IN A NEW ORDER
Christine Walde
04 September – 24 October 2020
The Vault, Victoria Arts Council, 1800 Store Street
Presented as part of concrete is porous 2020, in concert with STANZAS.
In A New Order is a series of visual poems, including remixes and reinterpretations, of Joy Division’s iconic 1980 song, “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”
In some poems, the words are randomly selected, following the same order of consonants in each stanza while strictly adhering to the same consonants and line breaks. In other poems, lines are composed in a kind of “free verse,” using only the words from the original lyrics, and arranged in a multiplicity of ways, including by order and repetition, cluster formation, as well as by mirroring each corresponding stanza. In every poem, each word appears the same number of times as in the original song — but in a new order, which is a pun on the band New Order, which was re-formed in the wake of Joy Division’s demise after the tragic suicide by lead singer Ian Curtis.
In addition to the print works, In A New Order has a performance element, and can be performed in front of a live audience as a live “remix” of the text. Exclusively for Concrete is Porous, the lyrics have been 3D-printed and hung as a mobile of interconnecting words in three-dimensional space, bringing a new kind of order to the work that is both transient and ephemeral.
Christine Walde is a writer, artist, and librarian whose work combines library and archival research with interests in experimental prose, poetry, visual poetry, performance, and the visual arts. Her recent collection, Bride Machine (flask), is a limited edition artist multiple composed of fourteen folios of poetry inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s iconic Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even. Walde lives and works in Victoria.