Julien BLAINE, France

Born in 1942, lives and works in Ventabren.

Julien Blaine is one of the most singular of French poets. Heir to both Dada and lettrism, he was at the origin of a very large number of experiments aimed at breaking the traditional semantic resources and the use of automatic language. Blaine’s poetic semiotics, sound poetry, is willingly spectacular in its own way, and appeals strongly to the bodily presence and a voice modulation, similar to the approaches used in contemporary music. Blaine is one of the major leading French protagonists of performance art.

Gesture, breath, energy characterizes the speech of Julien Blaine. Besides his Metaphysical poems and his semiotics of poetry, he commits his whole body to extend a thinking beyond words. This is apparent in his poetic gesture which is inseparable from his commitment to poetry in general.

Publisher / founder of the journal Doc (k) s (since taken over by Akenaton), Blaine have travelled around the world for decades, looking for 'basic' poetry, giving voice to opponents, dissidents, victims of the most totalitarian regimes. Julien Blaine is the co-creator of the International Centre for Poetry in Marseille and VAC (Ventabren Contemporary Art). Author of numerous books including Ch'i (Unfinitude Ed.Nèpe), I in Marseille (Ed.Cornaway), Before variants (Ed.AIOU) ...