Wolfsonian-FIU presents free public talk April 22

"Modern Reklameschriften" ("Modern Calligraphy in Advertising"). Pamphlet. By Gerhard Hantzsch, c. 1935.

It is April, the month of shoures soote – and The Wolfsonian-FIU is channeling Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales because the fourth month of the year also happens to be the month of O, Miami, a brand-new, county-wide poetry festival.

The festival’s goal: for every person in the county to encounter a poem during the month.

Inspired by O, Miami, the Wolfsonian has responded with a range of innovative programming around the theme of poetry and persuasion, including an exhibition titled “Rewriting the World: Primers and Poetry in the Age of Confusion,” a nightly film projection, a series of original postcards and a free program on Friday, April 22, titled “‘Hic Haec Hoc’: Aberrant Language and the Design of Everydayness.”

The talk, scheduled for 7 p.m. at the museum, will discuss “Rewriting the World” and engage the audience in topics ranging from poetry to persuasion to the language of everyday life. Featuring the exhibition’s curator, Matthew Abess, and the director of O, Miami, P. Scott Cunningham, the program will follow a regularly scheduled gallery tour, followed by a wine reception.

In conjunction with the exhibition, each night The Wolfsonian-FIU will project in its street front windows on Washington Avenue the film Abeceda (2000) on a continuous loop, from nightfall to sunrise. The film recreates the Liberated Theater’s performance of “Abeceda” – an icon of Czech avant-garde poetry, dance and constructivist design – using the 1926 “photo-text” publication as its visual guide.

In conjunction with the exhibition and in collaboration with independent curator Brett Fletcher Lauer, the Wolfsonian also has invited five contemporary writers to contribute original postcard poems written through the themes in “Rewriting the World.” The postcards will be distributed in the museum and also will be used in O, Miami’s international call for mail art, a part of the Abe’s Penny Live installations at ArtSeen, where visitors will be sending the postcards to writers and curators internationally, as well as to random addresses throughout Miami-Dade County.

For more information, contact Julieth Dabdoub at 305-535-2622 or julieth@thewolf.fiu.edu.