Asemic Writing

Asemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing. The word asemic means "having no specific semantic content". With the nonspecificity of asemic writing there comes a vacuum of meaning which is left for the reader to fill in and interpret. All of this is similar to the way one would deduce meaning from an abstract work of art. The open nature of asemic works allows for meaning to occur trans-linguistically; an asemic text may be "read" in a similar fashion regardless of the reader's natural language. Multiple meanings for the same symbolism are another possibility for an asemic work.

Some asemic writing includes pictograms or ideograms, the meanings of which are sometimes, but not always, suggested by their shapes. Asemic writing, at times, exists as a conception or shadow of conventional writing practices. Reflecting writing, but not completely existing as a traditional writing system, asemic writing seeks to make the reader hover in a state between reading and looking.

Asemic writing has no verbal sense, though it may have clear textual sense. Through its formatting and structure, asemic writing may suggest a type of document and, thereby, suggest a meaning. The form of art is still writing, often calligraphic in form, and either depends on a reader's sense and knowledge of writing systems for it to make sense, or can be understood through aesthetic intuition.

Asemic writing can also be seen as a relative perception, whereby unknown languages and forgotten scripts provide templates and platforms for new modes of expression. It has been suggested that asemic writing exists in two ways: "true" asemic writing and "relative" asemic writing. True asemic writing occurs when the creator of the asemic piece cannot read their own asemic writing. Relative asemic writing is a natural writing system that can be read by some people but not by everyone. Between these two axioms is where asemic writing exists and plays.

Influences on asemic writing are illegible, invented, or primal scripts (cave paintings, doodles, children's drawings, etc.). But instead of being thought of as mimicry of preliterate expression, asemic writing may be considered to be a postliterate style of writing that uses all forms of creativity for inspiration. Other influences on asemic writing are xenolinguistics, artistic languages, sigils (magic), undeciphered scripts, and graffiti.

Asemic writing occurs in avant-garde literature and art with strong roots in the earliest forms of writing. A modern example of asemic writing is Luigi Serafini's Codex Seraphinianus. Serafini described the script of the Codex as asemic in a talk at the Oxford University Society of Bibliophiles held on May 8, 2009.

Asemic writing exists as an international style, with writers and artists who create it in many different countries across the globe. One artist, who was practicing asemic writing since the early 1970s, is the late Mirtha Dermisache (1940-2012) from Argentina. Dermisache actively said that her graphisms have no meaning, but that even without meaning, they fully maintained the rights of an autonomous work. Cecil Touchon, from Austin, Texas, is also an artist who has been creating asemic fragments of writing since the mid-1970s. Touchon brings collage into asemic writing by utilizing words from old poster material, which he deconstructs into unreadable forms that still maintain the aesthetic presence of writing. Another contemporary artist, who has been creating asemic writing for the past 25 years (mid-1980s), is Brooklyn, New York based José Parlá. Parlá acts as a historical transcriber, and a visual raconteur. As a transcriber, he records his experiences in calligraphic and palimpsestic code, with his abstract graffiti and art documenting the history and decay of urban places. In China, during the 1990s an abstract calligraphy movement known as "calligraphyism" came into existence, a leading proponent of this movement being Luo Qi. Calligraphyism is an aesthetic movement that aims to develop calligraphy into an abstract art. The characters do not need to retain their traditional forms or be legible as words. In Vietnam during the 2000s a calligraphy group called the Zenei Gang of Five appeared. To this group of young artists, “Wordless” means that which cannot be said, that which is both before and beyond the specificity of naming. To be without words is saying nothing and saying everything. Some current practitioners of asemic writing are Tim Gaze, Michael Jacobson, Satu Kaikkonen,Marco Giovenale, Karri Kokko, John M. Bennett, Jim Leftwich, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Márton Koppány, Drew Kunz, Ekaterina Samigulina, Biagio Cepollaro, Riccardo Cavallo, Geof Huth, John Martone, Tommasina Squadrito, and Rosaire Appel.

Publications that cover asemic writing include Tim Gaze's Asemic Magazine, Michael Jacobson's weblog gallery The New Post-Literate, and Marco Giovenale's curated group blog "Asemic Net". There are groups that cover asemic writing on Flickr, Google, Facebook, and The International Union of Mail Artists. Asemic writing has appeared in books, artworks, films and on television but it has especially been distributed via the internet. More recently there have been architecture models which utilize asemic writing in the design process. Currently, there is a robot that performs asemic writing live.