John Giorno | |
|---|---|
 Giorno in 2010 | |
| Born | (1936-12-04)December 4, 1936 New York City, U.S. |
| Died | October 11, 2019(2019-10-11) (aged 82) New York City, U.S. |
| Education | Columbia University |
| Occupation(s) | Poet,performance artist |
| Spouse | Ugo Rondinone |
| Website | https://www.giornofoundation.org/ |
John Giorno (December 4, 1936 – October 11, 2019) was an Americanpoet andperformance artist. He founded the not-for-profit production companyGiorno Poetry Systems and organized a number of early multimedia poetry experiments and events. Giorno's creative journey was marked by collaborations, groundbreaking initiatives, and a deep exploration of diverse art forms. He gained prominence through his association with pop art luminaryAndy Warhol, sparking a creative partnership that propelled his career to new heights.[1]
Giorno's artistic evolution was shaped by his encounters with Warhol and other influential figures. His notable appearance in Warhol's 1964 filmSleep, where he slept on camera for over five hours, introduced audiences to his unique blend of performance and artistic expression. Giorno's creative trajectory was marked by an array of multimedia poetry experiments, one of which was the pioneering "Dial-A-Poem" project. This venture allowed individuals to access brief poems by contemporary poets via telephone, forging a novel connection between technology and poetry.
Collaboration was a hallmark of Giorno's work, as he joined forces with renowned artists, includingWilliam S. Burroughs,Patti Smith,Laurie Anderson,Philip Glass, andRobert Mapplethorpe. His poetic style evolved over time, encompassing techniques such as appropriation,cut-ups, and montage. His signature double-column poems, characterized by repetition, mirrored the vocal distortions he employed in his performances. As Giorno's career progressed, his work began to incorporate political themes, notably his active protests against the Vietnam War.
Beyond his artistic endeavors, Giorno embraced spirituality and activism. A transformative trip to India in 1971 introduced him toTibetan Buddhism, particularly theNyingma tradition. He was one of the earliest Western students of Tibetan Buddhism, inviting various Tibetan teachers to New York City and hosting them. As a committed AIDS activist, he founded the AIDS Treatment Project in 1984, providing vital support to those affected by the epidemic. Giorno's impact extended globally, as he continued to perform, collaborate, and exhibit his work, leaving an enduring legacy in the worlds of poetry, performance art, and multimedia exploration.
Giorno was born in New York City, and was raised both inBrooklyn and the Long Island town ofRoslyn Heights.[2] He attended high school atJames Madison High School in Brooklyn and graduated fromColumbia University in 1958, where he was a "college chum" of physicistHans Christian von Baeyer.[2][3] At Columbia, he was a resident ofLivingston Hall.[4] While in his early twenties, he briefly worked in New York City as a stockbroker.
In 1962, Giorno metAndy Warhol during Warhol's first New YorkPop Art solo exhibit at Eleanor Ward'sStable Gallery. In 1963, they became lovers and Warhol remained an important influence for Giorno's developments in poetry, performance and recordings.[5] A lesser-known Warhol film featuring Giorno,John Washing (1963), runs a mere 4½ minutes.[6] Warhol's 1964 silent filmSleep shows Giorno sleeping on camera for more than five hours.[7] Giorno and Warhol are said to have remained very close until 1964, after which time their meetings were rare.[5]
Inspired by Warhol, and subsequent relationships withRobert Rauschenberg andJasper Johns, Giorno began applyingPop Art techniques of appropriation of found imagery to his poetry, producingThe American Book of the Dead in 1964 (published in part in his first book,Poems, in 1967). Meetings withWilliam S. Burroughs andBrion Gysin in 1964 contributed to his interest in applying cut up and montage techniques to found texts, and (via Gysin) his first audio poem pieces, one of which was played at the Paris Museum of Modern Art Biennale in 1965.
