The New Post-literate: A Gallery Of Asemic Writing

Monday, September 18, 2023

Communication Through Asemic Writing | Olga Kulish | ATypI 2023 Paris

Friday, September 15, 2023

Asemic Collaborations with Dzenis Burzic and Texas Fontanella

Wednesday, September 13, 2023

id est: neo scribalist asemic expressionism by Michael Jacobson is available now at Amazon! Post-Asemic Press #024

id est: neo scribalist asemic expressionism by Michael Jacobson is available now at Amazon!

id est: neo scribalist asemic expressionism is a hand painted (with gouache and watercolor pencils) abstract illuminated manuscript. It utilizes asemic writing to tell the story of my psychological journey and final arrival into Agnostic Pantheism; the book is about going through mental hell and emerging as a spiritual survivor. id est contains 73 artworks painted with gouache and water color pencils on water color paper. This work was begun in 2021 and completed in 2023. The calligraphy in the book is rough and designed to be neo-expressive and true rather than technically perfect. The title id est means “that is” in Latin and is an homage to past and future scribes. I learned some Latin years ago to help me quit smoking cigarettes; every time I felt the urge to smoke, I would pull out my Latin dictionary and learn a few words till the craving subsided. Yet, there are no words in id est; instead, the book is filled with asemic calligraphy, mysterious figures, and abstract symbols. The book is meant to be read as a meditation even though most of the art is hectic, noisy, and urban. My intention was to take and modernize and revive the role of the scribe and demonstrates a new mode of contemporary free expression. The release of id est coincides with my 50th revolution around the Sun and is presented to the reader as a ticket to the universe and as a document of my spiritual quest.

Works that influenced my creation process are The Book of Kells, Bestiaries, a Batak Pustaha, The Codex Seraphinianus, The Voynich Manuscript, The Rohonc Codex, Mayan and Aztec painted books, Kenneth Patchen's picture-poems, William Blake's mystical illuminations, Tom Phillips' A Humument, Timothy Ely's artist books, Visual poetry, and the wilder action scribes of the asemic movement. Three artists who influenced my book are: Cy Twombly, José Parlá, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0CHL52X68
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Post-Asemic Press (September 11, 2023)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 86 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 173661472X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1736614723
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.4 x 9 inches
Price : $25.00

Here are some links to purchase id est:

Here are some sample pages:

Michael Jacobson is a writer, artist, publisher, and independent curator from Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA/Turtle Island. His books include an abstract illuminated manuscript titled id est: neo scribalist asemic expressionism, a prose poetry novella Somnolent Game (Post-Asemic Press), his collected asemic writing Works & Interviews (Post-Asemic Press), his autobiographical collection of senryu poems Hei Kuu (Post-Asemic Press), and his EP of sound poetry Schizo Variations; he is also co-editor of An Anthology Of Asemic Handwriting (Punctum Books). In 2019, he was written up in the book Asemic: The Art of Writing (University of Minnesota Press) by Peter Schwenger; it has an entire chapter dedicated to Jacobson’s calligraphic work. In 2013, he was published in The Last Vispo Anthology (Fantagraphics). Back in 2017, he founded Post-Asemic Press, to publish asemic writing, visual poetry, experimental poetry, and audio recordings of sound poetry via Bandcamp. Besides writing books, he curates a gallery for asemic writing called The New Post-Literate. In 2017, he guest curated the Minnesota Center for Book Arts exhibit: Asemic Writing: Offline & In The Gallery. Other countries where he has curated exhibits of asemic writing include Mexico, Spain, and Malta. Currently, he operates Future Script Gallery, which is an online commercial gallery for asemic writing and visual poetry. In his spare time, he curates a cyberspace gallery of planets dubbed THAT: A Plan(et). Michael’s online interviews are at Poemeleon, SampleKanon, Asymptote Journal, Twenty Four Hours, David Alan Binder, GAS, Utsanga, Schizoaffective, and at Medium. In the past, he created the cover art for Rain Taxi’s 2014 winter issue. Michael also sits on the editorial board of the online magazine SCRIPTjr.nl. In 2010, he founded and still administers the asemic writing Facebook group. Here is Michael’s YouTube channel, and here is his Fine Art America shop.

Thursday, August 24, 2023

Grzegorz Wróblewski, "ASEMIC NOTES (2023)"

Monday, August 14, 2023

id est: neo scribalist asemic expressionism. A book trailer by Michael Jacobson

id est: neo scribalist asemic expressionism is a hand-painted abstract illuminated manuscript created by Michael Jacobson. This book is about going through mental hell and emerging as a spiritual survivor. The codex utilizes asemic writing and abstract art to tell a visually poetic tale of transformation and evolution into agnostic-pantheism. It contains 73 art works painted with gouache and water color pencils on water color paper. This work was begun in 2021 and completed in 2023. It will be published by Post-Asemic Press in mid-September 2023.

