PARIS.- This is not a show “about” Michel Houellebecq, but a show “by” Michel Houellebecq, demonstrating how the writer has produced a form that contributes to the reinvention of exhibitions, by mixing up literature, photography and cinema, between fact and fiction.

Born in 1958, the poet, essayist, novelist and filmmaker Michel Houellebecq has always had close ties with the cinema and the world of the visual arts, which have accompanied and extended his reflexions since the start of his career, as the frequent allusions to them in his novels attest.

This show is a scenario, leading visitors through the writer’s obsessions. Made up of sounds, photographs, installations and films he has conceived, as well as the presence of several guest artists (such as Robert Combas), it will offer an immersion into the world and mind of the protean creator who is Michel Houellebecq.

The show is also an extension of the exploration conducted by Palais de Tokyo into the echoes between literature and contemporary creation, starting with the Raymond Roussel exhibition in 2013, before continuing with the John Giorno show in October 2015, the Jean-Michel Alberola exhibition in February 2016, and Double Je from March 24th to May 16th 2016.

“On several occasions, I have thought about introducing bifurcations, or narrative options, into a novel. I am not the first to have tried this – or to have failed.

Coetzee used an interesting system in his Diary of a Bad year, which has footnotes. I tried to interweave two narratives in The Possibility of an Island. But then one of the narratives ended up by dominating the other; it is above all the first ten or so pages of Diary of a Bad year which attract attention; and what I above all managed to do, in The Possibility of an Island , is a shift from one dominant narrative to another (thanks to using poetry, that universal can-opener).

what I think we were both aiming at is a second dimension, which is incompatible with a timeline, and thus unreachable within the limitations of our art.

Obviously, when planning the exhibition, I said to myself: but of course, that’s what I should have done! why didn’t I think of that before?

I haven’t overdone the bifurcations. There is an important one at about entrance+30 m ; then another, less brutal one at entrance+70 m . Otherwise there are obligatory points of passage, but also optional rooms. From a narratological point of view, it’s very rich. My faithful, so faithful readers (to such extent that it’s become really moving) will I hope recognise my main idiosyncrasies.

A downer of a beginning, not devoid of radicalness, via an irremissible immersion in reality.

A clear taste for megalomaniacal nonsense , the impression that I could put in anything, juxtaposing all types of representation and discourse. But that comes more towards the middle. It is there, too, that my guests, my next of kin , shine out. My thanks to them for existing.

Towards the end, things become evanescent, with a spiral of individual disappearances, or a walking-ghost phase.

Suddenly, an intrusive, gloomy romanticism emerges, re-enlightening the whole, and a second visit can begin. That would mean total success, and I can’t hope for it very often; if I get there with one or two people a day, then that will be fine.”
Michel Houellebecq

Michel Houellebecq is, since the 1990s, one of the contemporary authors of French language the most translated and read in the world.

“Michel Thomas was born on the French island Réunion in 1958, his mother was a doctor and his father a mountain guide. His early years were marked by frequent moves (Savoy, Algeria, back to Réunion). His life gained a certain stability after his parents’ divorce, when, at the age of six, he went to live with his paternal grandmother (whose maiden name, Houellebecq, he adopted as his penname).
His childhood was spent in Dicy, in the yonne. Then his teenage years in villiers-sur-Morin, in Seine-et-Marne.

After a high-school diploma, which he passed at the age of seventeen, he continued his education in Paris where, five years later, he qualified as an agronomist (specialising in vegetal ecology).

There then followed periods of unemployment intercut with periods of work (firstly to do with agronomics; then mostly for IT service providers).

1991 saw him publish his first book, as well become an administrative secretary at the Assemblée Nationale.

There, he had a brief career in the IT department. In 1996 he took unpaid leave for personal reasons, before resigning in 2008.”

Curator: Jean de Loisy