Film UbuWebBernard Heidsieck (b. 1928)
L'Atelier d'écriture: Bernard Heidsieck (1994) Paris Lecture (2005)Bernard Heidsieck, a multimedia poet, finds his origins in action poetry and is one of the cofounders of sound poetry with Henri Chopin, when, in 1959 they started to use recorders and microphones not simply as reproductive tools but as transformative mixing devices. He published his first book of poems in 1955 and started shortly after his first recording experiences. He participated in the different avant-gardes festivals of the 60’s in Paris, particularly the rare Fluxus evenings before starting to organize his own events at home or elsewhere, evenings of lecture, performances, and sound poetry in the 70’s at the Soleil Noir in Paris. He is the co-founder with Jean Jacques Lebel in the 80’s of the international festival Polyphonix. He also published some LPs, the first book-record (5 LPs included) in the 70’s at Soleil Noir in Paris; he published some pieces in OU review from 1954 to 1974, some records like ‘L’encoconnage’ and ‘Poèmes-partitions’ etc., and lately the box (CD+texts) Vaduz, at Conz editions in Verona. A few CD’s and ‘plaquettes’ will be published in 1999. Jean Pierre Bobillot published Bernard Heidsieck’s first book on his work in 1997, at Jean Michel Place editions. Bernard Heidsieck has never abandoned the meaning or the sentence, he invents a new visual ‘dramaturgy’, gestual, verbal and sound, with pre-recordings and simultaneous improvisation on the microphone, live, creating what he has named action-poetry (in action with a predefined partition). Creator and interpreter of his own production, he produces his work in which the text -body and the voice are an indissociable whole. -- Michel Giroud
RESOURCES:
Bernard Heidsieck in UbuWeb Sound