Alberto Greco’s Vivo-Dito, Lettrism, and the Prophecies of the Proper Name

This chapter explores the legacy of Lettrism in the practices of Argentine artist Alberto Greco as a means of investigating the self-proclaimed prophetic narrative of neo-avant-garde artists in Paris in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It examines how Greco’s ephemeral public actions (Vivo-Dito) in the streets of Paris, Buenos Aires, or Madrid, in which he repeatedly proliferated his own name as both signature and work of art, opened up exploratory avenues in which the artistic self was both inscribed and dispossessed. This text builds on Andrew Hussey’s interpretation of Isidore Isou’s artistic practice as a field of poetic forces. It examines Isou’s works as aesthetic and vital possibilities for perpetual exile while creating immersive universes. It further argues that although Isou’s and Greco’s artistic trajectories were different, they shared a common conception of the prophetic and messianic dimension of the artist as a proper name.