Hommage a Guy

Review

You are Guy Debord. Your breakdown has been stolen and sold back to you. Some kind of self-help book with cheerful cartoons. You try to explain that this is all wrong to the woman in the shop and she says it’s not that category of book at all, it’s a poetry book.

And so you open it again and this time the pages are different. They show pieces of cardboard with funny little sayings on them. Your words. Later, you go to a movie and when you reach for your money, you find the book, this book, in your pocket. Are you stealing things now? You go for a walk, following things that attract you, no set plan. You walk a long time, patrolling your life, this city of spectral memories. Just you and this damn book, walking round and round in the night, consumed by fire.

– Philip Davenport

A fascinating collection cleverly curated. On the left hand page we are given a list of the book’s contents, in French, with the title picked out in red of the artwork on the right hand page, which will have on it the same word, in various fonts on a piece of shaped paper, or fabric, and stuck to what looks like textured board. ne jamais plas plus looks to be printed on a petri dish, la belle vie on rescued bubblewrap. I read through this two or three times with pleasure and an English/French phrase book. My one problem being I don’t now know whether to slot it alongside my art or my poetry books.

– Sam Smith in The Journal