Avital Ronell has just completed a series of eight “séances” or sessions for the Centre Pompidou in Paris, where she engaged such artists and thinkers as Werner Herzog, Frédéric Boyer, Dennis Cooper, Suzanne Doppelt, and Anne Dufourmantelle, as well as three of the contributors to the Reading Ronell collection: Judith Butler, Pierre Alferi, and Laurence Rickels. The sold-out “Selon AR” performances coincided with the release of French translations of Ronell’s texts and an attendant media blitz—nonstop newspaper profiles, radio interviews, and television spots—the likes of which is typically reserved for movie or rock stars in the United States, where great thinkers are rarely celebrated (or even noticed) in the popular press. To date, Ronell has published five books in France.
The accompanying photograph was taken at the final Pompidou performance, June 19, 2009, where, among other things, Boyer, Cooper, Doppelt, Dufourmantelle, Loayza, and Xavier performed the short play in Part Six of Ronell’s Crack Wars: Literature Addiction Mania, entitled “Cold Turkey Or, The Transcendental Aesthetic of the Thing to be Eaten.” With any luck, the Centre will release the video soon, and I will post an update here.
The first of the Pompidou performances took place in December with Herzog, where he screened his film The White Diamond before sitting down for a conversation with Ronell; the Centre has just released the web video of that performance. The conversation itself begins about 12 minutes into the clip when Ronell turns to the filmmaker and says: “You are known for the legendary hospitality offered to freaks and misfits. Please allow me to ask for the same indulgence for a rogue philosopher and errant penguin spirit.” The reference is to Herzog’s film Encounters at the End of the World, in which a lone penguin heads off on his own, in the wrong direction, guided only by a suicidal GPS.
More updates to follow.
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Diane Davis is an associate professor of rhetoric & writing, English, and communication studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the editor of The ÃœberReader: Selected Works of Avital Ronell and the new book Reading Ronell.
