(Photo: https://www.wmarksutherland.com/)
On Jan. 1, 2024, Canada
and the world lost a distinctive and original intermedia artist. W. Mark
Sutherland (1955-2024) Canadian visual artist, poet, performer, musician, and
performance artist, passed away eight months after being diagnosed with cancer.
Mark Sutherland’s artistic creations blur the borders of poetry, visual art,
music, and performance, while investigating language, images, and sounds. His
texts, poetry, visual constructions, and scores were published internationally,
and his creations have appeared in galleries, festivals, and solo shows across
Europe—in England, France, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy—and in the USA and
Canada.
Sutherland possessed a
wide range of expertise, spanning videopoetry, visual poetry, lyric poetry, and
sound poetry. He was a pioneer of videopoetry and made major contributions to
electronic poetry and sound poetry. In my humble opinion he ranks among the
world’s finest visual poets (and I include artists such as Judith Copithorne, Reed
Altemus, Amanda Earl, Kate Siklosi, Fernando Aguiar, and Pete Spence, among many others). Sutherland understood his
creative expressions and stated that he aimed to make poetry that is visual
art, visual art that is music, and music that is poetry.
His Sonotexts, a booklet and two CDs put out by the Electronic Music
Foundation, NY, in 2011, is brilliant. The booklet includes an introductory
essay by Darren Wershler, titled “New Machines for the Locomotion of Time,” which
offers a theoretical perspective on electronic creations with reference to
Slavoj Zizek, among others. Sutherland’s scores for and notes on the individual
sonotexts make up the main body of the booklet. The CDs include wonderful
conceptual audio-art creations such as “Sound Poem For Emile Berliner,” which
features Sutherland tracing with a lavalier microphone the letters
s-o-u-n-d-p-o-e-m on a piece of sandpaper. I can’t speak of all of the wonderful
pieces on Sonotexts, but I will say here
that “Antiqwerty” is a sonotext composed on three electric typewriters and two
manual typewriters—with a single sheet of 8½ x 11 white paper. It is a remarkable art piece that echoes Stéphane
Mallarmé's “Un Coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard.”
Image:
from the Sonotext book (“Antiqwerty”)
The visual poems that serve
as scores for the sonotexts performed on these CDs each function within a
strong conceptual frame. The following poem-score for “Poème Digitales” was
generated in studio using ten metal thimbles, a drum kit, and a single track of
a cymbal being played. Sutherland wore the thimbles on his fingers, each with
one letter of the word percussion written
on it, to perform the scored sonotext on the drum kit, and then overdubbed the
track of cymbal playing.
Here is the score for “Poème
Digitales” from Sonotexts, which is also
a visual poetic art statement:
“Poème Digitales”
from Sonotexts
Here is an audio link to the various pieces which all feature strong conceptual frames. Some listeners might notice a Zen-like quality (perhaps Shinto-like) to these remarkable
concept-based creations.
Repetitions or
sound loops inform Sutherland’s many creations. Although he did not have any trade books of
poetry published, nonetheless, he stood tall as a poet. In this regard, Paul
Dutton, close friends with Mark (who proclaimed Dutton and Nobuo Kubota to be
two of his primary mentors), reminded me that “bpNichol imagined in 1968 the poet who ‘creates a poem/object for you
to touch and is not a sculptor for he is still moved by
the language and sculpts with words . . . but he is a poet always.’ That
description,” said Dutton, “fits Mark perfectly. While he never published a
conventional book of poems (the books of poetry that he did publish are
classified as artists’ books) he was a consummate poet. His verbal works (as
opposed to the abstract, nonverbal ones) always highlight the status of words
as objects, their meaning layered, often with sly wit and wry humour.”
