I met the poet Julien Blaine in 1993 because he was running a délégation à la poésie at the mairie de Marseille. A poetry office devoted to the poetry life! Can you imagine such an office in the city hall where you live? Julien Blaine made it and it did work perfectly... One night, he gathered young artists and poets in his house at the Moulin de Ventabren for a BBQ and he said: make poetry projects and I will sponsor you at the mairie de Marseille. I remember that the poet Christophe Tarkos decided to create le conservatoire de la liste, an institution that would keep every new list... More terre à terre, I organised an event about the young poetry scene in Romania. I invited 4 poets in Marseille (15, 17, 18 and 28 years old). They already had a status as poets in the romanian society; the 15 years old poet was invited on TV shows. How is poetry in Romania now? I guess this status has changed; it was a residue of the communist era, in which poetry was a part of the popular culture. I remember how big the poetry shelves were in the Bucarest book stores, in july 1989... Let's go back to Julien Blaine: here is a recent performance he made in the poetry festival of Lodève (France). It's about this word, poète. You can check this video on this page.

On pourra écouter une version de travail de "United problems of Coût de la Main d'oeuvre" mis en scène par Myriam Marzouki au Pré-Saint-Gervais la semaine prochaine. Les musiques et chansons sont de moi. C'est drôle et fou. La version définitive est pour plus tard, courant 2007. Avec Christophe Brault et Clémence Léauté, qui a aussi un groupe avec son ami

Plus d'infos

+ a new Toog video.

Jean-Louis Costes is an essential figure of the french underground. The first time I heard of him was through a friend in Marseille, in 92. This friend bought original Costes tapes mailed by the artist himself. What I heard in these tapes: a man screaming, howling like an animal on a minimal musical background. It sounded cheap and violent. In 1997, as Momus was becoming a parisian figure, we went to see a Costes show near Pigalle, in a small club called Le Gaulois (was it Le Gaulois?), in a stone arched cellar. What we saw was amazingly trash: naked people singing, simulating sex (was it simulation?), covering themselves with shit (was it real shit?), Costes jumping in the public after having taken a live pee shower under his naked girl partner. I tried to avoid this disgusting contact. When Momus interviewed Costes, he said that the performer is really calm, smart and generous in his responses.
I have heard of Costes from many people since then, even from people coming from the poetry scene. Costes is one of the most respected figure of the french underground. He never compromised, even the smallest phalanx of his little finger remained free. So it was strange to see that he's having his first novel out on a very big publishing company. The book is called Grand-Père. It was a commission of the publisher himself. I am happy to see that sometimes, miracles like this are still possible.

He is a bird, he is a fashion lover, he is a musician. Want to know more about his debut album?

Orange juice and God: when I read the story of Anthony Rossi, the founder of Tropicana, pioneer of the orange juice industry and a very religious man, I wonder if there was citrus juice during the years 0-33. I know it's a stupid question, but did the disciples and Jesus himself drink citrus juice? I don't consider wine as a fruit juice. Wine is the only special drink mentioned in the gospel and this is probably one of the reason why alcohol as been a serious problem in many christian countries, especially in the north of France. If God himself asks you to drink wine (which is red as his blood), is he encouraging alcoholism? And when he turns water into wine? Jesus wasn't politically correct and didn't think of it. I wonder what would have happened if he had met with Mr Anthony Rossi. I am sure that Rossi would have sorted out this alcohol promotion problem, turning wine into orange juice. And my own family name, Weinzaepflen, which means little wine cork, should also be changed into Orangezaepflen. But it's 14 letters instead of 12.

It's easy to be a christian in Roma, in Germany, in Europe. But there are many places in the world where it's not. This is why I hope that the pope will personnally apologize and correct his sentences. The Ratisbonne conference is a long and old fashioned scholastic discours about the relationship between raison and faith; it's focused on the notion of reason in the greek philosophy and its use in religion. There are two quotes about Islam, the first one is not justified and very offending. The pope also mentions the theologian Ibn Hazn (11th century), who "considered deductive reasoning insufficient in legal and religious matters".
The only good thing about this controversy is that the pope commited a lapsus which is a secret thought in the heart of many non-muslims: Islam has an educationnal role towards non muslims. I hope that the voice of educated Islam will have enough room in our 'christian' medias. At the end of his lecture, Benoit 16 is expressing the urgent need of a dialog between the cultures and religions of the world. He's right but when you want to meet the other, you first have to leave your prejudices...
A very interesting article written before the death of Jean-Paul II: "John Paul II pursued his quest for alliance with Islam in 1986 by becoming the first pope to visit a Muslim country. During that visit to Morocco he had this to say: "We believe in the same God, the one and the only God, who created the world and brought its creatures to perfection"... In 2001 John Paul II visited Damascus and became the first pope to pray in a mosque. He also issued a formal apology for what he termed the misdeeds of Christendom toward Islam, including the Crusades and colonialism."

"Discovering electronic music": a very interesting film about the future of music.

