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Fiona Banner Wp Wp Wp, 2014
‘Fiona Banner has fixed the twin set of gigantic Chinook blades to the ceiling of one of the Sculpture Park’s indoor galleries. It’s quite a feat of engineering: it took a year of preparation and a team of specialists from a mix of disciplines to ensure the building would not collapse with the strain.

‘Switched off, the blades have all the character of outsized ceiling fans. But as soon as the hidden motor whirrs them into action, they become something else entirely. The moment they swing lazily into motion, you’re struck silent by the sense that something awful is about to happen. Banner has captured cinema shorthand for menace and divorced it from any narrative context.

‘The blades scythe faster and faster in opposite directions, beating up to a speed where they are no longer distinguishable. It seems impossible that the thin spokes to which they are attached can hold them steady much longer. This was the moment when I made a break for the exit. But just as they have sped into a vortex, they wind down again. You gasp with relief.’

 

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David Adamo Untitled (axe n°4), 2010
axe, wood chippings. ‘I don’t necessarily think about aggressive things when I’m in the studio…although I do work myself into a sort of frenzy.’

 

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Arman Heroin and hypodermic needles, 1969
plastic, plywood, hypodermics, heroin and steel

 

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Sigalit Landau Barbed Hula, 2001
‘The powerful image of a naked Sigalit Landau doing the hula-hoop with a piece of barbed wire on an Israeli beach refers to the sacrificial practices dating back to the origins of religions: rituals, stigmata, propitiations, indelible markings.’

 

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Robert Lazzarini Knives, 2008
‘Robert Lazzarini is best known for his sculptures of common objects in which detailed craftsmanship is combined with precise illusionistic distortion. Scaled to the size of the original object and using the same materials, Lazzarini creates versions of guns, knives, brass knuckles, chairs, telephones, telephone booths, and skulls, among other things. Factuality is a theme that runs throughout his imagery, as is visual perception and how that perception is constructed in both the mind of the viewer and in the physical world. “I am concerned with the direct relationship between the viewer, the original object (the role of memory), and the sculpture (the object reconfigured),” Lazzarini explains.’

 

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Osang Gwon Metabo, 2009
‘Gwon takes thousands of photographs of his subject from every possible angle, collaging and moulding them onto a compressed Styrofoam sculpture. The result is uncanny. Proportion, 3D mass and 2D photography give the sculptures some, though not a great deal, of verisimilitude (a high gloss coating takes care of the rest). In appearance, it’s almost as if they’re contemporary cadavers mummified in the pastiched pages of magazines instead of peat.’

 

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Sylvie Fleury Razor Blades, 2001
stainless steel, 290 x 145 x 1 cm

 

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Graciela Sacco Tensión admisible, 2011
Digital print on mirror, knife and light source. ‘Graciela Sacco graduated in 1987 with a thesis devoted to the Argentinian avant-garde movement of 1960. The artistic expressions of that decade established strong ties between artistic experimentation and social commitment, culminating in Rosario, the artist’s hometown, with  ̈Tucumán Arde ̈ (Tucuman Burns) now esteemed as a landmark of international Political Conceptualism. This generation of artists was harshly repressed by the military dictatorship that seized the country from 1976 to 1983. Graciela Sacco’s work shows that even under democracy, that the retrieval of memory is a collective and conflictive task.’

 

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Aldo Giannotti Safe & Sound, 2021
‘He went with an electric chainsaw, cut a piece of plasterboard wall and took an important drawing by Aldo Giannotti. The Genoese artist, in fact, next to the drawing depicting a chainsaw placed on a wall, had written – as an instruction and interpretation of the work – “This drawing can be taken free of charge by a collector who comes with a chainsaw and cuts a piece of wall “. It is not known who he is, perhaps he is an artist.’

 

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Yoshitomo Nara Various, 1991 – 2001
‘Known for his portraits, Nara’s subjects are vaguely ominous-looking characters with penetrating gazes that occasionally wield objects just as knives or cigarettes, as well as heads and figures that float in dreamy landscapes.’

