Peeping Tom’s Digest #4: Paris

Peeping Tom’s Digest is an experimental, empirical and subjective publication dedicated to contemporary artistic practices. This issue, dedicated to Paris, teases out an offbeat and distanced portrait of the Parisian and French scene, through contributions from 70 participants and the restitution of work groups (dinners, performances, round table).

PEEPING TOM’S DIGEST #4: PARIS (Le Grand and beyond) is unusual in taking as a starting point the city of Paris, where the members of Peeping Tom reside. To conserve a necessary distance in regards to a scene they were already familiar with, the collective privileged initiatives and actors for whom a certain detachment (geographic, temporal, emotional, economic, ideological, etc.) was chosen or imposed: foreigners living in Paris or in residency, French people based abroad, nomads and dromomaniacs passing through, initiatives situated in Parisian suburbs or elsewhere in France, the student milieu, actors who have left the artistic scene or whose financial independence placed them outside of the art world, the points of view of other professions, isolated, transversal or unclassifiable practices, etc. The contributions as a whole question notions of territoriality, affiliations, and isolation, and draw a portrait, one largely made in counter-relief, of the “Parisian art scene.”