Asemic writing is like conventional writing’s mysterious twin familiar in shape but impossible to read. It looks like text, flows like handwriting or calligraphy, but doesn’t carry any literal meaning. The marks might remind you of a lost arcane language, musical notation, or scribbles from a dream. What makes it unique is that it’s meant to be unreadable. That’s the point it opens up space for interpretation without pinning things down to words or definitions. Above images my attempts at Asemic writing and incorperated into 30x30cm abstract paintings.
The word “asemic” literally means “without meaning.” But that doesn’t make the work meaningless. In fact, many artists and poets see it as a way to communicate beyond language to explore rhythm, emotion, and gesture. Where normal writing tells you something, asemic writing invites you to feel something. You might not know what a piece “says,” but you’ll respond to the movement, the density, the energy on the page. It’s like being allowed to look at writing through the eyes of someone who doesn’t speak the language pure form, no obligation to translate.
While asemic writing feels contemporary, it has deep roots. Ancient Chinese and Japanese calligraphers like Zhang Xu and Huaisu used wild brushstrokes to express feeling rather than legible words. In the 20th century, artists like Henri Michaux and Mira Schendel scribbled, invented alphabets, or blurred text and image. But the term “asemic writing” wasn’t used until the 1990s, when Tim Gaze and Jim Leftwich started using it to describe their visual poetic work script like marks that abandoned language entirely. Since then, it’s become a global practice.
Anyone can try it. You don’t need to be a calligrapher or poet. You just need paper, a pen or brush, and a willingness to let go of control. One way to start is to mimic the act of writing loops, lines, dashes without using real letters. Write with your non dominant hand, let your mind wander, let the pen dance. Some people like to imagine a language from another planet. My preference is to use asemic marks alongside collage, drawing, or abstract painting. There’s no right or wrong way just a sense of flow.
Interpreting asemic writing is just as open. There’s nothing to “solve,” like a puzzle. Instead, you read it like you’d look at a piece of abstract art. What emotions does it bring up? Does it remind you of anything? Sometimes viewers see entire stories in a block of asemic text; other times it just feels peaceful or charged or beautiful. The meaning isn’t in the marks it’s in the moment you spend with them.
Asemic writing lives at the intersection of art, writing, and imagination. It’s connected to abstract expressionism, Zen calligraphy, visual poetry, even graffiti. It resists being boxed in, which is part of its charm. Whether you’re making it or looking at it, asemic writing invites you to slow down, tune into gesture, and explore the space between thought and language. It’s a form of mark making that says: forget rules, just see what happens.
Link to Cecil Touchan Asemics.org
©️Graeme Webb 2025
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