On the Collective Self-Portrait
Like many artists developing their thinking in the 80s and 90s, Guykayser gradually became convinced that his “artistic truth,” the one worth devoting his efforts to, rested less on yet another sophistication of the “painting” object than on exploring the exchange processes that, in language, constitute the network of interhuman relationships. This conviction turned him away from the usual gestures of an art world perceived as elitist and oriented him toward experiments centered on the narratives of anonymous speakers.
But their voices still needed a favorable opportunity to express themselves! This raised the question: under what conditions could people who are not prepared for it like actors, communicators, or teachers “speak” their lives and put their most intimate experiences into words without the experimental framework designed to collect them breaking all spontaneity?
Guykayser knew that if such a minority voice managed to emerge, it would be through hesitant narratives, random anecdotes punctuated by enigmatic silences. Aware of these difficulties, he imagined a device designed to bypass them as much as possible, which he called: collective self-portrait.
The idea is to elicit narratives by drawing on events or places familiar to the people being interviewed. Guykayser therefore creates kinds of scenarios, playful stagings providing a pretext for testimonies and comments. The collected statements form, in their diversity, the collective self-portrait. For example, he proposed to the Les Tanneries art center a project entitled “Too Close to the Loing,” where the population living along this river was invited to “tell” their experience of the floods that marked the region in 2016.
Conceived as a device where research and artistic creation intermingle, the collective self-portrait establishes an ephemeral and egalitarian community around the artist and his interlocutors. The artist listens and creates a relationship that the playful aspects of the device help to make fluid.
Because it is a polyphony, the collective self-portrait tends to merge narratives into a common experience. This attenuates the inhibitions inherent in any personal speech. This collective effect is moreover essential to Guykayser’s work, which aims to give voice to those who are socially excluded from it. All the projects conceived by Guykayser aim to promote the expression of a voice or experience that has remained silent or inaudible due to the social constraints weighing on the expression of oneself and one’s lived experience.
