KARSTIC ACTIONS/WORKS Luxembourg & More!

KARSTIC ACTIONS/WORKS Luxembourg & More!

Hello everyone!
After a year & more sheltering at home in Brooklyn we are happy to head out to Europe, fully vaxxed, to pick up on gigs delayed by the pandemic. Four events are central, all taking place in Luxembourg:
1) our most recent KARSTIC ACTIONS/WORKS at Galerie Simoncini;
2) Pierre Receiving the Batty Weber Award;
3) the CNL celebrating his 75th birthday on 14 July (details to be announced)
4) the “finissage” of the KARSTIC ACTIONS/WORKS show on 15 July.
Voilà! Details below & looking forward to reconnect other that virtually.

1). Nicole Peyrafitte & Pierre Joris
ACTIONS/TRAVAUX KARSTIQUES
June 4th — July 15, 2021
Opening with a Performance Action on Friday, June 4th at 6:00PM

This exhibition/performance of paintings, texts, videos will occupy the gallery’s three levels:
—Sanctuaire/Sanctuary: basement
—Abri/Shelter: street level
—Canopy/Canopée : upper floor
Galerie Simoncini 6, Rue Notre Dame, Luxembourg.
For more details on this see:
Communiqué de Presse
Press Release

2) Just before the KARSTIC ACTIONS/WORKS, exhibition/performance, a long-delayed (because of covid) event will take place on 1 June: Pierre will receive the Batty Weber Prize  (Luxembourg’s life-time achievement award in literature). The ceremony will take place at 7 p.m. at the CNL (Centre National de Littérature) in Mersch in the presence of Minister of Culture, Sam Tanson & the director of the CNL, Nathalie Jacoby. A laudatio will be read by Jean Portante, celebratory poems sung by Nicole Peyrafitte accompanied by Pascal Delalée on violin, & Pierre will read the essay he wrote for the occasion & which will be available as a pamphlet from the CNL (Various Variable Words Variably Arranged in the Form of a Celebratory Talk-Essay on Language & Luxembourg).

3) We’ll be back in Mersch on July 14 as the CNL has proposed to celebrate Pierre’s 75th birthday by creating an event that will include poetry readings & performances by Nicole & some others of our friends, a public interview of PJ by Florent Toniello for a future book, and more. Details to be announced.

4) Finally on 15 July, the finissage will happen at the galerie Simoncini, possibly with a final performance as we take down the paintings, pack the videos & get ready to return to Brooklyn.

Other news:
Nicole’s
“Karstic-Action Je me dé-suffit/ Dé-suffice“: Official Selection of the 9th International Video Poetry Festival. The premiere of the festival will be on Sunday June 6th & will accessible to everyone in the entire world in the Video Art Zone 2021 section.
—Things Fall Where They Lie /Les Choses Tombent où Elles Reposent:
is now available on VOD to rent/buy
English subtitles  /  Sous-titres Français
—The Museum of the Women Library in Glasgow acquired the painting Nicole made during our performance at the CCA on 5th October 2016 as part of the Outside-In / Inside-Out poetry festival and symposium held in Glasgow and  here it is 
—Karstic Actions featured  in Periodico de Poesia UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México)

Pierre’s
upcoming online events include:
— Workshop “Celan übersetzen” (FU Berlin, Literarisches Kolloquium Berlin), 14.-15. Juni 2021. This will be a zoom occasion. DTBA
— A Claude Pélieu Symposium in Paris to be held at the University of Chicago Center Paris, On 8/9 July. Still uncertain if this will be live or zoom. DTBA. 
— Pierre’s two 2020 Celan booksPaul Celan: Microliths (Posthumous prose) (CMP) & Paul Celan: Memory Rose into Threshold Speech —  Collected Earlier Poetry (FSG) have garnered quite some reviews. Here are links to some of these:

Have a wonderful summer everyone stay strong & healthy!
 

Pierre & Nicole

Invitation:

Poster:

We Sure Are 2021 Ready!

