Une Conversation autour du livre de la neige*
est un objet éditorial qui prend sa source dans un autre,
ou plutôt dans un entretien retranscrit dans un livre :
celui du journaliste culturel belge Pascal Goffaux
avec le poète tout aussi belge François Jacqmin.

Figure peinte comme curieuse et discrète,
on dit de François Jacqmin qu’il occupe une place
singulière dans le sous-bois de la littérature.
Tout en se gardant des effets du langage
– certainement plus enclin à mettre en doute
l’usage du mot qu’à manier l’humour
des irréguliers du langage –, il participa fidèlement
au groupe post-surréaliste Phantomas à travers
sa revue éponyme. 

09.2022

Un livre posé sur le rebord du bureau,
trois lignes :
« Nous voici
réduits
à ce que nous avons expliqué »

Une Conversation autour du livre de la neige* se situe
au confluent d’un vif intérêt pour la conversation
comme mode d’existence des œuvres et d’une rencontre
fortuite avec l’ouvrage Parole Gelée dans lequel
François Jacqmin et Pascal Goffaux échangent et
digressent autour du recueil de poésie Le Livre de la neige
paru en 1990 aux éditions de La Différence.

10.2022

Nous n’avons jamais lu François Jacqmin,
nous ne lirons jamais Francois Jacqmin.

Le hasard du temps a cristallisé ce dialogue
magique entre les rendez-vous et les aspirations
en ce rotolus – de plusieurs mètres de long et
de cinq centimètres de largeur – présentant
les questions de Pascal Goffaux et les réponses
de François Jacqmin dans des sens de lecture opposés;
les lecteur·ices devant se tenir en face-à-face,
à une certaine distance et avec un rythme
de lecture équivalent.

Ce dispositif de consultation matérialise ces invisibles
caractéristiques de la conversation, cette matière
intangible entre deux individu·es pris·es dans
une séquence dialogique, cet espace impalpable
de tensions et de négociations.

02.2024

Lancement d’Une Conversation autour
du livre de la neige* à Ravisius Textor
8 rue des 4 vents – 58 000 Nevers (FR)

Les rubans sur lesquels se retrouve sublimées les paroles
rapportées de Pascal Goffaux et de François Jacqmin
ont été achetés à la Mercerie Saint-Pierre,
6 Rue Charles Nodier à Paris (FR). Cette information
à première vue anecdotique, se voit devenir le point
de départ d’une citation, d’un renvoi à l’artiste
français Daniel Buren qui avait fait 59 ans plus tôt
et au même endroit, la rencontre déterminante
avec ce qu’il nommera toute sa vie son outil visuel,
la bande verticale alternée.

02.2024

Blanc,
bleu,
blanc,
bleu, ...

Un doux merci à Florence Aknin, Thierry Chancogne,
Rosette et Marie Gateau.
Un merci à Maxime Félix pour les prises de vue.

Un doux merci à Éloïse Bissel pour le parachevage.
Un merci aux ateliers participatifs Green Frabric.
Un merci particulier à Manoël Dupont.

Discreet navigation between a postal correspondence
- dated eight September two thousand and twenty-three -
and a display of living glosses at 17, Quai Conti in Paris (FR)
for Conversations.

“ Something which is very near in place and time,
but not yet known to me.” Robert Barry, 1971

Thanks to Marius Astruc, Paul Bouigue, 
Léa Debusschère, Mila Landreau
and Salomé Veilleux.

In residency at le Centre National du Graphisme —
Le Signe between 2021 and 2022, Valentin Garcia
developed Post-Scriptum : , a research project
that aims to reactivate stories, events and
productions that participated directly or
indirectly in the writing of graphic design
as a place of exercise and mediation of thoughts.

For the third occurrence, he invited me to co-organize
an exhibition and to propose an activation of it
for the opening scheduled on May 15, 2022.

