F. Olivier-Thomas Venard
spoke in Venice at the International Course of High Culture of the Cini Foundation
At the invitation of Professor Carlo Ossola, Collège de France.
and in Marseille, he painted the scenography for the surrealistic spectacle: Le Bestiaire Humain (Human Bestiary)
The show was created by Michel Pastore, former assistant to Salvador and Gala Dali, on texts by Robert Desnos and Joseph Kafka, with music by Frédéric Chaslin, and performed on October 18, as part of the “Musiques Interdites” festival. It is a plunge into the universes of Desnos and Kafka, comical and tragic, of falsely naive representations of the human condition and its possible visitation by Grace.
Michel Pastore appreciated several paintings of animals by fr. Olivier-Thomas and commissioned him to create “animated paintings” to accompany the recitation of Judith Magre and the singing of Thomas Morris and Julie Cherrier Hauffmann.
- Here is the link to a presentation of the show
Brothers Łukasz Popko and Timothy Radcliffe
and the Questioning God
Timothy Radcliffe, former Master of the Order of Preachers, spent ten days at the Ecole Biblique between November 5 and 15. Bro. Timothy was Master of the Dominican Order, and thus Chancellor of the Ecole from 1992 to 2001. He is a world-renowned preacher and writer. His latest book, Alive in God: A Christian Imagination, was published in 2019.
This time, he arrived to work on his next book, co-written with Łukasz Popko.
This joint project was born out of a dialogue and discussion between the two Dominicans that centered on the Word of God. First in vivo, then via the internet, the content of their regular meetings seemed interesting enough for Brother Timothy to share it with a wider audience. They decided to choose the biblical passages where God engages in a dialogue with human beings. The only organizing principle was to utilize half of their texts from the New and half from the Old Testament.
Brother Łukasz provided the translation of a selected text, and then both authors commented and reacted to each other’s interpretation via email. After a year and a half, the collected material amounted to eighteen Dominican conversations about conversations with God. Fairly early in the project, the authors decided that the book should be enriched with images of paintings inspired by the same texts so that its future readers could have another impetus for their reading of the Bible.
The book is intended for all Christians and all people, not just theologians and exegetes. Its title is intentionally ambiguous: Questioning God will speak about the questions people adress to God, as well as the questions that God is directing to us. The book will be published by Bloomsbury.
.
