Since October 1997, a postcard is sent, every month, to a fixed number of people

No 99 (December 2005), Prolegomena

On black inscribe it generic, an unchaining, a progressive descent after broken apparition, one: striving for dramatic, by the, all clichés of the period: scattered notes, punctuating expressive discontinuities, lightning dissonance, acid gaps, plated chords – one counts to twelve during a predictable pause -, reprise di tutti, followed by the same – twelve – by the isolated keynotes coming first curtain and coming first obscured. A lamp, its light, says a situation is nighttime, composing less than a decor, just the hint of context: objects tightened in the vibration and rotating motion of the fan seen long after, the air rich with artifice in the context of nothing that moves, nor advances, collapses and resigns herself where she, absorbed, exhales air takes in, in the concerted movement of the pulsating air on her and of the air that she exhales where facing curtain reconstitutes theatre, of a noise places an object, turns back toward the ground, to this object given only in sound, holds an empty frame on a full ashtray, passes hand in frame, takes the ashtray, passes it through, leaves the frame, moves and dissolves into a still life, of a hand holding the back of the frame and of the hand dangling, caress-strokes the neck of a vase, looks, on the wall, a painting, a topography: the essential question of places, their crossings. Without a single movement, only by sound, in the space enlarged by the rhythm of steps, slides to the ground in a 3D vision with reflections projected onto ground reflector, between chairs and tables in the continuous drone of this fan, between tables and chairs or else the still life by the sofa, at the window, up to the curtain that opens onto trees blurred by her own reflection and she disappears allowing herself to slide, advance, take off again, that she turns back sighs face to fan, touches an object whatever, clears a table, a throat, one turns back where all the objects placed in perfect rhythm shrink perspectivally to the other corner where the rotating asynchronic fan, goes toward the table, breaks consciously an object by making it fall, all one movement to follow to see into the plunge: ashtray and ashes spread on the ground.

No 100 (January 2006), Where She

Where she: descending stairs, steps still audible, passing by: gate, fence, disappears. She: on foot full view: water tower, floor lamp, space in construction, bank, causeway, dust, crossing – mini apocalpyse. Where: sweeps with her shawl an invisible object and asks last time. She, in the middle the road, in the middle the pines, trailing gestures: to stop, to look at trees, to reach out or hold, to retreat, to proceed, one in the road, the other in the mad grass – mini choreography. Cut that a child crosses a road, attracts attention, passes in front, slows down to pass a hand through hair harmless, the theme: wanting to keep, turn back, and offer. Where: takes him by the arm, opens a gate behind to move from right to left. She: against a wall says will not say goodbye, gives up, says he will telephone, gives up extends his hand goodbye, to the sound of the fence, the grating sound so sharp, closing distinctly, moving away, out of sight – mini exit performance. Where: toward the entrance, turns towards, looks towards one immobile that they stare at, or perhaps lower their eyes, turns towards, passes: hall, picture window, a few stairs. She: in the modern interior, passes: balcony window, window, stops, looks, the wind flutters the bushes that she sees from the window: return to a natural time, in a natural pulse, begins, is the end of a sequence, a beginning of movement, a gradual starting again.

No 101 (February 2006) Who slips in

A street that awakens. A movement that stops. The warnings cease: consequence. She who gets out of a car. She who requires patience. She who approaches, monument, a hall that she crosses, waiting between pillars. She who searches recognizes, and enters there for real. She who sneaks into the noise confusion, passes between, stands between, comes, sneaks in, with a sign of her hand, from each side of barrier, to her before the man telephone in hand, pulls herself up, looks towards up and down. She who slips in, seems a diffuse perturbation without perceptible cause. The percussive noise is a motor is a stop theatre where lives the action spent. A man who leans over. Men who murmur. One who remains on the threshold, telephone in hand, asking for patience in the simulacrum of a conversation feigned. One who approaches to hear whispers murmurs. One who is eclipsed followed soon after by another. One who sneaks in, stirs the crowd. One who wonders what he’s doing, struggles, accelerates the disorder. A man sign who notices carefully the mobile values: accelerate temporal. One who reveals the entire mechanism. One who goes changes his mind. One who passes between, stops, points out, takes off again while to his smiling watches them pass, follows with calm eyes, he who slows perceptibly down. A sole bell stops ringing, letting out a small sigh, loud speaker from the middle column, the a-rhythmic concert, stop double of regular beating, of time beating isochrone heart. Nothing moves, rushes, gives the signal, the fall. He who sketches a movement on each side, column, addresses her abruptly, she, behind to see who where him: "here one minute of silence costs millions." One minute is a real time.