 

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Tayeba Begum Lipi Agony (Various), 2010 – 2015
‘Bangladeshi artist Tayeba Begum Lipi recreates memory-laden objects by connecting thousands of razor blades, transforming the sharp metal tools into tennis shoes, wheels for strollers, sewing machines, sensuous fabrics, and more. Lipi’s sculptures address female marginality and speak most specifically to violence facing women in Bangladesh. The razor blades also references her memories of witnessing the birth of her nieces and nephews as a child growing up in the small town of Gaibandha, where the tool was often used during delivery.’

 

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Lewis Stein Untitled, 2020
‘Lewis Stein is interested in the subtle ways a particular class of familiar objects, such as doormats, garbage cans and culinary tools, organize and structure our lives. The cleaver is a butcher’s knife, designed to cut through bone, and is thus implicated in ideas of cleanliness within cooking. Their imposing blades dulled by paint, the cleavers are surreally removed from functionality. They thus enact a humorous performance of a typically unanalyzed ritual of daily life, but without its end goal.’

 

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Jan Hakon Erichsen Balloon Destroyer, 2020
‘Erichsen has become well known for his “destruction videos”, which he began making in late 2017. Now, he typically posts one video a day on Instagram. The videos most commonly depict elaborate methods of popping balloons with knives, of which Erichsen has said he owns “somewhere between 500 and 1000”.’

 

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Chitra Ganesh Scissors, 2005
‘In Scissors, the faces of a woman and a man are merged to create the third eye—a reference to the Hindu deity Ardhanarishvara, a combination of the gods Shiva and Parvati who represents the coming together of male and female energies. Breaking the barrier of the thought bubble in which they are contained, the woman reaches to remove her partner’s unshared eye. Perhaps the eye will be added to the collection of excised eyes below only to grow back and be removed again.’

 

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Monica Bonvicini Latent Combustion #1, 2015
‘“Latent Combustion” is a monumental work, both handcrafted and readymade, made of thick construction chains and conglomerates of chainsaws, covered with black industrial liquid rubber.’

 

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John Conn NYC Subway 37, 1978
‘John Conn’s New York City Subway photographs were originally taken between 1975 and 1982. In the 1980s, over 250 felonies were committed every week in the system, making the New York subway the most dangerous mass transit system in the world.’

 

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Nathan Lerner Eye and Barbed Wire, 1939
‘The wide-open eye watches from the ground (which can represent also a burial ground) that is criss-crossed with barbed wire.’

 

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Barry Le Va Cleaved Floor, Four Paths, 2009
29 meat cleavers

 

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Chris Burden TV Hijack, 1972
‘During a live television interview to which he had brought his own camera crew, Chris Buden held interviewer Phyllis Lutjeans at knifepoint and threatened to kill her if the station stopped live transmission. To conclude the piece, he demanded to be given the station’s recording of the incident, which he then destroyed.’

 

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Timur Si-Qin Axe Effext, 2011
‘In his work “Axe effect”, Si-Qin purchased a sword and pierced several bottles of Axe-branded shower gel, which subsequently seeped out colourful pungent goop on to the white plinth. He tells about a study that discovered that when a sample of people evaluated two images – one of a person with a branded shirt and one without – participants were “far more likely to evaluate the branded person with positive characteristics like honesty and kindness. This reveals how our brains have evolved, to read clues from our environment that could possibly help us navigate our environment. In the case of branding, logos tap into the part of our brains that are evolved to read signals about the fitness of people… I think that is a beautiful thing”.’

 

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Kelly Reemtsen Various, 2011 – 2018
‘Kelly Reemtsen creates portraits of anonymous women wielding hefty and dangerous tools. The inclusion of the late 1950’s/early 1960’s dresses on the figures suggest that it’s unlikely the women would be engaged in the kind of work the tools are intended for, pointing to dark and perhaps murderous intentions.’

 

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Christophe Delbeecke Untitled, 2019
Epoxy resin, knife

 

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Liliana Porter Man with Axe, 2017
‘Man with Axe features a tiny plastic figure of an axe-wielding man who appears to have demolished an array of items, from dollhouse furniture to large vases, clocks, and even a full-size piano. This trail of destruction signals both the entropic effects of time and the collapse of historical progress that can be caused by a single agent of chaos.’

