Concrete

 

Seminar on Street Art 2: Concrete. Precast concrete slabs have sped up building construction everywhere. The resulting conglomeration of concrete rectangles, similar in appearance to an A4 sheet of paper, cross the landscape, relentless: a logical invitation to the concrete poet. Wild varieties of graphic verse, in every type of type and calligraphic application, liven the humdrum greyness of miles of slab. All of it free of charge to the company. Concrete poets take advantage of the disadvantages of this building material. To begin with, concrete is very expensive, replacement unthinkable. By coating the surface with polychromatic Baroque lettering, the concrete poet protects the dull and vulnerable concrete, extending its life by several years. Badge bombing strengthens the initial layer against sun and shower, an ornament to the industrial wasteland into which it speaks, as with multi-coloured tongues. Then concrete has a high compression strength, but a weak tensile strength. Concrete poets gibe at this temporality, often drawing cracks and chips into their overnight sensations as a gestural reminder that concrete walls, like their own most ardent efforts at attention, are not made to last. Concrete isn’t porous, another disadvantage that the poets turn to their advantage, brushing swathes of paint and spraying cans of colour over the smooth surface. In terms of speed, scale and level of detail, concrete is far superior to corrugated iron, which delivers optical confusion with its uncontrollable, interminable undulations, or the Melbourne paling fence, its textures porous and getting porouser, its timber shades spoiling the instant effects of a blank background. Unporous steadies the holding agents, beaming a chorus of diversity. Finally, concrete has the unhappy reputation of being unaesthetically pleasing. Concrete aficionados are divided as to the architectural beauty of the material. Snobs find pleasure in Soviet brutalism while land developers have a whole dictionary of laudatory words for every occasion, but public opinion wavers. Concrete poets, themselves aficionados if not for those reasons, find benefits to the underwhelming ordinariness of concrete. For them it is the opportunity to take up a fresh canvas, readymade and promising a constant viewership, that cannot begin to contain their unintelligible, gnomic poems. Much as references explain concrete poetry as a modernist version of shaped poetry, actually concrete poetry is old as Antiquity. Those earliest scratchings on city walls, those names for posterity that could be anyone in time, those tags against the forces of nature, those singular signatures – they fit the definition of concrete poem: “An arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance.”