TS: Can you tell us about this project that you’ve been working on?ĭG: Three years ago, Azzedine decided to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Pierre’s legendary Tomb for Five Hundred Thousand Soldiers, his masterpiece that preceded Eden, Eden, Eden. He is the voice for our times” – Donatien Grau
“ is also a hero, who almost was homeless for the sake of poetry. It is also the year of the passing of Pierre Guyotat, one of the individuals Azzedine admired the most. It also is the year of the publication of Taking Time, Azzedine Alaïa’s manifesto I helped make happen and of my own book on Azzedine, which is just coming out in French. During the lockdown, it meant working towards defining creative strategies to engage with the collections of the museum while we were closed. TS: What has this year been like for you? How has it altered your practice and, further to that, your viewpoint on the world?ĭG: This year has been very intense, like for all other people. But perhaps I am first and foremost privileged that creative figures I admire respect me enough to have me as one of their fellow travelers. I tend to think I am a philologist, meaning someone who studies the structures of text, and the presence of text in the world. Ted Stansfield: First off, I wondered if you could introduce yourself and your practice?ĭonatien Grau: I’m a scholar, writer, museum executive. Here, Grau shares more about the project, what he hopes to achieve through it and why he believes Guyotat’s work holds such relevance to this day why he is, to borrow Grau’s words once more, “the voice of our times”. Eden 50, as the project was named, also included a new film by Amiel Courtin Wilson in Melbourne – which is shown, in part, below – a performance by Michael Dean at Progetto, a reading by Philippe Parreno in Berlin, a concert by Scott McCulloch in Tbilisi. He enlisted a number of friends and “fellow travelers”, as he puts it, to help – including artist Paul McCarthy, writer Chris Kraus, artist Kaari Upson and rapper Abd Al Malik. Believing the book, and Guyotat’s work more broadly, to be more relevant now than ever, Grau decided to organise an event to celebrate its anniversary, comprising 50 readings around the world, one for every year since its release. Donatien Grau – the acclaimed scholar, writer and museum executive, who was very close to Guyotat – describes this literary work rather wonderfully as “barely bearable, but so beautiful” and “a very intense, very radical take onto oppression, violence, sexuality”.
Last Wednesday marked the fiftieth anniversary of Eden, Eden, Eden – the legendary novel by Pierre Guyotat, who died in February of this year.
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