Here, the speech of Jean Mas:

Allow me to rise from this couch as the wind rises, to listen to what the wind says, the word of the wind that carries the breath of my speech which is born and which exists only in the crevices of my art.

To speak of what I do, of the facts themselves, the effects that garb me, that gabble, this has the effect of seeking to speak by raising the question of truth. To raise the question is not to submit to it, it’s just a way of moving forward. The forward knows, it is knowledge that allows the step, the step forward, the step knows, the past which allows me here to remember that between Genius and Madness the doctor Lombroso placed or situated the mastoid......: an intermediate category, he claims: “There exists a variety that presents to us the exterior of a man of genius with the substance of the common man. It is this variety that forms the intermediate ring between madmen of genius, sane men, and actual fools.”

This category has not attracted a following, but it is interesting to follow the thinking, the conceptual framework of the psychiatrist who tried to make a problem of the creations he discovered.

Thus, following the intermediary I will continue with madness, the Scythe (symbol), the scythe holds things together, the grim reaper of death connects them. To reread, a reading never finished in the impossibility of speaking the truth about the truth; in truth, death is the only thing that one cannot experience, it is the real, the reason why as the basis of creation, yes, the why indeed!

The how is found in the pursuit of pleasure outside the place of the other! There is the where, the when, the why of death; creation tends to slip away, to put the why at a distance (by sinthome / symptom, sublimation...), the flight from meaning.

(The where: the setting, the when: the time). When the time and the setting flow together = sensory experience)

The first Surrealist manifesto was André Breton’s declaration against death, thus it is in this spirit that I propose an action: a raffle.

Action

Declaring oneself against death helps an artist organize chaos. For this, we have at our disposal religion, science, law, and art;, the last of which brings us together here this evening (the setting the time the theme).

Back to chaos: that would be a case high and a case low on a ladder leading to a dark cell, a hot cell for which we would need water to cool down, which makes me appear to be a water cache.

You understood that I am the whale, me, the producer of my art. It is this grey matter, produced by the whale’s intestinal evacuations called Ambergris, here we are with this grey matter that is the fragrance of my art......

Action

Back to my art, I didn’t say Bonnard: for him it’s too late, let’s go with Artaud, because, you see, for Art.

Artaud, the word is, in the literal sense of the word, a term, that is to say the terminal place of the organism, the organ of nerve endings, I will add to conclude, that in the long run it doesn’t have the word, it happens when talk becomes action, because if without “saying a word” nothing happens, with my words, you should consider action.

Here’s another concrete example: you’re going to have a slide projection...

Action

Here you are now, predisposed to better grasp what I’m telling you, send off, in full voice so to speak! Predisposed, Francis Ponge’s pasture is indeed the site where something is going to happen; predispose, lay out the pasture, that’s what the artist does.

And so, here, this evening, I am founding the college of Nice. The sign at the entry says so.

Works… Action

In any case, it’s always a matter of cutting off, of ignoring a separation in order to organize the chaos. In Greek mythology, Cronus, in order to stop his father Uranus’ unbridled proliferation, cut off his genital organs. Thus the organization of separation brings fresh air into my art, the pasture text of the letter P. From this letter P may an infinity of senses unfurl, it’s a basic signifier (phonetically).

Action: Distribution of a Portion to toss.

To finish, allow me to come back to the word “decease,” with a wink and a nod to André Breton. I want to suggest for a moment some CDs. CDs, there are plenty of them, and even when they’re gone, there will still be some left.

Action:

End.