Alain Arias-Misson Presents His Book Public Poems in Madrid

The artist and poet gathers in a comprehensive book his “50 years of writing in the street”. His Public Poems transcend the realm of performance to become a synergy between literature, society and the visual arts.

A document-work based on the public poem Palabras Fragiles by Alain Arias-Misson (1971). At Hoyesarte.com.

The figure of Alain Arias-Misson represents, like few others, the restless, against-the-grain artist. His Public Poems have taken the most daring poetics and visual art to dozens of cities, writing on the urban centers as if they were notebooks or canvases. On 26 January the Cruce – Arte y Pensamiento Contemporaneo association of Madrid presents the book “Public Poems – 50 years of writing in the street”, published by Ediciones Asimetricas, at its premises on Calle Doctor Fourquet. The artist will take part in the event, accompanied by leading figures of poetry and the avant-garde, such as Ignacio Gomez de Liano or Herminio Molero. Together with names like Joan Brossa and Fernando Carbonell (who will also take part in the presentation), Alain Arias-Misson developed his personal vision of poetry and art during the time he lived in Spain, in the 1960s.

Public Sinking of Venice, Alain Arias-Misson. Recording of the Public Poem performed on the occasion of the 2015 Venice Biennale.

Arias-Misson’s Public Poems are not performances, nor body-art, nor site-specific art. They are literature taken to its highest expression, in which the text transcends the written or spoken word to wrap itself in reality. In 1967 the multimedia artist and experimental poet asks himself a crucial question: why not use cities as pages? The answer then takes the form of Public Poems, active interventions that make use of the medium, the urban furniture, the passage of people and even the security forces (which have so often confronted his poem-actions). To create them the poet draws inspiration from the personality of the cities and their idiosyncrasy, and transports texts, letters, symbols and all kinds of graphics into urban settings, generating beauty and meaning. Thanks to the book’s publication, it is now possible to enter the unclassifiable and indispensable universe of Alain Arias-Misson’s poetic art, and to revisit it anew. An art more necessary than ever, which does not lose its relevance and constantly reinvents itself.

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