When, in 2007, my path crossed that of Tendance Floue, they had behind them a long wake of noise, flashes, actions, and laughs, but mostly of photographs. Their images were already illuminating flares aimed at all corners of reality. I had then sensed that one of the possible and especially pertinent uses of photography was being invented there. And I found that this experiment was well in its place.
Viewed today from the inside, this unique photographic adventure, that continues to embody collective commitment, poses, beyond the undeniable human adventure, the question of the future and the challenges of contemporary photographic practice in the new professional landscape of the 21st century. In this, the space in which evolves Tendance Floue is incandescent and dangerous; It is made of total freedom, of an acute consciousness of the world, of permanent questioning and self-giving.
25 years: this is not the simple celebration of a birthday or a relocation. It is also and especially the opportunity to rethink the measures of this fair course, on the fierce margins of the fortuitous, of doubt, and of necessity. To experiment, to place oneself in danger, to invent, including work methods … If we are sometimes tightrope walkers, those who come always back to zero, overlooking chasms and engendering fears to our surroundings or our patrons, we remain outstretched towards a same point, pulled forward by our union and the power of extreme encounters. A utopia? No doubt more. The word has become suspect in the ambient cynicism. What we build makes sense, imposes itself holding front against controversy and stagnation. However all the contrary of a strategy. But a future is certain. And it is time that it be known.
What do we photograph? What is bound then unravels with questioning, revolt, dreams and empathy, fed of the recomposed shrapnel of reality and energy put on the table. And where ‘ego’ is written ‘equal’. Against all accountable logic, the Tendance Floue artistic machinery today deployed in all its breadth and its independence, vogues and produces a common and singular narrative. A necessary re-lecture of the world in sum.
So ok… my acolytes confided me this page to discuss the future, our projects, our desires and here I speak of the present! Undoubtedly this is also what we call living photography: delving together in the folds of the present to sound what the images of tomorrow will be made of.
The sea of Sarcasm menaces. No problem. Our collective adventures continue to happen: in a close horizon, one of them, powerful, ambitious, will emerge and will be Korean. Its title: “Korea On / Off”. Its subtitle: “the tumultuous idea”. A kind of Mad in… of a new generation, in production since nearly a year with high experimental content. Here we lift the veil on the earliest images – some still embryonic – of those of our photographers who have already been there. Others will follow before the end of the year. Many of the energies of this collective have thrown themselves into this unreasonable and shared bet: many photos, sounds, films, words, links and pixels. We embark with us the magnificent typographer Ahn Sang-soo, who nothing less than shook from its torpor the hangueul, the Korean alphabet, by totally reinventing it. Are also on this voyage students (his), musicians, developers, poets, diplomats, archives and perhaps even a museum of photography.
And as previous crossings, it might very well reach port.
