Boris Bergmann

Boris Bergmann is the author of novels, short stories and poems. His first book, Viens là que je te tue ma belle, was adapted for television by the Franco-German channel Arte. His fifth novel, Les Corps Insurgés (2020), tells the stories of three lives enmeshed by passion and the quest for identity, and was awarded the Prix Fénéon. Bergmann has collaborated with visual artists in creating poetic books and objects, always in search of new territories to explore. In autumn 2021, at the Champagne-Ardenne regional contemporary art collection (FRAC), he instigated and co-curated Monts Analogues, a group show which initiated a dialogue between works by established as well as emerging artists on the theme of the legendary poet René Daumal and his cult novel, Le Mont Analogue (Mount Analogue). Coinciding with the exhibition, in October 2021 he directed the first new edition of Mont Analogue, published by Gallimard, in an illustrated version augmented with previously unpublished sections and critical reviews, including a foreword by Patti Smith.

Haruomi Hosono is considered one of Japan’s greatest contemporary musicians, famed beyond the borders of his native country, yet he remains very much out of the spotlight. Fleeing the media, Hosono has not given a single interview for some 30 years. A chance encounter, in Paris, between Boris Bergmann and the French-speaking composer gave rise to a unique project: while in residency in Kyoto, the author would research and write a poetic biography of the musician.

Bergmann conducted a series of interviews with Hosono, observing the silences, gestures and aspects of everyday life that have shaped his multifaceted creative path. The result would be less a conventional biography and more the poetic proof that the two indeed met.