What's contemporary ?

When I started this Master’s, I thought artistic development would mean becoming more skilled, more versatile,
perhaps more able to understand what sits behind the word “contemporary” and what it might ask of me in the years to come.

Looking back, I think something more complicated happened.
I did not find my artistic language, or one craft, that finally felt like mine.
Instead, I became more aware of the places where I could belong in other lifetimes, and of those I definitely do not belong to.

Agamben describes the contemporary as someone who does not completely coincide with their own time.
Someone who belongs to it, but remains slightly out of step with it.
Someone close enough to be affected by it, and distant enough to see what its brightness might conceal.

I thought CPPM would help me define what kind of artist I am. Instead, it made that definition even more unstable and chaotic…
But at least, I ve now learnt to preserve my own source when that survival instinct and instability are activated.

Agamben claims that access to the present necessarily takes the form of an archaeology.

Presence has been a huged topic during these past months and every Guest Artists used this word while,
somehow, holding a different meaning each.

Encountering those Guest Artists was not simply about experiencing and returning to their ancient glorious era :
it was a matter of perceiving what, within my present (and presence),
continues to be worked upon by origins, aesthetics, forms, and experiences that could never be fully lived
because of my own artistic frame, cultural background and life context.

Therefore, I wanted this MindMap/Viva to be an attempt to answer the question :
« Which unresolved gesture from the past
becomes legible again through the guest artists practices I encountered at CPPM ? »

We will go through:

• an archaeology of the evolution of my materials before / after CPPM ;
• the historical forces and epistemologic shifts that impacted me as an artist, but also the guest artists ;
• how my weekly questions have emerged within the constellation of others ;
• the investigation into each guest artist : the question they raised in me and their principles ;
• but also analytical lenses from which I've built my artistic identity.

• bonus --> my Timeline : the knowledge of the past, its archaeological side,
  so it can become legible from my present and post-CPPM position.

Accessible here : https://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/2249671/CPPM-Map-of-Minds-/