SPOTLIGHT ON KONTEXTS
Kontexts, edited by the London-born, Amsterdam-based poet/publisher Michael Gibbs, championed “visual poetics” broadly, rather than adhering to any one specific strain of the avant-garde. This gallery presents a comprehensive run of Gibbs’ magazine, which chronicles dozens of visual, spatial, graphic, and concrete works between 1969 and 1977 and was produced, partially, while Gibbs was still a student at the University of Exeter. Of Kontexts, Gibbs wrote:
“Words and national languages are rapidly becoming obsolete, while images and signs are beginning to constitute a new international language. The function of KONTEXTS is to provide a platform for as many different styles of poetry as possible…Nobody can predict the future of experimental poetry—this is how it should be—"
Andrew Belsey.
“Paranoia” [from Kontexts, no. 1].
1969.
Issued as eight cards, mimeographed, within a brown paper envelope. Published while Gibbs and Merchant were students at the University of Warwick. Contributors, which were fellow students, include Andrew Belsey, Michael Gibbs (two poems), Terence McCarthy, Paul Merchant (two poems), Wendy Opie, and Alan Shutt. By the end of the magazine in 1977, it had grown to 90 pages.
Michael Gibbs, ed.
Kontexts, no. 2.
Summer 1970.
Cover by Alan Riddell. Contributors include Richard Chadwick, Bob Cobbing, Michael and Jenny Gibbs, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Andrew Lloyd, Nicholas Mann, Peter Mayer, Paul Merchant, Cavan McCarthy, Gerald Rocher, Paul de Vree, and Nicholas Zurbrugg.
Michael Gibbs, ed.
Kontexts, no. 3.
Summer 1971.
Cover by Bob Cobbing. Contributors include Jeremy Adler, D.C. Carr, Peter Finch, Michael Gibbs, Mark Insingel, Nico Mann, David Mayor, Peter Meyer, C.A. Padin, Michael J. Phillips, G.J. de Rook, Miroljub Todorović, Timm Ulrichs, E.A. Vigo, and Nicholas Zurbrugg. A flyer for Kontexts publications is laid in, describing the magazine as devoted to “the breakdown of closed language and the substitution of the word as image / thing.”
Michael Gibbs, ed.
Kontexts, no. 4.
Winter 1972–1973.
Cover by Amelia Etlinger, with back cover by Michael J. Phillips; printed at Beau Geste Press. Contributors include Linda Bandt, Clark Coolidge, Wally Depew, Ken Friedman, John Giorno, Dan Graham, Hammond Guthrie, Richard Kostelanetz (including his essay “New Poetries in America”), Robert Lax, and Barry McCallion.
Michael Gibbs, ed.
Kontexts, no. 5.
N.d.
Displayed is work by Gabor Toth.
Cover by Clemente Padín, with back cover by Graham Keen. Contributors include Jeremy Adler, Karel Adamus, Andrew Belsey, Ian Breakwell, A.C. Caravalho, Ulises Carrión, Bob Cobbing, Peter Finch, Gabor Toth, Jochen Gerz, Michael Gibbs, John Giorno, J.H. Kocman, Robert Lax, Peter Mayer, Barry Edgar Pilcher, Seth Wade, and Jiri Valoch. Also includes the editor’s “reviews & notes from the concrete jungle.”
Michael Gibbs, ed.
Kontexts, nos. 6/7.
N.d.
Displayed is work by Peter Barry and Ulises Carrión.
Cover by J.C. van Schagen. Contributors include Alice Hutchins, bpNichol, Richard Kostelanetz, and Jonathan Williams, among many others, from countries ranging from Brazil to South Africa.
Michael Gibbs and Ulises Carrión, eds.
Kontexts, no. 8.
Spring 1976.
Displayed is work by Greta Monach and Mirtha Dermisache.
Contributors include William S. Burroughs, Henri Chopin, Brion Gysin, Richard Hartwell, Arrigo Lora-Totino, and Jackson Mac Low, among others.
Michael Gibbs, ed.
Kontexts, nos. 9/10.
Winter 1976–77.
The final issue. Contributors include bill bissett, Carl Clark, Scott Helmes, Dick Higgins, John Liggins, and Tom Winter. Within, Gibbs writes: “kontexts is as far as I know the only small press magazine (not to speak of the larger presses) which changed its format every issue. Economics had something to do with this, but it evolved as a principle that the material received for each issue should determine its format, not the other way round.”
Michael Gibbs, ed.
Kontextsound.
Kontexts Publications, 1977.
Displayed is work by Lily Greenham, Katalin Ladik, and Ab van Eyk.
The magazine was a compilation of “sound-poetry, text-sound compositions, poésie sonore, auditive texts, optophonetics, verbosonics, lingual music.” Published on the occasion of the “Tekst in Geluid” (“Text in Sound”) festival at the Stedelijk Museum (April/May 1977). Contributors include Jeremy Adler, cris cheek, Henri Chopin, Bob Cobbing and Eric Mottram, François Dufrêne, P.C. Fencott, Michael Gibbs, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Lawrence Upton, and many others.