Philippe Bootz’s work “À bribes abattues” is well named because each animated poem uses the same words until the meaning of each word is exhausted. “Bribes” refers to the individual words that play across the screen, as well as to the letters within the words which change independently in order to change the meaning of the words and stanzas. The title is also a play on words of “À bride abattue” which means “at breakneck speed.” The reader chooses which poem they will “read” (in quotes here because Bootz’s poems require much more than reading, rather experiencing). The act of choosing gives us a sense of control, but it’s more like being able to choose a poem out of an anthology of works. One only chooses the work or the page; one has no influence over the text itself.
The text appears and moves around the screen, allowing for a spatial as well as a temporal reading. Several terms are reused in several of the poems, including “toujours” (still, or always) and “vague” (wave, or vague). In the “bribe pessimiste” the word “vague” changes semantically when the article transforms from the masculine “le” (le vague = that which is vague) to the feminine “la” (la vague = the ocean wave). The genre of animated poetry allows for such play on words.
The complete, albeit limited, text from “bribe pessimiste” is as follows:
Time that always
That always breaks
Vague time hand/that which is vague always breaks/the vague time hand always breaks
The wave always breaks
The wave
The crest
The vague crest
The crest of the vague wave always breaks
The crest of the wave always breaks that you build
There are several possible temporal and spatial readings and I only included those that were most evident in my own reading. It is possible to “create” several different stanzas because the text moves like a combinatorial work. After each wave of movement the text assembles itself into a stanza of sorts for a moment, before reassembling itself into a new stanza. This transitory aspect is most obvious when the wave formation of the text reflects the content of the poem; for example: each time the word “vage” (wave, or that which is vague) appears, the letters appear and disappear one after the other, imitating the movement of a wave.
