BERNSTEIN, Michèle
The Night
" One strand of The Night concerns a walk, or drift, around Paris on 22 April 1957 during the final days of the Lettrist International – the Situationist International was founded a few months later. In After the Night, a détournement of Bernstein’s book by the anonymous London–New York-based collective Everyone Agrees, this drift is transposed to contemporary London. The text of After the Night was finalised for print on 26 April 2013, and the book references events that took place just a few weeks before it was published. Like the original novel, the rewritten version includes much appropriated material, including this from a piece I wrote about Wu Ming for the April 2013 issue of ArtReview: ‘Strong coffee is a common addiction in British counterculture.’ Despite the obscurity of certain references, Michele Bernstein says After the Night made her laugh out loud. The rewrite has genuinely funny moments, but Bernstein’s mirth also stemmed from the seriousness with which Everyone Agrees treats The Night – never the author’s intention. "
Steward Home
Published by Book Works
Literature
