Les écritures bougées (Kinetic Writing) is an organization that seeks to share literature in all its forms and is run by a team of writers, artists, and art critics.
Through a precise and dynamic program we hope to reveal the living facets of literary arts by offering a greater visibility in a cartography of writing in movement in relation to different artistic disciplines. It seems urgent to us to expand literary perspectives by giving voice to writers that work through material and visual expression in writing and explore its rhizomatic tendencies.
We regularly invite writers and artists (visual artists, choreographers, filmmakers, composers) to perform and give readings and favor intergenerational ties.
Numerous authors read their texts, others blend live readings with video, and still others create links between literature and music, theater and contemporary dance, or contemporary art… Literature overflows with multiple forms, arrives where we would least expect it, in perpetual metamorphoses and reinventions.
Literature is the place where thought becomes visible through language. It becomes a shared space through its readers. It is not palpable, which is to say that it doesn’t show itself. Literature is this immateriality of thought that essentially takes the form of books. In the physical world, it is two-dimensional in its written form on the page and takes on all kinds of dimensions in the mental space of the reader. It is also through words that it circulates, that literature resides in the bruissement de la langue, (“the murmur of the tongue”), as well as in passed-on fictions and fables, told, invented and reinvented, in texts read and said. “Literature has no other dream than the immediate nature of language”, wrote Roland Barthes in his Essais critique (1964).
Literature is in books, but also in tongues, on walls, in our dreams, and in our hands, which is to say at the heart of our lives. It is immaterial, as books don’t impose forms; it exists in chosen places and times. Meetings with certain authors or certain books takes place when we offer ourselves the possibility for them to happen.
Les écritures bougées has a nomadic structure. This mobility allows for the creation of a network between various cultural centers (bookstores, contemporary art centers, foundations, museums, libraries, artist run spaces, art schools, theaters…) by proposing a monthly program of different events (readings, conferences, performances, projections, concerts and exhibitions) and writing workshops. Les écritures bougées is based in Sologne à Méry-sur-Cher. For the last three years, the events organized by les écriture bougées have taken place in different French and Belgian cities, Paris, Alfortville, Nantes, Besançon, Rennes, Bruxelles and Douarnenez. The organization would like to develop its activities in central and metropolitan France as well as abroad in order to share with a larger public new forms of writing and literary performance.
The organisation of Les écriture bougées is centered around two principle axes: literary events (readings, conferences, performances, projections, and concerts) and literary workshops (writing workshops, sonic and performance work). The workshop “Le bruit des choses”, organized by Aziyadé Baudouin-Talec took place from February 25th to March 1st at the Villa Arson in Nice on the invitation of Pascal Broccolichi.
Through Les écritures bougées we aim to create space and connections between contemporary literary and artistic practices (contemporary art, cinema, music, dance etc.). Events and exhibitions centered around specific questions linking literature and materiality in the fine arts are also occasions to create bridges between these genres. Communication, speech, expression, words and language are at the center of numerous literary processes and artistic practices. The links that weave these themes linked to language and other forms of expression allow for a large field of these practices to open up and unfold, and in doing so, reveal different aspects of language (textual, sonic, visual, physical, and choreographic).
Les écritures bougées currently collaboartes with the bookstore À Balzac À Rodin (Paris 6ème), Volumes (Paris 19ème), Les Grands Voisins (Paris 14ème), the contemporary art center La Traverse (Alfortville), DOC (19ème), la Générale (Paris 12ème), le Frac Franche-Comté (Besançon), la Zoo Galerie (Nantes), Le Lac (Bruxelles), the contemporary art center. La Criée (Rennes), le CNEAI, (Pantin) and will soon work with Montevideo (Marseille).
We actively engage in partnerships with libraries, museums, art centers, galleries, foundations, theaters, schools (elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, art school…) in order to propose site-specific events and performative reading that bring together artists from different generations and backgrounds.
It’s in large part thanks to trust and confidence of Florian de Vaulchier, art historian and teacher at the Quai Malaquais Architecture School in Paris, who directs the bookstore À Balzac À Rodin that the écritures bougées began at all. Two cycles of events and two readings occurred at the beginnings of our adventure.
The bookstore À Balzac À Rodin is an atypical space and gallery that opened its doors to numerous events and gatherings. Since 1989, the bookstore À Balzac À Rodin has been a site various for events (readings, conferences, performances, projections…), as well as a home for ABAR, a group of artists, art and architecture historians that Florian de Vaulchier inivited into the bookstore to use as space for creation and rallying in the ‘90s. In 2010, ABAR, Femme a vu le jour, female artists, film-directors and choreographers including Sarah Klingermann and Sabine Macher came together once a month to create performance videos. In 2017 ABAR Quelconque was born. It brought together five male and female artists with different backgrounds and practices. Additionally, the Cycle N27 (organized by Franck Ancell), the Cercle Bataille, the literary journals À bras le corps and Chimères regularly present their work at bookstore À Balzac À Rodin. Today, the bookstore À Balzac À Rodin has grown and measures 100 square meters and can accommodate up to 70 people.