Why intersemiotics isn’t enough? : remarks on intersemiotic and intermedial studies

The aim of this paper is to discuss the limits of the intersemiotic perspective in favour of intermedial and performative approaches. The concept of intersemiotic translation focuses on the meaning transferred from one sign system to another. Consequently, sign systems are considered largely in regard to the significant power of their semantic, syntactic and structural devices. However, contemporary art and communication often take advantage of the materiality of signs. This quality, along with the problem of mediation, becomes crucial when sign systems are considered as media. That is why intermedial studies offer a more adequate approach to a wide range of modern communicative strategies. The problem should be examined on base of some examples from concrete poetry: a paradigmatic intermedial art form which exposes the materiality of language in two medial shapes – as the written medium and as the oral medium, suggested by the written form, performed live or recorded and processed by means of studio techniques. The latter is strongly connected to the aesthetics of the performative which has been a new principle of modern art, according to Erika Fischer-Lichte. Its aim is not to generate and convey meanings, but to create phenomena to be received as they are. The scrutiny of such phenomena goes far beyond semiotic analysis, taking medial and performative aspects into consideration