Bidspirit auction | ARAGÃO (António). FAÇA o Seu

ARAGÃO (António). FAÇA o Seu Avião. Lisboa. 1969. - ARAGÃO (António) FAÇA o Seu Avião . «projecto de António Aragão, 1969» (impresso na folha). Instruções impressas: «1.º preencha os 12 rectângulos em branco com as palavras seguintes: renegar, construir, afastar, querer, destruir, fazer, amar, abolir, criar, desprezar, abrir e eliminar; 2.º dobre pelas linhas indicadas; 3.º lance no ar o seu tipo de avião.» In: Hidra 2. Lisboa, 1969. (folha 8). Lisboa: s.n., 1969. 1 ff.: il.; 225×210 mm. This interactive poem-object by António Aragão (São Vicente, Madeira, 1921 - Funchal, 2008), dated 1969, is one of the most radical and lucid examples of Portuguese concrete and visual poetry of the 1960s. The sheet is simultaneously a poem, an instruction manual, and a potential object: the reader is invited to fill twelve blank rectangles with words provided by the author (renounce, build, distance, want, destroy, do, love, abolish, create, despise, open, eliminate), to fold the sheet along the indicated lines – marked and numbered on the back (1st, 2nd, and 3rd folds) – and to throw it into the air like a paper airplane. The poem is only complete with the active participation of the reader-builder, and its final ”reading” is the flight – ephemeral, unrepeatable, uncontrollable. The grid of words on the front, divided into pairs of empty and filled rectangles, organizes a vocabulary of fundamental human actions in polar tension: destroy / create, love / despise, open / eliminate. The ”type of plane” chosen by the reader – determined by the folds they make – is thus also an existential and political choice. The sheet was published as sheet 8 of Hidra 2 (Lisbon, 1969), a collective publication of Portuguese experimental poetry that also included works by Silvestre Pestana, EM de Melo e Castro, José Alberto Marques, Mei Leandro de Castro and Liberto Cruz. An exceptional archival document, representative of Aragão's kinetic and participatory poetry during the most fertile period of Portuguese experimental poetry. Very rare. ⚑ Auto-translated via Google Translate