n°60

FKey figure of the New York underground scene and of the Beat Generation, John Giorno (born in 1936, died in 2019) fed his poetic work with the “cut up” method. This is a literary technique that was experimented by the American writer William S Burroughs, a technique in which an original text is cut into random fragments which are then rearranged to produce a new text.

A true pioneer, Giorno composed his first sound poems in the early 1960s and has never stopped bringing his work out from the book object to explore other mediums. An exhibition/declaration was dedicated to him at the Palais de Tokyo, in the fall of 2015, by his partner, the artist Ugo Rondinone. In the summer of 2017, the retrospective is taking place at 13 different locations in New York City to pay tribute to one of the most influential poets of his generation.