No 102 (March 2006), In the Décor

Nighttime, the lit hall of a building, from a window that lights up, from a window on dark room, from a light that turns on, from this window frame, is of her back, of her back to of the window, with a gesture of the hand toward something outside. An alarm, the noise of steps or a slight movement who opens a door, who enters, from a passage on a wall and from one room to the next until the bedroom, arrives in the room, deposits an object, piece of stone, flower fossil that places among books, returns, grazes lightly or touches all the lines of the flower. Beyond the bedroom turns on, from the drawer, nail and hammer, returning hooks the flower, she, just beside the poster. Chooses a photo another, points out skin while coming back to the books, grazes, caresses a coffee table leg, advances toward a photograph to the hand that flips through pages, from the images glimpsed on the flipped-through books, looks at all of them attached to the wall, turns around, stops in front, says in a movement, proceeds to her image, focuses on photos showing, over which the eyes wander, stops, goes and comes back along the row of photos, while the other quickly relights the lamp with a metallic click. In the very distinct click of the metal rod buffeted by the wind is a rattling: standing restless or as if everything froze with his glance as the noise grows stronger with the winging movement, face retreating without a single movement to the metal poles always in the movement with always the noise retreating more, considers, represents a woman like Diana the Hunter in classic pose, approaches, disappears, appears immobile like someone lost in thought or lost, lifts for a moment the head as the noise from the glass door doubles triples, fan and rod giving city or objects as lone beings.

 

No 103 (April 2006), Weak Halts

Just an object in wan light and a voice that calls her, from her place, she, at her window to see from her window, calls him, moves to the side, framed fearful at the thought of noises below, searches or looks or calls, she, standing on the side to see without being seen, at the call, she, a little more retreats more into a corner, leans against the wall behind the curtain that she pulls with her hand, from the window towards, throws a pebble, clinking again echoing the swinging poles, advances toward, tosses the pebbles to the ground, shakes the glass door again echoing the shut door while she, at her window, passes rapidly in front stops and takes off again in reverse at the least noise cracking, asks, stops suspended – each element speaks a premonition formal or thematic at the announcement of war, or likely war. What she looks at fixated one who arrives ascends, from her turns away, stops, goes when, in the grass, rolls, detaches, holds, fixates on, looks, observes, one, at the audible background noise, bits of conversation, murmurs or looks up in the air at the sound of four, follows the movement of the eyes, looks down, takes off again towards, is an ambiance rather, toward the music goes, to go in where, stops on the threshold, of two, one looking up from under, turns away, looks, stops at her who, on the threshold, seems about to advance toward, mimicries of music, from a courteous hello to her hello to her on the threshold still, turns back and leaves, to both of them, murmuring barely audible, distinguishing barely seized seized, to her sitting finally is a pause stops – it’s about topography by clues, about multiple views of the city, of its transformation, of its latent state.

The France Issue

Summer 2010

Since October 1997, a postcard is sent, every month, to a fixed number of people

Eric Suchère

Born in 1967. Eric Suchère teaches art history and theory at the Ecole supérieure d’Art et Design of Saint-Etienne. He is a member of the editorial board of Action poétique. He presides over the Single Association. He has published L’Image différentielle (Elne, France: Voix Editions, 2001), Le Motif Albertine (Nantes, France: Editions MeMo, 2002), Lent (Coutras, France: Le Bleu du Ciel, 2003), Le Souvenir de Ponge (Marseille: Centre international de Poésie Marseille, 2004), Fixe, désole en hiver (Paris: Les Petits Matins, 2005), Résume antérieur (Marseille: Le Mot et le Reste, 2008), Nulle part quelque (Paris: Argol Editions, 2009).

English translations by Carrie Noland

Carrie Noland is the author of Poetry at Stake: Lyric Aesthetics and the Challenge of Technology (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999) and Agency and Embodiment: Performing Gestures/Producing Culture (Cambridge, Massachussetts: Harvard University Press, 2009), as well as writings on twentieth-century poetry and art, including a recent article on the poems published here in the present issue of Ekleksographia: "Eric Suchère: Momentum and Meaning," Dalhousie French Studies 90 (Spring 2010).  She is also the co-editor of Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics and Cultural Displacement (Hampshire, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), with Barrett Watten, and Migrations of Gesture (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2008), with Sally Ann Ness. She teaches French and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. Her current projects include Not a Dancing Bear, a study of poetry by Césaire, Damas, and Glissant, and—back in the dance vein—Aesthetic Subjectivity, an effort to initiate a virtual dialogue between Merce Cunningham and Theodor Adorno.