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Reading changes and nourishes our relationship with the world around us and with others. It influences and helps
form our sense of self. Reading accompanies us through our lives, a subtle presence and companion. Since September 2016 I have asked readers across France how reading has helped shape their lives and guide their paths — conversations we have over dinners I cook in the readers’ homes, in a space as intimate and shared as reading is. At the same time, in partnership with the cultural services of La Bibliothèque des Grands Moulins de Paris-Diderot, La Fondation des États-Unis, La Maison des écrivains et de la littérature, the Office of Student Life and Cultural Afffairs of Paris-Diderot, Politik’Art, and Crous culture, we have organized a series of forums that aim to open up conversations about different reading practices, reading’s place in our lives. I am currently at work transforming these testimonies – these stories – into verse, gathering them in a book. |
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Extracts of these conversations as well as recordings from a cycle of public forums on different reading practices appear on a collaborative sound map, Les Échos de la pensée : une cartographie sonore de la relation. Conceived in the spirit of Lyn Hejinian’s the open text, Les Échos de la pensée acts an open archive of this ongoing investigation.
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Christopher Alexander Kostritsky Gellert recently completed a master’s in lettres modernes, pensée contemporaine at Paris Diderot. His verse has appeared in Belleville Park Pages & FORTH Magazine, and is forthcoming in parentheses, a new Barcelona based journal. He is the recipient of the 2018 Ohioana Library Association Martin Rumsey Marvin Grant for writers under 30 who have yet to publish a book. He will be starting work on a doctorate in the fall on the investigation as an artistic practice with Vincent Broqua at Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis.
Drop me a line – christopheragellert@gmail.com |
Painting by Florence Miailhe, as part of suite of portraits of family and friends that dissolve into one another through animation; the series ends in a self-portrait of the artist. |