Asemic writing — Anti-calligraphy in history, practice, and education.

Despite being a relatively new term introduced in 1997 by visual poets Tim Gaze and Jim Leftwich, asemic writing has in recent years become a buzzword for a vast variety of non-semantic, graphic expression. Situated on the intersection of visual poetry, fine art and calligraphy it is defined as a form of mark making with no conventionally fixed, semantic meaning. Acting as pure form — or rather a coincidence of form and content — it merges aspects of drawing, painting, writing and calligraphy. This talk will give a brief overview of asemic practices within poetry, fine arts, and graphic design. Furthermore, asemic writing shall be examined as an educational tool as devised previously in various schools of design (e.g. André Gürtler, Martin Andersch, Denise Lach). The talk will also give insight into related research on the correlation of gestures, conventions and tools conducted at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts by Stefan Ellmer and Maziar Raein.