We Sure Are 2021 Ready!
Video
 
Indeed, all of us are ready for a healthy 2021. Truly hoping you have all made it through 2020 ok. We can’t complain, as we stayed healthy & productive throughout. Like for many of us, travelling gigs were cancelled though most only postponed or “zoomed”. Below, what’s coming up in the new year & some of our 2020 highlights. May justice, peace & health be on everyone’s schedule. If you are in NYC, remember that we will have to vote again & it is an important mayoral election. There is numerous candidates officially launching their campaigns — the Democratic primary is this 22 June & the general election 2 November. It is an important one since the NYC police department still needs to see serious deep changes. Profound & structural reforms are essential to address systemic racism, brutality & basic injustice. The word “Defunding” may scare  liberals but there are real problems (financial, cultural, etc.) Just look at the NYPD budget & its opacity. As an exemple:
—  Portugal’s total defense expenditure for 10.28 million people: $ 2.53 billion in 2020.
— NYC’s Police Department: for 8.3 million people, $11 billion from the City’s budget are allocated to NYPD’s operating budget.
Voting locally is super important and please join us in keeping the pressure on!
1 billion may have been “reallocated,”  but 80% of NYPD’s members belong to a Union that officially endorsed the despicable & democratically ousted Trump.
    As Bryan Stevenson, lawyer and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative says: 
“We cannot build our safety on punishment.”
   Meanwhile, keep in touch, stay healthy & together we can Resist, Persist & Assist.
   Bon anada, e schéint neit Joer!                               
   
   Nicole & Pierre

 
A CRÊPE-COOK-ALONG chez Nicole & Pierre
JANUARY 1st, 2021 8 AM EST
 


If you missed our Crêpe-Cook-Along video on January 1st for the legendary Poetry Project’s 2021 New Year’s Day Marathon, which this year was a 24-hour continuous online broadcast featuring readings and performances from a global cast of more than 200 poets, writers, artists, musicians, dancers, and theatre-makers – devotees of the avant-garde and demimonde, proud visionaries and iconoclasts working at the edge across language, time, and place you can see it here & please don’t forget to contribute here
And if you’re really serious about cooking along with the video, download the list of necessary ingredients here.
 

 
DOMOPOETIC KARSTIC-ACTION EXHIBITION
June 4 – July 7th 2021

Nicole Peyrafitte & Pierre Joris’s new domopoetic works are based on three word-concepts:
Les nouveaux travaux domopoétiques de Nicole Peyrafitte & Pierre Joris  s’appuient sur trois mots-concepts
RESIST    PERSIST    ASSIST
Actions paintings/Videos /Textes

Galerie Simoncini — 6, rue Notre Dame L-2240 Luxembourg 
 


Pierre’s 2020 

Books:
Fox-trails, -tales, & -trots: Poems & Proses (Black Fountain Press, Luxembourg)

Concluding 53 years of translating Paul Celan’s literary oeuvre:
Paul Celan: Microliths (Posthumous prose) (CMP )
Paul Celan: Memory Rose into Threshold Speech: The Collected earlier Poetry (FSG)

Agadir by Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine, translated with Jake Syersak, Dialogos Press, 2020.

Readings & Interviews:
LitBalm Reading November 2020
Celebrating Paul Celan: An Evening with Pierre Joris and Paul Auster Nov 2020
Writer’s Against Trump   August 2020
Woxxx Interview with Isabel Spigarelli September 2020

Pierre received the 2020 Prix Batty Weber, the Luxembourg national literary prize that is awarded every three years since 1987 to a Luxembourgish writer for the entirety of his work. Interview by Florent Toniello in Woxxx. His Fox-trails, -tales, & -trots: Poems & Proses was shortlisted for the Luxembourg National Book Awards.

The British daily, The Morning Star, named Microliths one of its two literary “Books of the Year.”

 

Nicole’s 2020 

Karstic-Actions:
Resist-Persist-Assist w/ Pierre Joris — Nov 2020
Vote! : August 2020
Je me dé-suffis / I de-suffice myself  — July 2020
Salon Zürcher – March 2020
Kingston 2020 w/ Pierre Joris, Michael Bisio, Patrick Higgins — Jan 2020

Other Videos:
Pierre Joris’ reading for Paul Celan’s 100th Birthday — Nov 2020
Robert Kelly : A Celebration w/ Pierre Joris —August 2020
Pierre Joris: Beach reading — July 2020
Voilà! Cooking while Confined — March-April 2020 — 24 live cooking videos w/ Nicole & Pierre

Readings:
LitBalm Reading 

Publications:
The A-LINE Journal
Le chant de la Sirène Journal :
Time of the Poet Republic
Voice of the Trees

Featured in TIME OF THE POET REPUBLIC

Featured in TIME OF THE POET REPUBLIC

Thank you! Poet Curator Mbizo CHIRASHA for featuring my work in such details on the  TIME OF THE POET REPUBLIC.

