The definition of linguistics is an analytic science that studies a language. Then there are the more specialised fields of grammar, which studies phrases; lexicography, which studies words; and morphology, which studies morphemes.
Below this level, the objects lose meaning and weight – they even cease to be signs. They are sounds, the subject of phonology, in as far as they are part of a linguistic structure, and, more generally, of phonetics in as far as they are emissions of human sound. At an even lower level, the sound itself, the signifier, disappears: there are just micro-particles that are so small that you doubt they even exist. These micro-particles are what Henri Chopin works on.

"In Neapel", an exhibition on show at Supportico Lopez, in Berlin, between 4 December 2009 and 23 January 2010, displays two groups of works by Chopin that take these micro-particles as their starting-point. The first of these is a series of poems, more sophisticated precursors of ASCII art, created with a type-writer. Here the characters have been stripped of all meaning and linguistic features: they have been taken apart, multiplied, overlaid and broken down, creating poems (if they can be said to be poems) that are purely visual (the reason is below).
Also on display is a series of recordings that documents Chopin's experiments with breaking down the sounds and phonemes produced by the body: these works replicate for the spoken word what the typographic poems do for the written word. Chopin uses a microphone to explore the subtlety of the vocal tract, creating a primordial poetry that combines the pre-sounds and micro-particles his equipment harvests from the larynx and nose. These are the components of all other sounds: you cannot reach them, however, by breaking down the spoken word, just as you cannot reach purely visual characters – only letters, which are signs – by breaking down the written word.

The exhibition at Supportico Lopez is, in fact, Henri Chopin's demonstration that poetry is simply synthetic linguistics. Vicenzo Latronico

In the pictures: views of the gallery with the works by Chopin; He mot juste, just a word isn’t it!; Concerto pour 2240 (C) do mineur (courtesy of the Fondazione Morra, Naples, and Supportico Lopez, Berlin). The audio file, Reliefs pour une vie réelle, april 2005, is a previously unknown recording of a performance given in Naples (Fondazione Morra archive).

Audio