Ursonate, Lynn Book and Andy Laties

Lynn Book and Andy Laties perform Kurt Schwitters' Ursonate 1932 live at Club Lower Links 09-12-91

Context provided by the artist, Lynn Book:

"As a transmedia artist working across disciplines and cultural spheres, the "Ursonate" was an early inspiration to develop my experimental voice and sonic works.  My long relationship with the text-score stretches back to 1984 when I joined Andy and 3 other musicians, performing a version that Andy had arranged (and even quasi-scored).  We performed it at the old Chicago Filmmakers on Hubbard St.  After that, Andy and I performed it as a duo several times, including a summer run at the Cafe Voltaire in Chicago in 1988, and for young children (who we frightened) at Andy's "Children's Bookstore", formerly on Lincoln Ave across from the Guild.  

I performed it solo in New York at Roulette for the first time in 1996 and believe I was the first woman to have performed it solo, in its entirety.  It inhabited me again in Berlin in 2014 at SOMOS. In 2016 I took over the main library at Wake Forest University (where I taught and directed Creativity and Innovation programs for 17 years) on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of Dada by Emmy Hemming and Hugo Ball at Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich.  It was an enormous, interconnected happening with many moving parts, including my "Ursonate".

In 2013, I performed it as part of an exhibition at Hanes Gallery, Wake Forest University (North Carolina). There is great footage of that, including incredible intros to the exhibition, called "Letterforming".  It links from my archive site, but lives on the Penn Sound site at U Penn.  Also included is an NPR affiliate interview with quantum poetics poet in residence at Wake Forest, Amy Catanzano.  My performance art students were plants in the audience of over a hundred people that created a chorus of rolling Rs during that passage.

Schwitters'  "Ursonate" is a fantastic entry point into Dada.  His formalism - and serious play - crossing so many border lines has meant that this work is seen as a forerunner of experimentation in the visual arts, literary, poetics and musical arenas. I've always had many expansive projects and practices in a range of media, but the "Ursonate" is the only one in repertoire. It's always waiting in the wings."