There’s
an interview with Sutherland, conducted by Alisson Avila for Loops. Expanded, a
video-art and moving-image exhibition program of The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXz91POIY44>,
in which Sutherland speaks about the creation of his “America a Videopoem”
(2008), for which he took the final scene in Edwin S. Porter’s 1903 silent film
The Great Train Robbery, generally
recognized as the first Western in motion picture history). The closing scene
in the film features a close-up of the actor, Justus D. Barnes, playing an
outlaw gang leader, pointing his pistol at the camera and slowly firing his gun
at the viewer. The scene is well over 100 years old, but still embodies the
ethos of the gun, and Hollywood’s role in creating or buttressing the myth of
violence as entertainment.
During
the interview with Alisson Avila, Sutherland mentions that his website, where this
videopoem can be viewed, includes a critique of it by videopoetry
authority Tom Konyves, who comments there on the conceptual quality of
Sutherland’s artistry. In other parts of the interview,
Sutherland talks about his approach to creative expression, his uses of
text, image, and sound, and of repetition and psychologically complex loops
that challenge any fixed interpretation. He acknowledges predecessors such as
Brion Gysin and Emmett Williams, who made permutational poems, as well as composer-musicians
Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and Brian Eno. In the interview Sutherland also
talks about his videopoem “Burroughs” (1996).
Sutherland was highly
adept at crossing over between media, and he ranks among the finest
practitioners of that art. He was cognisant of his various heritages, including
the works of Kurt Schwitters, Hugo Ball, Raoul Hausmann and more recent
creators such as Henri Chopin, Bernard Hiedsieck, and Sten Hanson. Sutherland
was also fully aware of contemporary expression and was remarkably in touch
with current artistic endeavours on a global level.
I encourage readers to check out Sutherland’s many visual
creations included in The Last Vispo Anthology:
Visual Poetry 1998–2008,
eds. Vassilakis & Hill (Fantagraphics Press, Seattle, USA, 2012), out of
print, but viewable in its entirety online at
https://archive.org/details/last-vispo-revised/mode/2up; Typewriter Art: A Modern Anthology, ed. Barrie Tullett (Laurence
King Press, London, U.K., 2014); The New
Concrete: Visual Poetry in the 21st Century, eds. Goldsmith, Bean,
McCabe, (Hayward Publishing, London, U.K., 2015), and The Art of Typewriting, ed. Marvin Sackner, (Thames & Hudson, London,
U.K., 2015). Those last three are still in print.
All of Sutherland’s splendid intermedia creations that were
commercially available have long since been delisted by their issuers, but most
are available online, and I encourage anyone seeking further details about his
luminous career and numerous works across media to check on his website, and his YouTube channel.
A few other works, such as “Nihilism,” can be found by conducting a YouTube search with his full
name. A complete list of his CDs (seven
solo and one with Nobuo Kubota) can be found by going to the “Bio” page on his
website and clicking on “FULL CV (pdf download)” at the conclusion of
the text there. Several of them can be heard on Spotify, using that site’s
search field by title. Browser searches by title will turn up some videopoems
and other works not included on his website or YouTube channel.
From “Code X”
https://www.wmarksutherland.com/
Sutherland’s Youtube channel features a few versions
of his Code X, an interactive creation
that invites its audience to participate, and therefore constitutes what
theorist Espen Aarseth calls an “ergodic” creation (which involves direct
audience participation). The primary version of Code X is readily available on
his website, where, says Paul Dutton, “it sits waiting to be awakened by users to
realize it as the masterpiece it is, providing addictive sessions of fun and
amazement.”
I remember teaching Code
X—via Coach House Books 2001 CD-ROM—in some of my classes at the University
of Windsor. I was careful to obtain permission first, and I found Sutherland to
be most generous in regard to granting that. I am not alone in maintaining that
his Sonotexts stands as one of his creative
highpoints: Julian Cowley the
prominent British music critic
and sound poetry specialist, writing in the prestigious music magazine The
Wire, declared that "This fascinating selection of ‘sonotexts’ … may
well mark a critical development in the life of sound poetry.”