 

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Wen Fang Rain, 2009
‘Wen Fang’s art piece titled Rain, a photographic installation consisting of images of garbage printed on 300 steel knives, addresses the problem of trash affecting China directly. She uses photography creatively by printing the photographs of trash that plague the urban streets of China on knives in an installation. These knives are then suspended by strings from the ceiling where gallery patrons can walk under them; this signifies the problem of waste metaphorically, as if it is raining from the sky uncontrollably on to the heads of the people of China. The knives not only signify the danger and destruction, but forces the viewer to see trash as an inherent problem that they themselves may have ignored when walking through the urban streets of China. Think about gallery patrons as they look up at the sharp tips dangling above their heads, one can only imagine the sense of unease if any of the knives were to come down when gravity beckons it. Wen Fang intentionally wanted her patrons to feel the same unease she did when she visited poor neighborhoods plagued by waste.’

 

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L. Spillaert Magiс Staircase, 1945
wood and knives

 

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Baptiste Debombourg Flow, 2013
‘FLOW is resurrection, rebellion, the sudden mirror of our mass consumption society that kills human beings and the objects it mass-produces. Here the windscreens of cars surge up like the wave that engulfs towns in catastrophe films such as 2012 or The Day After Tomorrow. They are broken, discarded, ignored objects that take the place by storm, rebel and attack us. Like ignored vomit being spewed out from on high.’

 

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Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen Saw sawing, 1996
‘This sculpture is located in the north side of the Main Entrance Hall of the Tokyo International Exhibition Center. It is a large scale saw placed as if it were sawing through the earth.’

 

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Catherine Biocca Good spirits, 2016
‘A ‘cotton candy’ pink floor attacked with knives and hypodermic syringes, depicting hidden violent fantasies that can pop up when deeply frustrated, characterize the artist’s work. Masochistic themes and behaviour that is merged into the contrary aesthetic of the safe heaven. Within her art practice Catherine Biocca is interested in this dark side of the ordinary, or to put it in other words; the momentum where brutality and pure innocence meet and can co-exist. The split second when ‘schadenfreude’ is created; when we laugh about and enjoy the metal or physical pain of others.’

 

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Liza Lou Security Fence, 2005
‘Security Fence is characterized by the absence of a human subject. As the artist herself explains, the structure is a “claustrophobic enclosure […] with its layers and layers of chain link– a moiré effect, as if the pleasure and pain could go on forever.” Tiny glass beads cover the entire structure, creating a surface which challenges the viewer’s perceptions of physical barriers and confined spaces, for what should appear as bare and harsh instead shimmers with an extraordinary sleek coating.’

 

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Beili Liu The Mending Project, 2019
‘The installation consists of hundreds of Chinese scissors suspended from the ceiling, pointing downwards. The hovering, massive cloud of scissors alludes to distant fear, looming violence and worrisome uncertainty. The performer sits beneath the countless sharp blades of the scissors, and performs an on-going simple task of mending.’

