The Thing

The Thing - E. Vila-Matas

Albert Monis wrote to me and told me that he and Arrietta would feel honored, contented, drawn and photographed if I wrote something at the beginning of this book which contained a universe of images perfectly connected with mine. There was in this letter an attachment with the work whose prologue I was to write. And I thought: I'm going to look at these images, but something that carries within it something of Arrietta, it's not even necessary that I see it: it has a relationship with my own universe, that's for sure . Having said that, I looked at this exhibit; "The thing", I began to call it; And then some time later it became "The thing".
The thing here and the thing there. I remembered the "thing" every time I went back to the computer, went back into the file and saw myself as part of a certain way in the book of Monis and Arrietta; I was one more thing of the thing, of that very thing which had happened to me as an attachment, I knew not whence; What importance, moreover, since the place from which it came could not change by a millimeter what I had already seen, and on which I had already made a jubilant judgment.
Let's see-I decided to tell the thing- I have no image, you have one and I do not; I am only a pen and a paper, but what I write reflects the trace left by the moment, it is a drawing, a photograph, a thing that has been and will one day, at this very moment, 'art.
However, I was worried because this reflection reflected only one face of the moment.
Let's see if I keep saying to the thing, what you hear is not meant to be read because, to begin with, it is probably not true to say that it is written, but rather That it was created to be watched and listened to, to be photographed and drawn.
Look, look at me, ghost wandering in the salons of memories, lonely and strange among other strangers, static nomad in the place where you see me, I can not assure that my words are art on something, , Art on this where on that, discursive art or art in itself, the thing, the thing, to tell it all. That is what it is all about. Turn the page. The door that overlooks the world is open ....

- Dimensions: Hardcover 13 cm high x 18 cm wide
- Weight: 180 grams
- Number of pages: 40 inner pages printed in four-color process
- Quality: high quality paper Gardapat 13 Kiara. Cover with text in white silkscreen

Limited edition of 300 copies
Editions de la Mangrove, Nîmes and Paris
ISBN 979-10-90202-14-6