Archivio Conz

Henri Chopin (1922 Paris, France – 2008 Dereham, UK) was a French poet, typographer, musician, independent publisher, and a pioneer of sound and concrete poetry. A vanguard artist, he is most known for liberating sound and language from typographical conventions, notably through his dactylpoème (typewriter poems) and audio-poémes. Back in Paris, Chopin approached avant-garde poetics and the “oral” experimental poetry from Czechoslovakia, Russia, Poland, and the Baltics. Chopin’s performances and recordings emphasize the organicity of the human anatomy and its reverberating effects on the outside. From nasal vibrations to guttural cries or infamously swallowing a probe for La Digestion (1974), his explorations of human noise obliterate the tone between inside and outside, chaos and harmony further manipulated and pioneered through studio and tape recorder experiments. An “éminence grise,” as Francesco Conz described him, Chopin’s poetry found a home in Conz’s support and enthusiasm for multiples. This long-lasting friendship produced numerous editions, such as To ray the rays: Poème Classique (1984–1992), with varied color and typographic patterns. Among Chopin’s notable publications include Le dernier roman du monde (1961), Le homard cosmographique (1965), Poésie Sonore Internationale (1979), Les Riches Heures de l‘Alphabet (1992) and Graphpoemesmachine (2006) published by Archivio Conz. Throughout his career, he exhibited and performed internationally at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (1974), the Centre Pompidou, Paris (1983), the ICA, London (2009), The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012), the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2013), and the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2017).