Drawing Room Confessions is a new printed journal named after a parlour game played by Marcel Proust, the Surrealists and others. It is made of words and exchanges, with no images. Six different sections (The Egoist, The Blind Man, Two to Tango, Ekphrasis, Time Line and La Madeleine) comprise the Rules of the Game, which are the same in each issue. What changes are the players: artist and interviewers who come from a wide range of fields. Each issue focuses on one artist only. The editors, Vincent Honoré and Manuela Ribadeneira, have added footnotes to clarify, complete, or redirect the conversations. The journal is designed by Åbäke and published in conjunction with Mousse Publishing. The first players are Charles Avery and Jason Dodge.
What is The Egoist?
The Egoist is a conversation with an individual selected by the player. The Egoists in Issues 1 and 2 are the British philosopher Robin Mackay and the American poet Michael Dickman.
What is The Blind Man?
The Blind Man is an exchange with an interviewer whose identity is concealed from the artist. We can now safely reveal that the Borges scholar Evelyn Fishburn and the viola player Juan Lucas Aisemberg were the Blind Men in Issues #1 and #2.
What is Two to Tango?
Certain activities cannot be achieved on one’s own. Two to Tango is a warts-and-all conversation with someone selected by the editors, which explores the core processes of creation. The economist and geographer Angus Cameron partnered with Charles, the artist Michael Dean with Jason.
What is Ekphrasis?
Ekphasis is a Greek scholastic exercise, ‘a verbal representation of a visual representation’. Here it is the artist’s direct intervention into the journal: an image with no image.
And the Timeline?
It is not a CV. Instead, the player selects the defining moments – personal, historical, and cultural – that have marked how he or she thinks and lives.
What is La Madeleine?
Each issue ends with the player answering a fixed questionnaire based on the original game of Drawing Room Confessions.
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