Beograd

Signal No. 6-7, November 1972 [Marina Abramovic, Sound Environment White]

[Belgrade]: International Review for Signalist Research, 1972. Offset. Single leaf folded to produce 4 pp. 8 ¼ x 11 ¾ in. Some edge wear; horizontal fold line at center with small (<¼ in.) closed tears at edges. Overall, very good. Item #6105

The rare November 1972 double issue of this short-lived periodical exploring Signalist poetry and art, with Marina Abramovic on the cover.

Abramovic, born in Belgrade in 1946, had just completed her postgraduate studies in Croatia in 1972 and would spend the next few years teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts at Novi Sad and working on her earliest solo performances, the first of which she would debut in Edinburgh in 1973.

The Signalist movement was born in Yugoslavia in the late 1950s and sought to revolutionize language as a medium of expression. Miroljub Todorović, the founder and publisher of the magazine, wrote on the back cover of this issue about the theory and practice of signalist or getsual poetry: “The gestual poet creates freely in space, making use of various elements - from verbal and visual through to sonorous - in the process...This kind of signalist poetry abolishes all boundaries between poetry and theatre, happening and concrete everyday action.”

Signal ran from 1970 to 1973 in nine issues; the magazine was then reconstituted and continued in the late 1990s for 12 more issues. Almost all of these were double-issues, making the magazine ever more scarce The journal included contributions from Raoul Hausmann, Augusto de Campos, Richard Kostelanetz, Dick Higgins, Sol Lewitt, and many more.

A rare document of avant-garde poetry behind the Iron Curtain, in the non-aligned Communist state of Yugoslavia, and an exceptionally early example in print of the work of the renowned performance artist, Marina Abramovic.

Price: $550.00