Henri Chopin
1929 - 2008
Born in Paris (FR), died in Dereham ().
Henri Chopin was an international important sound poet during the 1950s and 1970s in France. He created a large body of pioneering recordings using early tape recorders, studio technologies and the sounds of the manipulated human voice. His emphasis on sound is a reminder that language stems as much from oral traditions as from classic literature, of the relationship of balance between order and chaos. Chopin's poesie sonore aesthetics included a deliberate cultivation of a barbarian approach in production, using raw or crude sound manipulations to explore the area between distortion and intelligibility. Chopin was also director and editor of the audio-visual magazines Cinquième Saison and OU between 1958 and 1974. Each issue contained recordings as well as texts, images, prints and multiples, and brought together international contemporary writers and artists such as members of Lettrisme and Fluxus, Bernard Heidsieck and Paul De Vree, Jiri Kolar, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Brion Gysin and many others, as well as bringing the work of survivors from earlier generations such as Seuphor, Raoul Hausmann, Pierre Albert-Birot, and Arthur Petronio.
