The mouth remembers what the brain can’t quite wrap its tongue around & that’s what my life’s become. My life’s become my mouth’s remembering, telling stories with the brain’s tongue.
Daphne Marlatt reads The Mouth from bpNichol’s Selected Organs. In this work, Nichol writes about parts of his body; instead of a body of work, he writes a work of the body. Here we see the typography follow Daphne’s voice as she reads the text.
The Mouth highlights the orality of the poem. This segment plays with creating an oral text — using typography to create a sense of voice. “The Mouth” segment sets Daphne Marlatt’s performance against an animated riff on Robert Massin’s typographic work.
Instead of a body of work, he writes a work of the body.
Massin was a french graphic designer. He was a big influence on the contemporary “post functionalist” graphic design aesthetic — Carson, Brody et al. He undertook a striking graphic version of Ionesco’s play, La Cantatrice Chauve, in which images of the characters are intermingled with the text. The text itself takes on a performative role, appearing as part of the action.
Here are some images from Massin’s La Cantatrice Chauve
The Complete Works 