Commentaries on Bob Cobbing - The Argotist Online

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Collaborations for Peter Finch Lawrence Upton/Bob Cobbing; Writers Forum; ISBN 0 86162 784 9; October 1997 (reprinted 1998, and in November 2010) Between late 1994 and Easter 2000, Bob Cobbing and I collaborated on Domestic Ambient Noise or D.A.N. When we were about a third of the way into the project, Peter Manson asked us to submit collaborative work for the magazine Object Permanence. We responded with the poems which make up this book, Collaborations for Peter Finch, from which Manson selected. Thus, we fulfilled the commission, without impinging upon the process of D.A.N., using different procedures, so one set of work did not conflict with or become confused with the other, and agreeing on a relatively modest maximum length in order to return quickly to the ongoing work. After Manson’s selection had been published, the whole of Collaborations for Peter Finch appeared from Writers Forum in 1997. It was reprinted in 1998 and went out of print by 2000. This is the second reprint, timed to be available for the forthcoming Bob Cobbing exhibition [1], in 2011, which is being curated by Lawrence Upton. The title dedication is quite explicable. There is no hidden message. Regard the book as an artistic homage by the two of us out of admiration for Finch’s achievement as a visual poet, regarding Peter Finch as our peer in the making of various and inventive texts for live performance, a body of work of importance and distinction. I spoke of different procedures to those used in Domestic Ambient Noise. Briefly, in D.A.N., one image by one artist was taken by the other to make 6 or more variations upon it. (Sometimes more than one image would be taken; but let’s keep it simple: the basic idea was for one image to be varied six times.) In the case of Collaborations for Peter Finch, the variation was undertaken as part of the making process of each image. Each artist could initiate work on half of the page only. Each initiated half of the pages. Thus, half of the 64 pages would have been blank before I, say, put any marks on them. Those were my 32 pages to initiate. Cobbing also had 32 pages which were blank before he put anything on them. We could take our half of the page to be half horizontally or vertically or diagonally. Same with Cobbing.
So one initiated 32 pages and also responded to 32 pages, on those pages, on which one’s colleague/collaborator had worked. The pages were made one or a few at a time so that one was aware of how the whole was developing and changing. Neither initiated 32 images at one and the same time or anything like it. When both sides of the page had been made, the page went back to the initiator who could make changes; and that included changing what had been the other’s contribution. So one could add to or subtract from one’s work or one’s collaborator’s because it was all the collaborative text now. One of the things that happened at this third stage was a process of blending the two elements if that had not happened already as part of the initiation stage and the first response stage. Here was an engagement in a process I have since called “benign artistic trespass” [2]. The primary aim here was to get the whole image right in such a way that both were happy with it. By this point, we had been making images with each other for some time and were beginning to open each other to our own ways of seeing. Most pages went through the prescribed two stages, a few went through three and maybe one or two went through four. I once identified one page which had been through five stages; but, when I looked again, I could not be sure which one it was! Collaborations for Peter Finch does not have any pages made by one only of us; and in some cases the work of one has been changed by the other and not just added to. The writing is there without attribution of individual efforts. The length of book we settled on was about the maximum number of pages that could be managed in Writers Forum’s then preferred publication style (sheets folded to make 4 pages, centrally stapled). The page size was Cobbing’s favourite; and I think it’s all right. He was doing the actual production. I just did half the artistic bit. So I agreed, though left to myself perhaps I might have wanted to try different page shapes. We wrote up to that limit, pages having been abandoned along the way, usually half way through their completion by the first artist, sometimes by the other artist. (Typically, we would give each other a batch of pages half finished or a number of responses to the same page; and give with them permission or instruction to choose some but not all.) Near the very end, we had a look through and weeded a couple which we felt—in tranquility— were weak. All the pages were laid out on Cobbing’s living room floor and the order discussed. When a link was agreed, the pages were moved together until we had the entire order worked out. The writing/ordering process speeded up as the project progressed; and on the last day we finalised the last few pages and determined the whole order of the book. I think that the order of pages works; but it was not in any sense predetermined or foreseen.
Page 2 and 3:
Commentaries on Bo
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Contents Acknowledgements 6 Introdu
Page 6 and 7:
Acknowledgements An earlier and sho
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
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Bob Cobbing at The Klinker (29th Ap
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Co-editing Word Score Utterance Cho
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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
Page 60 and 61: Republication of Bob Cobbing’s Li
Page 62 and 63: and the foreground of the image; an
Page 64 and 65: has been more difference in aesthet
Page 66 and 67: It might be that he changed his min
Page 68 and 69: So far, within a page, Cobbing has
Page 70 and 71: Review of With Our Tongue Our Drils
Page 72 and 73: criteria before being sure of them;
Page 76 and 77: The working order of pages changed
Page 78 and 79: Introduction to Bob Cobbing and Wri
Page 80 and 81: The supposed improvement in product
Page 82 and 83: inevitable. I am not sure it was so
Page 84 and 85: ut eye elements! A notional alien n
Page 86 and 87: However, there is functional writin
Page 88 and 89: There are those poets who inherit t
Page 90 and 91: I have included less on the 1980s
Page 92 and 93: word or any inflection of it; nor d
Page 94 and 95: making poetry than he had been. And
Page 96 and 97: he did formally, in a context of th
Page 98 and 99: And now as poetry more and more bec
Page 100 and 101: Another Story of Bob Cobbing Welcom
Page 102 and 103: Yet, as I have said before, Bob Cob
Page 104 and 105: Both afford ample evidence of Cobbi
Page 106 and 107: Bob Cobbing: A Talk Given at Boat T
Page 108 and 109: 3. Published by Writers Forum in 20
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