5IVE SEQUENCES, a visual poem by Nico Vassilakis is being exhibited in AC [Chapel] as an installation for the first time since its publication. Enlarged in scale from its original chapbook size and offering a rare opportunity to collectively interact with the piece in a public forum, 5IVE SEQUENCES explores the inherent structure and transience of language as a medium.

In creating 5IVE SEQUENCES, Vassilakis focused on the individual shapes and constructions of letters within words, referring to it as a kind of “hyper-staring” that allowed him to transform them into images and sculptural forms, free of the bonds of syntax or semantics.

For Vassilakis, visual poetry is a tangential literature through which the alphabet is deconstructed into dislocations of meaning and/or the revisioning of letters—changing the viewers perception and experience of them. Within his work, letters or fragments of letters and the environment in which they are placed, become the medium for his compositions. 5IVE SEQUENCES explores a periodic table of language through individual letterforms, exposing and disjointing their order to lose their cohesion, opening up new interpretations and meanings.

Nico Vassilakis is a multimedia artist, poet and writer. He is currently the curator for the Subtext Reading Series in Seattle. His visual poetry videos have been shown worldwide at festivals and exhibitions of innovative language arts. Vassilakis’ writings have appeared in numerous magazines, including: Ribot, Caliban, Aufgabe, Chain, Talisman, Central Park and Golden Handcuffs Review. His latest publications are TEXT LOSES TIME and most recently a Vispo essay “staReduction,” from BookThug Publishers (Toronto, Canada).