Versingforms are poems transformed into visual representations, one letter at a time. They are a way to preserve and share my endangered culture and language. By taking Belarusian poems and turning them into visual forms, I make those pieces of my culture accessible to a global audience in a form of a visual image.
Versingforms are written on various surfaces & may be found in an urban space.
Video works / projections do often give text an additional dimension.
Concrete form workshop, which comes from working everyday and experimenting inside a certain format of material and stylistics in 2021-2022
'Form of forms' (2023), consisting of a dozen poems and using various calligraphy types and instruments.
Versingforms are poems transformed into visual representations, one letter at a time. They are a way to preserve and share my endangered culture and language. By taking Belarusian poems and turning them into visual forms, I make those pieces of my culture accessible to a global audience in a form of a visual image.
by antos sivyh
versingforms
Versingforms are poems turned into visuals, letter by letter. Using Cyrillic letters of an endangered Belarusian language, Antos transforms poems from all over the world. The process is simple and polished through the years of work - Antos writes each letter until it forms a visual form, planned out or one that happens on the spot. It's poetry, text, turning into a visual experience and recievieng a new dimension.
Antos started Versingforms in 2018 of the love to poetry, his native culture and cultures of the world. Through the years, Versingforms turned from absract calligraphy to technical and subject-based visuals, often done in public places and invoking discussion about cultures, poetry, text in a modern world and the ways to lead a curious life.
Versingforms are a mix of simple and complex, and sometimes they're actually practical. Beyond just starting conversations and delving into various cultural aspects, you can spot Versingforms on posters, announcements, stylish clothes, and even as web icons.
Versingforms draw inspiration from the widest array of poems, spanning from ancient Assyrian and Hebrew texts to masterpieces from the Arabic and European Middle Ages, all the way to modern experiments and poems that move Antos, who usually goes everywhere with a book or two. You'll also find many poems created by Belarusian authors from the 20th and 21st centuries inside of Sivyh's versingforms
In Versingforms, cities, plants, people, objects, and ideas get a rethink and a restructuring. These forms typically include the entire text or just a part of it, like a refrain. It's always letters, though – letters twisted into each other, creating a unique visual form.
Versingforms are often created in public and the process is often recorded. Thousands of people view Versingforms every day on social media pltforms due to that, and many people interact with the creator when he writes in public.
You may see some of the backstages here:
https://vm.tiktok.com/@versingforms
https://youtube.com/@sivyh
https://instagram.com/a.sivyh
*a youtube playlist with the best
backstages is under construction