Collection of texts, each dedicated to the life of an illustrious man as seen by another illustrious man.
The illustrious subjects: Tiberius, Jesus Christ, Dante Alhigieri, Caravaggio, Christopher Columbus, Giambattista Vico, Rene Descartes, Napoleon Bonaparte, Sigmund Freud, Richard Wagner, James Joyce, Margaret Thatcher.
The illustrious writers: Suetonius, Ernest Renan, Giovanni Boccacio,
Arnaud Labelle-Rojoux, Jules Verne, Adrien Baillet, Giambattista Vico, Stendhal, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Italo Svevo, Hugo Young.
Anne-James Chaton (born in 1970 in Besançon) has developed a multi-polar work, based on a continuous study of the textual materials that punctuate the daily life of contemporary societies. This "poor" literature, produced on a daily basis by a multitude of machines—cash register receipts, museum entrance tickets, leaflets, business cards, credit cards, subscriptions, etc.—constitutes the material for his textual work, which is also used in the production of his work.
The plural and polyglot dimension of his work has led him to develop projects with artists from other scenes and other languages. He has created pieces with Phia Ménard, Sylvain Prunenec, Valeria Giuga, and has written numerous albums with guitarist
Andy Moor (The Ex), German musician
Carsten Nicolai aka
Alva Noto and
Sonic Youth member Thurston Moore.
His books are published by
Al Dante and P.O.L., his visual works are shown by the Far West Gallery and his sound compositions are published on the German label Noton. Anne-James Chaton was a resident at the Villa Medici, French Academy in Rome in 2020. He received the
Bernard Heidsieck-Centre Pompidou International Prize for Literature in 2022.
