Signalism

Signalism is an international neo-avant-garde literary and visual art movement founded in Belgrade by the poet Miroljub Todorović, whose linguistic experiments beginning in 1959 are the movement's point of origin. Its program, set out in three manifestos between 1968 and 1970, aimed to break poetry free of late symbolism and neoromanticism by revolutionizing its medium - language itself - in step with the technological and electronic age. Signalist writing imports the symbols and formulas of the hard sciences, splinters words into syllables and letters arranged as visual patterns, and mixes verbal text with drawings, photographs, and graphs. The movement's magazine Signal (1970-1973, revived 1995-2004) connected Belgrade with an international network of mail artists, concrete poets, and performers, and the practice extended into visual, body, mail, and conceptual art.

Defining characteristics

• Poems set as visual patterns: words broken into syllables and letters scattered across the page
• Scientific notation - formulas, symbols, and graphs - woven into poetic text
• Verbal and non-verbal material (drawings, photographs, diagrams) collaged into one field
• Aleatoric and stochastic text: language generated by chance or mathematical rule
• Plain, unadorned typography and diagrams that reject ornamental book design
• Works meant for circulation and action - mail art, body art, performance - not just the printed page

Key figures

• Miroljub Todorović (b. 1940) — Poet and artist who founded Signalism and shaped its theory; editor of the magazine Signal
• Raoul Hausmann (1886-1971) — Berlin Dada founder who contributed to the international reach of Signal
• Augusto de Campos (b. 1931) — Brazilian concrete poet and visual artist, an international contributor to Signal

Example works

• Planeta (Planet) — Miroljub Todorović (1965)
• Putovanje u Zvezdaliju (A Trip to Starland) — Miroljub Todorović (1971)

Sources

• Signalism - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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