The Treilles Meetings

Meeting with…

Geneviève Parot

Geneviève Parot, in writing residency for three months at the Fondation des Treilles, participated in a meeting hosted by Élodie Karaki at the Jacqueline de Romilly media library in Draguignan on October 9, 2021.

First through the theater and the radio, Geneviève Parot had her first contact with writing through the writing of scripts, songs and the adaptation of texts such as La porteuse de pain (the bread carrier) by Xavier de Montépin. Then, in 2005, her first novel Trois sœurs, a long silence (three sisters, a long silence), appeared followed in 2009 by La folie des solitudes, both published by Gallimard.

In her first book, Geneviève Parot tells the story of three sisters, Simone, Marie and Marthe, in “a fascinating journey through the 20th century, described with precision and economy” (Josyane Savigneau, Le Monde des Livres, May 12, 2005) “I remember him drawing a circle on the board and asking us to follow the line. You could never find the end of it, of course, and that was eternity. Spinning endlessly in circles on his steps, like a donkey with a noria. I did not like that idea. And even today it frightens me, with its human logic. I do not believe it. I prefer to imagine myself eternity like a line which starts from death and which climbs, which rises through the air, exceeds the birds, the clouds […], escapes the attraction of the earth, arrives where the sky resembles night, and continues to go, very far, between the planets and the stars, without end. “

For her second novel, La folie des solitudes, Geneviève Parot is freely inspired by a news item about parricide that occurred in her Creuse region in the 1920s. Then, Geneviève Parot and Élodie Karaki discussed themes dear to the author: the secret heritage transmitted from one generation to the next, the desire for commitment and its disillusions, the inscription of individual destinies in the “History with his big ax” (to use Georges Perec’s expression), but also on the question of genre: short story and novel, and the distinction between black literature and white literature, which our author puts into perspective. Before, of course, discussing the plot of her next story, a project for which she received the Author’s Residency prize.

…the public of the Arles photographic meetings – from July 6 to 10, 2021.

Meetings and exhibitions animated “the house of Treilles” located in the heart of the old town.

Open to the public, the “Maison des Treilles” was taken over by the winners of the Photography Prize. Some presented the project carried out during their residency, others, their new achievements.

In addition to the scheduled events, the place allowed to exhibit the work of the 2019/2020 laureates, to encourage new encounters and to imagine other projects.

This first edition was also an opportunity for Maryvonne de Saint Pulgent, President of the Foundation, to congratulate Laura Serani, who chaired the jury for 7 years, for her remarkable work, and to present its new members and Jean-Luc Monterosso, who succeeds her.

Access here to the program of the 2021 edition

Garance Meillon

On Saturday May 22, a literary meeting with Garance Meillon, 2021 laureate of the Author’s Residency Prize, currently in residence at the Fondation des Treilles, took place at the Draguignan Media Library. During this reading hosted by Marion Couraleau, Head of the Adult Pole of the Public Reading Network, our author spoke about her career as a writer, punctuating her story with numerous readings of extracts from the three novels that make up her work: phantom pain, a normal family (Fayard Editions), insoluble bodies (Gallimard editions).

In her latest novel, Insoluble Bodies, the two main characters, Frederick and Alice, should never have met. The first, from a modest family, spent a painful childhood in the 1970s, between the building bars of his city, the daily beatings of his father, and soon drugs. The second only dreams of dancing and flees the conformism of her bourgeois Dijon family to escape to Paris, in the renewed pursuit of an existence off the beaten track.

But, one evening in 1983, Alice ran into Frédéric. She saves him from his dangerous slope, while he offers her the possibility of a special love. These insoluble bodies, for a time, will merge together.

Throughout her novel, Garance Meillon explores the incandescent trajectories of two characters separated by everything, each chapter echoing the previous one, and paints the portrait of a love against a backdrop of the 80s, between pink neon lights and black leather jackets.

« André Gide and the painters » : round table and visit of the collections

This meeting was organized for the launch of “André Gide and the painters. Unreleased letters“, a book edited by Pierre Masson and Olivier Monoyez with the collaboration of Geneviève Masson at Gallimard publisher (Unpublished works from the Fondation des Treilles, collection the NRF notebooks).

It took place on the 13th of February 2020 at the Orsay Museum auditorium in Paris.

In the analects of the Fondation des Treilles at Gallimard, a new volume entitled “André Gide and the painters. Unreleased letters” documents André Gide’s links with Maurice Denis, the Van Rysselberghe and the Bussy family and allows us to grasp the diversity and evolution of the writer’s relationship with painters. This original corpus, which sheds light on the friendship which linked André Gide to artists like Odilon Redon or the fresco artist René Piot, also gives the opportunity to highlight the support of the writer, familiar with galleries and salons, to his contemporaries, in particular through the purchase of their works.

Link to the programme

Meeting with…

Violaine Bérot

During her meeting with the public of the media library, Violaine Bérot, laureate of the 2019 Author’s residency Prize, addressed the theme of her latest work: denial of pregnancy. Fallen from the clouds tells of a birth by surprise, by breaking and entering. One snowstorm night, alone in her bathroom, a woman gives birth to a child. But is it conceivable to give birth when you are not aware of being pregnant ? Through a play of crossed voices, Violaine Bérot tells us the story of a puzzling motherhood.

“That this baby allowed himself to enter inside me without my permission was intolerable to me, I did not accept the violence with which he had forced himself into my body, I could not bear this intrusion, this “defilement”, but to whom could I have told that … “

The author has worked a lot on form, rhythm, and added a specificity to her writing game: the absence of a point. This contributes to making the plot even more breathtaking. The book can also be read on several levels. The voices of the characters fit together in a puzzle of numbered paragraphs that can be read in two different orders.