Here is a useful link from the Canadian Music Centre.
And here is an audio link to Youtube for “Sonotexts.”
Sutherland’s formative years were spent studying at
The Royal Conservatory of Music and at York University, where he earned a BFA in
Art History/Criticism, Film History and Theory. Both those pursuits very much
informed his eventual artistic practice, beyond which he maintained an avid and
enduring fascination with all aspects of cinema and cinematic history and
theory. He also, early on, spent several years as a staff writer for The Jazz Report, a magazine published by
his brother, and thereby gained knowledge that later came in handy when he
served as a board member for Musicworks
magazine for an outstanding and generous fifteen years, ending in 2015. Dutton tells
of how highly Mark was spoken of by Musicworks
editors he worked with, who valued his guidance, support, warmth, and
dedication.
“Mark’s behind-the-scenes arts support went far
beyond his efforts for Musicworks,”
said Dutton. “I know that he was of immeasurable assistance to Tom Konyves when
Tom was putting together his landmark Surrey Art Gallery exhibit Poets with a Video Camera: Videopoetry
1980–2020. In weekly video calls, Mark listened extensively to Tom’s thoughts,
doubts, considerations and deliberations, and offered counsel, consolation, and
encouragement, drawing on his own broad knowledge of videopoetry and of mounting
exhibitions to give Tom guidance and reassurance.
“And Mark didn’t just help from the sidelines,”
Dutton continued. “In the early to mid aughts he undertook—basically
single-handedly—the conception, curation, organization, fund raising, tour
management, crating, and shipping of the gallery show Metalogos, a major
nine-artist exhibition of language-based art that toured to two cities in Italy and four in
Canada. It comprised a
plethora of media—page works, paintings, videos, installations and more. The
show, which rightly included Sutherland among the nine, was a major success,
especially in Italy. The whole venture played out over four or five years, all
while Mark continued to work his day job. The guy’s skills, energy, and
generosity were amazing.”
Sonotext image
https://www.wmarksutherland.com/
Twelve of Sutherland’s booksworks (his preferred
terms for his artist’s books) are archived in international galleries and
institutions, most significantly The Museum Of Modern Art in New York, The
School of The Art Institute of Chicago, and The National Gallery Of Canada.
The breadth
of Sutherland’s activities included his involvement with the Broadview
Collective (BVW). Francesca Vivenza proposed the formation of this collective in
1993, when she approached Allison Bindner, J. Lynn Campbell, Roland Jean, Nobuo
Kubota, David McClyment, Ian Rubenzahl, Yvonne Singer, and Mark, who were at
that time all artist members of the Workscene Gallery (1974-1995). Canada was then
promoting Canadian artists internationally through government funding programs
which linked well with the mandate of the new collective because it intended to
feature Toronto art on the international and regional stage. As part of the
international program, BVW also included invitations to local Italian and
German artists to participate in their projects. Sutherland took an active part
in the Broadview Collective.
The following list is rather extensive, but for
purposes of this article, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention at least some of the many venues that Sutherland appeared in. His sound-poetry is recorded
in; Modern Sounds (The C.A.G.E.
Record Project, Cincinnati, USA), Baobab
- The New Worlds (Edizioni Elytra, Cento, Italy), Pate De Voix (Offerta Speciale, Torino, Italy), Carnivocal (Red Deer Press, Red Deer,
Alberta), Homo Sonorus (National
Center For Contemporary Art, Kaliningrad, Russia), Fumms bo wo taa zaa Uu (Weil a. Rhein, Teile, Germany) and La Voce Regina (3Vitre, Italy).
Sutherland’s solo and collaborative CD’s include Notes and Songs From The Pan American
Highway (The BarKing Boys Music Co.), Oral
Cavity (The BarKing Boys Music Co.), Sonotexts
(Electronic Music Foundation) and Cross
Rhythm and White Noise with Nobuo Kubota (The BarKing Boys Music Co.). W.