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hey, Dominick!!! Great book, as is ‘Eden Eden Eden’. Ha ha, yeah, for some reason people posting GIFs as reactions on social media drives me nuts. Like if I see one more person post that GIF of Leonardo DiCaprio applauding with a smug look on his face there’ll be cyber-hell to pay. I think making GIF novels has turned me into a GIF snob. I would enrol in your love’s class. That would be very useful knowledge. I suppose I should enrol in a learning French class first, but still. Love making every restaurant in the world have cold sesame noodle Szechuan style on their menu (I’m feeling greedy today), G. ** jamie, Howdy, J. Right, zLibrary is such an amazing find. Incredible what they’ve got stored there. And it’s made making book spotlight posts infinitely easier too. Yes, Puce Mary will be doing all the sound for our new film, and as it’s about a haunted house attraction and includes a ghost character who needs to have a noise/sound language, etc., we’ll need a lot of different kinds of sounds, and she’s perfect for the gig, and Zac and I are thrilled. Yes, the performance of ‘Jerk’ we filmed was the last ever. Jonathan announced that he doesn’t want to do it anymore, and after traveling all over the world doing it for more than a decade, that’s understandable. The film turned out great, so the piece will live on. For sure I remember that animation guy you worked with and the troubles thereby  too. That sounds potentially really fun, and I hope you guys can stay on mutually agreeable ground. Soon you’ll be out running around all day, and you’ll get to share in my high. And then hopefully you’ll even be running around in Paris at least briefly before too long. I hope your Friday is peary. (I love pears). xoxo. ** Steve Erickson, It seems possible that the Romero could get a theater release of some kind here, yes. I’m just about to walk down the street and get the new issue of The Wire. The Van Der Graff Generator one. I’ll check out Dalibor Cruz. Thanks. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. No, I was in Paris when Guyotat did his US tour. But I saw him read once here at the Pompidou, and it was mesmerising. I came very close to meeting him a couple of times, but it never happened sadly. ** _Black_Acrylic, Guyotat is a hell of a read. Such good news that you got through your second jab scot free! Hopefully it’s all bright-eyed and bushy tailed Ben from here on out. ** Bill, Hi. ‘Tomb’ is almost nothing like ‘Coma’. It’s super hallucinatory and non-stop wild. Brook’s theater is sporadically active. They rent it out sometimes. It’s an amazing theater inside, sort of half-gutted and transformed into a very flexible, strange space. Gisele has been wanting to do a piece there for years. ** Shane Christmass, Hi, Shane. It’s nice you watch the videos. I never know whether anyone ever looks at those. Paul Strand! Thanks, I’ll watch it. Have I done a Paul Strand Day? Hm, I can’t remember. I will if I haven’t. Yes, in fact ‘Latex’ was in my mailbox when I arrived home last night. Thanks so much! ** Okay. Today there’s a little, or not so little, cutlery-like post for you. See you tomorrow.

 

Buy me, buy me, or I will die torn to pieces, yesterday they seized me and sewed me inside the horsehair of a mattress, cutting a hole in the cloth at the place of my thighs and everyone could then fuck me choking inside the horsehair, eyes pricked by the sweat, and the cloth, around the hole, blackens and sticks to my belly; I can’t see them, I recognize them only by their cocks. Set me free, I’ll work for your living. — P.G., Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers

‘Most books demand solitude, this one screams for solitude, for you to take yourself away from any still pulsing, breathing encumbrance; so as to exist, in single file, as a witness to the death of humanity across turned pages.

‘No more than one witness at a time is necessary, efficacious.

‘Otherwise there’ll be a lack of continuation, propagation.

‘Like Marx, this book is an anti-aphrodisiac – a stark reminder that all was, in fact, has been, lost.

‘Not least paradise, space, place, corridors of even a bureaucratic beauty.

‘Converted too late, we defend symbols to then be symbolised.

‘Start again. The post-human rings out in its own absence.

‘The overman, or something more abstractly sexed, is here to be built-up from the miniscule moments of bleak poetic relief:

“dust runs in the folds of the curtains”

“a pink cloud passess in the frozen lake”

“a flock of cranes flees towards the border; the sun irradiates the radio antenna”

‘The edge extended turns into a ledge.

‘A membrane defended, a de-cathexis.

‘If de Sade was a forecalling for the dismemberment of God – as unifying principle, as psychic sop, as creative alienation – then this book reminds us, one at a time, to keep more than god dead: heads, civilization, culture, ever-declarative mouths, mirrors.

‘Apocalypse always.

‘Organised into seven chants across 378 pages the book charts the colonial wars within colonial wars within the interior of archipelago’d people colonised.

‘Only sphincters move. Shit on this.

‘Read it aloud? There would be a risk, in voicing the force of primordial massacres, in mouthing the ur-brutalities done to children and horses, of taking it on, in to some affectible inside, becoming it, being overheard, in single file, alone; becoming an emissary of more than auto-destruction: willing will-lessness overdetermined becomes a reflex of urge appeasement minus the pleasure.

‘Desire dies, is replaced by ash-grey doves and mouth foam.

‘Solidarity breaks-out via incest, pimp deals, slaver alliances.