Opening at the Palais de Tokyo, this week, for the new 5 milliards d'années exhibition. This was the chainsaw sculpture contest in a paddock outside. Hopefully, the sculptors didn't join the cocktail for a happening inside the museum: Gucci shoes, champagne, wood shavings and blood don't fit together.

Frederic Rossif made a lot of films about history, animals and cinema for the french TV. He became popular through his animal weekly program "La vie des animaux". He also directed feature films. One was screened at l'Etrange Festival, "Aussi loin que l'amour" (1970), a beautiful movie with a beautiful canadian actress, Francine Racette, who later married Donald Sutherland. In this film, an ornithologist is falling in love with Francine; a story about birds, love, the ocean, the cathars castels where the ornithologist wants to record a rossignol (nightingale). There is a scene in which the singer Barbara plays a beautiful song, La Solitude. It's a movie full of creativity (frame, repetition, inserts, colours, strange and surrealist atmosphere). The day after I went to see The Holy Mountain (1973) by Alejandro Jodorowsky, the craziest film I have ever seen. Jodorowsky was there to talk about his film, which is looking like new. He also released El Topo (1970) and Fando & Lis. I hope to see these movies too; there seems to be a resolution of the conflict with the rights owner Allen Klein.

I need to see these films because I need to be able to answer, when someone is asking me: when do you come from? When is more important than where. I grew up before cellphones, video games, internet and computers. I grew up in trees, bending branches to make bows, loosing shoes in mud fields, listening to the Rubettes and Plastic Bertrand, watching en cachette the naked pictures in Zoom magazine. This is my where.

Revue Le Quartanier 06 Sommaire:

POÉSIE ET FICTIONS : Antoine Brea, Benoit Caudoux, Hervé Bouchard, André Gache, Julien de Kerviler, Arno Calleja, Samuel Lequette, Christian Zorka, Mathieu Larnaudie, Gilles Toog, Ludovic Bablon

QUARTIER CRITIQUE : Xavier Person, Steve Savage, Nathalie Stephens, Hélène Frédérick, Daniel Canty, Anne Malaprade [sur Emmanuelle Pireyre, Francis Catalano, Eva Sjödin, Arno Schmidt, Eugène Savitzkaya, Aïcha Liviana Messina, John Cassavetes] // Revue des revues : Guillaume Fayard

DESSINS : Mélanie Baillairgé
COUVERTURE : Christian Bélanger

Hommage to Sono Sion at l'Etrange Festival. I never heard of this japanese director before. He's young. And his film is fabulous. I don't want to see his "Suicide Club" movie, which seems to be more commercial. After almost 3 hours, we lost name, perception. I thought: this is a poet movie. It's not perfect but it's generous and clumsily controlled, the first really ETRANGE movie we saw in the new edition of this very good festival.

Etrange/Estrange/Strange/Stranger: I love étrange, I love the stranger.

Those parmi vous who like Star wars and movies about the outer space should really enjoy my new film. It's called Beyond the milky way. The plot is: a man is watching the immense sky and... I cannot tell more. This is the last film of my trilogy about sex, space and wild animals. I have decided to retire from the movie industry and write my souvenirs about this extraordinary period of my life...

...............................

At L'Etrange Festival, after presenting Brandy in the wilderness, Paul Schrader asked me to stand up, because he wanted to seat on the same row next to his friend, Barbet Schroeder. In the street, they were talking with Gaspar Noé. I was too shy to join them. Maybe they haven't seen Sex is everywhere and A bull in my house yet.

This new film is called sex is everywhere. It was shot in my street, rue des martyrs in Paris, with non professional actors. Like Ben Hur, a lot of people were involved. Unlike Ben Hur, there was no chariot race or fight. No one was killed. In this film, I wanted to show that it's possible to make a movie with no guns and no sex. Unless you consider all the actors as living prooves of the existence of sex, which is true. Sex is everywhere; it was a regular sunday morning, 12 am.

I called this movie 'a bull in my house'. It's from my silent movie period (this morning). Hope you'll like it. A bull in my house earned more than 38 million dollars over its youtube opening weekend. If you have any question about the filming, actors, location, script, gaffer, light, references, influences, confluences and other lenses, I can answer.

Takashi Miike's movie The Great Yokai War opened the new edition of L'Etrange Festival. The public, very cinephile, very cinephage, very intellectual, some were goth, was surprised by this new opus (2005 in Japan): no trash, no sex, no horror. Strange monsters, a child who's becoming the Kirin chevalier in charge of saving the world. Where is the Miike we love? This is not the Miike we love! It was funny to see the faces after the movie. Many were disappointed. I heard a man next to me quoting all the cinematographic references. Further, a very fat and massive goth girl wearing a cowboy hat smoked a cigar. We loved the movie; my neighbour and lover even cried, when Sunekosuri died. It's hard to say what is Sunekosuri. It ressembles a cat without being a cat. It means: sune (leg) kosuru (to rub).