Artiste trouvé

Just like the objet trouvé is neither more nor less than an object found by an artist, artiste trouvé is nothing more and nothing less then an artist who was found by another one.

The central idea of the Artiste Trouvé Project (ATP) is to propose a model of successful collaboration between different artists who may live close or at huge distances from each other, who may or may not really fit each other culturally, who may or may not even really like each other, who may or may not even know each other.

The main point in ATP’s philosophy is to stop following the classical system of contemporary art production in which artists relate to each other as mere adversaries in a competitive field. Instead, ATP proposes a model of collaboration in which artists rather offer things to each-other, for instance ideas, inventions or any other kind of intellectual goods.

Basically an artiste trouvé is one who is asked by another artist to do a creative act in his or her place and in his or her name. The artiste trouvé is offered an idea, a proposal, a “program”, which he or she is invited to realize or perform in the name of the initiator. The initiator artist can of course do the same service in exchange or he/she can recompense or reward the artist found by him or herself upon agreement.

At a first glance the artiste trouvé can be taken for a typical contractor who only executes instructions, but this is improper, since the artiste trouvé is enjoying a maximum of liberty to contribute in a creative way in the realization of the proposed piece. After all, doing art is a chance to escape the awful blackmail based ethics of service capitalism.

ATP is not even about to try escaping the responsibility that each author should have concerning his/her artistic production. ATP is rather a possibility to make the borders of our personalities more flexible, a way to extend the limits of our persona, an opportunity for artists to work together either they live too close or too far from each other, either they perfectly fit or don’t fit each other, either they like or don’t so much like each other.

(Budapest, 2005)