John Giorno returns to Paris

Giorno took part in countless artistic scenes and movements, from Pop art to the Beat generation. He travelled to India and studied Tibetan Buddhism, a practice that he continued for the rest of his life. A committed activist, he founded the AIDS Treatment Project and used poetry to fight for civil rights and awareness about the war in Vietnam. He started a band that performed at CBGBs among other downtown institutions. He starred in the music video for R.E.M’s final single, We All Go Back To Where We Belong. Such a multifaceted career was made possible largely due to his belief in community, a guiding principle of his life and work. This commitment endures today, most notably in Giorno Poetry Systems, a non-profit the artist started in 1965. GPS still exists today, continuing Giorno’s mission of supporting artists and their work.

Ten years after the landmark exhibition ‘UGO RONDINONE: I ♥ JOHN GIORNO’, held at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Almine Rech and Giorno Poetry Systems present 'Merci! John Giorno', an exhibition celebrating the artist and his enduring legacy. Works by Giorno are presented alongside his contemporaries as well as a younger generation of artists for whom Giorno has acted as an inspiration. A decade later, Giorno returns to Paris as the global community he built comes together to celebrate his life and work.

Giorno Poetry Systems maintains the Giorno archive, a vast resource on Giorno and the downtown New York artistic scene. In honor of 'Merci! John Giorno', here are a few treasures from the GPS archive, illustrating the breadth of his work and his commitment to creating community through art and poetry.

John Giorno was a vital element of the New York artistic scene, always on the cutting edge of the avant-garde. He established himself as an active presence in New York’s art scene in the 1950s, lauded for his starring role in Andy Warhol’s five-hour film Sleep (1963). A life-long collaborator, he went on to stage multimedia events with Robert Rauschenberg, develop new recording techniques with Bob Moog, and perform alongside William Burroughs and Brion Gysin. In 1967, he published his first monograph, Poems, and his first LP, collaborating with Rauschenberg and Les Levine on the artwork and designs for both.

In an archival video from Le Confessioni di John Giorno (2000), Giorno discusses his relationships with other artists and what inspired him to bring poetry to the masses through painting.

For Giorno, it was essential that poetry be shared with the public. Throughout his life he became a symbol for the democratization of art. Giorno endeavored to bring poetry to a wider audience through his paintings, his performances, and the trailblazing Dial-A-Poem project.

Giorno created Dial-A-Poem at The Architectural League of New York in 1968. The project was conceived as a public service, poetry for the people. Giorno put together a team and improvised a phone bank using ten phones and industrial answering machines. The number was available all day and night, callers would hear a randomly selected poem read by an artist, poet, or musician. The original project ran for five months, receiving over a million calls. The project was subsequently included in the landmark group exhibition Information at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970. Today, Giorno's, Dial-A-Poem is available to call in the United States and GPS works with international partners to produce new editions of Dial-A-Poem around the world.

Dial-A-Poem was both celebrated and censored for its selection of readings and speeches by poets and activists. Giorno was unwaveringly unapologetic in his use of politically charged and sexually suggestive content, using his work as a platform to draw attention to his own status as a gay man, to police violence in America, and to the harrowing statistics associated with the war in Vietnam.

In another archival video from 1969 we are given a glimpse into the organization of Giorno’s groundbreaking Dial-A-Poem service. The Super-8 footage is paired with an excerpt from Le Confessioni di John Giorno (2000), in which Giorno explains the inspiration behind the project, which pioneered a new way of bringing contemporary poetry to a wider audience.

Giorno described himself as an artist of “promiscuous compassion". He always worked as much to elevate the work of others as his own. He was a tireless advocate for many writers and artists, a commitment that Giorno Poetry Systems continues to this day. This archival Super-8 footage from 1969 depicts Giorno participating in a Street Work performance, an informal public art event organized by Hannah Weiner, Marjorie Strider, and John Perreault. Roller skating through the streets of New York, they passed out poems to passersby, spreading inspiration and building community. In the audio, from Le Confessioni di John Giorno (2000), Giorno describes the many ways in which he shared poetry.

John Giorno believed that art should have no boundaries. This spring, Paris will welcome back his limitless creative energy, and even more people will have the opportunity to discover the possibility of inviting poetry into their day-to-day life.