Volume VII of (SIC) is an ode to drunkenness, in the broadest sense of the word.
It formalizes thoughts on the quasi natural connections between various forms
of intoxication and art. Isn't inebriation an essentially aesthetic state of mind? Whether it overwhelms us by means of absorption
or secretion, routinely or exceptionally, amid noise or in silence, it is a burst
of illumination, stirring up the mind, exalting the spirit, invigorating and carrying
us away. It promises rapturous ecstasy – that oceanic feeling, that hyper-consciousness
and hyper-presence of the world. Drunkenness is a matter of purging the sublime
by removing the dross of reality, sucking out all the marrow of life, imbuing the
whole outside world with an intensity of interest and seeking the soul on a
higher plane of consciousness. At once a transfiguring force and a means of
detachment from reality, drunkenness is a poetics of the beauty of the
situation and ephemeral experience. Drunkenness can be cruel, too, intensified
by the unbearable intuition of its imminent fading: its hours are numbered,
concentrated in an instant – the instant of paradoxically infinite enjoyment. What’s
worse is pharmacological intoxication, a remedy that denies its own poison. Once
it becomes pathological, it consumes us, wastes our lives away and forgets. This
is the drunkenness sung here, even though it seems a futile enterprise. Ever faithful
to its essential immediacy, it wears off with reflection, submitting to the
mediation of consciousness. Drunkenness defies the telling.
Editor: Sébastien Biset
Essays by Sébastien Biset, Antoine Boute,
Emmanuel Giraud, Pierre Hemptinne, Tom Marioni and Véronique Nahoum-Grappe
Published in 2015
In French
16 x 23.5 cm
152 pages
ISBN: 978-2-930667-13-3
EAN: 9782930667133
