Bamboo Ladders: Poems of Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Russia, 2016
by Richard Milazzo.

First edition paperback:  September 2021.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
188 pages, with a gatefold color cover reproducing photograph by the author, an extensive introduction by the author, an essay and a letter by the artist, 78 black and white reproductions of Holger Trulzsch’s drawings from his series of works, Layered Landscapes (Landschaftsschichtungen), executed from 1995 to 2008, and black and white photographs of, and extensive biographical notes about, the author and the artist.
9.25 x 6.5 in., printed, sewn and bound in Savignano-sul-Panaro, Italy.
ISBN:  978-3-9823192-0-9. ISBN:  3-9823192-0-X.
Berlin: Geistenblüten, April 2022.

RETAIL PRICE: $24.00 (includes postage and handling)

“In my opinion, the poems in Bamboo Ladders: Poems of Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, 2012, and Holger Trülzsch’s Layered Landscapes, a series of drawings he executed from 1995 to 2008, are perfect bedfellows, perfect companions, not in any specific way, but in their more respective abstract valences.

“I met Holger some thirty-three years ago, in 1988, in conjunction with his infamous collaborative work with the 1970s supermodel Veruschka, about which I was commissioned to write an essay. But I had missed the boat in terms of writing about Oxydation – comprised of Holger painting Vera literally into various decrepit industrial environments and residual fabric heaps – in the context of the death camps. Vera’s father had even played a role in the attempted assassination of Hitler. This project, Bamboo Ladders, three decades later, afforded me the opportunity to discuss that original work (Oxydation), as well as some of the history of Holger’s equally infamous series of individual works, Intrusions, La Chambre des Lumières, Le Garage di Hegel, and their relation to his Layered Landscapes.

“Holger puts it like this: ‘It is like we [Richard and I] are being compelled to add still another layer of experiences to those we have already accumulated, linked, as all these layers are, to our imaginary worlds, spurred on by our respective abilities to formulate these visions. Your subtitle, Poems of Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, reminds me how I tried to delve into centuries of various and diverse cultures, which had already attained great heights of sophistication, while our own European / Judeo-Christian culture was still not even born.’

‘After reading your poems, I think I understand why you thought it might be a good idea to link my landscape drawings/collages to your poems. In the same way you were writing the poems while traveling through these countries and experiencing these cultures, I was wandering through the work of these master artists whose visions go back across centuries, losing myself somehow in their immense richness, especially the paintings of the Chinese and Japanese, who had already constructed extremely refined, indeed, rarefied languages of abstraction, unknown to us until much later. Similarly, your travels have inspired you to reflect upon these ancient cultures, which have caused you to overlay and interweave several levels of perceptions and feelings, from the grandiose past to the vulgarities of the present, documenting how the art and religion of Buddhism is being inundated by colorful neon lights, draining it of all its vitality in the name of updating it. This is not merely a moralistic observation and regret on my part; it is also a fascinating subject worthy of a variety of verbal and visual approaches, as nearly all these countries, all these cultures, have been devastated by wars and industrialized consumption.’

“Holger’s landscapes or cultural stratifications are layered with the “history of our blots, our folding or collapsing structures, our throws and drips,” and ‘ladders’ like “delicate needles digging enormous muddy ditches into the earth,” which reflect the topographical memories and historical influences of Hercules Seghers, Alexandre Cozens, and Monsu Desiderio. When I look at Holger’s drawings, I see the various and varied histories of civilization lying before us in ruins, in splendid conflated acts of consciousness and unconsciousness. I see all the parking lots and malls of the world – those horrible concrete wastelands – converted into Basho’s hut hidden in the northeast hills of Kyoto, where it is rumored he stayed for only one or two nights. What we see ultimately in Trülzsch’s Layered Landscapes are literally the multivalent graphite and collaged ‘intrusions’ of the history and collective memory of landscape painting, both Occidental and Oriental in complexion, collapsing into themselves the European and Asian worlds.”

Besides the poems by the author and the 78 reproductions of Holger Trülzsch’s works, Bamboo Ladders contains the author’s extensive introduction expounding upon the drawings/collages and upon the nature of their collaboration; an essay by the artist describing in detail the influences on and the intentions of his work; the artist’s letter about the author’s poems; and biographies about the collaborators.