Session five, “The Book to Come” Reading Group: “Seminar, Writing Workshop, and Getting Ready for a Journey”, proposed by Menchu Gutiérrez

Almost everything I want to say and encourage the members of this seminar/workshop to think about in this session of The Book to Come relates to poet Marcel Broodthaers’ decision to turn the book into art material and a space for thinking about poetry and art.

If Pense-Bête continues to resonate with us after such a long time, it is because it is nourished essentially by poetry. Poetry which thinks about poetry, poetry which stands still in order to keep a secret. This work, which has been subjected to a large number of interpretations, still poses a large number of questions and holds a latent secret. A secret which will take centre stage in the second part of the seminar, which will focus on the work Un Voyage en mer du Nord (A Voyage on the North Sea).

In preparation for this journey, I will look at themes including concealment, magic, hieroglyphics, and the relationship between silence and language.

Menchu Gutiérrez (Madrid, 1957) has published several books of poems, of which we would highlight Lo extraño, la raíz (Vaso Roto, 2015). She has written extensively in prose, all of which has been published by Editorial Siruela. Her most recent prose work is araña, cisne, caballo (2014). Also an essayist and translator, she has organized multidisciplinary seminars in centres such as Casa Encendida, Fundación Botín and Arteleku, and given seminars and workshops at universities such as the Internacional Menéndez Pelayo, Santander, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, and UNAM, Mexico City.

The project The Book to Come is developed as part of Corpus, network for performance practice. Corpus is Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao), Contemporary Art Centre (Vilnius), KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution (Amsterdam), Playground (STUK Kunstencentrum & M-Museum, Leuven), and Tate Modern (London): www.corpus-network.org.

Corpus is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.