Mark Sutherland performed at numerous international poetry festivals. His
creative energies and output were always inspiring. A few of his live public
performances include; THEWORDMUSIC Festival, (Reykjavik, Iceland); Voice ++
Festival (Victoria, BC, Canada); Yuxtaposiciones Festival, (Madrid, Spain);
3durch3, (Stuttgart, Germany); Poesia En Voz Alta, (Casa del Lago, University
of Mexico, Mexico City); Symposium on Voice, (Guelph, Canada); and The
Bucharest International Festival of Poetry, (Bucharest, Romania).
One of Sutherland’s ongoing professional
relationships and personal friendships was with Vancouver videopoet Tom
Konyves, conducted per force by correspondence and video calls. Konyves told me
in an email that “Mark
had a knack for discovering the beauty in yoking together texts with
incongruous images. He revelled in the impurity of mixing genres but also
enjoyed a conceptual gesture. In fact, while working on my 2011 Videopoetry: A Manifesto, it was his
2008 video In Memory of Jack Donovan Foley that suggested to
me a supplementary category – Concept or Conceptual videopoems.” Konyves goes
on to say, “I had become not just another promoter of his art, championing his
videopoetry work; [but] he, too, supported and praised my critical and
theoretical writing efforts.… Best of all, he would distract me to no end with
stories of his adventures with [his wife] Lynn when they were young, attending
amazing concerts, rare films (we both admired Quentin Dupieux), his love for
Michael Snow’s art, the collaborations with sound poet Nobuo Kubota – he made
sure I included Nobi in the exhibition – and hanging out with Paul Dutton in
his garden. ‘On June 16th, Bloomsday,’ he wrote, ‘we drank wine and Paul read
his favourite chapters of Ulysses to
me… quite a delightful afternoon.’ He would often defer to Paul. So it was
fitting that it would be Paul who wrote to me of Mark's passing. His last videopoem,
‘America,’ was kind of a gift. ‘Here, could you write something about this?’ [Sutherland
asked]. [What I wrote] is now on his
website.” https://www.wmarksutherland.com/video-poetry]
I spoke with his widow Lynn about her many
years with Mark, and she mentioned he was a talented guitar player, who in
later years spent hours in his basement studio composing and looping melodic
music, reminiscent of Brian Eno's. As a teenager, he spent time in a band
playing rock standards in venues around his home town, and in his twenties he
put together a studio band, The BarKing Boys, with his brother and a
high-school friend. The three of them wrote tongue-in-cheek songs they recorded
on both tape and vinyl LP, with Lynn and two of her friends singing backup
vocals as The Yes Girls. It was never meant to accomplish much other than to
have a good time, but it was the start of his education in the recording
studio.
Once he found his artistic path and was
getting some recognition, he received invitations to perform and/or exhibit at
venues around North America and Europe. Lynn would usually travel with him and
they would make a holiday of it. Funding for the arts was more plentiful in
those years and there would be dinners and receptions that gave them the
opportunity to socialize and become friends with many talented artists from
around the world. Mark would always say that he lived his life large, and even
after his leukemia diagnosis he would admit that his life had been short but he
had had a lot of fun living it.
