In the late 1970s, Ariane Bergrichter undertook a profound autobiographical work that laid bare the underpinnings of her perceptions and persistent bursts of creativity. Between 1988 and 1996, swinging between phases of clairvoyance and anguish, remorse and a sense of persecution that resonated with her troubled past, Bergrichter began to write intensively in two very different manners. She scrupulously transcribed, in capital letters, the voices that she heard in her head, which harassed her until her death: OH, SHE IS SO STUPID—BUT HER STUPIDITY IS PROFITABLE TO ME. SHE DOES NOT TAKE AWAY HER LIFE, I TAKE AWAY HER LIFE—IT IS A LASER THAT I HAVE INSTALLED IN MY EARS TO SCATTER YOU—I WILL NOT DO IT THIS EVENING, BUT ONE OF THESE EVENINGS I WILL ATTACK.
In her notebooks, these sentences, directed at her with unbearable aggression, were surrounded by blocks of text that expressed her personal reflections. Written in conventional style, they served as reaction and resolution to the preceding authoritarian statements: His desire, to stay invisible and compromise me, me who finally had a little autonomy—Now everything can happen to me—he kidnaps me with no witness, he mutilates me organically—I have not had an hour of independence since 1988—It is as if one allowed a kettle whistle to blow in my head. Inhuman, experimental rat.
Bergrichter undertook this literary practice, which functioned as an outlet, in parallel with her creation of collages. Roaming downtown Brussels, she made sketches from life of café scenes, individuals with remarkable profiles, and workers in the service industry, building a raw, unembellished chronicle of daily life. Incognito, Bergrichter observed and recorded in ballpoint pen on bits of paper the individual scenes that she witnessed. She generally accompanied the figures that she drew with fragments of their conversation, inserted in bubbles in comic-book style. Sometimes she sketched herself on these pages, evoking her sources of inspiration, her youth, and the world of fashion. Every few months, she chose some of her drawings to assemble roughly with Scotch tape and glue on a rigid backing. On the back of this collage, she added other elements necessary to the story that she wanted to tell: threatening images from advertisements, cynical personal remarks about power relations, social critiques tinged with ridicule, various newspaper articles, and outrageous lists of her essential needs. As a way to finish these compositions and unify the disparate scenes, she colored the subjects that abounded on the surface of her collages. Occasionally, a crosshatched framing would define and enclose the composition. Ultimately, Bergrichter folded her works in eight and hid them away from prying eyes. After her death, her children found more than fifty collages stuffed in a large brown suitcase. Gathered like this and alluding to a displacement state, these works forge a cacophonic memory palace through time, composed of reconfigured individual and disparate stories.
Valérie Rousseau, “Ariane Bergrichter. Patchworked Narratives: Reconfiguring the Real,” in Vestiges & Verse: Notes from the Newfangled Epic, ed. Valérie Rousseau (New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2018).
