Michel SerresSecon Maprrarios ow ouR Wars oF Kwowine ‘To amaze the crowd and get himself talked about, an artist wrapped bridges, buildings, statues in public squares. se, I hear, I know the world wrapped with words, sentences, images. We put birds in cages, fish in aquariums, plants in pots, children in schools, adults in factories and offices, women under veils fr in houses, God under the low crushing masses ”of stone in the churches of the countryside and the raves of the cathedrals, our love letters in envelopes, lastly, for settlement in ful all the things of the world in prison under words, locked up behind their bars. This so-called artist gives expression to this general wrapping. TT would like to listen to the things freed of these packages, the way they presented themselves before finding themselves named. Betelgeuse disappeared into the bag ofits star naming: I only eat asparagus or carrots folded in bunches in the dally newspaper of their appellation; I see winds and rains below their satellite image maps your fist name and your ‘words hide your body from me and even, almost, {your voice, your voice which, in its turn, names me. For thousands of years we have been licking things with our tongues, covering and daubing them so as to appropriate things for ourselves. If language boils down to a convention, this convention took place between the speakers without consulting the thing named, become asa result the property of those who covered it in this way with their drawn or voiced productions. Malfeasance analyzes these acts of appropriation, Thus every inert object, every living thing a well sleeps under the covers of signs alittle in the way that, today a thousand posters shouting messages and tagy rots of color drown, with their filthy flood, the 38 landscapes, or better, exclude them from perception ‘because the meaning, almost nil ofthis fle language and these base images forms an iresistible source of attraction to our neatons and eyes. Tie appropriation covers the world’s beauty with ugliness. How to estimate at their exact thickness the layers of meds ‘under whieh all things le, thus multiply wrapped ‘under veriting, folded under printed matter, gagged under images, hidden under sounds, choked under languages, lost under a hundred sereens? A screen, 4uite a confession: obstructing as much as revealing. One intelligent instructor once told me that certain of bis pupils, among the most gifted, seemed to be grieving from having suddenly entered into writing. Did they remember a world without words, before any learning of saying and reading? Were they weeping over a second loss? OF what use to us were certain neurons ofthe left occipito-temporal region of our brain before we re-employed them recently ~ less than three thousand years ~ for reading? The most expert specialists in cognitive science pose this {question as well Burying things ina first glove of words, a second pocket of writing, a third sereen of printed mater, a thousand names. Black boxes, rliquarie, prisons, ‘our safes belonging to the fabulously wealthy owners of everything in the world, without exception, The way our rightshanders help themselves to the straight 39line, orientation or the law; our language conventions ‘cover things so as to appropriate them. Freed from these pockets, these chests, 1 would like to see them reborn under their code proper name. And myself, aren't I called Michel Serres by pure and simple convention? The coding of my DNA says my true proper name, For liberating the things, ‘emancipating them, making us be reborn with ther inthis way, this is knowing them.Brncscumunn Yes, I've often seen the opened Earth, and I've even heard cries come out ofits gaping opening, lke the ancient Romans. Better, between the lips of that ‘opening, I've been present at births. Like ths. [Any alpinist has crossed crevasses. Gray, black, sometimes mauve, always blue-green, wide oF narrow, they threaten and yawn: gaping Farth. On a snow bridge or otherwise, no one crosses them without fear and trembling, particularly bergschrunds, those indentations, sometimes a thousand meters deep, at the vertical of rock faces and at the birth of glaciers, 2 as though born from their contact. 'm pleased t0 Ihave crossed, in dreading them, those crevassed rivers of ice before they die; I've seen them, litle by little, {grow shorter and sometimes disappear. You can fall into the hell of their gaping openings, you can aso ‘ome out of them, Like this. We were descending ~ Anne-Marie, brave and beaut, Jean-Yoes, ou saintly guide, and me ~ from the Barre des Ecrins, and with the morning over we ‘were getting ready to cross the final bergschrund before break at the hut pas the glacial crossing. The leader of the roped party took the usual measures, 4 solid anchor and two or three lengths of rope, Anne-Marie went forward and, as never happens the snow bridge gave way and she disappeared without a cry imo the abyss After having checked the anchor again, Jean-Yves and I, our hearts beating wildly, crawled to the upper lip of the crevasse and called ‘Anne, Anne-Marie!" From below, a voice answered us, unrecognizable, whose tonality surprised us; but anxiety can deform the throat and ice walls echo. [ven stranger: that call seemed to ask for 2 rope, while, duly tied and strapped in, our friend had no need for any additional link. Jean-Yves sent one a the sme, and as soon as we were assured with a shout that she could climb back up, we hauled her up with all our might. Fatigue, obstacles, ice ridges, getting 8stuck tothe limits of breaking, prudence, the ascent lasted a long time, inthe anxiety that it might fil ‘But finally we thought we were going to faint in seeing emerge fom the edges ofthe crevase...aman. ‘We were expecting a black-haired woman; a blond male emerged in her stead. A terrifying apparition. | can still se this pale, groaning, unexpected phantom come out of the ground, like the open lips of a ‘We were soon to leatn that we had just rescued another alpinist who, doing the same route solo, had fallen into the bergschrund two days previously and ‘was slowly dying from cold, hunger and abandonment. Resigned, he had even stopped shouting when, changed into an ice statue after two nights of agony, she heard calling not far from him. His desperate voice covered over the cries of our frend. (Of course, quickly, quickly, we extnpated, as well, fou Anne, angel, from the white-black and cold ell, With humor and bravura, she shook herself: “That was a narrow escape, wash it?” she laughed, deep- fiozen. With leaping hearts, we couldat stop hugging het Not only to warm her up. Aer the first treatments forthe escapees ~ survival blankets and hot tea fom the flask ~ after the final descent, slow, all four fed, reassured, elaxed around Kronenbourgs atthe hut, wwe calculated the rare chance that the snow bridge should have given way beneath the one at the very “4 same spot where the other had been victim, before, of 8 similar accident. What luck this misfortune, Drank with joy, more saintly than ever, Jean-Yves, standing fon the table, sang: "I found my Eurydice .. with a second Orpheus ... I have the right to drink even more than Noah For that morning the Earth gaped and twice gave birth, i i 45