HOME / A SINGULAR COLLECTIVE / ARTWORKS / ANALYSIS / INTERVIEWS & CRITICS / CONTACT /
A SINGULAR COLLECTIVE / A choral work / Philosophy / Publication /
pUBLICATION
66 QUESTIONS
Élisa Brune & Paul Qwest have brought together in an essay all the spirit of an art of living that implicitly touches on Séroux's work.
Reading the 66 questions (one a day, to be savoured like Belgian pralines) is an invitation to a journey of initiation.
It will take us from the event to the advent.
THE EVENT
Making things happen is intrinsic to life as it is, as soon as we see it as a succession of choices, decisions and attempts that are more or less daring or even out of the ordinary.
The art of living is not illusory, according to Paul Qwest's book. There is play between what chance imposes and the space we have to make something else happen. But there is more.
AN ADVENT
Marking an advent. There are literary, pictorial, cinematographic and architectural works in every field of creation and innovation that mark their era.
With them, there was a before and an after. Perhaps this is the profound interest of what is at stake in Séroux's research. He is considerably broadening the once stereotypical way in which identity was experienced.
What it changes
An advent is never without consequences for how life, how it is viewed and its meaning will be modified from now on. What would this beginning be?
It is marked by societies that are at last pluralist and multicultural, by the creolisation of the world and the recognition of 'others' in all spheres.
Translating this into artistic form means offering it as an object of thought to everyone.
( Our lives as event )
what art and science transform in us
Our lives ? In Hebrew, "life" does not exist in the singular: throughout our lives, it is impossible to have just one. Something only begins when we realise that we have several lives, successive and simultaneous.
THE BOOK'S HISTORY
The spirit of the works presented here is explored in this book, co-written with Elisa Brune.
Just as the meaning of the various chapters is never given to the reader, but will emerge as he or she makes connections with his or her sensibility, the meaning of Séroux's works remains open to interpretation by the viewer.
WRITING ON THE EDGE
In May 2016, a simple chocolate mousse that she could not digest led to a clear medical diagnosis for Élisa Brune: stage 4 cancer.
30 DAYS & AN ETERNITY
To the question of the prognosis asked in the emergency: "You have thirty days to live, madam", Paul Qwest, who witnessed the scene, quickly invited her to put life back at the heart of this event.
Paul Qwest, who witnessed the scene, quickly invited her to put life back at the heart of this event by suggesting that she move to another hospital and that the two of them resume writing the initiatory book they had begun. A scientific, artistic and literary epic, it will be underpinned by their ten years of conversations and by their now out-of-reach plan to write together.
The adventure will continue for two and a half years. Elisa Brune will die at the end of 2018.
FORM IS CONTENT
Sixty-six questions are based on as many discoveries and strokes of genius, often little-known, which, echoing quotations from scientists, writers and artists, sketch out our new horizons.
The book takes the form of an archipelago of thought at work here and in our contemporary world. The back of the book offers readers the tools they need to turn their lives into works of art.
To see our lives as events is to offer ourselves the opportunity to revisit our relationships with ourselves, with others and with the world. From there, we understand that the work that emerges here constitutes an advent.
Since 2008, when they met Edouard Glissant and made their first trip to Lisbon in the footsteps of Pessoa, this work has expanded considerably, as summarised on the page A choral work
