A lover's discourse / un discours amoureux : a reading with Clémentine Bedos

The Surrey Poetry Festival Kivland read unsolicited ‘encounter’ emails as if they were intended for her alone in a sincere desire for a real love relation, until their repetition bored her. She posted them on Facebook, while she sought their form. Her friend A. C. wrote to tell her how much he was enjoying her lover’s discourse. The form became clear: after the French edition of Roland Barthes’s Fragments d’un discours amoureux (1977). In this reading Kivland read selected 'propositions' in her rarther literal English translation, while Fabienne Bideaud read each original French version, producing a reversed echo. The effect is somewhat like a film by Jean-Luc Godard. This is the third reading in a series, each with a different French woman.