It is by crossing this invitation with my collection
of lost gloves that began the sprawling project
Chère Maia, as-tu des nouvelles de Tommy Rot ?
(Dear Maia, have you heard from Tommy Rot?)
which revolves around the story of the character
of R. Hythlodée and her manifestations
in the environment in our surroundings:

Post-Scriptum : is – by its denomination –
an invitation to go beyond a first text,
to comment on it, to deploy it continuously
in multiple ramifications. P.-Post-Scriptum :
Épisode trois, Chère Maia, as-tu des nouvelles
de Tommy Rot ? logically extends
its third occurrence.

R. Hythlodée’s story  is rooted in the posters
exhibited in Post-Scriptum : Épisode trois,
Chère Maia, as-tu des nouvelle de Tommy Rot ? .

The exhibition’s closing on May 22, 2022
did not mark the end of her quest.

To do so, we invited a selection of guests to jointly
constitute the iconographic corpus of her story.
Each of them received in their mailbox a glove
from my collection – embroidered with their address 
– telling them about our (re)quest.


Thanks to Green Fabric and Éloïse Bissell
for their precious help.

Post-Scriptum : is – by its denomination –
an invitation to go beyond a first text,
to comment on it, to deploy it continuously
in multiple ramifications. P.-P.-Post-Scriptum :
Épisode trois, Chère Maia, as-tu des nouvelles
de Tommy Rot ? logically extends
its third occurrence.

Produced in a series of twenty-eight and drawn
under the name of R. Hythlodée, the poster
for the exhibition becomes a new link, a new mesh
of the narrative of our heteronym by considering
and recognizing the whole trajectory of each
of its copies.

In this sense, our mythology values each
of the purchasers as a new incarnation
of the character of R. Hytholdée and becomes
by direct affiliation, one of the author of the poster.
This transfer takes effect when the purchaser
signs the promised spaces of his copy
and the accompanying contract.

Never Force the Back is a program of workshops
and two evenings which took place at Le Lac
in Brussels (BE).

From March to July 2022, I invited Tessa Hall,
Gary Farelly (Office for Joint Administrative
Intelligence), ByeByeBinary, OO collective,
Léa Beaubois, Gérémy Lelièvre
and Marjolein Guldentops to question
the embodiment of a text a medium of creation.

Visual identity made with Marion Moulin
and Jade Rouanet.
 

Project supported and financed
by the city of Brussels.

Thanks to the artists and the participants.
Special thanks to No Matter Nomads, Dear Deer,
Jazmyn, Stuffed Foxes and Olive & Pomme
to have wonderfully played during
the restitution evenings.
Thanks to all who helped in any way
to make this project happen.

Written, designed, printed and staged during
a six-week residency at La fraternelle
in Saint-Claude (FR), Une Porte sans poignée 
(A Door without a handle) is the meeting
of a play and a short story that take place
in the same space-time.

The dice slipped in the cover holds an important
role and the melodic stage directions inscribed
on it occupy a double function:
- Played by the reader and/or the actor,
it determines with which tone to interpret
each character.
- Played by the printer, it determines
with which paper, which mesh and
which ink to print each chapter.

Une Porte sans poignée  considers and defends
the printer as the main actor of the book.

Thanks to all La fraternelle team
for their precious help.
Thanks to Derek Byrne.

La Manicule Bonimenteuse interprets the verbal
stage directions of the same name play. This latter
– in which I play all the characters –  is articulated
around extracts of different authors’ work.

La Manicule Bonimenteuse indicates
to the audience who I play and
modulates the intonations of my voice.

