Dominique Fourcade on Pierre Alferi

an alferienne cinematography 

and to begin with, bare, your sentence, I want you bare, and having for purpose just existence

I cannot resist, despite my gaucheness, to make a selfie of my presence right next to his absence, and it strikes against my eye, the immediate indecent photo, the photo without recoil, his absence tellingly present and my presence so tiny. it is impossible that Pierre Alferi is no longer with us. if Pierre is no longer with us, we are no longer with us. I’m having such a bad time figuring the form death imposes, I'm not Rilke, I'll never get used to that. look, he leaves us alone with the word imminence, but this word by itself makes for such intense company. alone with the word impatience also

he us, us all him, leaving him alone, an unbreakable connection, a connection now broke. but we are never alone since there’s always, to keep us company, solitude
with a very beautiful gait

he left us in a parade of swallows that he never left his whole life. this is so marked.

a touch of Shostakovich, in Webern. in truth a nation of swallows, exquisite acrobatics of death. irresistibly, while I daydream, there, on the disjointed steps of the old stone stairs, a lizard invites me to follow into a gap. there’s always, to keep us company, death 

to nothing, absolutely none of what precedes, can I shut my eyes

to a very a great extent he was so determined a company and immensely charming isn’t that it

acrobatics, then acrobatics gone, dizzying always, things are funereal from birth, summer, they are particularly unrelenting. I believe the reservoir of loss is full to the brim but see a new being  plunging, I don’t know anymore who to embrace, who to swim with

he knew what to do
with his insurrectional
kidding

[Pierre Alferi 1963 –2023]
[Translated by Charles Bernstein from a card published by Chandeigne 28 August 2023]