An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris
The aims of this semester are to become familiar with the milestone French author Georges Perec and to practice drawing in its many means of explorations.
A specialist in the play of language and the manipulation of graphic and sound signifiers, Perec is the author whose work is intimately linked to Paris. He made Paris the setting for most of his texts and films. The city is a key material for his writing, as the titles of all his texts clearly reveal: Lieux, Les Lieux d'une fugue, Les Lieux d'une ruse, Tentative d'épuisement d'un lieu parisien, Espèces d'espaces...
Georges Perec, who described himself as a ‘user of space’, keen to understand how Paris works, used the city as a playground for literary experimentation. In Espèces d'espaces, he provides a number of possible ways of using Paris, advising us, for instance, to sit on a café terrace, pull out a notebook and write down everything we see. The ordinary, and more importantly the ‘infra-ordinary', what we no longer pay attention to because it seems so banal, mundane and yet, which forms the very essence of the city.
Over the semester, I intend to take you on a journey of discovery Paris, and make use of Perec's instructions for his project Lieux:
'I have chosen twelve places in Paris, streets, squares, crossroads, linked to memories, events or important moments in my life. Each month I describe two of these places: the first time on the spot (in a café or in the street itself) I describe ‘what I see’ as neutrally as possible [...]. The second time, anywhere (at home, in a café, at the office), I describe the place of memory, evoking the memories associated with it, the people I knew, etc. […].”
We'll make these instructions our own, so that by the end of the semester, we elaborate and share a map of our Paris exploration and familiarity.
--- this class is an invitation to reconsider the obvious