“Time of the Legend with Acclaimed Performance Poet Nicole Peyrafitte.

“Performance Poet Nicole Peyrafitte your dub verse is mind raving and lyrical gymnastics scintillates lowspirited readers to resurrect themselves to activity. Your poetry heaves with heart throbbing rhythm, that of a dense canopy of papaya tree dancing on the passing wind and as well dangling with ripe yellow ready to be give us Vitamin C. Your art is mature and provokes  the world to rise  and see dots of darkness in the sun  as such to realize patches of  dirty  on the  undergarments  of the moon .Your philosophy concocted imagery raves and cracks our mental boxes, like how stray tendrils of marijuana smoke spirals into the nostrils of a saint, a nonsmoker and wrecks his brains to speak to himself or herself. Mind boggling. Thus, the power of your voice is extraordinary”….more

Recent & online

Recent & online

Recap of works recently published.
Immense gratitude to all the publishers
Care    Persist    Resist!

FAIM! French Online Poetry Festival 

Indefatigable performer/ curator Pauline Cathrinot curated & mc’d a great Online Festival! 
“Impérieuse. Elle grossit, gronde, épaissit. Une extraordinaire FAIM, faimgalle, fringale. Elle se lève, nous dresse. Oui, on a FAIM! de corps proférants, de cous tendus en dynamiques de cordes, de larynx émus et d’amygdales vibrantes, de ce qui lève monte s’accroît quand la chair est parole, et qu’elle se jette sur nous. Qu’on l’attrape, la saisit la gobe. De langue à langue, et par dévorations.” … more from Pauline here

our contributions:

KARSTIC-Action : Je me dé-suffis / I de-suffice myself from Tawil Productions on Vimeo.

Le Chant de la Sirène Journal  

“Chant de la Sirène began as a weblog in 2007 by Laura Hinton, on the topic of the hybrid literary arts. First focusing on the radical New York poetry & multi-media arts scene through which Hinton had been floating adrift, the original blog came to offer a wider array of poetry book reviews, artist-poet interviews, poet tributes, conference travelogues, memoirs, and guest essays… (more here)

5 Pages & a text from my Daily Carnets in here

 

The A-Line  Journal

the A-Line

Convergence 5: Apocalypse Now and Then    

By  on July 1, 2020
“The announcement of this issue was circulated some months ago, but these past weeks have reassured the editors of the necessity of an enterprise seeking to draw together the best of contemporary progressive thought in order to provide the intellectual and emotional sustenance we need to survive this enormous contraction, and continue the work of overhauling our society. Although the A-Line was founded two years ago as a response to felt crisis, I believe we’d all agree that our current political order—home and beyond—has reached a not-to-be-doubted inflection point beyond which we can neither see, nor even guess. “Apocalypse Now and Then”—in its varied figurative and referential valence—lends its name to this timely issue that includes  essays, poems, and images taking up the many dimensions  of this national and global emergency— from the COVID-19 pandemic, to climate change, economic disaster, as well as the spectacle of violence and lawlessness at the highest levels of governance that currently defines US society. (more here)

Nicole : A text & 3 paintings in the  The A-Line  Journal

RED RAT

Pierre Joris:

from: DIARY NOTES MARCH-MAY 2020

Voilà! Live Cooking Videos – while confined

Voilà!  Live Cooking Videos – while confined

Friday April 24th was the finale our Live Cooking Videos—while confined. 
First and foremost THANK YOU to all the viewers, & a very special thank you to all the regulars from literally all around the globe. During these 24 daily livecast rendez-vous, you provided sustained warm & joyful support which gave me a some sense of purpose in these trying times while we are all confined, waiting for the virus to pass.
By now, sadly most of us know someone who has succumbed to the coronavirus, and we are also all watching — or no longer watching in order to stay sane — the ineffective & disgusting political debacle. Even if most of us are safely at home, and in a somehow privileged situation — I sure feel mine is that — we still all go through the emotional roller coaster, so if the show helped make your ride smoother, I am super happy. You need to know that it sure eased mine tremendously, so gratitude to you all for watching & cheering! I really know that I also learned a lot from the whole process.
Do not hesitate to reach out via messenger at any point if you have cooking questions of just want to keep in touch; I would love that!
Meanwhile, stay healthy, take great great care & eat the best you can.
Much much love from the two of us.

