Hi, my name is Virginie Thérèse Colombe and since 2 years, I have been pursuing a video art project which takes place in different countries.

This project is about meeting alternative artists in the countries where they are living and interviewing them to elaborate creative videos. Mostly because I want to make these interviews in a way that keeps the creative work of the artist expanding through it, but also to add a touch of documentary project and art work.

My goal is to develop an alternative network of artists that are not always visible outside their borders, bring the opportunity to connect with them, and create a platform which would promote them through creative interviews. For these reasons, I would like to find support to develop this project.

Until now I made this self-financed project possible with the simplest material (a camcorder), a lot of work and tutorials, restraining travel expenses by choosing the cheapest hostels, being hosted at friends places or travelling in night trains.

This remains the driving force of these travels, discovering a new art scene, meeting people whose creative work is marked with alternative spirit.

The birth

The project started 2 years ago when I was about to travel from Brussels to Istanbul for the summertime. Passionate with travels since my early age, it was for me one more opportunity to discover new countries, cultures and traditions as well as expanding the network of people I knew.

But something happened that changed everything.

It was at an exhibition opening few days before my departure. I met a video artist who performs for bars in town. When I told him I was going abroad the week after, he suggested me to make something creative from this journey beside just exploring and decided to lend me one of his video cameras. And this is how everything began !

The week after, I was in the plane, with a backpack, a video camera, and lots of ideas !

The Idea

The idea of interviewing artists came when I considered what to do with this camera. I have always been interested in art, experimenting painting, sculpture, photography as a teen, as well as being passionate for music documentaries and experimental movies.

Concerning the travels, I have been lucky to experiment them since I was a child, mostly to visit my family abroad. But it soon became a way of living, settling in several countries, exploring different areas, learning new languages and acquiring travel experiences.

Thus, the mix of travels and art appeared as a logical link for this project.

Also what makes a journey abroad a genuine experience ? People. Socializing, exchanging is a great feeling and by bringing a new sphere to these exchanges could allow me to meet even more people. Indeed, I was not anymore the simple traveler but the "cultural journalist". I came for a reason: discovering the local art scene and meeting the artists. And It was an opportunity I wanted to take!

So when I have decided to begin the project and the interviews, I was not expecting such enthusiasm from the people, neither finding myself in private circles, events, or even being hosted by artists themselves! The result has been more positive than I thought and I could come back home with lots of material from several countries!

At the end, it gave me the insurance and the confidence in having ideas, developing them and making them come real.

Getting started

The development of the project took a while as I never did video editing before and therefore I had to learn everything by myself. I also realized that you need time to edit something in a proper way, so I had to go through a period of time in which I had to learn how to edit and how to arrange the interviews. It took several months and intensive work, before I could finalize my first interviews and even make trailers for the project.

This is during this period that I also became more and more devoted to video editing, progressively becoming aware of the place that the project was taken in my life. So I have decided to develop it and to expand it by travelling in new countries. Thus I bought for the first time a small camera and went the next summer in Caucasus area, for new interviews.

The project was on and I called it Art Tracker.

Since I have been working on it, I always wanted to give a sense to the interviews I have done. Each artist has his own creative world and it is this sphere that I would like to show, beside the interviews. Each video is directly linked to the persons through their creations so that each person interviewed can have a video that represent the best what is created. This is my goal in the editing process.

I could reach artists in various areas and create videos from interviews made in Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Georgia but I could also meet people who are willing to be interviewed in Finland, Poland and Bucharest !

However, it would be amazing if I could have some support, knowing that I can't afford all these travels by myself, as I have done until now. Indeed I would love to keep on developing this project, bringing back from these travels, some images that would give an other information about what is done in the field of alternative Art in this country or that area, when sometimes we don't have any idea about what is made over there.

For this reason I am asking your help to encourage me in developing this project and contribute in posting the next interviews online !

Art Tracker

The publications