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anacoluthic preface
Having architect parents, it is perhaps within the art work of Bas Jan Ader and the poetry of Christian Dotremont, Winfried Georg Sebald, Nicolas Bouvier, Jean Genet, Marcel Broodthaers or Henri Michaux that my sensibilities have aligned themselves. Hyphenated lines of changing altitude, fictive words on a map seen from bird's eye view. Works of Jeff Koons or James Ensor, or possibly those lines of Daniel Buren -- sequences, scratches, rays, bands, stripes -- existing as much for what they underline as for the graffiti that appeared on them during the renovation of the columns at the Palais Royal in Paris in 85-86. Except that for me, the line stays as writing. I write, but I'm suspicious of novels as I will always be suspicious of the man who -- despite appearing intelligent and courteous in society -- still takes it into his head to take a group photo of everyone. I appreciate, though not totally exclusively, books or texts that have been defeathered, that are concise. It happens to me regularly that I stop reading a book in the middle, as if disturbed by the idea of having to continue, but with the feeling of having read it, the meaning seized. In modern societies, man's rapport with writing is becoming more and more vulgar, the negative consequence of his relationship with the image. Circumlocutions magnified by archives, it's a debauchery of publication that has not at all the stupefaction, hanging over Tiberius's bed, of Parrhasios's painting representing Meleager having for Atalanta a "shameful complacency". They impress anything, anyone. Today books have become less than this assemblage of sheets, papers or notes, formerly forming their voyage. They have in fact become objects, effegies, cliches, or are on their way to becoming them -- Prosopôn, theatre's masks. Increasingly, authors are accepting that their portraits appear on the covers of their books, like in the film industry. I think that from the "trace", there is a tendency towards the flat tint (aplat). It was pixeled (tramé), it's becoming digital.
Rambling is to the truth what reason is to desire; not to abandon oneself to : gossip. One must write, like Alexander, in the temple of Jupiter, from his sword the Gordian knot was cut. How to write today? Yes, I have also taken the time to apply a woman's breast to the keyboard of a computer only to ask my spellcheck to correct the poetic result afterward and I think it is hardly insipid to consider today computer non-linear hypertextuality, associative mind mapping or augmented reality overlays(AGROS) in poetry. However, to become an "author of your reading"2, in no way guarantee the quality of said reading. Thus I admit to remaining prudent before this tendency to judge the actuality of a work more from the modernity of its container than the pertinence of its contents. Media and film accumulate "in us a swarming mass of cliches of uncertain origin, a depository of images and citations that govern and exhaust us"3 and this need for images is "the proof of our mutilation, our dryness, our desolation."4 After the poetry of the words of surrealism, of dadaism, of lettrism, of Italian and Russian futurism, and the enflamed prose of Isidore Isou, it is now perhaps time to think about allowing the field of language to lie fallow for some seasons?
In sum, I abstain most of the time, it's not bad. I see in this an act of art even. I mean, a sign. Abstention as an attempt of art. For several years, I have claimed my work "attempted". The doubt that Cioran evokes in Pe Cumile Disperãri in reference to "the utility of continuing" nevertheless doesn't seem to have prevented its publication, and I even see "complete text" marked on the back of Herne's edition. In 1926, Bataille did destroy his first book. However, the question cannot be quieted, or perhaps the question is how to be quieted adequately? If "to quiet" becomes poetically significant in view of the complacent hubbub of our days, and such is my feeling, I must be interrupted. How to discontinue? I maintain that I am quite sure of not desiring "complete text" marked on the back of the book I have, in fact, not yet written. The title is what is worst in a book, and I do not know such a thing as a "complete text". "To say it in Greek, the zôgraphia (writing of the living) is the intrigue that silents itself by becoming concentrated within the image that speaks -- added Simonide -- by "being quiet(siôpôsan)."5 I'm tempted to transcribe the real, to write about the living without reiterating it, without rechewing it. I learn other languages, and I interrupt myself. 1/ (Victor I. Stoichita) 2/ (Norbert Hillaire) 3/ (Jean-Pierre Criqui) 4/ (Alain Cuny) 5/ (Pascal Quignard) > Work list > Newsletter |