Michel Layaz in «Insight Journey» (Voyages immobiles) , artist’s book, 2000, (extracts)
Verticales, juillet 2000
There it is again. For once without ostentation. A fragile presence, making itself felt more strongly, stirring up the effects of time. An aura, unbound. Poised between earth and sky. The aura, like a visitor, resting on branches or against tree trunks, floorboards, on a table, a chair, the earth that has been touched, leaves slipping through the hand, light on skin, the tiny sound of the grass. And that movement. First it hesitates, then it swings. From fear to calm. From joy to pain. From darkness into light. And in the space of this movement is the dream of what has been. Of what will be. From one moment to the next. Of what subsists. Man is here: in a garden being worked, a hut being built, furniture arranged around, ruins being restored. Man has gone. He may come back. What we remember and what we forget, who decides? We may question, question as much as we like; we may even go beyond. On the other side, it will no longer be a matter of being visible. Then our presence shall be seen. On the fallen branch. On the chair that has been shifted. In the promise of the wind.
Les chaises, juillet 99
In a shimmer of grass and flowers storing the trace of whispered conversations and rhythmic pauses we have these two chairs. Shall we tell all, or smother all? But the songs of grief and the words of joy have no import. Nothing matters in the dancing light and the disappearing shade save being there, save having been there, culled like a sacrificial flower.
Cabane, janvier 98
Hitched up to our past, a closed space that gives birth to fairies, fears, joys, monsters, a little cabin where secret whispers are exchanged for other secret words, where leaders are crowned, where tears are hidden, an enclosed space where the melody of the branches sang to the child, »You are free. Neither darkness nor light shall slay thee.» But the hut has fallen, and the bindings of memory, now wearing out, have also fallen away.
