Linelife: a noveline
by Robert Zend
Copyright © Janine Zend, 1983, all rights reserved, reproduced under license
Hitherto unpublished. Hand-drawn manuscript converted into this 50 second film by American-Canadian poet Camille Martin, Toronto, 2013.
Copyright © Janine Zend
"[This] previously unpublished short visual work [is] a flip-book animation sequence of dots and lines that Zend dedicated to his daughter Natalie. I was excited to find Linelife in the Zend fonds at the University of Toronto. Fortunately, Zend left instructions for its production. Although he had drawn the images in black ink on white paper, he preferred that the colors be reversed to white-on-black. So I digitalized the images and, according to his wishes, converted them into negatives. I thought that the digital medium would enhance the animated sequence of frames, so using film editing software I gave them a time-lapse animation to imitate the effect of flipping pages. Natalie made some excellent suggestions for the most effective presentation of the work. I hope that her father would have liked Linelife in this digital incarnation.
"Although the narrative of Linelife unfolds in a geometrically abstract sequence of creation and disintegration, it also suggests an anthropomorphic trajectory of a life. And in fact, there exists a longer unpublished work entitled The Tense Present [see cover art, and full work below], which consists of the sequence of images in Linelife and interpellates text and other images to explore the arc of human life from conception to death.
"In the Linelife sequence above, which does not include that programmatic narrative, the gradual creation of a complex pattern of lines and dots could also suggest human creativity at work, and the deflation and ultimate disappearance of that triumphant pattern implies that in the cosmic order of things, art as well as life is short. Yet its very abstraction points to a more universal signification: the drama of development and decline, on microcosmic as well as macrocosmic scales. As well, the mirroring of the opening and closing suggests a cyclical pattern as things arise and fall apart in a continual succession of order and entropy."
"[...] Although I know of no other flip-book in Zend's œuvre, its theme emblematizes his recurring concern with cycles of creation and destruction."
- Camille Martin, Robert Zend: Poet without Borders, Part 1. Linelife: Premiere of a Rediscovered Treasure (published on rogueembryo.com, January 26, 2014)
"Although the narrative of Linelife unfolds in a geometrically abstract sequence of creation and disintegration, it also suggests an anthropomorphic trajectory of a life. And in fact, there exists a longer unpublished work entitled The Tense Present [see cover art, and full work below], which consists of the sequence of images in Linelife and interpellates text and other images to explore the arc of human life from conception to death.
"In the Linelife sequence above, which does not include that programmatic narrative, the gradual creation of a complex pattern of lines and dots could also suggest human creativity at work, and the deflation and ultimate disappearance of that triumphant pattern implies that in the cosmic order of things, art as well as life is short. Yet its very abstraction points to a more universal signification: the drama of development and decline, on microcosmic as well as macrocosmic scales. As well, the mirroring of the opening and closing suggests a cyclical pattern as things arise and fall apart in a continual succession of order and entropy."
"[...] Although I know of no other flip-book in Zend's œuvre, its theme emblematizes his recurring concern with cycles of creation and destruction."
- Camille Martin, Robert Zend: Poet without Borders, Part 1. Linelife: Premiere of a Rediscovered Treasure (published on rogueembryo.com, January 26, 2014)
The Tense Present
by Robert Zend
Hitherto unpublished. Copyright © Janine Zend, 1983, all rights reserved, reproduced under license
The Tense Present consists of the sequence of images in Linelife and interpellates text and other images to explore the arc of human life from conception to death.
- - Camille Martin, Robert Zend: Poet without Borders, Part 1. Linelife: Premiere of a Rediscovered Treasure (published on rogueembryo.com, January 26, 2014)
- - Camille Martin, Robert Zend: Poet without Borders, Part 1. Linelife: Premiere of a Rediscovered Treasure (published on rogueembryo.com, January 26, 2014)
The Tense Present in pdf form:
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Variations on the theme:
Robert Zend, "A Bouquet to Bip: A Tribute to Marcel Marceau," Exile: A Literary Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Toronto: Exile Editions, 1974), p. 97. Copyright © Janine Zend, 1974, all rights reserved, reproduced under license.
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Marcel Marceau's sketch,
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Robert Zend, "Mutamus," Arbormundi: 16 Selected Typescapes (blewointmentpress, 1982), copyright © Janine Zend, 1982, all rights reserved, reproduced under license.
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