Sutherland’s
creative expressions attracted a wide range of critical responses, including a
Musicworks’ review of a 2007 voice
festival, a critical discussion of Code X
on Dani Spinosa’s Generic Pronoun website, an article by
Paul Dutton (“Sounding the Written Seen,” Musicworks 85, 2003), and full-length article by
British music critic Julian Cowley, published in The Wire. They all
concur concerning Sutherland’s artistry and offer comments such as, “Sutherland’s
‘Code X’ turns readers into collaborators by turning their computer keyboards
into sound poetry producing machines” (Generic
Pronoun). Paul Dutton discusses the media fusion at the core of
Sutherland’s art, including his show Scratch at Toronto’s Koffler gallery, with
reference to what Dutton calls verbovocovisual expression in the form of
poetry, music, and visual art, including performance and exhibition (as well as
video), with reference to artists such as John Cage. Christopher Reiche talks
about the Voice++ festival at the Open Space Gallery in Victoria, BC, in 2007, with
three short video works by Nobuo Kubota and Mark Sutherland, featuring
percussive consonant sounds executed with rapid-fire precision, combined with
visualizations including head shots and a spectrogram of the sounds being
produced. Cowley comments
on Sutherland’s sound poetry tour of Canada with Bob Cobbing and Paul Dutton, which
featured “borderblur” influences from artists such as Nobuo Kubota and Dick
Higgins.
I will say briefly that screenings of Sutherland's
videopoetry appear in VideoPoesia (Museo Caixa Forum, Barcelona/Madrid
Spain), Optica Festival de Videoarte (Gijon, Spain), Roma Poesia
(Rome, Italy), Zebra Video Poetry Festival (Berlin, Germany), Festival
Instant Video (Aix en Provence, France), aluCine Toronto Latin Media
Festival (Toronto, Canada), Video Bardo Festival of International Video
Poetry (Buenos Aries, Argentina), The Text Festival (Bury, England) Loop
Videoart Festival (Barcelona, Spain), E-Poetry Conference (Kingston
University, London, England), This is Not a Script (Ghent, Belgium), Poésie/Traduction/Film
(Université de Paul Valery, Montpellier, France) and WRIT LARGE – A Festival
of Text (Oakland, USA).
Nobuo Kubota (left) & W. Mark
Sutherland (right)
Sutherland has departed, but his remarkable legacy
lives on. I was delighted to include him as an ongoing editorial correspondent
for Rampike magazine for over 25
years and to frequently publish his visual poetry in Rampike’s pages. His brilliance and friendship still resound, and I
predict that his contribution to the arts will resonate for ages. His creations
were unique, and he was always an inspirational artist. In this article, I
include several remarkable images from his website and one image from Rampike (below).
“Sound Effects” by W.M. Sutherland
(Canada)
From: Rampike
13.2
Towards the end of his interview with Alisson
Avila, Sutherland speaks of a Shinto shrine in Japan,
called Ise Jingū which is knocked down and
rebuilt every 20 years. He speaks about how that process has occurred over the
last 1000 years, and the fact that the rebuilding ensures the intergenerational
passing on of building techniques. He speaks of death, renewal, and possibility,
and how impermanence can build hope in the future. I will close this homage to
W. Mark Sutherland with that thought of hopefulness.
W. Mark Sutherland stands tall as a
Canadian and international artist. He will be greatly missed by friends, fellow
artists, and members of the general public who were touched by the poetic
objects he created across so many media.
[Warm thanks to Paul Dutton, William
Blakeney, Tom Konyves & Lynn Lehman who shared their memories and helped
greatly to make this article possible.]
Karl Jirgens, former English Dept. Head and Chair of the Creative Writing Program (U
Windsor), is author of three books of fiction and two scholarly books (Coach
House, Mercury, ECW and The Porcupine’s Quill Presses). Jirgens edited two
books (on painter Jack Bush, and poet Christopher Dewdney), plus, an issue of Open
Letter magazine with Beatriz Hausner. His scholarly and creative texts are
published globally (most recently in Japan). His poetry was selected for the
anthology Best Canadian Poetry in English, 2023 (Biblioasis). Jirgens
founded/edited/published Rampike magazine featuring stellar
international art, writing, and theory (1979-2016) now digitally archived
(searchable & free) c/o U Windsor’s Leddy Library. All copyrights remain
with contributors: https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/rampike/about.html He serves on the Editorial Board of ellipse
magazine. Jirgens is an 8th Degree Black Belt (Grandmaster) of the Korean
Martial Art of Tae Kwon Do.
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