Pacôme Thiellement is a writer and video-maker. Born in 1975, he has written essays mixing pop and gnosis (“Poppermost”, “La Main gauche de David Lynch”, “Les mêmes yeux que Lost”), co- directed videos with Thomas Bertay (« Le Dispositif », 51 episodes up to now) and contributed to “Rock & Folk” and “Chornic’art” magazines as well as to the radio programme “Mauvais Genre” (France Culture). In 2012, he has written an essay on Hara-Kiri (“Tous les chevaliers sauvages”, published by Philippe Rey) and “Soap Apocryphe”, his first novel (Inculte publishers).
A god is assigned to each layer of reality, and he does not understand anything.
We live in a world governed by a false god: mad, stupid, and cruel. And our lives are vales of tears punctuated with bursts of laughter.
We have always known this. What we know less is that, once we have crossed the frontiers, which separate us from the next world, the same problems will arise: bigger, clearer, harder. We must always ally ourselves with the remote god against the nearby one, because he hates him; but we do not know what the next sign will be. Ruptures, dreams, images tell us about the space which separates the worlds. This is the reason why great painters are our shamans. They brighten up our eyes and inform our souls of the new appearance of an immemorial space. This space is the “world of suspended forms” Sorhawardî talks about a world of “suspended citadels”. From these citadels, we look towards the other world, and, from the other world, a gaze is turned towards us.
Pacôme Thiellement
SCOTT BATTY
Born in 1968 in Manchester UK. He is a painter, a writer, a singer with “the Umbilical Chords”, and has produced several books of images and poems, particularly “Gas Flowers” published by Dernier Cri, and “Peeling Angels” published by L’Hippopotame de Thèbes.
CAPTAIN CAVERN
Born in 1956 in Paris. A drawer and a painter, he becomes known in the graphic underground world in 1983. Along with Placid, Muzo, Pyon, Bruno Richard, Pascal Doury, he contributes to the emergence of graphzine. He is the author of several books of images and comic strips, among them “ Le gouffre de la Piscine” and “Voyages Somnambules dans les galaxies virtuelles”. Captain Carven is the founder of “Vertige” magazine created in 2002.
OLIVIA CLAVEL
A member of collective Bazooka, the incarnation of French punk in the seventies and eighties, Olivia Clavel has greatly influenced the French new wave scene, particularly thanks to her collaborations with the Rita Mitsouko, Elli Medeiros, or Brigitte Fontaine. She is the author of Télé, the mythical character ( “Télé au Royaume des Ombres”, Les Humanoïdes Associés publishers).
GEBE (1929 – 2004)
Even though he made drawings for “Paris-Match”, “Le Journal du Dimanche”, “Bizarre” in the sixties, his name is definitely linked with Hara-Kiri” (of which he became the editor in 1969) as well as with Charlie-Hebdo in which the pages of the book of comic strips “L’An 01” were published. He then made a film of “L’An 01” with Jacques Doillon. Among his greatest books : “Berck”, “Une plume pour Clovis”, “L’âge de fer”, “Un pas de côtéz, and the novel “Sept Cartouches”. He also wrote photo-stories photographed by Chenz, edited magazine “Zéro” in 1986, contributed to “L’Idiot International” from 1989 to 1993.
KILLOFFER
Born in 1966 in Lorraine. He attended classes at Duperré applied art school in Paris in the early eighties. He is one of the founding members of “ L’Association”, cult publishers. Among other books, they have published “676 apparitions de Killoffer”, and more recently two books of drawings “Récapitation” and “Charbons”. He is regularly exhibited in France and abroad. At the same time, he illustrates articles in newspapers and magazines such as Libération, Le Monde, La Vie.
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE MENU
Born in 1964, he is definitely a major figure of alternative publishing in the world of comic strips. As a drawer and publisher, is one of the founding members of “L’Association”, but he is the author of several books as well, like “Gnognottes”, “Livret de Phamille”, “Le Livre du Mont-Vérité”. Today he has created his new publishing house “l’Apocalypse”.
ROLAND TOPOR (1938 – 1997)
He is a multiple artist, not only a writer, but also a scriptwriter, a drawer, a stage director. A student at Paris Fine Arts School, he has his drawings published in “Bizarre”, an avant-garde journal, then in “Hara-Kiri”, the satirical magazine. In 1962, with Alexandro Jodorowsky and Fernando Arrabal, he creates the artistic movement “Panique”. He is the author of the novel “Le Locataire Chimérique”, of the play “Le Bébé de M.Laurent”, and of many uncategorizable books such as “La Vérité sur Max Lampin”, “Four Roses for Lucienne”, “Pense-Bêtes”, or “Café Panique”.