Works that influenced my process are The Book of Kells, Bestiaries, a Batak Pustaha, The Codex Seraphinianus, The Voynich Manuscript, the Rohonc Codex, Mayan and Aztec painted books, Kenneth Patchen's picture-poems, William Blake's mystical illuminations, Tom Phillips' A Humument, Timothy Ely's artist books, Visual poetry, and the wilder action scribes of the asemic movement. Three artists who influenced my book are: Cy Twombly, José Parlá, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Here is some more info: https://postasemicpress.blogspot.com/2023/09/id-est-neo-scribalist-asemic.html

Click here to purchase id est at Amazon.

Michael Jacobson aka Asemic Writer is a writer, artist, publisher, and independent curator from Minneapolis, Minnesota USA/Turtle Island. He is the author of the abstract illuminated manuscript id est: neo scribalist asemic expressionism, the prose poetry novella Somnolent Game, his collected asemic writing Works & Interviews, the senryu poetry collection Hei Kuu, and the noise poetry album Schizo Variations. His book publishing project for longer works of asemic writing and experimental poetry is Post-Asemic Press. Since 2008 he has curated The New Post-Literate: A Gallery of Asemic Writing.

Monday, August 7, 2023

id est: neo scribalist asemic expressionism by Michael Jacobson is Forthcoming from Post-Asemic Press in Mid-September 2023

I am excited to announce that the proof copy for my next hardcover book arrived from the printers. The work is titled id est: neo scribalist asemic expressionism. It's an abstract illuminated manuscript that will be available in mid-September 2023 from Post-Asemic Press. The book collects 73 paintings that I created after a long absence (since 2001) from doing art with a brush and paint. The mediums I used in the codex were gouache paint and watercolor pencils on watercolor paper. The paintings were scanned at a high resolution and printed in full color. I wrote a 5 page introduction to the book to give context and history about how this project came together. The book will be released on my 50th birthday, on 9/11/2023.

The manuscript contains my visually poetic story about going through the lowest depth of my life experience with schizoaffective disorder and how spirituality, friends, family, art, creativity, stories, and medication brought me out of the abyss. There are no words in the main text, instead, the book utilizes abstract art and asemic writing to express my adventure with mental illness. But this work is much more than a commentary on my negative condition. This illumination is a brief chromatic text of asemic storytelling, illustrated with the totality of my experience connecting to an altered state of consciousness. To put it bluntly: I went through mental hell and came out a rebel optimist!

For id est, I have raided the art world for ideas to inspire my writing and artistry. It is these creative influences in art history, of which there are many, that are synthesized in my writing and art. Ultimately, this codex is an artifact I have composed in an attempt to make the old new and fresh. For me, this area, now specifically christened as asemic writing is one of the most dynamic areas of human creativity because it has transformed something as ancient as proto-writing into many vast manifestations of contemporary scribal invention. Not every page in the manuscript has asemic writing as a focus because I wanted the work to blend and flow seamlessly from abstract art into my non-verbal calligraphy. Every page in this book is unique, but all the paintings have a similar style and signature. I strive towards an intimate universality in the aesthetics of my work, at least that is my intent.

id est is my discovery of artistic purpose while existing in a technological world of machines, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology; I am simultaneously embracing the future and the past, and I am keeping my human creative spirit alive in a plastic world. This book is my attempt to revive and modernize scribal culture and continue onward with my asemic science-fiction calligraphic scripts; my reason is to spiritually document my high-tech existence with low-tech art tools. I am excited and overwhelmed with tech; I use it every day but also feel that human creativity is urgently needed to check and balance the machines. Neo-expressionism but not perfectionism is my main guide in creating this manuscript, since computers do a better job at precision than myself, and I lack a technical robot brain.

The book is a summary of my personal metamorphosis from being a wild pagan in my youth, to being confirmed as a Lutheran, to my spiritual evolution into Agnostic Pantheism as a middle-aged man. id est is the documentation of this process of spiritual aging, and the eternal spirits dwelling in the heaven and hell in my own mind.

My goal is to have id est available to as broad a spectrum of potential readers/viewers as possible. Therefore, I entrust the Internet with this hand-painted silent story for print-on-demand distribution; though it will only be available for offline perusal; maybe someday I will do an e-book, but right now I am a little fatigued with reading books online, and feel a need to return to the dark academic sanctuary of handwriting on paper, rare tomes, and libraries. I hope this book will appeal to people interested in contemporary 21st century art, illuminated manuscripts, abstract calligraphy, visual poetry, illustrated volumes, poem brut, asemic writing, and artist's books.

The book will be released by Post-Asemic Press in mid-September of 2023: Click here to purchase id est at Amazon.

Here are some sample images from the book: