‘Rewriting The World: Primers And Poetry In The Age Of Confusion’ Exhibition On View In The Wolfsonian’s Rare Book And Special Collections Library Vestibule
April 7, 2011
The Wolfsonian
1001 Washington Avenue
Miami Beach, FL

The Wolfsonian–Florida International University presents Rewriting the World: Primers and Poetry in the Age of Confusion. Drawing on the museum’s holdings of rare books from the early twentieth century, the selection of materials represents a range of attempts to define the contours of everyday life through renovations of language. Whether a motorcar marketing booklet, a literacy manual for non-native speakers, or a poem comprised of innovative typography and non-sense sounds, these works emerged from certain social and political agendas. The exhibition surveys the ways in which such agendas are inscribed in the rudiments of language—set into speech and written into thought.

Rewriting the World is organized by Matthew Abess, curatorial research assistant at The Wolfsonian. The exhibit will be on view April 7 through June 5, 2011 and includes evangelical alphabet primers, National Socialist toothpaste pamphlets, Czech photo-texts, typographic fairytales, and end-of-the-world scenarios filmed by the angel of Notre Dame.

“For the writers, designers, and even corporations behind these works, the transformation of everyday life was something to be achieved by linguistic means, and especially by the transformation of language itself,” notes Matthew Abess. “At their most effective, these efforts to initiate readers into certain visions of the present and future are well concealed. This exhibition aims to make them manifest.”

The exhibition is organized in response to the stated mission of the O, Miami poetry festival that every single person in Miami-Dade County encounter a poem during the month of April. Following this call for encounters, The Wolfsonian also will be projecting Abeceda 2000 in its street front windows from nightfall to sunrise beginning on April 7, 2011. The film recreates the Liberated Theater’s performance of Abeceda—an icon of Czech avant-garde poetry, dance, and constructivist design—using the 1926 “photo-text” publication as its visual guide.

In conjunction with the exhibition and in collaboration with independent curator Brett Fletcher Lauer, The Wolfsonian has also invited five contemporary writers to contribute original postcard poems written through the themes in Rewriting the World. The postcards will be distributed in the museum and also will be used in O, Miami’s international call for mail art, a part of the Abe’s Penny Live installations at ArtSeen, where visitors will be sending the postcards to writers and curators internationally as well as to random addresses throughout Miami-Dade County.

On Friday, April 22nd, following the 6pm gallery tour, Matthew Abess, and director of O, Miami Scott Cunningham, will introduce Rewriting the World and engage with the audience about matters of poetry, persuasion, and the language of everyday life. Wine reception to follow; event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Julieth Dabdoub at 305.535.2622 or julieth@thewolf.fiu.edu.

O, Miami is a county-wide poetry festival inaugurating in April 2011. Produced by the University of Wynwood and funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, it is a month-long series of events and projects mixing traditional readings with innovative poetry-in-public-places projects, weaving poetry into the fabric of the city’s infrastructure and cultural life. The events will culminate in a four-day series of readings, April 27-30 at the New World Center. For more information and a full schedule of events, visit omiami.org.

The Wolfsonian is a museum, library, and research center that uses objects to illustrate the persuasive power of art and design, to explore what it means to be modern, and to tell the story of social, historical, and technological changes that have transformed our world. The collections comprise approximately 120,000 objects from the period of 1885 to 1945—the height of the Industrial Revolution to the end of the Second World War—in a variety of media including furniture; industrial-design objects; works in glass, ceramics, and metal; rare books; periodicals; ephemera; works on paper; paintings; textiles; and medals.
The Wolfsonian is located at 1001 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, FL. Admission discount in effect through April 14, 2011: $5 for adults; $3.50 for seniors, students, and children age 6 -12; and free for Wolfsonian members, State University System of Florida staff and students with ID, and children under six. The museum is open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday from noon-6pm; Friday from noon-9pm; and is closed on Wednesday. Contact us at 305.531.1001 or visit us online at www.wolfsonian.org for further information.