Patrice Serres

Biography

As a draftsman in the United States, he worked as an assistant to Frank Robbins. Back in France, he worked on three volumes of Tanguy et Laverdure adventures, scripted by Jean-Michel Charlier. In the press, his illustrations, signed Esdé, appeared in Pilote from 1968 to 1973, and he went on to manage a number of satirical magazines. In 1975, as deputy editor-in-chief of Tintin, he helped relaunch the title by pre-publishing other successful series, such as the adventures of Blueberry and Lucky Luke. He created Radio à Roulettes on France Musique in 1977 and Trésors vivants on France Culture the following year. From 1977 to 1981, he enabled schoolchildren to organize debates on the L’oreille en coin program on France Inter. In 2007, he issued his first stamp dedicated to the journalist Albert Londres. Patrice is also a sinologist. From 1969 to 1975, for the publisher L’Impensé Radical, he translated and commented on Far Eastern chess rules. His Grand Livre des proverbes chinois has been published in four languages since 1999.

Conference: Can we write time?

In the earliest agrarian civilizations, the cycle of the seasons was punctuated by the precession of the 12 moons, which controlled the beginning and end of major agricultural tasks. By systematizing the division of time, these cultures were able to attribute an archetypal symbolic meaning to the first 12 natural integers. They all have the exorbitant power to deploy the occult force par excellence, time… and are still alive and kicking today. A simple sign traced on a medium that was intended to be perennial could travel into the future, to be read much later, in a new present. The mechanism has already worked for several millennia. It will continue for a long time to come, whatever happens, since its real driving force is its user. From the Mediterranean basin to China, we’ll follow the migrations and mutations of these 12 special symbols. We’ll highlight the common origins of devices as diverse as zodiacs, calendars, time systems, measures, alphabets and even games of chance or strategy. For this archaic structure has had a prodigious progeny in which the traces of an invisible order that still governs us today can be seen. Unbeknownst to them, our contemporaries still owe it a large part of their mental organization.