P.S: The videos of all 24 videos from the last to the first below & they all have notes & links with useful information. Below the videos more cooking background info.

What do we eat/cook & why?
A few years back for serious health reasons we switched to healthier, low glycemic foods & adopted the 16/8 intermittent fasting method that involves eating only during an 8-hour window & fasting for the remaining 16 hours. So we eat a variety of foods but avoid pasta, rice, potatoes, sugar, processed flour & we favor veggies, legumes, eggs, healthy whole grains, & responsibly raised meat, poultry, & seafood, some fruits…Well, you get the idea & you will discover the details in the videos below. We will keep adding them as we go. Never hesitate to ask questions or request foods recipes you would like to see demonstrated or talked about.

Voilà! Bon Appétit, stay home & healthy!

 

“Voilà Lunchtime” were daily live-casted on FB & IG from March 24 -April 24 2020 M-F 12:00 EST


A little background:

Once upon a time I was a cook! I never liked the term chef, though I did run kitchens & was called one! I never really missed the restaurant business, but never stopped cooking. In the early years of this blog I posted more recipes & articles on food, I taught cooking & went as far as taping a demo cooking show, and filming several recipes.  My aim has always been to empower people in the kitchen, not to impress them. I appreciate sophisticated techniques & truly enjoys highly skilled chefs but I was never into that kind of cooking.  My background is in French regional Southwestern food but I have been in the US since 1987 and learned so much about food here. Getting together with Pierre Joris (here producer/dishwasher/husband) in 1989 was crucial for my artistic future but also for my cooking experience: it is through Pierre that I met Diane Rothenberg & Margie Byrd who are my mentors in many ways. Both are great cooks and had open tables for many years. Diane, an anthropologist, tremendously expanded my perspectives on the history of food; Margie taught me many American staples — the best corn bread ever! & then there is my childhood friend Ariane Daguin from d’Artagnan who is an inspiration has been incredibly supportive of my food related performance work. She was an early supporter of La Garbure Transcontinentale/The Bi-Continental Chowder, a performance that included texts, videos, cooking and sharing the result with the audience. Pierre & I went on doing more of these performance & a memorable one was at the Jardin des Cinq Sens et des Formes Premières in Provence; this performance included the making of a Primordial Soup, readings, vidéos, music by Denis Brun and a Karstic-Action Painting. Here are some pix.

But my cooking debut were really early! I was born in Luchon (French Pyrenees) into the 5th generation of a family of hoteliers-restaurateurs (Hotel Poste et Golf) & my very early cooking training started when I was 6 years old with my grand-father chef Joseph Peyrafitte (whose father Louis was also a chef). Later, when I took over the family kitchen, I went to intern at award winning restaurants in France –1982: Restaurant Vanel, Toulouse, 1991: Hotel de France, Auch. Both places had 2 stars at the Michelin Guide  — then I got a few awards myself!

Anyway! forwarding to today: like everyone else we are trying to make the best of this imposed confinement & I always find solace in cooking & eating well.  So Pierre & I decided to share the prepping of our simple & healthy home cooking live. We are live both on Facebook & Instagram Monday-Friday from 12 to 12:30 —sometimes a bit longer.  Sharing & live-casting our cooking is really in line with our Domopoetic* practice.

* Domopoetics is our collaborative attempt to think, feel & make us respons/able to this/our world & it responsive to us. We do this via our private lives & public actions & performances that meander dialogically between Nicole Peyrafitte’s drawings & videos, voice-, textual & cooking work & Pierre Joris’ poems, translations & essayistic thinking.

Memorabilia:

Sitting next to a chaud-froid de volaille at the hotel Kitchen
Hotel Poste & Golf Bagnères-de-Luchon (here circa 1965)
My grand-pa Chef Joseph Peyrafitte
San-Diego 1990 : Nicole, Pierre Franey, Ariane Daguin
Award 1981
Award 1982