‘Soldier vampires loll, fuck, prod, rape, shoot, sever, cut, burn, bleach, turn tail, ring noses, vultch, displace populations, wait for furniture…

‘Soldiers captured in their own barrack-blocks like boxed goods, free now but for the wire.

‘The overflow of horror, the Boschdom without narrational context, has left each and everyone on the verge of extinction: enter a character/exit a character, enter tenderness/murder tenderness. For now, in an excess of present unaccessible to hope, expecting, almost willing, the expenditure of the cheapest of all the economic variables, there is a kind of living hysteria, as if the permanent time here, throughout the centuries, is seven or less minutes to midnight.

‘It is this hysteria, its animal energy and, also, the fallback onto psychosis that spares the book the mass suicides that would end it *.

‘At this pitch of survival (“beyond the barrier of terror”) there can be no fear.

‘Fucking, a loveless valve. A time beating, a little prepatory death.

‘The human generates no affect. The affect always from outside, crossing in, as a vaguely veiled romanticism:

“over them hover large white and violet butterflies. The dust from their wings falls on the sentries’ dry lips”

‘Respite for the author? Recipes for the readers?’ — datacide

 

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Further

Pierre Guyotat @ Wikipedia
The Multiplying Hells of Pierre Guyotat
Pierre Guyotat – His books stink of sperm and killing
into the zone: guyotat & film
A History of Reason
A Vital Aberration: Writings On Pierre Guyotat 1994-2010
Pierre Guyotat Reading Matter Pt. 1
Alain Badiou: Pierre Guyotat, Prince of Prose
Why Pierre Guyotat’s Work Is More Relevant Now Than Ever
PG interviewed @ BOMB
PG @ Semiotext(e)/MIT Press
PG interviewed @ Purple
‘Pornographic’ French writer Pierre Guyotat dies aged 80
Donatien Grau’s Homage to Pierre Guyotat’s Eden, Eden, Eden
;*)%,”””!@;,: Pierre Guyotat
PG @ Goodreads
2 X PIERRE GUYOTAT
Disparition: Pierre Guyotat, éternel éden
« JE NE PEUX PAS VOIR CE MONDE COMME UN MONDE INFERNAL, PARCE QUE J’Y SERAIS DÉJÀ RÔTI »
« Je suis un musicien, je suis un alphabétiseur. »
“Pierre Guyotat, la matière de nos oeuvres”
Download a free pdf of ‘Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers’

 

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Gallery

‘Pierre Guyotat’s experiences as a French soldier in the Algerian War of Independence led him to develop an entirely new kind of writing. The brutality he witnessed in North Africa compelled Guyotat to refuse the conflation of literature with civilisation. Instead, he treated language as physical matter through deformed words, verbal onslaughts and obscene imagery. This led him to the concept of the matière écrite, a sort of ‘secretion’ to be perceived orally, visually and architecturally. Of Le Livre, for example, he once explained: ‘I am aware that what I do in Le Livre cannot be readily understood without me speaking the text, pronouncing it publicly.’

‘But perhaps the most famous expression of Guyotat’s approach was the book Eden, Eden, Eden – a hallucinatory evocation of the horrors of sexual violence under colonialism – which was banned in France the same year it was published. For Guyotat, even the manuscript itself was a piece of visual art, and he did a special painting for the cover. Guyotat gave up drawing after a breakdown in the early 1980s and would only resume the practice in 2015. The artworks on view demonstrate his extremely complex yet direct language, which stems from memory and symbolism while presenting scenes of sexuality, freedom, joy and exploitation.’ — Manifesta 13

 

 

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Extras

Pierre Guyotat, écrivain radical

Pierre Guyotat – “In bed” by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Pierre Guyotat – Rencontre à la Librairie Les Cahiers de Colette

Life of Pierre Guyotat: New Social Environment #43

 

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Interview

 

THE WHITE REVIEW — In 1960, at the age of 20, you were sent to Algeria with the French army, where you stayed for two years. In 1962, you were found guilty of encouraging desertion and possessing forbidden material and were imprisoned for three months.

