The Collective

Périscope is an experimental and instable result of encounters and talks, of a common desire to query collective creation and contemporary world altogether. It is also the outcome of several statements: the fact that the commons can never be taken for granted, and that we must come up with our own answer to our need to be and do together.

Through projects designed and implemented together, we try to experiment collective creation as a maker problem, and we intend to do so in a flat organization, as participative as possible — because we think there is something to invent beyond individualistic art and photography.

Fanzine #1

Le rouge s’est fait nuit

Lisbon, Portugal, 2015

When we decided to go to Lisbon for our first collective project, we deliberately avoided all kind of protocol. Undertaking the experimental nature of the project, we choose to fully assume that this was an onset-project, a matrix-project, an experience-project. Above all, we wanted to learn how to live and write together, and to see what would surface from a daily, tangible and collective experience. We wished to define with and within practice what would be the outlines of our future collective practice of photography. We only chose one guide: literature, from Pessoa to Lobo Antunès, and we went to Lisbon with a single canvas in our minds. First, grasp the space through words, verses, stories. Then, think, dream, build a fantasy out of it. Finally, go there, live there briefly, and experience it collectively.

Fanzine #2

C’est fait j’ai fait l’image

Villeneuve-d’Ascq, France, 2015

Pick an hotel like all the other, in the confines of the Metropolis. Take four rooms, identical, regular. Four suitcases, identical, regular. And four individuals, necessarily singular. Let them pack their suitcases with their objects, their books, their cameras and their memories. Put the individuals and their suitcases in the shaker of Fortune. Don’t forget to put some crushed ice: it’s North, and we’re in December. Shake. Shake. Shake. Then pour into each room one cup containing an individual and a suitcase that does not belong to him. Let the batter stand for twenty-four hours, out of direct contact. It’s ready to serve. Now you can open the doors, one by one.

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