MARC-ANTOINE MATHIEU /// Graphic Novels and Borgesian Labyrinths

This conversation is an interview I did with graphic novelist Marc-Antoine Mathieu for Chicago-based architectural journal MAS Context (Issue 20: Narrative). The interview was made in French as you will hear, but for the purpose of Archipelago, this version is dub with the English version given by Liduam Pong. Marc-Antoine and I speak about his fascination to design labyrinths in which he can loose his characters, his readers, and himself as well. We also evoke the specificity offered by this unique medium of the graphic novel, as well as the way third and fourth dimensions can be considered and imagined through this object. The few excerpts of his books following here will give an insight of what kind of worlds his work creates, even for the non-francophone reader, who is likely to grasp the way Marc-Antoine acts on the very structure of the book itself.

Marc-Antoine Mathieu is a French graphic novelist who, books after books, explores new ways to integrate the very form of the graphic novel as integrative part of the labyrinths of his narratives. His series Julius Corentin Acquefacques, prisonnier des rêves (Julius Corentin Acquefacques, prisoner of dreams) that gathers six books from 1990 to 2013, in particular, deconstructs one by one every formal components of the graphic novel (cover, frames, perspective, two-dimensionality, directions of the pages, flatness of the page) while composing metaphysical considerations of what reality really is. As said in the following conversation, he seeks for the loss of control, the Borgesian vertigo, in which he himself, as the author, would get lost and let the world he instigated acquire a certain autonomy.

WEBSITES:

– http://www.editions-delcourt.fr/catalogue/auteurs/mathieu_marc_antoine
– http://cicla.pagesperso-orange.fr/div/marc-antoine_mathieu.html (non-official website)

WRITTEN VERSION OF THE INTERVIEW:

– “Labyrinths and Metaphysical Constructions: An Interview with Marc-Antonie Mathieu” on MAS Context 20

REFERENCES BOOKS:

– Marc-Antoine Mathieu, L’origine (The Origin), Paris: Delcourt, 1990.
– Marc-Antoine Mathieu, La qu... (The Qu…), Paris: Delcourt, 1991.
– Marc-Antoine Mathieu, Le processus (The Process), Paris: Delcourt, 1993.
– Marc-Antoine Mathieu, Le début de la fin (The End of the Beginning), Paris: Delcourt, 1995.
– Marc-Antoine Mathieu, Mémoire morte (Dead Memory), Paris: Delcourt, 2000.
– Marc-Antoine Mathieu, La 2,333e dimension (The 2.333th Dimension), Paris: Delcourt, 2004.
– Marc-Antoine Mathieu, 3 secondes (3 seconds), Paris: Delcourt, 2011.
– Marc-Antoine Mathieu, Le décalage (The Discrepancy), Paris: Delcourt, 2013.
Translated into English: Dead Memory (Dark Horse, 2004) & 3″ (forthcoming 2014)

EXCERPTS:

Marc-Antoine Mathieu, Le processus (The Process), Paris: Delcourt, 1993.

Marc-Antoine Mathieu, L’origine (The Origin), Paris: Delcourt, 1990.

Marc-Antoine Mathieu, La 2,333e dimension (The 2.333th Dimension), Paris: Delcourt, 2004.

Marc-Antoine Mathieu, Dead Memory, Dark Horse, 2004.