Mapping Antonin Artaud

November 5, 2016 by

The very last installment in my commentary series for Jacket2 is a Google Map that includes photos and videos embedded in the plot points of Artaud’s biography, his performances, and his legacy. You can check it out here: http://jacket2.org/commentary/mapping-antonin-artaud.

Thanks to all the kind people at Jacket2 & especially Jessica Lowenthal. I’ll miss working on this project & it’s an honor to be a part of the Jacket2 tribe. This has been one of my dream publications for a long time. I’m so happy to have gotten to work with these folks.

Filed Under: Events and Publications, French Literary Culture Tagged With: , ,

Artaud Through the Looking Glass

October 28, 2016 by

My latest installment at Jacket2 tackles Artaud’s glossolalia in his translation of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass: “By overwriting Carroll’s text with veritable nonsense, Artaud is inserting his own theory of neologisms. Artaud has spent most of his life trying to escape the strictures of reality as we understand it—reaching for an expression that is beyond language. Carroll’s text was the springboard for creating new words that pointed nowhere and everywhere at once…” You can read the whole thing here.

Filed Under: Events and Publications, French Literary Culture Tagged With: , , , ,

Antonin Artaud: Asylums & After

September 8, 2016 by

antonin-artaud-at-rodez

There’s a new post up at Jacket2: “On his way back from Ireland in 1937, Artaud was put into a straight jacket. Once back on French soil, he was turned over to the authorities. This was the beginning of a nine-year stint in hospitals with Artaud in what biographer Martin Esslin called a ‘near-catatonic state.’”

Filed Under: Events and Publications, French Literary Culture Tagged With: ,

le monde du silence: 30 years of FRAC Champagne-Ardenne

August 9, 2014 by

Carte Localisation Région France Champagne-Ardenne.png
“Carte Localisation Région France Champagne-Ardenne“. Via Wikipedia.

The Camac Art Centre is situated in the 230-person town of Marnay sur Seine, just an hour southeast of Paris by train, in the Chapmpagne-Ardenne region of France. The centre’s director, Jean-Yves Coffre, curated a tremendous sound/art show in June 2014.

Camac Sound Installation from Upstairs

 

 

 

 

Christian Marclay’s “Graffiti Composition” is displayed in the middle of the room.

 

 

 

Christian Marclay

 

 

 

Marclay pasted blank musical sheets all over Berlin. Once the sheets were full, he asked musicians to interpret the scores. He then took pictures of all the pieces and recorded them.

 

 

 

 

Christian Marclay 2

 

 

You can flip through the 800 photographs while listening to their interpretations.

 

 

 

 

Lidwine Polonge

 

Lidwine Prolonge’s “Mute Juke Box” holds 30 people’s playlists. Each drawer holds a typed sheet with the music they listened to when they were teenagers. It’s a low-fi nostalgia machine.

 

 

 

 

 

Isabelle GiovacchiniIsabelle Giovacchini’s “5661 Carats” reinterprets Arvo Part’s “Spiegel im Spiegel.” Each beat of silence in the original piece is indicated by the symbol for 18 carat gold: an eagle’s head.
 

 

 

 

 

 

Carsten Nicolai 2My favorite piece was Carsten Nikolai’s “Wellenwanne.“A flat, filled with water, sits atop speakers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Carsten Nicolai

The various sound waves from the speakers create patterns in the water, which you can see in the photos on the wall.

 

 

 

 

Here’s a video of one soundscape

Carsten Nikolai, who also goes by Alva Noto, has been published in textsound. His collaboration with Anne-James Chaton can be heard here: u_08-1.

 
*A special thanks to Sierra Nevada College’s Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing and the Nevada Arts Council for supporting this residency.

Filed Under: French Literary Culture, textsound Tagged With: , ,

Bibliothèque nationale de France

July 20, 2014 by

BnF 2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

The French National Library (BnF) houses some fifteen million documents, thanks to le dépôt légal, which requires that a copy of every publication–web sites and television programs as well as books and periodicals–be housed at the BnF. This is not unlike the function of the Library of Congress and the Copyright office in the United States; however, what makes the BnF special is that the legal deposit was first enacted in the 1500s under François I. This library has been around a long time (albeit in different forms.) Also, the above ground structure is in the shape of four open books.

Ouah!

Filed Under: French Literary Culture