Quebec - The new literary festival Quebec in full offers a whole challenge from October 14 to 24: that of taming the twitterature. In the company of Jean-Yves Fréchette, performance artist and teacher, Internet users will be able to express themselves… in 140 characters.
Professor of literature at CEGEP for 35 years and designer of educational software, Jean-Yves Fréchette wondered about the literary value of tweets when he discovered Twitter last year. Today, he thinks he has an answer: “The diversion of the medium is the artist's own. The artistic approach of twitterature is no different from that of a painter who uses paint, first made to cover walls, to paint a canvas. "
For Jean-Yves Fréchette, it is not because it is small that it is not good, on the contrary. He also asserts that all great ideas fit into 140 characters and cites E = mc as an example2. Mr. Fréchette also believes in the educational value of Twitter: students can write on a medium they know and be read by a large number of people. According to him, the important thing is that young people learn to play with words. Why not in 140 characters?
As he discovers the tweets, Jean-Yves Fréchette comes into contact with a community of Tweeters, mainly from France. As the city of Quebec has been twinned with the city of Bordeaux for 50 years, Jean-Yves Fréchette has an idea: to found an Institute of Comparative Twitter (ITC) in collaboration with a French twitter, journalist Jean-Michel Leblanc. This organization, which for the moment has a “zero dollar” budget, has yet “these letters patent, an iron will and a lot of hand juice! », According to Mr. Fréchette.
The fourteen challenges proposed are all inspired by the work of Jorge Luis Borges, central figure of this first edition of the festival. They will be accessible on the website of Quebec in full as well as on the website of the Institut de twitterature compared (ITC). Participants, young and old, will therefore be able to write tweets without a vowel or even recreate a Borges sentence. The tweets successful, will be put online by festival volunteers who will act as moderators. The number 140 was not chosen by chance: in the work of Borges, whom Jean-Yves Fréchette knows very well, this number represents infinity.
Quebec in full letters also underlines the 200e anniversary of the independence of Argentina, where the writer is from. An early reader and writer, Borges was educated in Geneva. In 1955, with the fall of the Peronist dictatorship, he was appointed head of the National Library. He is then already blind. “Let others brag about the pages they wrote; I am proud of those I have read, ”he writes.
The festival Quebec in full responds, according to the organizers, to a need in the Quebec literary community for an event in the fall. Organized in collaboration with the Canadian Institute of Quebec, the festival is also funded by the City of Quebec.
To consult the Québec site in full and consult the festival schedule
To follow Pierre-Paul Pleau (Jean-Yves Fréchette) on Twitter
To read Nathalie Collard's article on twitterature
To visit the website of the Créalogik interactive web agency
To visit the website of the Institute of Comparative Tweet
To consult the blog of Jean-Michel Leblanc, ITC bordeaux
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