Battlefields 

Battlefields is a collaboration between visual artist Zolt Asta and poet Anne Murray, in which short poems accompany artworks comprised of images of European battlefields from the two world wars folded into abstract art installations. These assemblages of words and images compel us to witness the processes through which cultural memory is forged. The poems facilitate this reconfiguration by breaking down words, syllables, and punctuation marks into smaller units of meaning, sound, and signification:

Government




                   ++++++++++++

People

                                                    ol

                                                             itics

Here, the first letter of “politics” is embedded in “people,” while “government” hovers ominously. The line that runs through “ol" and "itics” negates the possibility of individual agency while also suggesting the hope for a radical transformation that art can sometimes bring about.

As Murray points out in her foreword, Asta’s art is “reminiscent of the process of typesetting, from a period when movable letters were once arranged to create a whole.” The same can be said for the poems themselves, which continue the work of reframing the past via language, while highlighting the various ways in which we move through space: 

unguarded outbursts

under and over

                         a new frame,

backstep, retreat

scale

Through its visual and linguistic deconstruction of Europe’s violent past, this collection invites us to reflect on the aftermath of war, when bodies have been swept away and memories congealed to suit our present circumstances, and to imagine a different way forward.