#edouard leve

(Edouard Levé in a manipulated portrait)

Of course, don’t miss the amazing Works by Edouard Levé, translated by Jan Steyn for The Dalkey Archive. The thesis of the book is captured in its first point: “1. A BOOK OF WORKS THAT THE AUTHOR HAS CONCEIVED BUT NOT BROUGHT INTO BEING.” That’s just the start. 

3. Proust’s head is drawn on a page of In Search of Lost Time. The words tracing out the contour of his face form a grammatically correct sentence.

15. A leather jacket made from a mad cow.

19. A butterfly is released into a room, hidden from sight. Every night, its flight, detected by laser beams, is transmitted to a mobile machine equipped with an hourglass. By morning, the imprint of the nocturnal flight is drawn in sand on the floor.

26. A building is transformed into a cemetery. The rooms become vaults.

35. Fake drawings by artists from the early twentieth century are folded up and inserted into books in provincial libraries. The books are chosen for the coincidence of their dates of publication and the supposed dates of the drawings. At an undetermined date, a reader discovers the work. Not imagining that it might be a fake, since the usual motive for forgery – the financial enrichment of the forger – is not operative here, experts authenticate the drawing. The artist’s body of works is augmented. Wrongly so. 

Shockingly awesome. 

-Hal-