John Giorno
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Giorno (born 1936) is an North American poet and performance artist. He founded the artist collective Giorno Poetry Systems and coined its mass communication experiment Dial-A-Poem. He became prominent as the subject of Andy Warhol's film Sleep. He is also an AIDS activist and fundraiser.
[edit] Career
Giorno was born in New York. He graduated from Columbia University in 1958. In 1962, while in his early 20s and working in New York as a stockbroker, he met Andy Warhol, who became an important influence for Giorno's developments on poetry, performance and recordings. Giorno and Warhol are said to have remained very close until 1964, after which time their meetings were rare. Their relationship was revived somewhat in the last year before Warhol's death.
In 1968, Giorno founded Giorno Poetry Systems in order to connect poetry to new audiences, using innovative technology. This intuition turned out to be very influential on later approaches to poetry, like Spoken Word, Slam readings (Slam Poetry)and the use of technology as an aid for artistic purposes. Some of the poets and artists who recorded or collaborated with Giorno Poetry Systems were William Burroughs, John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Mapplethorpe.
In addition to his collaborations with William Burroughs, Giorno has produced a number of albums, tapes, videos and books.
[edit] External links
- Giorno Poetry Systems Discography/Web site
- Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews John Giorno
- Extensive interview discussing his life and his work
- Guardian article in which Giorno discusses his relationship with Warhol and his instrumental role in the production of the film 'Sleep'
- Review of sound poetry performance - Giorno is described as 'an elder statesman of bohemia'; also includes brief discussion of his technique of phrase repetition.
- UbuWeb Dial-A-Poem Poets, New York City - A downloadable audio collection of the Dial-A-Poem albums.
- Simplemente di no a los valores familiares / Just say no to family values.
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