An homage to Marcel Proust
Ann Robinson
I have always been amazed by the poetic power of Marcel Proust’s writing, by his almost supernatural ability to translate our most subtle impressions and bring them to life. To read and love In Search of Lost Time is to become a "reader of oneself," guided on one’s own journey by the richness of his thought and the sharpness of his gaze.
In June 2021, I had the opportunity to handle two of Proust’s handwritten notebooks at the BNF. This experience determined the form my project would take. I saw in his manuscripts a real work-in-progress; notebooks bursting with folded and glued sheets of paper that his governess, Céleste Albaret, called "paperoles." I was struck by the parallels between his practice and my own, as my work also consists of an almost infinite accumulation of scraps, fragments, and successive layers. I enjoyed imagining Proust’s room strewn with notes on loose sheets, comparing it to my own studio, littered with Paris metro tickets, whole or cut, torn, scratched, and folded.
The Paris metro ticket is my raw material, a modern fragment of space and time. It allows me to transpose experiences of the physical world into the order of art by superimposing three shifting motifs: space, materialised by fragments of tickets with recognisable Parisian inscriptions; time, reflecting the linearity of a lived life and the uninterrupted thread of writing; and the work itself, represented by a circularity that evokes the "eternal return" of spiritual aspirations. In this series, I use it to create a "Proustian geography" of the neighbourhoods the author frequented, juxtaposing the linearity of lived life with the circularity of the work of art.
To convey the multi-faceted nature of Proust’s literary work, I reconstructed his notebooks in my own way using the format of a school workbook. I sought to recreate that sense of gestation; a work growing from within through the successive incorporation of disparate elements, by layering numerous pages and "swelling" the books with folded fragments. On the covers, I arranged metro tickets in rhythmic compositions.
Ultimately, this series is an exploration of "involuntary memory." By cutting, colouring, and rearranging the magnetic strips and logos of the RATP tickets, I aim to translate the kaleidoscopic organisation of La Recherche into a material form. Like Proust’s spinning wheel of chronological time, these collages represent the unpredictable resurgence of past impressions; the source of all creative desire.