MICHEL DANSELACADÉMIE INTERNATIONALE DU RAT15-28.02.1977

“If the rat weighed 20 kilos more, man would no longer be the ruler of the Earth.”
Einstein

The Académie Internationale du Rat (International Academy of the Rat) visits Galerie S:t Petri in Lund from February 15 to 28, 1977.
The president of the Academy is Michel Dansel. The aim is to gather as much documentation as possible about this much-discussed rodent.

Michel Dansel from Paris is a writer, poet, and literary critic. He has published his own poetic works, as well as studies on mainly 19th-century French symbolist poets such as Laforgue, Corbière, and Verlaine. Last year, he published a remarkable and much-debated book about the Parisian cemetery Père Lachaise, for which he also received the annual prize for black humor.

Recently, Michel Dansel published the book Our Brothers the Rats – Their History, Legends, Mysteries, and the Art of Loving Them. It is based on extensive documentary material about the role the rat has played in all societies, throughout all times, and across various humanistic disciplines.

For some time, Dansel has also published the periodical RATTUS, which is part of his Académie Internationale du Rat.
In RATTUS, articles and documents about the rat are presented from literary, documentary, historical, artistic, and iconographic perspectives. The various contributors include doctors, scientists, and artists from many parts of the world.

“The rats,” says Michel Dansel, “are victims of our prejudices, our dogmatic thinking, and our lack of curiosity. Yet they continue to fascinate us intensely. The rat exists in our dreams, in our unconscious; it is the laboratory animal of science, humanity, and progress. We should,” he argues, “be aware of the rat’s refined intelligence, social structure, and mystique — these animals, in many ways, could have taken over the helm.”

The president of the Académie Internationale du Rat hopes that the exhibition in Lund will establish contact with Swedish rat researchers.

The exhibition is open on weekdays from 15:00 to 20:00, and on Saturdays and Sundays from 12:00 to 17:00.