visual poetry by robert frede kenter
Artist’s Statement:
In a spectral art of time / memory / present & future, VU / Manhattan exists in my body at the cellular level, with interstitial memories of interiority, underground travels, life along the D & F-Train lines. From referencing Genet & Burroughs through to Warhol/Factory, these images project the blurring flow of the Velvet sound-style in an experience of space-geography, from noise rebellion and expressive continuum to do-wop and drone. My aim here: to create a poetic hybrid art of dislocation, a layered system of intuitive collage – clusters of colour, texts, drawing & visceral exegesis, mutations, kinetic night forms, a poetics of falling. /
One context: for a short time, I had employment working for Stefan Brecht, Bertolt’s son. Laboring on his massive, multi-volume work on post-war experimental theatre, my task was to translate hand-made cassettes, transcribe his dense German English into words on paper. He lived at the top of the Chelsea Hotel, a lot of stairs to climb. I met him via Gerard Malanga, once-VU go-go-dancer & poet. Next door, at Squat Theatre, I saw John Cale was performing solo, so excitedly, I attended. First time seeing him live, opening and closing wing doors, smashing them as part of his performance. Inspired, I wanted to be permanently wherever explorations of queer & radical culture were most vividly alive.
For me the VU, and the hybridity of intersecting artistic forms in Lower Manhattan were/are by example, esthesis, how rebellion & transformation could be embodied in sound, movement, revolutionary ideas, text and art. Enjoy.
DELANCY & CANAL
ONDINE POP 300
Photo of Robert Frede Kenter
BIO: Robert Frede Kenter, born Hamilton, Ontario (the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas ) is a widely published writer, visual artist & publisher of Ice Floe Press ( www.icefloepress.net) A multiple Pushcart Prize & BOTN nominee, Robert studied performance & art at Antioch College (Ohio) & experimental theatre in NYC with Wooster Group & Talking Band. Recently in journals ballast, winged moon, ABR, wasteland, heterodox haiku, storms journal, black bough (Silver Branches series), Cable Street, Watch Your Head, Pissoir, Anthropocene, Feral, Burning House , Otoliths and many more. Select anthologies: Capitalism is a Death Cult (Sunday Mornings), Speaking in Tongues (Steel Incisors), Interpoem #1 & 2 (Sedserio), Glisk and Glimmer (Sidhe Press). Select books: Father Tectonic (Ethel Zine, 2025), Audacity of Form (Ice Floe Press, 2019). Soc media X: @frede_kenter, IG: icefloe22, r.f.k.vispocityshuffle, Bluesky: @rfredekenter.bsky.social.