From June 4th — July 15, 2021 Galerie Simoncini —Luxembourg, presented the second extensive installment of Nicole Peyrafitte & Pierre Joris’ Domopoetics creations. The couple, who has shared life for three decades, moved in with their most recent KARSTIC ACTIONS/WORKS —paintings, texts, videos — & occupied the three levels of the gallery. — On the ground floor, the Karstic Refuge where their domestic & political processes interconnect & transform. — In the basement, the Sanctuary, neither holy nor secret, but table/altar for their intimate domopoetic works. — On the second floor, the Canopy, where the diversity & resilience of multi-species relations can be experienced. For the opening & the finissage live Karstic-Action performances were presented. Below are the two videos:
OPENING: Friday, June 4th at 6:00PM with an improvisation of Pascal Delalée on violin
FINISSAGE: July 15 2021 with Colin Toniello on keyboard
Hello everyone!
After a year & more sheltering at home in Brooklyn we are happy to head out to Europe, fully vaxxed, to pick up on gigs delayed by the pandemic. Four events are central, all taking place in Luxembourg:
1) our most recent KARSTIC ACTIONS/WORKS at Galerie Simoncini;
2) Pierre Receiving the Batty Weber Award;
3) the CNL celebrating his 75th birthday on 14 July (details to be announced)
4) the “finissage” of the KARSTIC ACTIONS/WORKS show on 15 July.
Voilà! Details below & looking forward to reconnect other that virtually.
1). Nicole Peyrafitte & Pierre Joris ACTIONS/TRAVAUX KARSTIQUES
June 4th — July 15, 2021 Opening with a Performance Action on Friday, June 4th at 6:00PM
This exhibition/performance of paintings, texts, videos will occupy the gallery’s three levels:
—Sanctuaire/Sanctuary: basement
—Abri/Shelter: street level
—Canopy/Canopée : upper floor Galerie Simoncini 6, Rue Notre Dame, Luxembourg.
For more details on this see: Communiqué de Presse Press Release
2) Just before the KARSTIC ACTIONS/WORKS, exhibition/performance, a long-delayed (because of covid) event will take place on 1 June: Pierre will receive the Batty Weber Prize (Luxembourg’s life-time achievement award in literature). The ceremony will take place at 7 p.m. at the CNL (Centre National de Littérature) in Mersch in the presence of Minister of Culture, Sam Tanson & the director of the CNL, Nathalie Jacoby. A laudatio will be read by Jean Portante, celebratory poems sung by Nicole Peyrafitte accompanied by Pascal Delalée on violin, & Pierre will read the essay he wrote for the occasion & which will be available as a pamphlet from the CNL (Various Variable Words Variably Arranged in the Form of a Celebratory Talk-Essay on Language & Luxembourg).
3) We’ll be back in Mersch on July 14 as the CNL has proposed to celebrate Pierre’s 75th birthday by creating an event that will include poetry readings & performances by Nicole & some others of our friends, a public interview of PJ by Florent Toniello for a future book, and more. Details to be announced.
4) Finally on 15 July, the finissage will happen at the galerie Simoncini, possibly with a final performance as we take down the paintings, pack the videos & get ready to return to Brooklyn.
Other news: Nicole’s —“Karstic-Action Je me dé-suffit/ Dé-suffice“: Official Selection of the 9th International Video Poetry Festival. The premiere of the festival will be on Sunday June 6th & will accessible to everyone in the entire world in the Video Art Zone 2021 section. —Things Fall Where They Lie /Les Choses Tombent où Elles Reposent:
is now available on VOD to rent/buy English subtitles / Sous-titres Français
—The Museum of the Women Library in Glasgow acquired the painting Nicole made during our performance at the CCA on 5th October 2016 as part of the Outside-In / Inside-Out poetry festival and symposium held in Glasgow and here it is
—Karstic Actions featured in Periodico de Poesia UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México)
Pierre’s
upcoming online events include:
— Workshop “Celan übersetzen” (FU Berlin, Literarisches Kolloquium Berlin), 14.-15. Juni 2021. This will be a zoom occasion. DTBA
— A Claude Pélieu Symposium in Paris to be held at the University of Chicago Center Paris, On 8/9 July. Still uncertain if this will be live or zoom. DTBA.
— Pierre’s two 2020 Celan books, Paul Celan: Microliths (Posthumous prose) (CMP) & Paul Celan: Memory Rose into Threshold Speech — Collected Earlier Poetry (FSG) have garnered quite some reviews. Here are links to some of these:
Indeed, all of us are ready for a healthy 2021. Truly hoping you have all made it through 2020 ok. We can’t complain, as we stayed healthy & productive throughout. Like for many of us, travelling gigs were cancelled though most only postponed or “zoomed”. Below, what’s coming up in the new year & some of our 2020 highlights. May justice, peace & health be on everyone’s schedule. If you are in NYC, remember that we will have to vote again & it is an important mayoral election. There is numerous candidates officially launching their campaigns — the Democratic primary is this 22 June & the general election 2 November. It is an important one since the NYC police department still needs to see serious deep changes. Profound & structural reforms are essential to address systemic racism, brutality & basic injustice. The word “Defunding” may scare liberals but there are real problems (financial, cultural, etc.) Just look at the NYPD budget & its opacity. As an exemple:
— Portugal’s total defense expenditure for 10.28 million people: $ 2.53 billion in 2020.
