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Blackout
“It all started with a letter to my father. It had been about ten years since his death, and I suddenly felt like writing to him about the silence, his silence, the silence between us. It started in 2020, as a necessity. The silence, then, was striking. It resonated with other erased voices, other voids, other emotions. I thought I would not be able to stop. Neither diary, nor essay, nor short story, Blackout is a weaving, a braid made of these lines of silence, and tells, in fragments, the story of a dispossession, of an entry into darkness.”
— Yann Chateigné Tytelman
— Yann Chateigné Tytelman
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Published October 1, 2025
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December 30, 2025
Blackout (2025) is the Clem Clement's translation of the 2023 original by Yann Chateigné Tytelman, and comes with a preface from Suzanne Joinson.
The book is published by the wonderful small indy press Les Fugitives. My reviews of all of their books (this is #35) can be found on my dedicated shelf.
As with many of Les Fugitives' works this is a hybrid work which straddles genre boundaries, as the author has explained: "It all started with a letter to my father. It had been about ten years since his death, and I suddenly felt like writing to him about the silence, his silence, the silence between us. It started in 2020, as a necessity. The silence, then, was striking. It resonated with other erased voices, other voids, other emotions. I thought I would not be able to stop. Neither diary, nor essay, nor short story, Blackout is a weaving, a braid made of these lines of silence, and tells, in fragments, the story of a dispossession, of an entry into darkness."
Blackout is indeed addressed to the author/narrator's late father, and opens during lockdown (I've added the French original after Clement's translation):
We woke one morning and the lands of our existence had slipped.
Nous nous sommes réveillés un matin, et les terrains de nos existences avaient glissé.
…
I wanted to write to you so I could talk to you about silence, about the unforeseeable silence which fell all at once over our neighbourhood.
Je voulais t'écrire pour te parler du silence. De ce silence imprévisible qui s'est tout à coup abattu sur notre quartier.
…
It is not silence itself which interests me, but it’s incarnations, it’s powers – the way it acts in our lives, gaining and strength without our ever being able to grasp it, like a black hole.
Ce n'est pas le silence en soi qui m'intéresse, mais ses incarnations, ses puissances - la manière dont il agit dans nos vies, de plus en plus fort, sans que l'on puisse le saisir, comme un trou noir.
As well as a very personal story, this is deeply philosphical and ekphrastic, a carefully constructed meditation on silence and isolation. The 81 pages of the main text include references to, amongst others:
Music, particularly ambient listening including Brian Eno; the water music of Mieko Shiomi (one of a number of artists featured who were part of the Fluxus movement); and music critics such as David Toop
Literature - including the poetry of Emily Dickinson; and a Hugo-award winning short story by Octavia E Butler
Philosophy - including Paul B. Preciado (the closing words of his Learning from the Virus the source of the title); Michel Serres and Giorgio Agamben
Essayists - notably Pacôme Thiellement.
Art - including Robert Raucschenberg’s White Paintings; Charles Ray's Ink Box; and, particularly, Vija Celmins's detailed drawings of ocean surfaces:
Every one of Celmins' pieces has so much detail that it takes on an almost mineral density. In fact, each one is loaded with such a burden of time, of concentration, of hand movements and graphite marks on the white surface of the paper that it becomes an exhibition of matter. We are looking not at an image of the ocean, but at a concrete presence: an expanse of carbon. Laid out according to a certain order, the image is formed from the meeting between this fragment of mineral, this dust and its vibration on the rough white surface of the paper. Graphite and diamond are composed of the same chemical element, carbon, but their structures are different: one is denser, and lets the light through. And yet, for Celmins, reproducing the image of a starry sky is first and foremost an exploration of the colour black, the colour of her materials - the material of the night.
This is no mere Wiki-novel - the sources are both well researched and referenced, but also, importantly, the author himself is part of the art portrayed - interviewing some of the artists; collaborating with or reproducing the work of others; and referencing his own art.
The author's father was a manual worker, a painter, and his own different vocation was one reason for their relative lack of connection. There is a particularly effective and poignant passage where after reflecting on both ambient music and Robert Raucschenberg’s White Paintings's, the author recalls his time working with his father, applying paint with a roller and with the radio as a former of ambient backdrop:
I see you with your back to me on the scaffolding, concentrating, wordlessly applying the paint roller to the worn plaster, leaving a thick layer of fresh colour. Doing things together, like working, was a pleasant way to experience the silence which existed between us.