Inspired by Rauschenberg'sExperiments in Art and Technology events of 1966, Giorno began making "Electronic Sensory Poetry Environments", working in collaboration with synthesizer creatorRobert Moog and others to create psychedelic poetry installation/happenings at venues such asSt. Mark's Church in New York. In 1965, Giorno founded a not-for-profit production company,Giorno Poetry Systems, in order to connect poetry to new audiences, using innovative technologies. In 1967, Giorno organized the first Dial-A-Poem event at theArchitectural League of New York, making short poems by various contemporary poets available over the telephone. The piece was repeated to considerable acclaim at theMuseum of Modern Art in 1970, and resulted in a series of LP records compiling the recordings, which were issued by Giorno Poetry Systems. Some of the poets and artists who recorded or collaborated with Giorno Poetry Systems wereWilliam Burroughs,John Ashbery,Ted Berrigan,Patti Smith,Laurie Anderson,Philip Glass,Robert Rauschenberg,Anne Waldman, andRobert Mapplethorpe. From 1976 to 1979, Giorno also hosted The Poetry Experiment[8] and presented his eight-part series Dial-A-Poem Poets, withCharles Ruas, onWBAI-Pacifica Radio.[9]
Giorno's text-based poetry evolved rapidly in the late 1960s from direct appropriation of entire texts from newspapers, to montage of radically different types of textual material, to the development of his signature double-column poems, which feature extensive use of repetition both across columns and down the page. This device allowed Giorno to mimic the echoes and distortions he was applying to his voice in performance. A number of these poems were collected inBalling Buddha (1970). The poems also feature increasingly radical political content, and Giorno was involved in a number of protests against theVietnam War.Spiro Agnew called Giorno andAbbie Hoffman "would beHanoi Hannahs" after their WPAX radio broadcasts made to the U.S. troops inSouth Vietnam onRadio Hanoi. Some of Giorno's work from this period was published in0 to 9 magazine, a late 1960s avant-garde publication that experimented with language and meaning-making.
Giorno traveled toIndia in 1971 where he metDudjom Rinpoche, head of theNyingma order ofTibetan Buddhism. He became one of the earliest Western students of Tibetan Buddhism, and participated in Buddhist communities for several decades, inviting various Tibetan teachers to New York City and hosting them. Some of Giorno's poetry reflects Buddhist and other Asian religious themes beginning with his earliest verse, but the poems inCancer In My Left Ball (1972) and those that follow involve a highly original interpenetration of Buddhist and Westernavant-garde practices and poetics.
Touring rock clubs in the 1970s with Burroughs, Giorno continued to develop an amplified, confrontational performance poetry that was highly influential on what became thePoetry Slam scene, as well as theperformance art ofKaren Finley andPenny Arcade, and the earlyIndustrial music ofThrobbing Gristle andSuicide. He made the albumWho Are You Staring At? (1982) withGlenn Branca,[10] is prominently featured inRon Mann's 1982 filmPoetry in Motion, and is heard in performance with guitaristRudolph Grey in theoperaAgamemnon (1993).Who Are You Staring At? was featured in 2023 at theCentre Pompidou in a Nicolas Ballet curatedno wave exhibition entitledWho You Staring At: Culture visuelle de la scène no wave des années 1970 et 1980 (Visual culture of the no wave scene in the 1970s and 1980s).[11]
Giorno stopped using the found elements of theReadymades of Marcel Duchamp tradition in his poetry in the early 1980s and henceforth pursued a kind of experimental realism, using lyricalincantation andminimalist art-like repetition.
Giorno celebratedqueer sexuality from the 1964 "Pornographic Poem", through hispsychedelic evocations of gayNew York City nightlife in the 1970s, to more recent poems such as "Just Say No To Family Values". He founded anAIDS charity, theAIDS Treatment Project in 1984, which continues to give direct financial and other support to individuals with AIDS to the present day.
In addition to his collaborations with Burroughs, Giorno produced 55 LPs, tapes, videos and books. He performed at poetry festivals and events, notably in Europe where he was an active participant in thesound poetry scene for several decades. Giorno's artworkPoem Prints (1991) is included in the permanent collection of thePérez Art Museum Miami, Florida. The piece was acquired through the larger acquisition of over 400 language-based artworks from the collection of founders of the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, a Miami based words and language arts collection.[12][13]
Giorno lived at255 East 74th Street, when a smallcarriage house was located on the property.[14][15] He later lived and worked from three lofts in a building in theBowery neighborhood on theLower East Side.[16]
In 2007 he appeared inNine Poems in Basilicata, a film directed by Antonello Faretta based on his poems and his performances. In addition to his solo performances in live poetry shows, since 2005 he had collaborated in some music-poetry shows with Spanish rock singer and composer Javier Colis.
The first career-spanning collection of Giorno's poems,Subduing Demons in America: Selected Poems 1962–2007, edited by Marcus Boon, was published bySoft Skull in 2008.
In 2010, Giorno had his first one-person gallery show in New York City, entitledBlack Paintings and Drawings, at the Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, wherein he exhibited works that chronicled the evolution of the poem painting. The firstPoem Prints were part of the Dial-A-Poem installation in the 1970 exhibitionInformation at theMuseum of Modern Art. Connecting words and images, the poet uses the materiality of the written word to confront audiences with poetry in different contexts.
In 2011, he starred in one of two versions for the music video toR.E.M.'s final single "We All Go Back to Where We Belong".[17]
Giorno died of a heart attack at age 82 on October 11, 2019, at his home in Lower Manhattan.[2][18][19] At the time of his death, he was married to Swiss artistUgo Rondinone.[20]
