Photos

Fragments of tablets

The humanist library of Sélestat: In March and April 2002, some fragments of the tablets were presented to the public in the midst of ancient manuscripts and other incunabula entrusted to this prestigious institution for preservation.

The apocryphal manuscript

How can we not be struck by the visual proximity of these iconotexts with the sophisticated pictograms of contemporary description? The work, which was put under seal at the Dominican cloister in Colmar, seems to belong to the environment of contemporary urban icons rather than to ancient writing. Despite numerous attempts, no one has been able to date or decipher this ancient writing.

Zhou Jinde – The apographies

While accuracy never involves beauty, “beauty” in itself can only exists when in connexion with the “accurate”.

In order to create the stained glass of the Puits d’Ambroise Chapel, Zhou Jinde sought inspiration in the tablets of Chanteroels. Firstly, he used a radiography system that he calls “apography”. Then, with the help of the Photonic systems laboratory of the Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg and the high technicity of an French industrial, he transposed the “sketches” on thin glass sheets that were vacuumed-packed.

Words carved out of stone

A message first depends on our ability to apprehend and receive the intention of the one who transmitted it, even beyond the latter’s precise will (James Brayes).

Because of their graphics and because of the way they are understood, the writings presented here might be the unsuspected projections that have escaped the humanoid memories of our computers: SMS, smileys and other text messagings. To which desert do they belong? To our suburbs saturated by tags? Or to the immense desert on which blows the Harmattan? (with my grateful thanks to Fatiha Sahali and Abdel Krim Ayoub).