Nachtboek 1978-1984

ANTWERP, 7 FEBRUARY 1978

Beauty, the voodoo that heals or poisons the body.

ANTWERP, 8 FEBRUARY 1978

Night belongs to me.

I draw all my ghosts.

My night is a space without taboos.

ANTWERP, 9 FEBRUARY 1978

The garden is my private exhibition space.

After digging, measuring and sewing for weeks, my Project voor een nachtelijk grondgebied* is complete.

I want my tent-laboratory to be an empirical practice that requires discipline and total abnegation.

ANTWERP, 11 FEBRUARY 1978

Aware and unaware actions by experience.

To distill art.

A process of self-realization.

ANTWERP, 13 FEBRUARY 1978

I am a lonely shadow

in a mysterious garden.

ANTWERP, 14 FEBRUARY 1978

We need ceremonies again.

Of special rituals.

Of new initiations.

Because the artist of the future will get back to ‘making’ real objects.

And he will be the one who will know the secret of their ‘making’.

ANTWERP, 15 FEBRUARY 1978

I draw as a breath,

Too fast sometimes.

And then I throw my thoughts on paper

and sprinkle them with my sweat.

ANTWERP, 16 FEBRUARY 1978

Most divine things elude human knowledge

for disbelief.

(From Heraclitus, sixth century BC)

Jan Fabre (Belgium, 1958 – ) translated in English by Slow Words from Giornale Notturno (1978-1984) edizioni Cronopio (Napoli, 2016-8), ISBN 978-88-98367-20-7

Here you can buy the discounted book (Italian) 

The image cover (ph. Diana Marrone) is a glass ceiling on show at The Castles in the Hour Blue, a Fabre’s solo show in various private and public spaces of the city of Milan


The Night Writer, a performance Jan Fabre took from the book, is on tour in Europe. From January 16 to 17 it’s at Teatro Goldoni (Venice), check here for further dates

*project of nocturnal territories

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