the Mountain of Aubervilliers

Posted by on Monday, April 30, 2012

  • Rémy Héritier, Laurent Pichaud, Gilles Saussier, Marcelline Delbecq, Mathieu Bouvier, officeabc, Anne Kerzerho

In the frame of the european project « Special Issue », dedicated to forms of « performed publication », choreographers Rémy Héritier and Laurent Pichaud invited photographer Gilles Saussier, artist and writer Marcelline Delbecq, visual artist Mathieu Bouvier, graphic design studio officeabc, and Anne Kerzerho, head of studies at the CNDC school in Angers, to form the editorial board of a temporary publication, for a duration of 12 days.
Together, they decided to « perform » a journal : not a journalists journal but a journal of « journaliers » (day laborers). News can wait. A journal with no dispatches, but the journal of 12 days dedicated to the production and sharing of certain practices of reading, description, translation, investigation, speculation. As many performative practices of information, techniques of elucidation, fictionalizing of the real, in short, ways of acting upon the narration.
They decided to name this journal « La Montagne d’Aubervilliers » (The Mountain of Aubervilliers). « The Mountain ,» because a conference is held at the summit. Because news are carried there on men’s back, the step is slow, ascent takes time and favors exchange. Because under the avalanche of information, one must be able to get on one’s feet again. Because from a valley to another, echo carries the voice. And because Aubervilliers used to be called the « Plaine des Vertus » (Plain of Virtues).
« La Montagne d’Aubervilliers » will be a single-issue magazine, dated from September 10th to 22nd, 2012. Its daily publication will take place at the mountain refuge of Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, every day according to the order of the day : September 10 at 10am, the 11th at 11am, the 12th at noon, etc., until the culminating point on the 22nd at 10pm.

“Every morning brings us news of the globe, and yet we are poor in noteworthy stories. This is because no event comes to us without being already shot through with explanation. In other words, by now almost nothing that happens benefits storytelling; almost everything benefits information. Actually, it is half the art of storytelling to keep a story free from explanation as one reproduces it.” 
Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller (Der Erzähler), 1936

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