Piero Heliczer: I Must Be More Like An Ant
Than A Cigale Because
I Like To Sing In Winter.
Counter Culture Chronicles/
Casioli Press/Sloow Tapes. 2020.
Staple bound
and risographed softcover.
40 pages.
English/Dutch.
5 1/2 x 7 14/16".
Hand numbered edition of 100.
Counter Culture Chronicles
and Casioli Press from The Hague
have joined forces with
Bart De Paepe’s Sloow Tapes
from Stekene, Belgium
to publish a lovely edition
dedicated to Piero Heliczer.
The book, designed by Lula Valletta
and risographed by Stencilwerck,
is a tribute to Heliczer's creative mind
and to the man himself by friends, admirers
and people Heliczer worked with,
according to CCC’s René van der Voort.
Memories of Heliczer, eyewitness reports,
investigations into lost works and actions
and writings from obscure
Dutch magazines by Heliczer
himself have been compiled
in this edition,
which also contains photographs
by Harry Hoogstraten,
a letter to the Dutch queen
by Heliczer and a
couple of other extras.
Other contributors than René van der Voort
and Harry Hoogstraten
to this Heliczer tribute are
Eddie Woods, Harry Ruhé,
Hans Plomp and Alain Diaz.
This book is a valuable addition to the existing works
and biographies dedicated to Piero Heliczer as well
as a collectible book in itself.
Poet, publisher, actor and filmmaker
Piero Heliczer was
born to a German mother and a
Polish father in Rome in 1937.
After his father, who was active
in the resistance, had been
murdered by the Gestapo,
Piero and his mother emigrated
to the US in the 1940s,
where he enrolled at Harvard in 1955
only to drop out two years later.
Heliczer moved to Europe, where
he co-founded the seminal
Dead Language Press with
his high school friend,
poet and composer Angus MacLise.
After having relocated to London in 1960,
Heliczer returned to the US in 1962.
There he worked with
Jack Smith, Andy Warhol
and The Velvet Underground
and produced some
25 experimental 8mm films.
After having lived
hand to mouth in Amsterdam
and New York in the 1970s and 1980s,
Heliczer moved to Normandy in 1984,
where he worked in a secondhand
bookstore until his death
in a road accident in 1993.
