHANGE
Format:	Book
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	EC SCHW

"Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948), inventor of his own personal branch of Dadaism called 'Merz,' is best known for his collages and for his monumental constructions called Merzbau. But Schwitters' stated goal was 'to erase the boundaries between the arts' -- he said his poems were 'a kind of drawing' while his collages 'demand to be read.' This collection, culled from five volumes of Schwitters' writings published in Germany, introduces the total work of art that is Merz via Schwitters' words rather than images. Included is the complete text for the 'Ur Sonata,' which, as renowned poets/editors/translators Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris comment, 'is to sound poetry what Joyce's Ulysses is to the twentieth-century novel.'" 288 pages, paperbound, $17.95 list price.

Artist:	SCHWITTERS, KURT
Title:	What a Beauty/Die Ursonate
Label:	WERGO (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$22.00
Catalog #:	WER 6313

A year after deleting the original, historic Schwitters recordings of "Ursonate", Wergo release these new recordings (from 2004) by Die Schwindlinge (a women, Silke Egeler-Wittmannn, plus 2 guys who look like they just got back from the lipstick factory). Well, there's tragedy all around us and this CD is pure cabaret nonsense. I know that we could all extend our "sense of humor" and just "enjoy" the wackiness, but the only sentence that complements the conclusion of this CD is: "Please Kill Me."

"The members of the ensemble Die Schwindlinge present the 'Ursonate,' 'An Anna Blume,' 'what a b what a b what a beauty,' 'Ribble Bobble Pimlico,' 'From dawn to dark' and further sound-poetical works by Dadaist composer Kurt Schwitters. These works exemplify Schwitters' motto, 'May my humorous laughter be a sign that we will have an entertaining time together.' Schwitters (1887-1948) was an exceptionally gifted reciter and lecturer -- although less as someone who forms language than as someone who deforms it. As an artist-clown, the bourgeois Schwitters was capable of giving free rein to his anarchistic and chaotic tendencies. As a performing artist he took the goals of the modern architect, 'light, air, and sun' and added another, laughter."

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