Table of contents
PROLOG
1. What is this book about?
2. How do I read this book?
3. What is ignorance?
4. Do we really know what's important?
PART ONE :
DE-CLUTTERING
CHAPTER ONE :
DEMYSTIFYING THE INDIVIDUAL
1. Character, posture and imposture
2. The person in person
3. The means of narrative
4. Being the product of others
5. The impulses of interaction
CHAPTER 2 :
DUMPING THE SURPLUSES
1. Learning to unlearn
2. Release the bone of meaning
3. Calming reasoning
4. Unclog the tongue
5. To see things more clearly
6. Starting afresh
CHAPTER 3 :
EXPERIENCING WHAT'S ESSENTIAL
1. The singularity of reality
2. The idiot, the one who doesn't make sense
3. The eclipse, a flash of night
4. The night, or the dark side
5. The meaning of tragedy
6. Superimposition as the structure of the world
7. Detachment
8. Openness
9. Delight
PART TWO :
EQUIPPING
CHAPTER 4:
OTHER ATTITUDES
1. Contemplating reality
2. Being in love with details
3. Exploring consciousness
4. Broadening the point of view
5. Experiencing time
6. Getting moving
7. Generating shapes
8. Weaving the true and the false
9. Thinking backwards
10. Choose between two and three
11. Being fragile
CHAPTER 5 :
UNEXPECTED METHODS
1. Giving yourself carte blanche
2. The treasures of waste
3. Rebounding
4. Throwing bridges
5. Dare to collage
6. Composing by superposition
7. Constructing arrangements
8. Enjoying serendipity
PART THREE :
ENTERING THE PRESENT
CHAPTER 6 :
OPENING UP TO OPEN FORMS
1. Hesitation
2. The unpredictable
3. Incompleteness
4. Discontinuity
5. Thought in an archipelago
CHAPTER 7 :
ART BY EXAMPLE
1. The artists :
Robert Filliou and life above all
2. The viewers :
Vermeer rediscovered
3. The work :
The appearance of Vivian Maier
PART FOUR :
EXPANDING HORIZONS
CHAPTER 8 :
NAVIGATING COMPLEXITY
1. The value of misunderstanding
2. The blind spot of reason
3. Rising madness
4. Bypassing borders
5. The mythology of fine art
6. The riches of failure
7. The fresh air of the incomprehensible
8. Knowing nothing
9. The relevance of the inappropriate
10. To please, to displease, to ignore
CHAPTER 9 :
WEAVING THE MULTITUDE
1. Feeling numerous
2. The registers of otherness
3. Embracing globalisation
EPILOGUE
1. The elusive remains
2. Outrages and Delights
NEWSPAPER / Liberation critic
«OUR LIVES", ESSENTIAL HAZARD»
By Louise Bernard
BETWEEN PERSONAL REFLECTIONS AND QUOTES FROM AUTHORS, ELISA BRUNE AND PAUL QWEST WEAVE A CHORAL BOOK IN WHICH THE ARTS AND SCIENCES REDEFINE OUR IDENTITY.
It could be personal development, but it is based on science and literature. Elisa Brune and Paul Qwest's book, Nos Vies comme événement, claims to be 'choral'. It advocates originality and applies it to its format: after a guiding question that resembles a philosophy essay topic,
- What do we know about our ignorance?
"Why bring out what is not yet there?
or "Do we also recognise ourselves elsewhere than in ourselves?" -
the article begins with a fact, an anecdote, or a concrete scientific explanation before gradually sliding into the artistic and concluding with a touch of lyricism.
The two authors then give way and collect quotations from different thinkers, in relation to what they have said before, to build 'bridges' between their personal reflections and fragments of other texts that echo them, in order to set thoughts and languages in motion. The menu includes a wide range of personalities (writers and philosophers), although the names Barrico, Proust, Kafka, Pessoa, Nietzsche, Beckett and Wittgenstein are often mentioned.
The aim is to make use of the different types of knowledge that revolve around us - astronomy, neurology, geometry, linguistics, history - to better envisage what we are, who we are as individuals, what we create, and to reflect on 'events', those that punctuate our lives and shape us, and those of history, on a global scale.
None of this is intended to overwhelm the reader. The alternation between prose and this fragmentary anthology even makes the whole thing rather light. Above all, the vocabulary is never intended to be jargonist: you might read "une bouffe entre potes" ("a meal with mates") to talk about the Last Supper revisited by Veronese, or the expression "to make a mess of people's minds" ("messing with people's minds") to talk about Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon. Instead, the authors seek to provide keys for thinking and inventing. Horace's catchphrase "Dare to know" remains the guiding principle of the book, which calls for freedom and independence, detachment from preconceived barriers - "How many preconceived ideas remain to be overturned? - to leave room for chance and the unknown.
The intellectually dense questions are refreshed and sometimes made to smile: did you know that the canary forgets its spring songs every year because remembering them would weigh down its brain and prevent it from flying? We learn that, seriously, it is baseball that distinguishes us from the great apes. The strength gained in our shoulders thanks to bipedalism allows us to hit (not just balls) and acquire hunter status.
"BREATH"
There is a story behind this project. A chance event in Elisa Brune's life became an event: indigestion from a chocolate mousse led to a diagnosis. She had only a few years to live. The essayist who wrote seminal works on female pleasure died in 2018. Before her death, she and her friend wanted to add one last stone to the edifice. Paul Qwest naturally dedicated this book, which exists thanks to her "breath of fresh air", to her. How can we fail to understand the insistence on the idea of accepting the mysterious and the incomprehensible?
An article on fragility concludes: "The foundation is that there is no foundation and that makes nothingness habitable." The text becomes a tribute.
Louise Bernard
Élisa Brune and Paul Qwest
Our Lives as Events
What art and science transform in us
Odile Jacob, 480 pp.