— NYC’s Police Department: for 8.3 million people, $11 billion from the City’s budget are allocated to NYPD’s operating budget.
Voting locally is super important and please join us in keeping the pressure on!
1 billion may have been “reallocated,” but 80% of NYPD’s members belong to a Union that officially endorsed the despicable & democratically ousted Trump.
As Bryan Stevenson, lawyer and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative says: “We cannot build our safety on punishment.”
Meanwhile, keep in touch, stay healthy & together we can Resist, Persist & Assist.
Bon anada, e schéint neit Joer!
Nicole & Pierre
A CRÊPE-COOK-ALONG chez Nicole & Pierre
JANUARY 1st, 2021 8 AM EST
If you missed our Crêpe-Cook-Along video on January 1st for the legendary Poetry Project’s 2021 New Year’s Day Marathon, which this year was a 24-hour continuous online broadcast featuring readings and performances from a global cast of more than 200 poets, writers, artists, musicians, dancers, and theatre-makers – devotees of the avant-garde and demimonde, proud visionaries and iconoclasts working at the edge across language, time, and place you can see it here & please don’t forget to contribute here. And if you’re really serious about cooking along with the video, download the list of necessary ingredients here.
DOMOPOETIC KARSTIC-ACTION EXHIBITION June 4 – July 7th 2021 Nicole Peyrafitte & Pierre Joris’s new domopoetic works are based on three word-concepts: Les nouveaux travaux domopoétiques de Nicole Peyrafitte & Pierre Joris s’appuient sur trois mots-concepts
RESIST PERSIST ASSIST
Actions paintings/Videos /Textes Galerie Simoncini — 6, rue Notre Dame L-2240 Luxembourg
Pierre received the 2020 Prix Batty Weber, the Luxembourg national literary prize that is awarded every three years since 1987 to a Luxembourgish writer for the entirety of his work. Interview by Florent Toniello in Woxxx. His Fox-trails, -tales, & -trots: Poems & Proses was shortlisted for the Luxembourg National Book Awards.
The British daily, The Morning Star, named Microliths one of its two literary “Books of the Year.”
Thank you! Poet Curator Mbizo CHIRASHA for featuring my work in such details on the TIME OF THE POET REPUBLIC.
“Time of the Legend with Acclaimed Performance Poet Nicole Peyrafitte.
“Performance Poet Nicole Peyrafitte your dub verse is mind raving and lyrical gymnastics scintillates lowspirited readers to resurrect themselves to activity. Your poetry heaves with heart throbbing rhythm, that of a dense canopy of papaya tree dancing on the passing wind and as well dangling with ripe yellow ready to be give us Vitamin C. Your art is mature and provokes the world to rise and see dots of darkness in the sun as such to realize patches of dirty on the undergarments of the moon .Your philosophy concocted imagery raves and cracks our mental boxes, like how stray tendrils of marijuana smoke spirals into the nostrils of a saint, a nonsmoker and wrecks his brains to speak to himself or herself. Mind boggling. Thus, the power of your voice is extraordinary”….more
Indefatigable performer/ curator Pauline Cathrinot curated & mc’d a great Online Festival!
“Impérieuse. Elle grossit, gronde, épaissit. Une extraordinaire FAIM, faimgalle, fringale. Elle se lève, nous dresse. Oui, on a FAIM! de corps proférants, de cous tendus en dynamiques de cordes, de larynx émus et d’amygdales vibrantes, de ce qui lève monte s’accroît quand la chair est parole, et qu’elle se jette sur nous. Qu’on l’attrape, la saisit la gobe. De langue à langue, et par dévorations.” … more from Pauline here
“Chant de la Sirène began as a weblog in 2007 by Laura Hinton, on the topic of the hybrid literary arts. First focusing on the radical New York poetry & multi-media arts scene through which Hinton had been floating adrift, the original blog came to offer a wider array of poetry book reviews, artist-poet interviews, poet tributes, conference travelogues, memoirs, and guest essays… (more here)
By Editorial Staff on July 1, 2020 “The announcement of this issue was circulated some months ago, but these past weeks have reassured the editors of the necessity of an enterprise seeking to draw together the best of contemporary progressive thought in order to provide the intellectual and emotional sustenance we need to survive this enormous contraction, and continue the work of overhauling our society. Although the A-Line was founded two years ago as a response to felt crisis, I believe we’d all agree that our current political order—home and beyond—has reached a not-to-be-doubted inflection point beyond which we can neither see, nor even guess. “Apocalypse Now and Then”—in its varied figurative and referential valence—lends its name to this timely issue that includes essays, poems, and images taking up the many dimensions of this national and global emergency— from the COVID-19 pandemic, to climate change, economic disaster, as well as the spectacle of violence and lawlessness at the highest levels of governance that currently defines US society. (more here)
—“Karstic-Action Je me dé-suffit/ Dé-suffice“: Official Selection of the 
