Fabrice Schneider
Établissement d’en Face
(31.01. - 29.03.2026)
When you grow up, what do you want to be?
an outstretched arm
an arrow
not alone
always in the light
a snow storm in Marseille
a sovereign
a plumber
awake
a song
of many springs
an object escaping the hand in half-sleep
a lightbulb going out above someone’s head
a buzzing phone at the fall of night
a stirring sleeper
unafraid
Enter the Établissement in seamless vespertine transition.
Early party guests
Cashmere and assorted activewear
tucked
into the corner of a beautiful bel-étage salon. They gather around
an ivory cradle. Its
hard,
precise
pieces carved from the first man‘s rib for
holding a precious mother-heart.
In bedroom -- door cracked
Because the dark is still daunting.
Soft,
sentimental
hallway light enters with the familiar lullaby of distant speech:
Sounds like silhouettes
huddled around a fire pit.
My evening date
was lost somewhere, while a long procession ascends
the wooden stairwell like sleepwalkers descending
into the realm of the unconscious.
Slow,
hushed
movements and voices
Because we‘re moving past rooms
with sleeping children
and bestias
that we are wise enough not to wake.
The room reveals: a magnificent treasure of
dozens of screws loosely organized by size and in
rising-falling lines like clumsy handwriting tumbling
off the bottom right-hand side of the page.
Spilling over the edges of
velvety darkness
that drinks the faint light
to near extinction. But Place Jean Jacobs and the
wet streets shimmer
under lanterns in safe reach.
The room unfolds: endless states of falling
Blurred,
suspended,
a ladder leading up to infinity,
the uncharted,
the attic,
a pitch black rectangular void looming below the ceiling.
I am lured
into a tiny chamber
dedicated to the summoning of good luck.
Probing percussion
expertly executed
by a father summoned to the screen of an iPhone
to perform some remote-rescue.
His explanations
an opaque language
turn into a soothing melody in my ears.
The inscription of his achievement award shyly faces the wall
hard to decipher
like the man
himself and
I‘m a child
again displaced among
the belongings of this loving, unapproachable man.
I notice the shrunken size of my body
only after climbing the final set of stairs. Now
panting from the effort, I step into cool white light
squinting
my eyes as they adjust
to Elysium.
I can just see over the edge of the vitrines dressed
in white skirts. My eyes are level with the stern, meringue-like
white folds of cotton that extend
stiff and grave towards the floor. I suppress the urge to lift
one of the hems and slip under one of the tables. Instead,
I inspect what lies under the glass.
Big and small exotic bugs, in bright cellophane colours,
chocolates, candied fruit, conserved in sugar crystals
an underwater wind-up clock, alien electronics, a link of tank
track turned father in Sunday suit. Jewels
drained of colour
with smiles frozen in place,
for breakfast lunch and dinner.
Learning how to shave beards
that will never grow.