PIERRE GUYOTAT — I went back to Algeria frequently after independence, particularly to the Sahara. Since then, I’ve only returned through my fictional characters, or at least those that can recognisably be identified as ‘Algerian’. As a soldier over there, and immediately afterwards, I’d reached saturation point with France. I was very anti-Europe and anti-West. It was the great era of thirdworldism and ethnology, a period that is very controversial today because some see it as an avatar of colonialism. One can read very surprising things about this period nowadays. Everything becomes neo-colonialism and it has become impossible to consider nations that were colonised as free – free to reject their dictators – and proud. Every time something bad happens to them, we see the hand of the ex-coloniser behind it and we continue to treat them like children.

No one is perfect: it’s worrying that there is today this desire for everything to be perfect. The fewer things that happen, the fewer things are possible – and still we want even more perfection. To be politically perfect, which means that you can no longer be anything. Someone taking an interest in an African tribe will be seen as a colonialist. No one knows what to do any longer. There are committees, charities, councils representing who knows what… it’s astonishing. All of these entities would be interesting if they had no vested interests, but the charities are generally supported by the state, which means they are accountable for their actions. A certain number of scandals and controversies justify this state support, just as policemen have to hand out a certain number of traffic fines.

I understand very well, I’ve always supported the idea that slavery should be recognised as a crime against humanity – and, as we know, the West is not the only guilty party with regards to this abomination. I’m not saying there should necessarily be legal recognition of this fact, but we should agree that it was a crime that was perpetrated continuously over the course of 300 years. Involving the law in something like this is very complex, but when people’s desire for publicity leads them to speak lies…

It is unbearable to live in this kind of environment. Someone trying to live an honest life can no longer live. He can be honest, he can watch everything he says, everything he thinks even – but he will be dead. One cannot live when one is constantly ordered. There is a contradiction at play here: people always talk about multiculturalism in France but at the same time you have to stay politically correct on every single topic… We have to accept some form of disorder. It’s impossible to control a population through interdiction, it’s impossible. On building sites, for instance, you sometimes hear terrible things and often people shout at each other in an incredibly rude but also funny manner, and things are settled in good humour. Things can go very well. We have to let people express themselves. Otherwise, they die. We are always facing language barriers built by ignorant people. We cannot let some societies make laws and create interdictions: there are enough interdictions as it is. It’s strange that people are so infantilised. We have to let them speak for themselves, to let them learn for themselves what not to say because it hurts others, history, a History, the honour of man. And we can say certain things and laugh at them up to a certain point, which time will decide.

THE WHITE REVIEW — In CARNETS DE BORD you wrote: ‘Great works (or great men) are those which bear the mark of the brutality of the world. Not those which conquer their serenity and gentleness on the most profound chaos and the most acute solitude. Otherwise, one does not feel civilisation (the moment of conquest) but already decadence (i.e. the habit of benefits conquered in the past).’ This idea still applies to your work, in which violence and gentleness are both present.

PIERRE GUYOTAT — I’ve always said that. The premise of my work is brutal, but it does become gentler.

THE WHITE REVIEW — But is cruelty its fundamental reality?

PIERRE GUYOTAT — It is one of its realities. Cruel acts don’t need to be shown explicitly. There are also implicit cruelties. Inequality is an implicit cruelty, the most terrible, the most violent cruelty. One might wish to abolish it, to abolish what makes a man not know he can do anything. One has to seize what lies close at hand, what is urgent. The transformation of humanity into ‘strata’ or ‘masses’ – an avatar of scientism that has done so much harm – can only inspire disgust. I’ve long thought that in every human being there is a sleeping genius and I endeavour to continue to believe this. I wrote something, long ago, along these lines: ‘So long as man has five fingers on each hand, we cannot do anything about it.’ Unless a great organic and bodily mutation occurred. Man isn’t everything, either. We need to look beyond the human too. It’s a necessity. I do it a lot. I force man outside of his humanity.

THE WHITE REVIEW — How important is working as a collective to your work? Does collective work have as much value as the work of an individual? You were part of the Tel Quel movement at one stage.

PIERRE GUYOTAT — Yes, Tel Quel was my generation’s collective. It remains the only time I have been part of a collective. It fitted me quite well at the time, especially in terms of the movement’s discourse. From an artistic standpoint, it was quite different. The overall discourse suited me at the time – that’s clear – and I think I suited them, too. Later, things changed, quite quickly. As always in the history of literature.

