John Giorno: The Performative Word

John Giorno: The Performative Word is the first monograph devoted to the American poet, artist, and activist John Giorno (1936–2019). It accompanies a retrospective at MAMbo – Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, curated by Lorenzo Balbi.

Over six decades, Giorno moved the written word off the page and into performance, sound technology, painting, and public space. The book traces that practice through his LP records, wall pieces, and the telephone project Dial-A-Poem, which let callers dial in and hear a rotating cast of poets read down the line. Archival photographs, ephemera, and documents round out the picture, tracking his parallel life as an AIDS and anti-war activist and longtime Buddhist practitioner.

Giorno came up through the 1960s New York downtown scene, working across overlapping circles that included the Beat poets, Andy Warhol's Factory, punk music, and queer counterculture. His collaborators there included Robert Rauschenberg, William Burroughs, Laurie Anderson, Anne Waldman, Allen Ginsberg, and Ugo Rondinone. He also founded the nonprofit Giorno Poetry Systems to record and circulate poetry beyond the page, work this catalogue situates within his six-decade practice.