[wptpa id=”16″]<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In \u0152uvres<\/em>1<\/a><\/sup>, a book by French writer and artist \u00c9douard Lev\u00e9 published in 2002 by P.O.L, there are several subtractions of interest, for example:<\/p>\n Fragment 354: \u201cInstead of being set on the tabletop, dishes are inlaid.\u201d<\/p>\n Fragment 408: \u201cIn a museum, paintings are covered in black paper and sculptures draped in black fabric. Only frames, stands and title cards remain visible.\u201d<\/p>\n Fragment 456: \u201cA one-deciliter jar containing a liter of dehydrated water.\u201d<\/p>\n The meaning behind the \u0152uvres<\/em> collection is explained on the very first page: \u201cA book describes the works an author has thought of but has not produced.\u201d Fragment 520: \u201cA bullet shoots a hole in a novel. The missing words are found in another copy. A short story called The Hole<\/em> consists exclusively of these words.\u201d<\/p>\n This procedure reminds us that any and all subtraction \u201cfills elsewhere\u201d, that there is never any pure or complete subtraction, rather a displacement; subtracting from one place means adding somewhere else<\/em>. It\u2019s mathematical, if not geological (think of tectonic plates that crumble on one side only to re-emerge on another).<\/p>\n Already in \u201cOne Less Manifesto\u201d2<\/a><\/sup>, French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, speaking about Italian theater director Carmelo Bene, writes: \u201cyou begin by subtracting, deducting everything that would constitute an element of power, in language and in gestures, in the representation and in the represented. You cannot even say that it is a negative operation because it already enlists and releases positive processes.\u201d<\/p>\n In a recently published article in Lib\u00e9ration<\/em>3<\/a><\/sup>, Philippe Lan\u00e7on reports on the publication of Les for<\/em>\u00e7ats, <\/em>a book by Bruno Gibert that recounts the years he spent with \u00c9douard Lev\u00e9 (published in 2019 by Editions de l\u2019Olivier).<\/p>\n A writer today, Gibert describes multiple dramatized situations involving Lev\u00e9. Gibert analyzes his friend\u2019s unique personality: \u201cLev\u00e9\u201d, he writes in Les for<\/em>\u00e7ats<\/em>, \u201cgladly follows all manner of eccentric and over-agitated marginalized people in the streets, for instance a homeless man with Tourette\u2019s who yells \u2018Go jack yourself off with your \u00e9clairs!\u2019 at the baker.\u201d Gibert continues, \u201cOne day I understood why my friend was so interested in freaks. Someone who never sought conflict, never took a stance that could be considered aggressive, who kept his outer appearance as smooth as possible, suddenly took pleasure in being immersed in the anti-neutral.\u201d Lev\u00e9 nurtured an \u201cabsolute taste for the neutral\u201d. In his article, Lan\u00e7on comes to the conclusion: \u201cGibert and Lev\u00e9 are players, but they have principles: maintaining distance, cool sarcasm, practically militant reserve when it comes to the world\u2019s complacent excess.\u201d<\/p>\n This begs us to wonder about neutrality, just as we wondered about blandness in another Subtraction Chronicle.<\/p>\n Oh, but maybe that\u2019s redundant. Let\u2019s look deeper into the \u201cfreak\u201d aspect, as Bruno Gibert calls it.<\/p>\n To do so, we can consult a specialist on the subject, Patrick Declerck, educated in philosophy, a doctor of anthropology and psychoanalyst. In 1986, Declerck developed his first sessions dedicated entirely to hearing what the homeless population in France had to say. Back then, he conducted nearly 2000 interviews. In his introduction to his book Les naufrag\u00e9s, Avec les clochards de Paris<\/em>4<\/a><\/sup>, Declerck writes, \u201cI followed homeless people in the street, in shelters, at the hospital. I met them when they were drunk, loud or in alcohol-induced coma-like states, haggard from rage and powerlessness.\u201d \u201cI think I was able to provide relief for many of them,\u201d \u201cI know that I healed none\u201d, \u201cI call them bums<\/em> because I had to give them a name.\u201d Declerck meets Michel5<\/a><\/sup> at Gare du Nord train station in Paris during his first ethnographic study, which he conducted in the streets. \u201cMichel\u201d recounts the author, \u201cwas thirty-eight at the time. He was a chain smoker and often smelled like wine, although,\u201d Declerk explains, \u201cI\u2019d never seen him drunk.\u201d \u201cMichel\u2019s life, as he told it, induces a kind of unease,\u201d says Declerck, \u201cthat of powerlessly witnessing a drowning man who cannot control his destiny, one he could not fathom, not even for an instant, that it was in his control to design.