What is OuViePo ?
OuViePo (Ouvroir de Vie Potentielle) is a participatory artistic project inspired by OuLiPo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle), a movement founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais. Where OuLiPo explores literature through constraint, OuViePo applies the same principle to everyday life.
The idea is simple: what if each day could become a work of art ? You don’t need to be an artist, know how to paint or master an instrument. You just need to accept a constraint… a frame, a game rule… and follow it in your daily life.
The OuLiPo & OuBaPo heritage
OuViePo is born from an acknowledged lineage with two artistic movements that changed the way we think about creation.
OuLiPo explores literature under constraint. Georges Perec writes La Disparition, an entire novel, never using the letter « e ». Queneau publishes Cent mille milliards de poèmes (image), a book whose possible combinations exceed the lifespan of the universe. The rule doesn’t prevent the work, it makes it possible.
OuBaPo (Ouvroir de Bande dessinée Potentielle) applies the same principle to comics: Lewis Trondheim draws stories without lifting his pen, Jochen Gerner reduces classical works to their black marks alone. Constraint reveals what total freedom would have drowned.
OuViePo, for its part, takes not language or drawing as material, but everyday life. Moving differently. Looking differently. Eating, speaking, sleeping, walking… under constraint. Transform the ordinary into artistic experimentation.
The constraints
An OuViePo constraint combines two elements: a domain of life (body, space, time, intimate, object, sound, image, relation, digital) and a precise action to perform. For example: « For one day, communicate only in whispers » (domain: sound) or « Photograph each meal of the week from the same angle » (domain: image).
Constraints are drawn randomly from the homepage, but you can also browse and choose the one(s) that inspire you. Each constraint has a difficulty level and a suggested duration.
The Traces
When you complete a constraint, you can leave a trace: a testimony of your participation. This trace can take any form: a photo, a text, a video, a sound recording, a web link or a mix of everything.
Each trace is submitted via a 7-step form and, after moderation, joins the collective mosaic: a digital fresco where each colored pixel represents a participation. The more traces there are, the more the mosaic grows.
A community project
OuViePo is not another social network. It’s a shared creation space where every participation enriches the whole. By registering, you become OuViePien: member of a community that believes constraint frees creativity and that art is everywhere, in every gesture of daily life.
As Robert Filliou, a figure of the Fluxus movement, said: « Art is what makes life more interesting than art. » That’s exactly the spirit of OuViePo.