Fictions / Performed readings

As part of the initiatives conducted in association with the periodical "J'aime beaucoup ce que vous faites" ["I Like Your Work a Lot"], the Fiction / Lectures performées program ["Fiction / Performed Readings"] aims to experiment with the possible forms of a practice of public reading from the angle of visual arts. Public reading is a practice of literature very often offered within the framework of exchanges between writers and readers.

The modes of operation are often very limited: an author or a reader reads a text in public, sometimes with a staging of the text that can come close to theater. In the 1960s, some artists (Robert Filliou) and writers (William S. Burroughs, Bernard Heidsieck) took part in new attempts to make contemporary poetry public on the occasion of "poésie - action" events at the American Center on Boulevard Raspail. Already, during the early avant-gardes, Kurt Schwitters - among others - approached the question of voicing the text through sound poetry.

As it seeks to continue and further these experiments, the Fiction / Lectures performées program uses the diversity of current practices to raise the question of which types of artistic acts can best deal with the orality or the plasticity of the text. An experimental laboratory, the project brings together artists from different fields: visual artists, choreographers, writers, performers, each time questioning an original relation to reading and literature.