la trame
33 rue Dautzenberg
1050 Bruxelles
email: contact@latrame.org
Phone: +32 26 40 19 67
The publisher la trame, a
non-profit-making organisation, was set up in April 2001 by three
women, Jacqueline Rossi, a historian, Anne Donck and Annick Blavier,
both of whom are artists. Given the inflated number of books on the
market, the organisation’s main activity is, and will remain focused on
publishing limited-edition books and videos by artists, essays, posters and
postcards, with the emphasis squarely on quality.
A new series was launched in March 2003 entitled Vis à vis (Face to Face). The juxtaposition of these three particular
perceptions and fragmentary texts, together with the plurality of
expression, of unpublished texts and older or published texts speak to
us. This approach stems from the desire to avoid separation and “to
open up plurality”, or as Maurice Blanchot put it, “non-unitary
plurality”; with this approach as our objective, we invited French and
Belgian philosophers, writers, artists and scientists to take part in
the project.
2003
Frontière
The first of the new series is entitled “Frontière” and brings together texts by: the French philosophers, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida, the Belgian
writers Caroline Lamarche, Corinne Hoex, Eddy Devolder, Marcel Moreau,
and Gérard Mace from France, the French political commentator Catherine de
Wenden, French botanist Francis Halle, the French biologist Dominique
Thierry, the Belgian artists Annick Blavier, Patrick Corillon, Mark Luyten,
Bob Verschueren, the libanese artist, Mona Hatoum, Maria Flores, the english artist David
Tremlett, the Belgian film maker Boris Lehman, the French actor Jacques
Bonnaffé.
Frontier is concerned with AND: “AND,
which is neither one nor the other’, falls between the two; it is the
frontier, a line between advance or retreat, but which is all but
imperceptible. And yet, it is at this line of retreat that things
happen, where the act of becoming takes place …” (Gilles Deleuze).
The book led to an exhibition in Brussels held by the artists at the De Markten Gallery in December 2003
and January 2004, and was supported by the Ministries of the French and Flemish Communities of Belgium
After “Frontier” in the “Face to Face” series came a book on time,
introduced by a quotation from Jean-Luc Godard: ‘… as a result, I can
but be only an enemy of our time since its task is precisely aimed at
the abolition of time…’ “The Transformation of the Baker”, a
published text by Giles Deleuze is followed by an anonymous text and a
variety of unpublished texts by: writers Hélène Cixous and Guy Goffette
from France, Jean-Claude Pirotte from Belgium, French choreographer and
essayist Daniel Dobbels, French actor Laurent Terzieff, French
physicist Jean Matricon, French historian Maïte Bouyssy, from France,
photographic contributions by the Belgian photographers
Felten-Massinger, Dirk Braeckman and French photographer Eric Aupol,
Belgian artists, Annick Blavier, Daniel Locus, and Bernard Villiers.
2004
le temps
Presentation in Lille (Fr) of the two published books.
In October 2004, in the framework of The Fury of Reading,” la trame” organised In Résonance, at the Mercelis Theatre, where writers and artists from Lille presented their work in the form of readings and videos.
In January 2005,” la trame” expressed its wish to add to the Face to
Face series by publishing a book on political, ethical, professional or
amorous commitment by bringing together contributions from the
following: French philosophers Giles Deleuze and Bernard Stiegler,
unpublished work from French writers Judith Brouste, Gaelle Obiegly,
Emmanuell Pireyre, and from Belgian writers Jean-Marie Piemme and Raoul
Vaneigem, French agronomist Catherine Guibourg; French art historian
Paul Ardenne, French mathematician, Gerald Tenenbaum; Belgian
archeologist Laurent Tholbecq, film makers Ulrike Knorr and Hannes
Schüpbach from Germany and Swiss respectively, Belgian artists Luc
Claus and Felix Hannaert, French artist Robert Filliou, Swiss artists
Laurent-Dominique Fontana and Helene Upjohn; artist Milagros del la
Torre, Belgian photographers Christian Carez and Gilbert Fastenaekens.
This book was presented in Brussels at the Passa Porta bookshop, and
included an exhibition of ink-jet prints by the artists of the book,
readings by and a discussion amongst some of the contributors.
2005
l'engagement
In 2006 : La visite est terminée. It is concerned with feminine sexuality with seen as a force of inexhaustible inspiration for the imagination. As
Alexandra Makowiak says: ”The problem is to find reliable statements on
feminine sexuality when it is well known that the literature, the
representations (the photographs and paintings), which tell this story
are mainly those of men (which explains the impression, for example, of
omnipresent saphism).”
Nineteen
women from Europe and other continents drawn from writers, historians,
doctors, film makers and artists, and four man, will be contributing.
The book is not presenting a homogenous vision, but one of plurality, where we try to work from the lines of retreat.
Two pages (32/24cm) are at the disposal of each contributor and can be
used as the contributor wishes. It is preferable that any
contribution is unpublished work.
The publication
Non, pas ce soir is a quarterly magazine born in 2010, in diary form, that aims to open our eyes to some overlooked aspects of a contemporary world dominated, for lack of an audience, by uniformity.
Through the pages of our magazine we want to attract the reader's attention to the plural nature of society. We wish to explore the way society acts as a mirror to artistic creation, taking the time for new thoughts and ideas to emerge, based on observation and personal discovery, rather than more global, ready-made definitions.
The hallmark of our approach is its openness, as well as its expression of the world. Every participant in this initiative is, after all, a constitutive element of the fabric of society, and our desire to assemble a diverse range of profiles seemed to resonate among us like a harmonious echo.
This project, then, does not have to be unwieldy. It often takes very little to get the imagination working - just a few words, or an image.
As Gilles Deleuze put it, let us give birth to "new time-spaces, even if they are just surfaces and scale models".
This singular approach encourages a new dialogue between men and women, one that is out of phase with the daily taking and readjusting of measurements, and one that is understood in its simple quest for life together. Stereotypes may emerge, but they will be dismantled, spread out and reassembled, through the filter of writers, philosophers, artists, scientists and other citizens, of all generations.
In concrete terms, Non, pas ce soir is a quarterly publication created by two women, Annick Blavier, artist/publisher and Florence Marchal, architect/designer and a man, Arnaud Matagne, an art historian.
As our credo is 'interrogation', we wanted to address different generations, aiming for a certain degree of cultural and artistic democratisation, while maintaining standards of quality.
"It is not the world that reveals the question, but the question that reveals the world." (Nahman de Braslav)
Temporarily leaving behind the world of books, in the strict sense, for this project, we deliberately chose to publish a magazine that will be sold in bookshops, certain newsagents and other, more unusual places. This will enable us to reach a wider public. More specifically, we will be tackling issues from a diverse range of cultures and societies, mainly focusing on women in Europe. These subjects will then be developed with established correspondents in different cities, such as Paris, Berlin, and Milan. We will also be sensitive to the North-South dimension, whether locally, nationally or internationally. This is why we are working hard on the transversality of our editorial approach. Some issues may focus on specific themes. To be continued...
Annick Blavier & Arnaud Matagne
