2023-12-04 12:28:12
The artist Enki Bilal made himself known through series like To the Nikopol trilogy or The Monster Tetralogy. Works with dystopian tones but not far from us and our current affairs, in which imaginary worlds rub shoulders with the exploration of human nature and speak to us regarding the future of our planet.
Enki Bilal et William Shakespeare
In his work Julia et Roem (Casterman, 2011), second volume of his Bloodstroke Trilogy, Enki Bilal revisited the drama Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare by placing the two protagonists in a hostile world, a land which has revolted and in which one must survive.
A work which, Enki Bilal insists, is not an adaptation, and which follows a first meeting with Shakespeare, when Enki Bilal collaborated with the choreographer and dancer Angelin Preljocaj by imagining the sets and costumes for the show Romeo & Juliet for the Lyon Opera in 1991.
Today, the beautiful book Shakespeare-Bilal: an encounter published by Marie Barbier in November 2023, explores the companionship between Enki Bilal and Shakespeare.
Enki Bilal further emphasizes the universal dimension of Shakespeare’s work: “the world may evolve, whatever we do, even if we are on the edge of a precipice, in the last moments we will perhaps need to want to love ourselves. Perhaps the only thing that does not change not in the history of humanity, it is to want to love one another. Shakespeare said it very well.“
Playing with comic book codes
From comics to books via cinema, Enki Bilal works in transdisciplinarity.
“Perhaps I get more pleasure from writing than from drawing.” he emphasizes, he who was happy to reread his work Julia et Roem ten years following its publication, because there is ”found the music” words and sentences.
In fact, it was because he did not find this music in traditional comics that he moved away from it and subverted its codes.
Sound clips:
Archive of Angelin Preljocaj from France Inter, Fred’s Day03/05/2014 Archive of René Goscinny, Special edition, 11/24/1961 Extract from the film Bunker Palace Hotel by Enki Bilal, 1989 Song Juliet & Romeo by Luis Mariano
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