"What I love about words is also what I find difficult about them: Words live inside and outside [of me/us], Words need me/us. Words have hurt me. Words have shut me up and opened me up. I admire their agency, their resistance, how the body knows/feels/houses them without judgment, unafraid of consequences, and yet, can be brought down by them.
I'm in awe of what language can ‘do’."
In residence at Montmartre since January 2018, Christine Herzer has been living, staging [mise-en-scène] and writing/drawing the question: How to show caring/devotion for words, as well as their meanings and [ab]uses?
She is the author of three chapbooks of poetry, including Orange, which was published by Ugly Duckling Presse [Brooklyn, NY] in July. Her written drawings were first shown in Paris at the Museum of the Playing Card’s exhibition JE[UX] EST UN AUTRE. At the end of the month, some will travel to La Maison de Recherches in Bordeaux, where the drawings will be exhibited as part of the International Symposium on litterary practices of self-writing: ‘Une généalogie littéraire des pratiques de soi. Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and Claude Mauriac.
Christine Herzer (France/Germany) is a recipient of the Writing Committee of the Cité internationale des arts.