Commentaries on Bob Cobbing - The Argotist Online

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Acknowledgements An earlier and shorter version of this collection was part of the documentation supplied by Space Studios London to the exhibition Some Variations on a Theme of Bob, curated by Lawrence Upton, which ran from 25th March 2011 to 7th May 2011. Thanks to Space Studios and, in particular, Paul Pieroni, Anna Harding and Hannah Barton. My thanks to all editors/publishers who first or subsequently published this writing, particularly Jeffrey Side of The Argotist Online, publisher of this book. In like spirit, my thanks to Sarah Bodman, Senior Research Fellow for Artists’ Books at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UWE, Bristol for inviting the exhibition Bob Cobbing and the Book, and to Guy Begbie for his generous advice and help with that exhibition. Finally but not least thanks to Amie Ouzman at Goldsmiths, University of London for a little admin help. She may say it was “nothing”; but the point is she did it immaculately and quickly, as always. See also Further Acknowledgements at end of the book.
Introduction The commentary herein is largely of my authorship. The only exception is that of an article by Caroline Andrews that, by accident, it falls to me to make available again. The writing is arranged chronologically to the degree that is possible. I do not offer my work as the only route to appreciating Bob’s art. Far from it! It is one approach, or set of approaches, almost certainly partial and blinkered; but it may be of some use. What I have to say arises from practice and, for many years, collaborative practice. It is the opinions of one who worked with Bob Cobbing quite a lot. I never did take book-learned theories and test Cobbing’s output or anybody’s with them. On the contrary, I learned and developed such theory as you will find here through practice, often alongside or in the company of Bob Cobbing. The distinction is important. In recent years I have found myself interviewed and in discussions of Cobbing’s work, both with and without the formality of an interview; and I have quite often concluded that my colleague has made up her or his mind regarding what my answers are likely to be before we have started. One sign of this is a resistance to many answers I have given as being, apparently, improbable, often also because they do not match instruction they have already received or read. This resistance occurs not only in the case of opinion, but also over questions of fact to which I was and am a primary witness! These writings were scattered. I began to gather them to supplement the descriptive documentation I wrote for Variations on a Theme of Bob, the exhibition I curated at Space Studios in 2011. Copies of all that documentation ran out a year ago. Furthermore, some texts I should have included there had evaded me. This time, I hope, I have them all; but this collection is not comprehensive because some published texts are still easy to locate, and it seems pointless, even perverse, to duplicate them. There is also one new text yet to be published. (See the short list, following this Introduction, of writings not included herein.)* It was not my intention when I began writing about Bob Cobbing three decades and a bit ago to write a book. What I have written about him has always had a purpose, usually my desire to draw attention to Bob and his work; but, latterly, because people have invited me to write or speak of him. As a result, the sections here repeat ideas and data, now and then, to some extent; but I prefer not to engage in a total rewrite. I want the original circumstances of the writing to be discernible. What I have written I have written! Most but not all of what is here is unrevised; and the revisions are minimal. I have made a few silent corrections and alterations when it does not alter the nature of what I had said. I start with a very early attempt to write about a mode of writing for which I had no critical vocabulary and have applied to it, that is, to my writing, an approach I developed later and in other circumstances or other texts: basically, cutting out the good or ok bits from the less good or to let them stand on their own here. This is the review of Pattern of Performance.
Page 2 and 3: Commentaries on Bo
Page 4 and 5: Contents Acknowledgements 6 Introdu
Page 8 and 9: That first essay, from over 30 year
Page 10 and 11: Review of Pattern of Performance (A
Page 12 and 13: Bob Cobbing at The Voice Box Cobbin
Page 14 and 15: Bob Cobbing at The Klinker (29th Ap
Page 16 and 17: Co-editing Word Score Utterance Cho
Page 18 and 19: It took Cobbing 10 years—or 20 ye
Page 20 and 21: • Do you use machines/technology
Page 22 and 23: I would like to see the visual inte
Page 24 and 25: Introduction of Bob Cobbing at the
Page 26 and 27: tonight at Bob’s instigation, a f
Page 28 and 29: I shall quote now from a slightly-c
Page 30 and 31: espect. The contents are linear poe
Page 32 and 33: the level of the book rather than a
Page 34 and 35: medium may leave us more flexibilit
Page 36 and 37: Introduction to Bob Cobbing at Sub
Page 38 and 39: Ladies and Gentlemen, Bob Cobbing.
Page 40 and 41: silent. Then he turned intense atte
Page 42 and 43: Bob Cobbing: A Worker in Progress I
Page 44 and 45: It was during that time that I met
Page 46 and 47: Funeral Oration for Cobbing (11th O
Page 48 and 49: Celebrating the Memory of Bob Cobbi
Page 50 and 51: Bob Cobbing: A Talk Given at Boat T
Page 52 and 53: As well as the simplicity of approa
Page 54 and 55: The Destruction in Art volume recen
Page 56 and 57:
themselves and not a completion in
Page 58 and 59:
Reissue of Kroklok Kroklok was an e
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Republication of Bob Cobbing’s Li
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and the foreground of the image; an
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has been more difference in aesthet
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It might be that he changed his min
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So far, within a page, Cobbing has
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Review of With Our Tongue Our Drils
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criteria before being sure of them;
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Collaborations for Peter Finch Lawr
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The working order of pages changed
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Introduction to Bob Cobbing and Wri
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The supposed improvement in product
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inevitable. I am not sure it was so
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ut eye elements! A notional alien n
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However, there is functional writin
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There are those poets who inherit t
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I have included less on the 1980s
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word or any inflection of it; nor d
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making poetry than he had been. And
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he did formally, in a context of th
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And now as poetry more and more bec
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Another Story of Bob Cobbing Welcom
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Yet, as I have said before, Bob Cob
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Both afford ample evidence of Cobbi
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Bob Cobbing: A Talk Given at Boat T
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3. Published by Writers Forum in 20
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