FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

1. What is helloloser?

helloloser is a collaborative framework for collective action and shared authorship.

2. Where does helloloser come from?

helloloser was founded 2019 in Joshua Tree by Charlotte Bonjour and Romain Löser. It emerged from a long-standing exchange between their two independent practices. Reciprocal dialogue shifted into production and then gradually expanded to include others.

3. What does a “loving and iconoclastic machine” mean?

The machine is a process rather than an instrument. In this sense, helloloser is both loving and iconoclastic: it builds connections while also disturbing habits and challenging established roles. This machine, like the desiring‑machines, is not a cold apparatus but a productive assemblage: something that connects, interrupts, and generates flows. The organic counterpart that inspires us is the mycelium.

4. Is helloloser a collective or an artist duo?

Both, and neither at the same time. Charlotte Bonjour and Romain Löser remain autonomous artists under their own names, even as they question the idea of the single author. Building an art career always involves many others. The status of those collaborators and the hierarchies within a group are significant. Some artists acknowledge the many hands behind a project, while others cling to the myth of the solitary genius. helloloser explores larger scenarios of shared intelligence and production and presentation.

5. Is helloloser a family project?

It depends on what one calls family. helloloser does not care about bloodline. The kid they happen to make things with is their own, but what they care about is intergenerational dialogue — with children as well as with older artists, as happens frequently at GUTS. To limit the generational contract to “I raise you, then you take care of me” seems insufficient. What is needed instead is an ongoing conversation between voices of different ages. Thatcher was wrong: society is a family too and we in it together.

6. How does dystopia relate to the practice?

Dystopia is not something helloloser seeks out; it is the atmosphere of the present. Since the nineteenth century, dystopia has accompanied modernity as a counterpoint to utopia. Today, as industrial logics increasingly absorb the soft skills of human life, that counterbalance has largely disappeared. Utopias are dwindling. Working collectively does not resolve this condition, but it insists on strengthening those human capacities for this idealized living together/working-together: attention, cooperation, and imagination.

7. How does collaboration function within helloloser?

It depends. Sometimes the collab’ is structured around a clear goal, as in the awnings, where defined parameters and materials guide collective action. In other situations, collaboration relies more on intuition and porosity, unfolding through shared time, attention, and responsiveness to materials and contexts. Recognizing others is the condition for the collective. Collaboration comes out of relation. helloloser should therefore be understood not as a merger but as an extension.