Silver Cylinder, 1964/65

Lijn was interested in the way a reflected line of light describes the altered surface of the cylinder and gives precise information about any changes made to its surface.
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ABC Cone, 1965

The word accelerated loses its identity and becomes a pattern pregnant with energy. It is pregnant with the energy of its potential meaning should it once again become a word.
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Man Is Naked, 1965

When Lijn puts words on cylinders and cones and makes Poem Machines, she wants the word to be seen in movement splitting itself into a pure vibration until it becomes the energy of sound.
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Time Forces Split, 1965

The word accelerated loses its identity and becomes a pattern pregnant with energy. It is pregnant with the energy of its potential meaning should it once again become a word.
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Sky Never Stops, 1965

The word accelerated loses its identity and becomes a pattern pregnant with energy. It is pregnant with the energy of its potential meaning should it once again become a word.
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Eroskon, 1965

The word accelerated loses its identity and becomes a pattern pregnant with energy. It is pregnant with the energy of its potential meaning should it once again become a word.
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Fidel Prism, 1964

"Lijn constructs kinetic pieces she called Poem Machines, with titles such as Fidel Prism and Time Forces Split, that span words at high speed until they blur and vibrate." (Hannah Duguid, Guardian 2016)
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La Madeliene Poem Machine Sculpture by Liliane Lijn

La Madeleine, 1964/2004

Lijn is an artist who attends to the past and to memory and the place name evokes a Proustian memory – that of the instrument which opens the vistas of involuntary memory, a persistent image, just as the whirling units of classical culture re-combined into a new but also primordial spectacle.
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Sound Rain Free Future, 1963-1964

Lijn made the hand held Poem Wheels during a period when she lived in Greece in a house without electricity. Lijn was busy building the house and these were the first art works she made there. She thought they might be used the way Greek men used worry beads.
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