THE WHITE REVIEW — Was it an alliance of sorts?

PIERRE GUYOTAT — Yes, it was during the brief moment when – this was the high point of Tel Quel – there was a division between two sides, broadly speaking: those favouring convention, and fiction, and the avant-garde, who favoured anti-fiction. I was very much in the fiction camp, full of characters, places, and scenes. I was more aware of the constructive aspects of the movement: the future, a more material fiction which would be open to the world, a transformation of language to be effected immediately rather than to be vainly wished for…

As I have often said, I read very few nouveau roman books. I knew their authors, but I didn’t read them much. The important thing was to know that these books existed. That was enough. It was a kind of tabula rasa, a fresh beginning. That, I knew, but I almost felt like there was no need for me to actually go out and read the books. I got a sense of those books instantly by just looking at them. I’ve always had the eye of an illustrator, I can tell immediately whether something is right or not. If it’s not good enough, I can tell straight away. I should have read a lot more, as I had as a child and adolescent, before really starting to write like I do now. I read a lot of British and American authors, like everyone else. But I read the authors people like to match me with much, much later.

THE WHITE REVIEW — Do you see any proximity between your work and that of writers like Bernard Noël or Jean Genet?

PIERRE GUYOTAT — With Bernard Noël, none whatsoever. As for Genet, we’d known each other for a long time. I met him in the Gallimard offices on the day I met Antoine Gallimard for the first time, forty years ago. It was a very open first meeting, we laughed a lot. I met Genet several times afterwards, I ‘loaded’ him in the Volkswagen I had at the time. I felt very free with him, and I also witnessed his ordinary human suffering. But, you know – and I’ve explained this often – I read most of his work later. I read a lot of the books that were compared to my work after I had already produced a consistent oeuvre. I first read LEIRIS AND GENET only then, and SADE, much later. I would read someone’s work after I met them. For example, Leiris himself gave me his AFRIQUE FANTÔME, in the beautiful blue Gallimard edition of the time. When someone gave me their book, I would read it. Mascolo gave me his COMMUNISME, which I maybe would not have read otherwise. It doesn’t always work out like that, only sometimes. I like it when people give me their own works.

THE WHITE REVIEW — In terms of English-language authors, were you into Faulkner and Joyce?

PIERRE GUYOTAT — Yes, among others. DOS PASSOS was formally very interesting. In Faulkner’s work, there is a kind of matter, a kind of idiocy, it’s wonderful. His is a world that suits me perfectly. Joyce too, especially FINNEGANS WAKE, a wonderful book which bears little relation to what I do, but which has such freedom, such visual language! I’ve always felt a greater affinity for that kind of literature to modern French literature, where language is a matter of state. Shakespeare and Molière are the couple who educated me.

THE WHITE REVIEW — How attentive are your readers? Do you have any contact with them?

PIERRE GUYOTAT — Sometimes I bump into them on the street or on the metro. Some recognise me but don’t say anything. I also receive letters, from readers who have really read me properly. I trust that these readers exist – I think that an illusion is created in this regard by a certain section of the media. Beyond that, there are still readers, of course. There is no reason for that to change because there is this desire for fiction, for language. I saw this when I used to give readings. People would come without preconceptions. Preconceptions are a problem. People with preconceptions say: ‘It’s too complex for you.’ Those in the universities say that to their students. The press also plays a part in this – even if it is almost entirely discredited — because the printed form still has a little bit of prestige. The ‘illegibility’ reproach is an old classic, which reflects only consumers’ inability to read anything.

THE WHITE REVIEW — What is more important in your relationship to your work: your control over it, or its independence from you?

PIERRE GUYOTAT — One’s work, everything one does in life – it all overtakes you in the end. It’s particularly true of politics, for example. A lot of people, a lot of politicians, practically acted in total emptiness. Nowadays it’s not really the case anymore. Before people stepped out into the abyss without really knowing what would happen. Nowadays nothing like that happens because speech is so weak, so miserable, so controlled that it annihilates itself, and no one takes risks any more. Without being conscious of urgency, speech can no longer have the same strength. Acts have practically disappeared. Apart from in the civilised world where, day to day, those left behind by politics have to act day to day to survive. We are no longer ‘children of God’, but voters.

