andrew infanti 

fr ➜ en

voir

Une Saga documentaire sur l’OuLiPo

Musique : Matthew Shlomowitz
Texte : Andrew Infanti
Vidéo : Rees Archibald
Récitation : Joanna Bailie, Dave Procter

Cette œuvre est le fruit d’une collaboration artistique destinée au public de l’Association londonienne Rational Rec créée en 2007. Le texte d’Andrew Infanti applique diverses contraintes littéraires prônées par le groupe OuLiPo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle). La musique de Shlomowitz et les images d’Archibald offrent des contrepoints humoristiques et distanciés. (en lire plus …)

Echantillons graphiques et textuels

Documentary Saga about the OuLiPo
text department

Section 1B – Constraints [Saga Tone]
172 words
(… plus 17)


A lofty law, a LIPOGRAM with skill casts out a consonant or vocoid from a book, long or short. This class of constraint fashions vast hardships for the word-craftsman.

Thus, a constraint by opinion simplistic can harass a word- stylist causing many twists and turns of talk to say a thought without using that word-thing which must not show up.

Avoiding an obvious trap, an OuLiPO rat in his labyrinth must burrow paths of possibility around such obvious limits.

A grand catalog of OuLiPO constraints has found its way to print. Many innovations amplify proportions found in an old and famous fancy of past days. Sundry OuLiPo lyricists aim to parody our Bard’s iambic artistry through rationality not INSPIRATION. Copy his grammar and apply its rigid ramifications as a program. Gloss syntax from old songs and adapt it to an infinity of unknown, unsaid sayings. Pat and pull all into palindromic putty. 

OuLiPo disdains fatuous facts. A word-craftsman culls and authors axioms as in math. Unchains a possibility by applying a formula.

Documentary Saga about the OuLiPo
text department

Section 4B - Combinatoriality [Saga Tone]
72 words
(… minus 17)


N R T S A W O L
R T S A W O L N
T S A W O L N R
S A W O L N R T
A W O L N R T S
W O L N R T S A
O L N R T S A W
L N R T S A W O
N R T S A W O L


Never restrict to sense a word or letter!

Rhyming takes sound and walks over logic. Newer tools shape associations while ordering literal revolutions.

Sequences advance, wearing out, looping, neutrally recycling things and weaving oulipien labyrinths nobly redistributing treasured significance which older laws narrowly regulated. Theory-spun aggregates of letters negate revelation’s treacherous stimulus and wake literature, nodding round the sacred accident. Weapons OuLiPo nurtures, reclaiming tenser structures: a whirligig obliging language.

Documentary Saga about the OuLiPo
text department

Section 5B- Anticipatory Plagiary [Saga Tone]

91 words

(… minus 18)


[ … like many masterpieces]

Songs by old bards must tend their tithe.

Prior poets render tribute having cozened constraints concerning

OuLiPo’s exclusive experiment. History’s harbingers invaded, inferring invention.

Contributions subsequently reconsidered plagiarism, counterfeited literature’s tutelary indemnity

incapacitated, OuLiPolitics excommunicates traditionalist appreciations. Atavistically exaggerating determinism,

neo-oulipien retro-appropriation metamorphoses anticipatory potentiality, counterdemonstrating anthropological reversibility.

Productivity propagandizes proprietary polygenesis. Imperishable legitimacy, intrinsically indefensible,

obstinately original, dissimulates embezzlement. Oulipien outrageousness recuperates recognition,

harvesting heretofore historic happenings, recently rectified OuLiPo inventions.

Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Pushkin, announced fragile theories later 

made truth by French men near the Seine.