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Félicia Atkinson - Animals
Animals questions through a poetic approach the modernist apprehension of time and locomotion, in the realm of today.
Animals is the third novel by Felicia Atkinson, following Twenties Are Gone (2012) and Improvising sculpture as delayed fictions (2014). Somehow, Felicia Atkinson is asking herself what is the feeling of passing the beginning of a century on the passenger's seat whereas it is experienced through reading, writing, while she is traveling by train or by car, scrolling informations on a computer, and its consequences on one own's perception of a particular landscape. Or, even how to behave in a mundane context. Can a lake shape a relationship? Can a train be an office? How to deal with neighbors? When to act? When to stop? Can the words mean the same thing all the time? What is duration? How to feel specificity inside a crowd? Through simple words in English (Atkinson is a French native speaker) in the rhythm of an echoing monologue punctuated by black and white paper cut-outs, the author finds her way through the book with an ambiguous mixture of “nonchalance” and attention. Animals is a train ride, an experience of time brushed by the fugitive landscapes and the indistinct noises all around.
Limited edition of 200 copies.
Experimental musician, sound and visual artist Félicia Atkinson (born 1981) lives on the wild coast of Normandy (France). She has played music since the early 2000s. She has released many records and a novel on Shelter Press, the label and publisher she co-runs with Bartolomé Sanson.
For Félicia Atkinson, human voices inhabit an ecology alongside and within many other things that don't speak, in the conventional sense: landscapes, images, books, memories, ideas. The French electro-acoustic composer and visual artist makes music that animates these other possible voices in conversation with her own, collaging field recording, MIDI instrumentation, and snippets of essayistic language in both French and English. Her own voice, always shifting to make space, might whisper from the corner or assume another character's tone. Atkinson uses composing as a way to process imaginative and creative life, frequently engaging with the work of visual artists, filmmakers, and novelists. Her layered compositions tell stories that alternately stretch and fold time and place, stories in which she is the narrator but not the protagonist.
Félicia Atkinson has collaborated with musicians including Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Chris Watson, Christina Vantzou, and Stephen O'Malley, and with ensembles including Eklekto (Geneva) and Neon (Oslo). She has performed at venues and festivals including INA GRM/Maison de la Radio and the Philharmonie (Paris), Issue Project Room (NYC), the Barbican Center (London), Le Guess Who (Utrecht), Atonal (Berlin), Henie Onstad (Oslo), Unsound (Krakow), and Skanu Mesz (Riga). Her work has been commissioned by filmmakers (Ben Rivers, Chivas de Vinck) and fashion houses (Prada, Burberry). She has exhibited in museums, galleries, and biennials including RIBOCA Biennale (Riga), Overgaden (Copenhagen), BOZAR (Brussels), Espace Paul Ricard (Paris), and MUCA ROMA (Mexico City).
 
published in April 2016
English edition
14 x 21 cm (softcover)
160 pages (b/w ill.)
 
sold out
Animals Animals Animals


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