semantische studie
/3
- semantische studie
- 1986
- 3 sheets, typewritten text on paper
- 29,7 × 21 cm
The selection of words in Jiří Valoch’s conceptual poetry is rather limited, and he seems to prefer nominal language: nouns, adjectives, and possibly adverbs. Of what character are these? Some of them represent basic natural or landscape-related elements: a tree, a cloud, a stone. Others represent colors, and he often also uses temporal terms or terms defining a place of destination, a location, or a relationship. In cases of pairs, they are often opposites of a specific or abstract nature that express negation—frequently oppositeness in terms of space and time.
In large part, Valoch’s conceptual poetry makes use of foreign languages—mainly English and occasionally German. Valoch was close to the German-speaking context due to his German-speaking father, the important archaeologist Karel Valoch, who claimed Czech citizenship during the 1940s. Thanks to that fact, Valoch’s family evaded expulsion. Jiří Valoch studied German language and literature alongside Czech language and literature and aesthetics from 1965 to 1970 at the Faculty of Arts of Jan Evangelista Purkyně University (today’s Masaryk University). He graduated with a thesis about visual poetry. During his studies, a major influence on him was had by the linguist and semioticist Jiří Levý, who authored the epilogue of the Czech translation of “Theorie der Texte” (Theory of Texts) by Max Bense. He chose English as the default language of his concepts for more reasons than just its internationality. J.P.
“If I use English when working with full-fledged semantic elements, it is fundamentally due to its convenience for the way I work—it is far more abstract than Czech, where a single word can carry numerous meanings and variants created by declension; the corresponding prepositions or suffixes are no longer there.” (Valoch, 1995).
In large part, Valoch’s conceptual poetry makes use of foreign languages—mainly English and occasionally German. Valoch was close to the German-speaking context due to his German-speaking father, the important archaeologist Karel Valoch, who claimed Czech citizenship during the 1940s. Thanks to that fact, Valoch’s family evaded expulsion. Jiří Valoch studied German language and literature alongside Czech language and literature and aesthetics from 1965 to 1970 at the Faculty of Arts of Jan Evangelista Purkyně University (today’s Masaryk University). He graduated with a thesis about visual poetry. During his studies, a major influence on him was had by the linguist and semioticist Jiří Levý, who authored the epilogue of the Czech translation of “Theorie der Texte” (Theory of Texts) by Max Bense. He chose English as the default language of his concepts for more reasons than just its internationality. J.P.
“If I use English when working with full-fledged semantic elements, it is fundamentally due to its convenience for the way I work—it is far more abstract than Czech, where a single word can carry numerous meanings and variants created by declension; the corresponding prepositions or suffixes are no longer there.” (Valoch, 1995).