“We admire the skill of the novelist Violaine Bérot, who has succeeded in making silent mountain dwellers speak and in orchestrating their beautiful solitary personalities. » Astrid de Larminat. Le Figaro littéraire.

The Fondation des Treilles meetings at the Sauroy hotel

From May 11 to 20, 2018, the Foundation organized at the Hôtel de Sauroy (Paris) an exhibition of the winners of the Photography Prize and round tables presenting all of its activities, ranging from the organization of seminars and residential studies devoted to research in all fields of knowledge, actions or meetings for educational purposes, hosting writers and photographers in residence, training young singers with the Voice Academy, to promoting the collection of works of art bequeathed by the founder.

Link to the full programme

Meeting with…

Louis Philippe Dalembert

The meeting with the author Louis-Philippe Dalembert, laureate of the 2018 Author’s Residency Prize took place in March 2018. He spoke about the reasons that pushed him for writing his book Before the shadows fade away, in which he tells the story of a young man coming from a Polish Jewish family during World War II and his exile in Haiti.

In the prologue to this saga leading the protagonist from Poland to Port-au-Prince, the author recalls the vote by the Haitian state, in 1939, of a decree-law authorizing its consulates to issue passports and safe conducts to all Jews who requested it, thus allowing them to escape Nazism.

Thanks to this decree, before his arrival in Port-au-Prince, Doctor Ruben Schwarzberg was one of those whose path had been broken by Nazism. Having become a renowned physician and the patriarch of three generations of Haitians, he had left his past behind. But, when Haiti was hit by the earthquake in January 2010 and among doctors coming from all around the world, his little cousin Deborah rushed from Israel, he agreed to reconsider his story. His book won the France Bleu-Bookstore Page prize in 2017, and the Orange book prize in 2017.

Michaël Ferrier

Michaël Ferrier, laureate of the 2018 Author’s Residency Prize, came to meet the public in the fall of 2018 to talk about his novel François, portrait of an absent.

A blank voice, appearing in the middle of the night, announced to Michael the death of his friend François and his daughter Bahia, both brutally swept away by a villainous wave on a small island in the Canaries. To exorcise the pain, the author decides to write down the story of their friendship, and gives us a portrait full of tenderness of his childhood friend.

We discover Francois’ life, who began his career as a film director and finally joined the world of radio. Michaël recounts with nostalgia their memories from high school, the discovery of Japan, where he now lives, the endless debates and discussions of two friends who were passionate about music, cinema and radio. He evokes their good times, but also quite unexpectedly, their argument : their “quarrel”.

“How to talk about the disappeared? Indeed, by writing what never has the weight of a “tomb”, Ferrier also questions literature, and how words can bring this exceptional and beautiful friendship to life. ” Le Point.

Olivier Dhénin

This literary encounter is part of a plural journey: an exhibition and a reading. Both poet and director, Olivier Dhénin, laureate of the 2018 Author’s Residency Prize, is the first playwright received as part of the Treilles writing residencies. During his stay he worked on the writing of Waldstein, the third installment of his Trilogy : The Ordeal, which follows in the dramatic lineage of the Greek Tragics.

Presented alongside his writing residency, Olivier Dhénin’s workshop exposed the poet’s artistic connections, the playwright’s intimate links with painting, music, photography and literature. In this artist’s studio, different sources of inspiration, works and their transformations in contact with other artists were developed.

How the poem becomes music thanks to the composer, how the words are transformed into colors thanks to the painter and the photographer; how an old novel, a film scene, a painting are revealed as a source of inspiration that generates the writer’s work. The exhibition brought together a collection of unpublished documents: manuscripts revealing the genesis and labour of his writing, musical scores and artist books that constitute the poet’s constellation. This workshop fits into Anne Gruner Schlumberger’s approach, who wanted the different arts to meet.

Meeting with…

Wiktoria Wojciechowska

n 2017, the Draguignan theater exhibited the work of Wiktoria Wojciechowska, winner of the 2015 Photography Prize. With her series Sparks on the war in Ukraine, consisting of portraits of young men who became soldiers and who joined the front, she tries to show the traces of war on the faces and in the eyes of young combatants.

Hicham Gardaf

Hicham Gardaf has also exhibited at the Draguignan theater. He is a Moroccan photographer who lives between Tangier and London and works on the representation of the major changes that Morocco is experiencing nowadays. He won the 2014 Photography Prize. His project for Les Treilles is a description of the great urban, socio-cultural transformations, and it addresses the question of Western modern society’s identity and vision in the Arab world.

Meeting with…

Raed Bawayah

Winner of the 2011 Photography Prize, Raed Bawayah lived a story worthy of a film script. At the age of ten he began to work as a fruit picker on an Israeli farm, and then sold grapes in the streets of Jerusalem. It was by observing the tourists strafing the Holy City that his passion for photography began. At 28, against all odds, he joined an Israeli art school, the Naggar School, and went there illegally every morning to take photography lessons. He is today a recognized professional.

Through his various black and white series, he constantly questions exclusion, isolation, normality and finally the place of human beings. Whether it is with children from his village, Palestinian workers forced into exile in Israel, patients at the psychiatric hospital in Beethlehem, or even gypsy communities in France and homeless people in Germany, Raed always operates with a “inside” approach. He then produces a realistic and objective photographic work, preserving modesty, compassion and respect, devoid of any miserabilism.