The True Story of Artaud-Mômo
Face to Face
The Colombier Lecture, 1947
by Antonin Artaud
The lecture that Artaud gave at the Vieux-Colombier Theatre on 13 January 1947, entitled ‘The true story of Artaud-Mômo – Face to face by Antonin Artaud’, would become an important reference point for a generation of post-war intellectuals and artists. This is the first translation into English of a work that many scholars believe is crucial in understanding Artaud’s later writings. What makes these texts so riveting and powerful is that Artaud, unlike in his other writings, is summing up a lifetime’s experience of pain at the hands of society and doctors. It is the closest thing we have to Artaud’s autobiography. In his lecture at the Theatre Vieux-Colombier, Artaud forcefully ruptured all received and polite notions of performance or lecture, even the idea of the theater. He pushed himself and his viewers past the realm of what could be comfortably absorbed. Writing to Saillet, after the performance, Artaud maintained what he always thought was true in this world: that “all the rare lucid tortured souls have always been assassinated.”
Translated and with an introduction by Peter Valente
Afterword by Stephen Barber
Illustrated by Martin Bladh & Karolina Urbaniak
out now
Hardbound, 324 pages, 190 x 148mm
ISBN 978-1-915908-10-0
Release date 10/07/2025
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About the authors
Antonin Artaud's work has a world-renowned status for experimentation across performance, film, sound, poetry and visual art. In the 1920s, he was a member of the Surrealist movement until his expulsion, and formulated theoretical plans across the first half of the 1930s for his 'Theatre of Cruelty' and attempted to carry them through. He made a living as a film actor from 1924 to 1935 and made many attempts to direct his own film projects. In 1936, he travelled to Mexico with a plan to take peyote in the Tarahumara lands. In 1937, preoccupied with the imminent apocalypse, he travelled to Ireland but was deported, beginning a nine-year asylum incarceration during which he continued to write and also made many drawings. After his release in 1946, he lived in the grounds of a sanatorium in Ivry-sur-Seine, close to Paris, and worked intensively on drawings, writings and sound-recordings. He died on 4 March 1948. His drawings have been exhibited on several occasions, notably at the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna in 2002 and at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris in 2006.
Peter Valente
Peter Valente is a writer, translator, and filmmaker. He is the author of nineteen full length books. His translation of Nanni Balestrini’s Blackout (Commune Editions, 2017) received a Publisher’s Weekly starred review. Recent books include, a translation of Gérard de Nerval, The Illuminated (Wakefield Press, 2022), a translation of Artaud’s notebooks, The True Story of Jesus-Christ: Three Notebooks from Ivry (August 1947) (Infinity Land, 2023), The New Revelations of Being & Other Mystical Writings by Antonin Artaud (Infinity Land Press, 2023), and his translation of Nicolas Pages by Guillaume Dustan (Semiotext(e), 2023)). Forthcoming is his Selected Essays (2019-2023) (Punctum books, 2025) and a book he edited on the work of the filmmaker Harry Smith, The Occult Harry Smith: The Magical & Alchemical Work of an Artist of the Extremes (Inner Traditions, 2025). Twenty-Four of his short films have been shown at Anthology Film Archives.
Stephen Barber
Stephen Barber is the author of thirty fiction and non-fiction books, most recently White Noise Ballrooms and The Projectionists. His books have been acclaimed as ‘brilliant, profound and provocative’ by The Times newspaper, and he has been called ‘a writer of real distinction’ and ‘the most dangerous man in Europe’ by The Independent newspaper. The Sunday Times newspaper hailed his books as ‘exhilarating and disquieting’. In 2020, the author David Peace wrote in The Times Literary Supplement: ‘Beginning in 1993 with Artaud: Blows and Bombs, Stephen Barber has quietly, independently forged one of the most singular and enriching bodies of work in contemporary writing.’ He is a professor at the Kingston School of Art, Kingston University, London.
Martin Bladh
Martin Bladh is a Swedish-born artist of multiple mediums and co-founder of Infinity Land Press. His published work includes The Rorschach Text, The Hurtin’ Club, The Torture of the 100 Pieces, Braquemard: The Clavicle of Gilles de Rais, DES: The Theatre of Death and Michael Carter - The Practitioner. He lives and works in London.
Karolina Urbaniak
Karolina Urbaniak is a multimedia artist and co-founder of Infinity Land Press. Urbaniak’s published works include Altered Balance − A Tribute to Coil, Death Mort Tod - A European Book of the Dead, The Torture of the 100 Pieces, The Songs of Maldoror and Grave Desire - A Cultural History of Necrophilia among others. Her audio-visual work − Gasper (2015), On the New Revelations of Being (2018), Sandmann (2019), The Projection of the Ture Body (2022), Johannes Rass - Aktion Bos Taurus (2024) − has been shown at festivals in the UK and internationally. Urbaniak’s installation, based on The Fall of Jerusalem by Hermann Nitsch, was exhibited at the Prinzendorf Castle in Austria in June 2025. She lives and works in London.