Emilie Bujès

Describe your work in five words.
Film, document(ary), archive, intimacy, psychedelic anthropology.

Why did you apply and what will you do if you win the Schweizer Kunstpreis?
Because I would like to work independently for a while - and therefore left my position as a curator at the Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève -, the Schweizer Kunstpreis would allow me to research and write, work on several new projects I am currently thinking of or developing. - For example a book (co-edited by writer and architect Matei Bellu) including several theoretical and artistic contributions - all newly commissionned - that discusses the notion of trauma as conceived and questioned as a cultural paradigm. Or an exhibition in collaboration with artists Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo that will be presented at the Médiathèque of the FMAC in Geneva and will be articulated around the video collection and archive of the former Centre pour l'Image Contemporaine (Geneva) to expand towards further contemporary works. Projects require time, to read and think.

What is your favourite work of art?
It seems quite difficult to name one theoretical piece of writing as its relevance always very much depends on the subject and practices involved. There are several «classical» books that could be listed here, but I think it is more interesting for me to perhaps mention psychoanalytical theory or even litterature as inspirational and fertile grounds. I recently worked with some novels by Brasilian writer Clarice Lispector, who often subtly explores the dynamics of human interactions (in particular from the female point of view), a text by artist Adrian Piper entitled "Slave to Art” in which she describes an intellectually and sexually tense encounter with curator and art historian Pontus Hulten, or Pasolini's "Qui je suis”, a very personal text which adopts the form of a fake response to some interview and develops on many crucial questions for the filmmaker and writer - his work, the press, some childhood memories, troubles with the law, etc.

Where do you come from, where are you now, where are you going?
I come from history of art, and spending eight years in Berlin; I think these years had a great influence on me, on many different levels. I am now in Geneva watching several hundreds of films each year in my quality of selection committtee member for the international film festival Visions du Réel, and in parallel developing independent projects (lately at Marcelle Alix, Paris), after working for four exciting and intense years at the Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève as a curator, presenting a.o. works by Herman Assel­berghs, Sven Augustijnen, Manon de Boer, Pavel Büchler, Cinenova, Dora Garcia, Louise Hervé & Chloé Maillet, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Charlotte Moth, Ben Rivers, Ben Russell, Akram Zaatari... I am going to place that is not quite there yet but that I can clearly see.