 

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Book

Pierre Guyotat Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers
Creation Books

‘This is the first English translation of French writer, Pierre Guyotat’s legendary novel, which was recently included in Le Monde’s “100 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century.” A violent collision of brutal warfare and sexual ecstasy, Guyotat is said to have hallucinated the subject matter as a young soldier during the Algerian war, where the novel is set.’ — Creation Books

 

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p.s. Hey. I’m the latest guest on Paul K’s great podcast Wake Island where we talk about ‘I Wished’ and a whole bunch of other stuff if you’re interested. Here. ** Montse, Hi, M! Your comment arrived too late, but I luckily managed to notice it yesterday evening. Mmm, mushrooms while on, mmm, vacation. That must have been so nice. I can’t wait to get out of Paris. I’m good, still flying high about and around the reopening, seeing lots of art and friends and drinking coffees. You had Covid? Oh, no, but I’m glad it was mild. I don’t know how I managed to evade it, but I did unless I had a symptomless version and never knew it. Yes, Paris is just about well worth visiting now, and by fall … hey, there might even be music shows by then, although that’s hard to imagine. I see Pavement is playing at Primavera! Big love to you and Xet! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Please tell me you’re feeling as right as rain after your second jab. Here’s hugely hoping so. ** Dominik, Hi!!!! Do you know that old story/fairytale about the 7 Chinese brothers? One of them inhales the ocean so the others can hunt for fish, but then he can’t hold it in anymore and vomits out the ocean and drowns his brothers? I think that’s where my yesterday love originated. Thank you for the eccentric love. I like the way he thinks. Love hacking into every social media platform and making it technically impossible for people to upload reaction GIFs as ‘comments’ because he’s grouchy and they’re making him hate humanity, G. ** jamie, Hey, Jamie. Thanks, buddy! Good question about the soundtracks. I don’t for for sure. The ones where I indicated they’re added on later I know, but I’m guessing he probably used sound of some sort, and so … ?  Ah, you get the openness in a week and a half? I hope it’s as spirit lifting as ours. Night and day in terms of what it does to one’s life and mood. I was out doing stuff all day yesterday, and it been a long time since there was enough out there to keep me out of my apartment for that long. Yeah, I think I would be sort of embarrassed and feel very uncool if I only got the virus now. I’m a bit in-between projects at the moment. Well, we’re starting to prepare for the new film. Puce Mary, who’ll be doing the sound/score for the film, is in residency in Paris right now, so we’re beginning to conceptualise and work on the film’s sound element, which is a very important aspect. And waiting for the green light to proceed from our producers, but that’s just waiting, not doing. Zac and I are co-writing a little novella that I hope we’ll finish soon. We’re finishing the final edit of the film of Gisele’s and my piece ‘Jerk’, and I’m very early on in developing the text for her next piece. So, stuff’s going on, but I’m not in the hottest heat of anything. What’re you up to? Have a great day doing whatever it is you’re up to. xo. ** Steve Erickson, So curious about that Romero, like I said. Mm, actually, I think the Eurovision performers are still utterly sincere. Either that or they conceal their irony extremely well because I didn’t detect even the tiniest trace of ‘knowing’ self-consciousness in any of the performances I caught. ** David Ehrenstein, I can never enter the NYT from over here. I can access that Foucault thing, so I’ll read it. Thanks. ** Bill, That film of Richter’s with the eyeballs is pretty great. His first couple are a little dated, but then they get sharp. I don’t know that Peter Brook. He’s still very active. His great theater near Gare de Nord is still putting stuff on, or was and will be when such things are allowed again  in a couple of weeks. ** Right. I’ve long wanted spotlight today’s great Guyotat novel, but it has been so extremely out of print and expensive to get ahold of. Thanks to the great site zLibrary, you can now download a pdf of the book for free using the last link in the ‘Further’ section, so that seemed like a green light to go ahead and give ‘Tomb …’ its DC’s due. See you tomorrow.