18 ~ Friday, September 25, 1998 — North Shore News

installation poet
gets out the word

@ Word on the Street, Vancouver Public
Library, Sunday Sept. 27.

John Moore
Contributing Writer

THE word will literally be “on the street” at
the annual Word On The Street Book Festival
held at the Vancouver Public Library Sunday,
Sept. 27. “Installation poet T.S. Thomas will
be laying out big letters all over the pavement
to create a poem too big to be contained by
any mere book.

At last vears Festival, Thomas, who divides
his time berween Gabrioia Island and West
Vancouver, installed a poem measuring 20
metres, (60 ft.) at the Library’s main entrance.
Nobody who walked past/around/through it
could ever again say, “I don’t read poctry.”
which is precisely Thomas's point.

Earlier this vear, during the Vancouver
International Jazz Festival, Thomas buddied up
with former TISH poet Jamie Reid to “install”
the final stanzas of Pres,

Reid’s book-length poctic
tribute to jazz legend Lester
Young, along the sidewalks
of English Bay in what was
self-billed as “A Wanton Act
of Poetry.”

The effecr of Thomas's
work on passersby is always.
clectric. “People who say
they never read poetry and.
maybe never do, are forced
to encounter the work,” he
observes with a mischievous
Kackle. “They sce huge letters
on the street or sidewalk and

. they have to ask themselves,
‘What am T dealing with
here? Is it permanent? Is it
some Candid Camera stunt?”
It short-circuits all the tradi-
tional expectations people
have about the context of the
text. People are used to see-
ing big words on signs and
billboards, but seeing them
actually down in the street
forces them to re-think the
way they think about words
and about poetry.”

Thomas’s “installed” poems do actually
resemble some kind of anarchistic “Revenge of
the Signs,” a semantic orgy in which the huge
letters from billboards and signs have escaped
their pasteboard or neon crucifixion and run
riot in the streets, refusing to advertise designer
jeans and condos, and instead formed them-
sclves into lines of poetry in an act of semiotic
rebellion. :

What Thomas docs with his poetry installa-
tions is on a par with the international artist
Christo's fabric fence across the state of
California and his “wrapping” of massive public
buildings in cloth. Christo brought “art” out of
the gallery, into the world, and compelled the
world to interact with it as an external, rather
than narrowly internal experience.

Thomas docs likewise with poetry to even
greater effect, despite the somewhat smaller
scale, taking the “poem” out of the “bcok” and
transforming it into a concrete object that has

physical as well as intellectual presence.

“Without getting too profound about it, I
think it’s safe to observe that context has been
the single over-riding aesthccic of all art in chis
century,” Thomas observes, “And my installa-
tions are an extension of that ethos”.

This year, Thomas's Word On The Street
installation, Te Word from Cyberspace, will be
in his own words, the text taken from ancther
“non-book” ongoing publishing project he’s
been working on for most of this vear; a unigue
Internet website called File Not Found 404.

As the title suggests, this is no ordinary web-
site. There are no ghastly “creative” graphics;
File Not Found 404 consists of nothing but brief
texts, usually as short as a paragraph, none
more than one electronic pags long, most of
which are devoted to thought-provoking obser-
vations and questions about the nature of
Cyberlit and what compels human beings to sit
up until all hours clicking a litde button to see
whar's on the next page.

‘The visual starkness of the site, the brevity of
the excerpts which makes
downloading the next page
mercifully instantaneous, all
combine with the ideas in
the text to create “the
world’s first known décon-
structed web site.” File Not
Found 404 is the anti-web-
site, a lictle speck of subver-
sive anti-matter in the virtual
universe, and for travellers
on the information highway
to hell, it’s as refreshing as
slapping cold water on your
face in that gas station wash-
room somewhere in mid-
Prairie. The full File Not
Found 404 experience can
be computer-accessed at
http://www.islandnet.com
Despite the fact that as a
poet he works in mediums
that are both macro and
micro the traditional format
of the book, Thomas is no:
one of those self-styled
prophets of the furure who
smugly harp on the obsolcs-

. cence of the book.

“T actually love books and I think it’s worth
noting that most of the contemporary media
philosophy about the meaning of cyberspace
and virtual reality etcetera is still accesse
through the medium of books, not on-line,” he
notes with an ironic chuckle. “1 haven’t pub-
lished in book form because these installations
keep taking up all my time and I haven’t really
worked out a book format that would be able
to capture the physical and conrextual aspects of
what I do. It would have to involve pho-
tographs, at least. I’m more used to videotape
as a means of recording the creation of the
installation and the interaction of passersby.”

-A video of last years installation at the
Vancouver Public Library can be accessed at
http://www.dentv.com

One day, the Muse is probably going to set
fire to Thomas’s weiking shoes and he will start
installing a poem that begins in Victoria and
ends in St. John’s, When it happens,you heard
it here first.

.:. _ TIME IS RUNNING OUT FOR -
x. MOVIES FOR LOONIES!!.

eo 6

AT

The end of the month spells the end of the sensational, Movies for
Loonies deal at 2.50 Videe. Come and help us celebrate our Grand
Opening tomorrow, Saturday September 26, between 11-2pm. it will be
great fun for the whole family as there will be face painting, hot dogs and

-
_ ENTRY FORM

balloons. jolly Genie, the cutest mascot
in town, will also be there to help draw

for the Grand Prize of A TRIP FOR 2

Sepices suede!

Marine Dr!

TO DISNEYLAND.

. . _ - el ms
Libraries host sales _
GRACE Poivi (left) and Joyce Crist browse books for sale by North. Vancouver :

Pe

District Library this Saturday, 10 a.m to 3 p.m., and Sunday,’ 12:t6/3.p.
Capilano branch, 3045 Highiand Bivd., and Oct. 17 and.18 at Lynn Valley lib

Ea

The North Shore’s newest ice facility full service Sports Store and heated :

is opening next month at 2411 Mt.
Seymour Parkway, just west of the
Ron Andrews RecCenitre. Ice Sports

IGE

SPORT'S

North Shore will
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ice sheets, restaurant,
rink level concession,

For Adult, Weekend, Novice,
21 &under Hockey Leagues,
Power Skating,
Learn-to-Figure Skate
Call 924-0828
Registration begins Oct. 13

seem vasengere

NORTH
SHORE

viewing galleries. Which means those _
sounds you're hearing are the cheers
of all the recreational skaters, figure

skaters, minor hockey
players and parents
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Female Hockey School,
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