INTERVIEW
He is a comic book author who no longer has to prove himself. 32 years ago, he won the Grand Prix at the Angoulême comics festival. For decades, Enki Bilal has explored the future in his works and is now familiar with the apocalypse. In the new volume of his saga Bug , which has just been released, he explores a new facet of this kind that anticipates the end of the world: he imagines a total computer crash in 2040, a universe without technology, at a standstill, totally paralyzed and emptied of any personal digital data. To evoke this comic strip and his more global work, the designer has made an appointment with Frédéric Taddéï at the foot of the Eiffel Tower for a Parisian walk.
Hybrid and mixed
Enki Bilal chose the Iron Lady because this is where her new album begins. It is also the first monument that the designer visited when he arrived in France in 1960 at 9 years old. The author was born in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, of a Muslim Bosnian father and a non-practicing Czech Catholic mother. His heroes are mixed, in his image. "I am for miscegenation at all levels and against all communitarianism.It is the exact opposite of the reality of today.This hybrid comes a little from there but also from Belgrade, which was a hybrid city", says the designer.
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RAM replaces living memory
Talking about the Eiffel Tower, enclosed by a "Berlin glass wall" to protect it, also refers to another monument in the capital, Notre-Dame burned. It could have happened in his albums that cultivate the aesthetics of chaos. "Because I was born in a country where nothing was finished, everything was a little out of whack, there is a form of aesthetic disorder that has marked me," he says.
In Bug , chaos comes from the disappearance of technology. "We're all a little addict, it's kind of uncomfortable to be so tied to that, the most serious thing is memory, it's a muscle and you do not do it too much work. The RAM replaces the living memory, "he slips.
The past, the future, but never the present
"I'm from the 20th century, I think I'm comfortable in the 21st, but I'm afraid that the transmission deficit that characterizes our time will make us lose the link with the 20th century, and I feel a bit of a depository. is ubiquitous in my work (...) I am marked by the 20th century, which I find beautifully violent, failed and successful.It is a hybrid. " Another hybrid. He himself is double: marked by the past, turned towards the future, never drawing the present. He explains: "It bores me tremendously the obligation to restore the reality, there is no pleasure to reproduce."
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At first, it was the yellow vests, we said 'something is happening', but it quickly got bogged down
The duo is then staged in the square courtyard of the Louvre. Enki Bilal exhibited in the museum in 2012. "I'm pretty proud of it," he says. Rue de Rivoli, barriers are in place for the "yellow vests". "At first, it was the yellow vests, we said 'something is happening', but it soon got bogged down, it was a very nice momentum, a lucidity that appeared. this whole area of society, "says the artist, who does not fully believe in his apocalyptic fables. "I think we play with fire all the time but that's what makes the charm of the human too, we're on the edge of the razor all the time." He feels like he's free. "It's also because I'm not in a militant commitment, and at the same time, I'm fascinated by politics."
The desire to write more
In his work, he has also freed himself. He broke with the boards, he painted by box, which allows him a "fluidity and a freedom at the level of the assembly.I come from the cinema." And there is also his work on the text. "In Bug in particular, I use dialogue for transitions, little psychological touches on the characters.The text off, even the inner voices, is what is the cement of the story.It's my literary side. I want to write more than I do, I'm surprised to say it and I think it: I prefer to write than to draw. " He is also preparing a carte blanche book after spending a night at the Picasso Museum.
From now on, taxi to Prague street. Enki Bilal imagines what would be the worst if Bug's situation were to happen: "We should confront each other again and start from scratch with the others, that's what would terrorize me, find myself in front of the others", confides -t it. He finds that people look strange today, still dipping to their smartphone screen. "But it suits me, I became a harmonious loner", he slips, even if he also likes the moments of sharing. Like at Bruno Verjus's restaurant, Table, where the walk ends. The restorer and the designer have at least one thing in common, which is reflected in Bilal's comics: the taste of blue.