Chloé Delaume

Chloé Delaume was born in 1973. She has been writing experimental autofiction since 2000, in written, sound and performance forms. Director of the Extraction collection at Editions Joca Seria, as well as of the digital magazine of the same name, her approach to literature is akin to that of a laboratory, centered on the notion of research and hybridization of media and genres. Autofiction, Serge Doubrovsky: “Fiction, of strictly real events and facts. If you like, autofiction, of having entrusted the language of an adventure to the adventure of a language in freedom”. Lacan also said: “The real is when you bump into it”. Guy Debord adds: “In the world really turned upside down, the true is a moment of the false. That’s why Chloé Delaume, who is writing season 11 of her autofictive adventures at the Villa Médicis, is going to attempt a few permutations between reality and fiction. In order to achieve a “Reality of strictly fictitious events and facts”.

The project is entitled Messalina, dicit. Messalina, powerful woman, voracious instincts, who bent reality, bacchante, murdered, now almost 2000 years old; the fireflies in the Bosco, some say: her ghost. Another trace of her remains, too, in language. Messalina, it’s spit out, it means whore. There are still vestiges of Messalina in books, texts and films. Fiction, what reality. Messalina a historical figure, but so much fiction, dissolved, still floating, the fireflies exist in the Bosco. To transmute reality and fiction, Chloé Delaume will have to write a lot, compose a few sound pieces, light black candles in the middle of the night, create a secret society and a club, practice literature, performance and magic.