Take root among the stars
is a long-term project about Octavia Estelle Butler’s work and life. She was the first African American author to make science fiction her career. Feminist and visionary, she was born in 1947 and died in 2006 at the age of 58. It is intended to be both scholarly and artistic, at the intersection of literature and visual arts, Europe and the United States. It has been supported by L’Institut Francais (sur mesure +) and La Fondation des artistes in 2021 ; it is now the subject of a thesis in the framework of RADIAN (practice-led PhD in artistic research and creation), beginning in 2022 and ending in 2025. This project is supported by Au diable vauvert, publisher of Octavia E. Butler, located in the Camargue (south of France). Our collaboration will result in the publication of my research in the form of a full-length biography of Octavia E. Butler, due out in 2025. My dissertation is entitled : Unseen Work and Hope as Keys to Understanding Octavia E. Butler's Writing.
My research unfolds in three simultaneous directions: her novels, her papers (housed at the Huntington Library in Los Angeles), and Butler’s legacy from Pasadena, where she spent most of her life, to Los Angeles County. This poetic and political investigation combines several typologies of printed and audiovisual documents (Images-memory : her archive, newspapers, Internet database / films and photographs : image’s documents from her life and novels / sound : daily records, radio, interviews / writings : her archives and novels, mine). They constitute a visual archive that is constantly expanding. These documentary resources will be shaped in the future realization of a film essai that retraces the experience of an encounter that did not take place physically, but through memories. A film conceived and built as an experience (inspired by Chris Marker) and a written biography. My dissertation is entitled : Unseen Work and Hope as Keys to Understanding Octavia E. Butler's Writing. This page is intended to show some of the documents I work with. It is updated daily and will take on different forms over time.
All rights reserved © Manon Recordon
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens © Estate of Octavia E. Butler
is a long-term project about Octavia Estelle Butler’s work and life. She was the first African American author to make science fiction her career. Feminist and visionary, she was born in 1947 and died in 2006 at the age of 58. It is intended to be both scholarly and artistic, at the intersection of literature and visual arts, Europe and the United States. It has been supported by L’Institut Francais (sur mesure +) and La Fondation des artistes in 2021 ; it is now the subject of a thesis in the framework of RADIAN (practice-led PhD in artistic research and creation), beginning in 2022 and ending in 2025. This project is supported by Au diable vauvert, publisher of Octavia E. Butler, located in the Camargue (south of France). Our collaboration will result in the publication of my research in the form of a full-length biography of Octavia E. Butler, due out in 2025. My dissertation is entitled : Unseen Work and Hope as Keys to Understanding Octavia E. Butler's Writing.
My research unfolds in three simultaneous directions: her novels, her papers (housed at the Huntington Library in Los Angeles), and Butler’s legacy from Pasadena, where she spent most of her life, to Los Angeles County. This poetic and political investigation combines several typologies of printed and audiovisual documents (Images-memory : her archive, newspapers, Internet database / films and photographs : image’s documents from her life and novels / sound : daily records, radio, interviews / writings : her archives and novels, mine). They constitute a visual archive that is constantly expanding. These documentary resources will be shaped in the future realization of a film essai that retraces the experience of an encounter that did not take place physically, but through memories. A film conceived and built as an experience (inspired by Chris Marker) and a written biography. My dissertation is entitled : Unseen Work and Hope as Keys to Understanding Octavia E. Butler's Writing. This page is intended to show some of the documents I work with. It is updated daily and will take on different forms over time.
All rights reserved © Manon Recordon
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens © Estate of Octavia E. Butler
