Miroljub Todorović
Miroljub Todorović is a Serbian poet and artist. He is the founder and theoretician of Signalism, an international avant-garde literary and artistic movement. He is also editor-in-chief of the International review "Signal".
Biography
He was born March 5, 1940 in Skoplje. The war years he spent as a refugee with his mother, and his sister in the areas around the Great Morava river, where he finished elementary school. In 1954 the whole family moved to Niš, where he finished high school.He graduated from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law in 1963. For a time he studied Public International Law at the third instance of the same faculty. A member of the editorial board of the student culture periodical “Vidici”, he participated in the student uprising of 1968. His poem "March of the Red University" was multiplied in thousands of copies and adopted by acclamation at the Student Union at the Faculty of Philosophy as the anthem of the University of Belgrade.
In 1969 he founded the neo-avantgarde literary and artistic movement Signalism, and the following year he launched the International Review “Signal” publishing most important avant-garde authors Raoul Hausmann, Augusto de Campos, Michele Perfetti, Adriano Spatola, Clemente Padin, Julien Blaine, Sarenco, Eugenio Miccini, Richard Kostelanetz, Guillermo Deisler, Bob Cobbing, Eugen Gomringer, Pierre Garnier, Enzo Minarelli, Keiichi Nakamura, Dick Higgins, Dmitry Bulatov, Sol LeWitt, Shozo Shimamoto, Klaus Peter Dencker, Ruggero Maggi, Daniel Daligand, Willi R. Melnikov, Kum-Nam Baik, On Kawara, Klaus Groh etc.
He worked as a journalist, a high school teacher, secretary of the editorial board, editor and advisor for Interstate and International Cultural Cooperation of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia. In 1982 he retired and fully devoted himself to literary and artistic work.
Poetry, essays, and intermedia works of Miroljub Todorović have been published in several languages: in anthologies, collections, catalogs, newspapers and magazines in Europe, North and South America, Australia, South Korea and Japan.
As an artist, he had a dozen solo exhibitions and participated in more than six hundred collective international exhibitions of drawings, collages, visual poetry, mail-art and conceptual art.
He is included in the biographical dictionary “Serbs Who Have Marked the Twentieth Century”, Belgrade 2006.
On the work of Miroljub Todorović and Signalism movement that he had founded, three doctoral dissertations have been defended: Dr. Julian Kornhauser, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, 1980; Dr. Živan Živković, Faculty of Philology in Belgrade, 1991 and Dr. Milivoje Pavlović, University of Kosovska Mitrovica, 2002. Twenty monographs have also been published on the same subject.
In the holdings of the Library of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences there is a "Special Miroljub Todorović library", and in the Historical Archives of Belgrade there is a Legacy “Miroljub Todorović”.
Awards and recognitions
- 1995: "Pavle Marković Adamov" for poetry and life work
- 1998: "Oskar Davičo" for best book published in
- 1999: "Todor Manojlović" for modern artist's sensibility
- 2005: "Vuk Award" for exceptional contribution in Serbian cultural space
- 2007: “Vuk Legacy“ Award for art, for poetry book “Blue Wind”,
- 2008: “Golden Letter“ Award for book ‘Slang Stories“
- 2010: “Krleža Award” for life work
- 2010: Diploma for life work of Writers Association of Serbia,
- 2011: “Golden link” by Cultural-educational community of Belgrade, for perpetual contribution to the capital's culture
Works
Poetry books
- Planet
- Signal
- Kyberno
- Trip to Astroland
- The Pig is an Excellent Swimmer
- Staircase
- Gift-parcel
- Certainly Milk Flame Bee
- Thirty Signalist Poems
- Bumpkin Shows off, slang poetry
- TV Set to Stare at,, slang poetry
- Insect on the Temple
- Algol
- Textum
- Brain Soup
- Chinese Erotism
- Knock-out
- A Day on the Hymen
- I Become Silent Horror Language Core
- I Mount Rosinante Again, selected poems
- Water-snake Drinks Rainwater
- Soupe de cervau dans l'Europe de l'Est
- St. Vitus Day
- Rzav River Neighs Happily
- His Thorn Red and Black
- Ambassador Dustbin, slang poetry
- Grill from Srem
- I Breathe, I Talk
- Rosy Lizard Runs Across the Rain
- Striptease,, slang poetry
- Loud Frog
- Virgin Byzantium
- Storm Spittle
- Tsar Trojan's Goat Ears, gestual poetry
- Planet
- Stink bug, slang poetry
- Electric chair, slang poetry
- Stars' Trowel
- Prescription for liver inflammation
- Azure Dream
- Shot into Shit
- Speech Burning
- Phonets and Other Poems
- Parallel Worlds
- Blue Wind
- Wound, Word and Poem
- Golden Fleece
- Pig is Excellent Swimmer and Other Poems
- Storm Lover
- Hunger for Unspeakable
- Кyborg.
Prose books
- I Just Opened my Mail, epistolary novel
- Walked Into my Ear, slang stories
- Diary 1982
- Window, dreams
- Slang Stories
- Bark at My Sole, slang stories, internet edition
- Shocking Blue, slang novel
- Soaked in Henhouse, slang rants
- Hurts my Dick, slang novel
- Osier Bag, short stories
- Diary of Signalism 1979-1983
- The Diary 1985
- Apeiron
Essays and polemics
- Signalism
- Signalism
- Zipper for Morons , note: a settlement with false avant-garde
- Cocks from Baylon Square note: a settlement with Serbian traditionalism
- Diary of Avant-garde
- Liberated Language
- Play and Imagination
- Chaos and Cosmos
- Towards the Source of Things
- Planetary Culture
- Grammatology Thirst
- Signalism Yugoslav creative movement
- Miscellanea
- Poetics of Signalism
- Courses of Neo-Avant-garde
- Language and Unspeakable
- The time of Neo-Avant-garde
- Reality and Utopia
- Spaces of Signalism
- Nemo propheta in patria
Books for children
- Mouse in Kindergarten
- Crazymeter.
Book-works
- Fortran
- Approaches
- Signal-Art
- Zlatibor
- Forest Honey.
Anthologies (editor)
- Signalist Poetry
- Concrete, Visual and Signalist Poetry,
- Mail Art - Mail Poetry,.
Solo exhibitions
- Trip to Astroland
- Trip to Astroland-Hotbed
- Kyberno
- Drawings, Signalist and Computer Poetry
- Signalist explorations 1.
- Mail Art
- Think About Signalism
- Signalist Research, Visual Poetry, Mail Art,
- Signal Art
- Conquered Space
- Signalism
Some works in English