Jurgen Egyptian [Internet Review]: As part of the "collected works" of Gerhard Ruhm is now part of the band 2.1 "visual poetry" before, which has been edited by Monika Lichtenfeld. She has, in its editorial afterword suggests that it is an "annotated reading and study issue" involved that is has been in close cooperation with the author about.The volume contains, divided into eighteen groups of works, some 680 works, of which almost half will be unveiled and document the one lasting more than half a century of work process. The most extensive chapter, the "schreibmaschinenideogramme" (p. 7-76), "typocollages" the (p. 87-234) and the "literary awards" (p. 297-540), which include the only the entire period of work related Ruhm . The sequence of work groups oriented that when each technique was dominant. Within each chapter a chronological arrangement was sought. Lichtenfeld pointed out that in the compilation of the material mainly technical issues played a role.In the first of these texts about his Schreibmaschinenideogramme and Fototypogramme Ruhm goes to the specific capabilities of the typewriter (for example, the technique of the Convention Andert Ippens, the loosening of the line grid, the folding of the paper for the purpose of pulling or scattering of the text) and runs from the conscious use one "poetics of the typewriter", who was the emergence of conceptual critical texts. Depending on the physical nature of the artistic means of production varies the ratio of aesthetic autonomy and heteronomy. With collages, newspaper layouts and image poems from cut paper images the creative autonomy is largely in artistic actor. However, leads Ruhm from the example of his writing inks and Tuschtypocollagen that the final shape of the work is the result of a process is always, "which goes even beyond the act of painting and moisture from contingencies of external conditions such as saturation degree of the brush, tempo of color contract, texture and of the paper depends on. " Vary according to the suggestions of aesthetic production that Ruhm picks. For the techniques with a high degree of constructiveness he lives by Piet Mondrian concept of the 'New Design', the process produces, in which arbitrary external factors play a bigger role, he represents himself to sign Zen Buddhist traditions.A special status under Ruhm production techniques take the meditative. Here he explicitly includes in the parapsychology of Rudolf Tischner, who has opened up for him the way to his automatic writing and drawing scriptural meditations. Tischner've studied the phenomenon of psychic automatism, which manifested themselves without the involvement of the will in psycho sensory and psychomotor spontaneous utterances. These states of psychic automatism acted as "method for activation of latent creative potentials" and culminated with pen and paper, in-swinging, sometimes dynamic lines. Ruhm is also called, blind drawings' and makes them the observation that leaves that have begun to go beyond Scripture, in drawings, and vice versa. At this point it is interesting that Ruhm gets with his characterization of the flowing exchange of letters to and from image to image recording at a meditative attitude in the vicinity of the art theoretical maxims of the painter and art educator Holzel. Already at the beginning of the 20th Century Falco had developed the technique to awaken in meditative absorption through rhythmic movements write creative impulses and einzuschwingen in a writing and Zeichenakt. The approach, therefore, also have some of Ruhm writing drawings on the ambiguity of Holzel font base leaves, but of course will proceed to their discourse and objectivity. Ruhm placed in this context on the value difference to the automatic writing of Surrealism, which is for him merely the tool to a withdrawal from the ingrained ways of thinking, but not consistently applied method.On subjects can be in the case of visual poetry naturally say little, but experimenting with is technical process for the recovery of new artistic forms in the foreground. Philosophies are sometimes created by titling, such as the font drawing "Four types of Describing the Rain" with its allusion to a quintet by Hanns Eisler. It is noticeable, however, that recurring linguistic particles cause certain constitutive relations within Ruhm visual poetry. These particles are the linguistic word pairs, I-thou ',' yes-no ', and, yes-no' or punctuation pair! /? '. Also reverse the words, and 'and' now 'back often. Can be derived from this basic vocabulary of Ruhm visual poetry that he is concerned with basic configurations, the complementarity of opposites comes to connection, disconnection and representation. The examples of convergent or divergent movements of the characters, for the entanglement or contrast between me and you are numerous.The most commonly chosen as the starting point or the sole object of the writing movement or typographical arrangement of words is, 'I. Ruhm it uses to constellative Selbstamplifikation, and he uses it in his experiments with extremely accelerated writing movements. Simultaneously alongside these experiments on the spatial and temporal self-reproduction is the graphic framing the letters, n 'and' ts', which I annihilate the quasi visually. This Auslotungen the ego by means of various techniques is one of the continuities in Ruhm visual poetry. Likewise, this includes the use of pin-ups, which also document the conversion of the representation of female nudes in the print media and the stability of Ruhm bourgeois male fantasies. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.