Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language

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Walk Talk

Ferdinand Kriwet. Walk Talk. 1969

Ferdinand Kriwet (German, b. 1942). Walk Talk. 1969. Silkscreen on PVC, 39 3/8 x 425 13/16" (100 x 1081.5 cm). Courtesy BQ, Berlin. © Ferdinand Kriwet

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Walk Talk is a testament to Kriwet’s all-encompassing exploration of the mechanisms of language and the various contexts within which it can be perceived. The work exists visually, as an object to be looked at; acoustically, in its rhyming words; and spatially, because to experience it fully one has to physically traverse it. Kriwet was active in international Concrete poetry circles, coining terms such as “poem paintings,” “Publit” (short for “public litera­ture”), and the German Sehtexte and Hörtexte, describing visual and audio texts, respectively. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Kriwet created a large body of text-based kinetic sculptures, films, broadcast radio works, wallpaper, shaped paintings and drawings, and three-dimensional environmental installations such as this one.