Sébastien Camboulive – Artist in Residence

Sébastien Camboulive – plans for this residency…

As there is no planned final exhibition (covidwise), it relieves my mind from a constraint of rapid and concrete results. It is good news in a way because my projects initially mentioned for this residency do not turn out to be very relevant in the local geography. So here in Linz, I have the opportunity to work experimentally, to try various directions without deadline. For once it could be time to fail, that is precious.

It is pretty much a situation of a blank page and thus a productive improvisation on “how to photograph in a city” away from the documentary mainstream dogma. My naive ambition is to work on a renewed visual path that would feed me for months to come. For the moment, the pattern of vegetation is leading me towards most of the ‘natural’ space of Linz and around. Another emerging idea is that the corpus of images I’m collecting here will be part of a larger set linked to images from another city (in the nearby Czech Republic) that I will make in a second step.

…working in different genres…

I have been working on some installations and videos in the past , but I realized I didn’t have enough ‘expertise’ and control on these media (and not really willing to get it) to feel real pleasure to work with. So I decided that photography was wide enough for me and the road long enough before I get bored with it.

Sébastien Camboulive – experiences as an Artist in Residence…

I have been to quite a number of residences this last 20 years. Something like once a year in average. Because it is a good way to distract from my routine, to focus on my work putting aside personal and family matters, to bring me in some necessity to change what I do and how I do it. Most of the time, it’s a place where worries and freedom come together; it can be sometimes challenging but it made me grow as an artist (and a human being).