Poems and Monsters: Pierre Alferi’s “Cinépoésie”

In Pierre Alferi’s oeuvre, what place should we give to his “cinepoetical” excursions? As we seek an answer, let’s briefly take the poet at his word, and start where, according to one of his recent titles, everything begins. Ça commence à Séoul (2007) is the result of a collaboration between Pierre Alferi and sculptor Jacques Julien. In this poetic and visual “series of adventures” described on the DVD cover as “woven together from images and sounds, from voice-overs and slow motion, from storyboards and cartoons [“toons”], there emerges an “incident regrettable” (the title of one episode) concerning a banal ping-pong table. The four intertitles that announce the scenes, as in a silent film, tell us that this table, “on four legs,” “feet soldered to the ground,” “incapable of taking part in the merry-go-round,” not having “even the right to undulate or to grow,” and judging that this life “is no longer bearable,” is reduced “in order to regain its liberty / to count on [tabler sur] a cataclysm.”