Lisa Robertson: Anemones—A Simone Weil Project

It is with great pleasure that we present Lisa Robertson’s Anemones: A Simone Weil Project, the fourteenth publication within the If I Can’t Dance Performance in Residence programme.

Three years ago, If I Can’t Dance invited poet and writer Lisa Robertson to develop an experimental research project based on her long-term study of medieval troubadour poetry and the invention of the rime in the historical region of Occitania. The scope of this investigation offered If I Can’t Dance an intriguing proposition to revisit genealogies of performance that sit outside the canons that define this rather young discipline. Troubadour poetry was composed and sung in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries using the Occitan vernacular language, a language of migratory confluences, where Arab, Jewish, Christian and secular popular traditions blend and jostle. Unlike the stability and authority of Latin or of the then forming French territory to the north, troubadour rime culture elaborated a poetics of intermixture—linguistic, erotic and mystical, in the southwest region of what is now France, in relation to Andalusian, Syrian and Palestinian cultural movements and influences, as well as to plant and animal neighbours. As Robertson explained at the Edition VIII—Ritual and Display introductory weekend in October 2019, this language “learn[ed] from birds, leaves and tree frogs as well as people”, each of which moved between lands and over the borders of political territories.

What was initially going to be a publication on the invention of the rime within these vocal and cultural movements eventually took a different turn. The archival research and the collaborations Robertson had envisioned for the project had to come to a halt due to the prolonged confinements provoked by the outbreak of Covid-19. In this space of arrest, Robertson encountered the essay “What the Occitan Inspiration Consists Of”, penned by philosopher, mystic and political activist Simone Weil in 1942 for the Marseilles-based anti-fascist literary journal Les Cahiers du Sud. Written from within the devastations of the World War II, Weil elevates the troubadour concept of love to a practice of political resistance that rejects force in all its forms. In a new annotated translation that lies at the heart of the volume, Robertson dwells on the transhistorical potential of this notion, coming to terms with the broken lineage of troubadour culture, the legacy of Weil’s philosophical thought and the violent context from which it emerged. In so doing, Robertson embraces the affect of both actualised and suppressed histories, testifying to friendship, readership and the resistance of words across incommensurable distances.

Designed by Amsterdam-based Rietlanden Women’s Office, Anemones: A Simone Weil Project moves between poetry, the epistolary genre and scholarly research. Echoing Weil’s philosophical concerns, the publication is also the site of a performance of dedication that takes the form of a series of floral actions conceived and realised by artist Benny Nemer. Carrying a letter written by Robertson, Nemer delivered an arrangement of flowers to seven people—artists, writers, poets—this book is dedicated to. The pages of the book then become the receptacle of a performativity that resists consumption and is not meant to be seen, announced and disclosed, but rather imagined, whispered and savoured in a moment of intimacy.

For the festive launch of the publication, hosted by Ellen de Bruijne Projects and Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, we invite you to attend a Radio Emma conversation and two live readings by Robertson. During the day you are also welcome to pass by and experience a floral action by Benny Nemer, browse through some of Robertson’s research materials, and buy your copy of the book for a reduced launch price (through January 9).

Book launch programme
Sunday, December 12, 2021
Online: Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee
On site: Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Singel 372, Amsterdam

1–2pm: Radio Emma
Curator archive and research Anik Fournier and director Frédérique Bergholtz in conversation with Lisa Robertson, Benny Nemer, and Rietlanden Womens Office’s Johanna Ehde & Elisabeth Rafstedt
Tune in via Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee

2–5pm (ongoing): Floral Action—Benny Nemer

3pm: Reading—Lisa Robertson
A poem by Bernart de Ventadorn

4pm: Reading—Lisa Robertson
A poem by William IX of Poitiers

Lisa Robertson’s Anemones: A Simone Weil Project—curated by Sara Giannini—is part of If I Can’t Dance’s Edition VIII—Ritual and Display (2019–21). Edition VIII also includes new productions by Derrais Carter, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Giulia Damiani, Sara Giannini, MPA and Sands Murray-Wassink.

The live radio broadcast is realised in partnership with Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee. Special thanks to Naomi Collier Broms, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, and Master of Artistic Research of the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten.

If I Can’t Dance receives structural support from the Mondriaan Fund and the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts) and project support from the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds.

Other titles in the Performance in Residence programme
18 pictures and 18 stories, Bulegoa z/b and Isidoro Valcárcel Medina
Adrian Piper: Performing Objects I Have Been, Rhea Anastas
Anemones: A Simone Weil Project, Lisa Robertson   
Black Revelry: In Honor of The Sugar Shack, Derrais Carter
Chroma Lives, Erin Alexa Freedman and Lili Huston-Herterich
Delphine Seyrig’s Calamity, Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez
Guy de Cointet’s Five Sisters, Marie de Brugerolle
How We Behave, Grant Watson
I See/La Camera: I, Jacob Korczynski with contributions from Lucy Lippard and Babette Mangolte
Louise Lawler: A Movie Will Be Shown Without the Pictures, Sven Lütticken
Maquillage as Meditation: Carmelo Bene and the Undead, Sara Giannini
Matt Mullican’s Pure Projection Landscapes, Vanessa Desclaux
Taking Voice Lessons, Gregg Bordowitz
Ueinzz Theatre Company: Cosmopolitical Delay, Peter Pál Pelbart
Who touched me?, Fred Moten and Wu Tsang