Perhaps it gave us an excuse not to talk to each other.
We had to concentrate so as not to make mistakes. The background noise of the radio which accompanied you to every job site provided a kind of framework for reflection to the lack of words.
Both intellectually stimulating and moving, a rare combination.
The book is published by the wonderful small indy press Les Fugitives. My reviews of all of their books (this is #35) can be found on my dedicated shelf.
As with many of Les Fugitives' works this is a hybrid work which straddles genre boundaries, as the author has explained: "It all started with a letter to my father. It had been about ten years since his death, and I suddenly felt like writing to him about the silence, his silence, the silence between us. It started in 2020, as a necessity. The silence, then, was striking. It resonated with other erased voices, other voids, other emotions. I thought I would not be able to stop. Neither diary, nor essay, nor short story, Blackout is a weaving, a braid made of these lines of silence, and tells, in fragments, the story of a dispossession, of an entry into darkness."
Blackout is indeed addressed to the author/narrator's late father, and opens during lockdown (I've added the French original after Clement's translation):
We woke one morning and the lands of our existence had slipped.
Nous nous sommes réveillés un matin, et les terrains de nos existences avaient glissé.
…
I wanted to write to you so I could talk to you about silence, about the unforeseeable silence which fell all at once over our neighbourhood.
Je voulais t'écrire pour te parler du silence. De ce silence imprévisible qui s'est tout à coup abattu sur notre quartier.
…
It is not silence itself which interests me, but it’s incarnations, it’s powers – the way it acts in our lives, gaining and strength without our ever being able to grasp it, like a black hole.
Ce n'est pas le silence en soi qui m'intéresse, mais ses incarnations, ses puissances - la manière dont il agit dans nos vies, de plus en plus fort, sans que l'on puisse le saisir, comme un trou noir.
As well as a very personal story, this is deeply philosphical and ekphrastic, a carefully constructed meditation on silence and isolation. The 81 pages of the main text include references to, amongst others:
Music, particularly ambient listening including Brian Eno; the water music of Mieko Shiomi (one of a number of artists featured who were part of the Fluxus movement); and music critics such as David Toop
Literature - including the poetry of Emily Dickinson; and a Hugo-award winning short story by Octavia E Butler
Philosophy - including Paul B. Preciado (the closing words of his Learning from the Virus the source of the title); Michel Serres and Giorgio Agamben
Essayists - notably Pacôme Thiellement.
Art - including Robert Raucschenberg’s White Paintings; Charles Ray's Ink Box; and, particularly, Vija Celmins's detailed drawings of ocean surfaces:
Every one of Celmins' pieces has so much detail that it takes on an almost mineral density. In fact, each one is loaded with such a burden of time, of concentration, of hand movements and graphite marks on the white surface of the paper that it becomes an exhibition of matter. We are looking not at an image of the ocean, but at a concrete presence: an expanse of carbon. Laid out according to a certain order, the image is formed from the meeting between this fragment of mineral, this dust and its vibration on the rough white surface of the paper. Graphite and diamond are composed of the same chemical element, carbon, but their structures are different: one is denser, and lets the light through. And yet, for Celmins, reproducing the image of a starry sky is first and foremost an exploration of the colour black, the colour of her materials - the material of the night.
This is no mere Wiki-novel - the sources are both well researched and referenced, but also, importantly, the author himself is part of the art portrayed - interviewing some of the artists; collaborating with or reproducing the work of others; and referencing his own art.
The author's father was a manual worker, a painter, and his own different vocation was one reason for their relative lack of connection. There is a particularly effective and poignant passage where after reflecting on both ambient music and Robert Raucschenberg’s White Paintings's, the author recalls his time working with his father, applying paint with a roller and with the radio as a former of ambient backdrop:
I see you with your back to me on the scaffolding, concentrating, wordlessly applying the paint roller to the worn plaster, leaving a thick layer of fresh colour. Doing things together, like working, was a pleasant way to experience the silence which existed between us.
Perhaps it gave us an excuse not to talk to each other.
We had to concentrate so as not to make mistakes. The background noise of the radio which accompanied you to every job site provided a kind of framework for reflection to the lack of words.
Both intellectually stimulating and moving, a rare combination.
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