Pär Thörn
DIE LEIDEN DES JUNGEN WERTHER (ALPHABETISCH)
Book-Presentation & Performance
Saturday, March 24, 2012, 6-10pm
Curated by Storno Verlag, Stockholm
In 'Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (alphabetisch)' Pär Thörn alphabetizes all the words of the original edition of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's classic novel from 1774 and sets them in a fracture typeface. The result is a broken narrative structure, a graphic score and a visual text that rather emphasizes the individual word and the typographic materiality than the book's content. This is a conceptual work that thematizes readability, nationality, literary autonomy in relation to the expanded field of art and typographic heritage.
As a live-performance Thörn plays a sound piece where he has transformed the foreword to white noise and silence.
Pär Thörn is a writer, sound and conceptual artist. He published his first book in 2002 and during the last ten years presented text- and sound pieces all over Europe. His record Schöneberg/Stammheim/Gärdet/Rågsved was nominated as the best Swedish experimental music record in 2008. He has performed with Leif Elggren, Keith Rowe, Charles Bernstein, Lina Selander, Johannes Bergmark and Martin Küchen. Thörn is now based in Berlin after several years in Malmö.
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