\u201d \u201cInsidiously, through his wanderings, and administrative improbabilities notwithstanding, he calmly led us to observe something that is, at the very least, terrifying: He misplaced his own son in the great chaos of the world, like one might lose an object or an escaped dog.\u201d And Declerck adds, \u201cIn this context, pathology has become such a norm that it appears practically routine, in any case inevitable and traced back to a series of chain events; horror smoothed over by banality makes its way into the mind by this suggested etiology, as if that were simply the way of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n So let\u2019s connect all this to the figure of the artist: \u201cArtists come up with strange ways to earn money, when they make any at all.\u201d This was said by French artist Robert Filliou, famous for \u201cMona Lisa is on The Stairs\u201d, a piece he made in 1969. In the 1960s, Filliou wrote \u201cEnseigner et apprendre, arts vivants\u201d (\u201cTeaching and learning, performing arts\u201d,<\/em> published in French only6<\/a><\/sup>). The text analyzes the figure of the artist from an economic perspective: \u201cIn fact, quite frequently; the freer an artist, the more deprived. Which testifies to a different value system, with applications for the whole of society. Take me, for example, at this very moment (November 1968). For the past two years I\u2019ve been working on this book, with some interruptions. Lately I\u2019ve been working on it regularly. And yet, I have no idea if it will ever be published, furthermore, if it will lead to any remuneration after it\u2019s been published. I cannot pay my rent, but I carry on, and rather happily. Conversely, look at Picasso.7<\/a><\/sup>\u201d Later in the text, things frankly start to spoil and grow reminiscent of Declerck\u2019s aforementioned book: \u201cOn a rainy gloomy night, while pissing in the toilets at Edgware Road tube station (in London), surrounded by bums, drunks and other night owls, I felt a sudden joy in realizing how much I resembled my companions, that I was a loser, nothing more than a loser, pissing with the simple diligence of a dog. (Some of my more realistic friends speak to me in terms of: complex and vagrant, masochism, psychology of failure<\/em>)8<\/a><\/sup>\u201d<\/p>\n Filliou seeks to transform this observation into \u201ca new value theory\u201d, which will serve as a conclusion for our Subtraction Chronicle today. He writes, \u201cOptimal production, distribution and consumption of goods and services will have been reached once every person is rich enough to live like the poor. Everything else is leisure. By contributing to the creative use of this leisure, the artist becomes a service provider, enabling him to make enough money to live like the poor and take advantage of his own creativity, freedom and independence.9<\/a><\/sup>\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n THIS WAS: Neutrality as subtraction, being nothing as a subtraction and subtracting somewhere in order to add someplace else.<\/strong><\/p>\n Translation by Maya Dalinsky<\/strong><\/p>\n Cover: \u00a9 Ana\u00efs Enjalbert<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [wptpa id=”16″] In \u0152uvres1, a book by French writer and artist \u00c9douard Lev\u00e9 published in 2002 by P.O.L, there are several subtractions of interest, for example: Fragment 354: \u201cInstead of being set on the tabletop, dishes are inlaid.\u201d Fragment 408: \u201cIn a museum, paintings are covered in black paper and sculptures draped in black<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101027,"featured_media":15445,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1847],"tags":[1854],"corpus":[1179],"post_types":[1329],"associate_editors":[],"authors":[1627],"class_list":["post-14375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society","tag-counterculture","corpus-subtraction-chronicles","post_types-chronique-en","authors-jean-baptiste-farkas-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101027"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14375"},{"taxonomy":"corpus","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/corpus?post=14375"},{"taxonomy":"post_types","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_types?post=14375"},{"taxonomy":"associate_editors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/associate_editors?post=14375"},{"taxonomy":"authors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/authors?post=14375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nNot produced = subtraction. Here, however, is a not-produced work by Lev\u00e9 that we want to discuss in today\u2019s chronicle:<\/p>\n