“ ‘It seems opportune then than
in the historia there is someone who
informs the spectators of the things
that unfold [...] or invites you with
his own gestures to laugh together
or cry in company.’ Alberti’s words,
written in 1436, couldn’t any more
perfectly define this ‘hand that speacks’,
this bonimenteuse hand that, in a game
of ethymology, shares features
with admonitor.
This ‘hand that speacks’ is a hand that
shows and that refers, within the space
of the book, to this typographic sign
called manicula, which is generally
to be found in the margins of medieval
manuscripts in the form of a hand that
has been separated from its body,
with an excessively long index finger
logically indicating important passages
to the reader as well as inviting us
to confortably observe the key elements
of a text. However, outside of the text,
in this space that we could call 
‘the extra-book’, the bonimenteuse hand 
becomes the delegrate of a Grand Imagier
of the book. [...]
A bonimenteuse hand that, though its
manipulations, would allow one to grasp
various readings, if only because 
it is a medium element existing between
the world of the book and that of the reader.”

Catherine Guiral, (In)visible Touch,
Revue Faire n°4, 2018
Translation: Derek Byrne

Series of posters drawn for the fictive projections
of Werner Herzog’s documentary films
at the Aquarium Ciné-Café in Lyon (FR).

Copain.
In the late Middle Ages, a large slice
of bread – in french, pain – was shared
as a plate. It's called Com-pain.

Copain.
From the Latin Cum panis: To eat bread with.
Then, companio: The one with whom
one shares the bread with. Then, compaing:
the one with whom one shares adventures,
food – and among other things – bread.
Finally, companion and, copain.

Copain.
Title of issue D of the revue Approche – initiated
by Ninon Chaboud and Jimmy Cintero and which
questions writing and its typisation – for which
I was invited.

Copain.
I shared my bread with George Brecht and
Robert Filliou at La Cédille qui sourit.
During the reading of the rules of the game
A Bag of Beads – from the book Game at the Cedilla,
or the Cedilla Takes Off published in 1967 –
I unconsciously confused the word Beads
with the word BReads. Bread instead of beads,
so be it! 

A Bag of BReads

500 bReads each with a word
stamped on it.

Each player takes a bRead
at random from the bag
and adds it to a knotted string.

When the string is finished 
(according to a pre-determined limit
— perhaps 3 bReads per players or
some much), a sense for the sentence
so prepared is decided (perhaps by
all the players, perhaps by a neutral
referee or neutral referees) and
the player who has contributed most
(or least) to the meaning 
of the sentence gets the pot.

Copain.
Before sharing it, I learned how to do it.
I left the Cédille qui sourit to go to
au Pain Paillasse to meet Franck Etienney.
We discussed. The 500 words extracted
from our conversation have found new
meaning during A Bag of BReads
on August 24, 2019 in Clermont-Ferrand.

Thanks to Au Pain Paillasse and Franck Etienney.
Thanks to Hélène Humbert, Thierry Humbert
and Nathalie Battier for their precious help.

 Jeu des coulisses à usage
des habitué·es du théâtre contenant
une foule d’anecdotes et de révélations
piquantes sur les acteur·ices, les auteur·ices,
les directeur·ices, et en général sur tout
le personnel composant le monde dramatique
(Backstage game for use by regulars of
the theater containing a host of anecdotes
and revelations about actor·esses, authors,
directors, and in general about all the personnel
that make up the dramatic world) is a play
in four acts for four players.

You are backstage at a theater.
You have little time left before you
go on stage. You have no script.
It’s time to play.

Special thanks to Sabine Chaperon, Emma Joly,
Luca Reverdit and Tiphaine Voix.

Le Napperon Compensatoire (The Compensatory Mat)
is an object-quotation of La Cuisine Ornementale,
extracted from Mythologies written by Roland Barthes
and published in 1957.

Conversation and four-handed drawing 
with the heraldic painter Laurent Granier.

Four hands,
               four meetings,
                                four flags. 

On each of them, the transcription of the words
exchanged during the afternoon as a motto.
 

Specimen of the typeface Le Granier 
drawn for the occasion.

Publication for Roxanne Maillet's exhibition Psappha 
at Ambiance Office at Brussels (Be) and activation
of it for the opening on June 21, 2018.