Poetical
revolutions. What to do ?
An international video art festival
to Mohamed
Bouazizi
A
young Tunisian whose suicide by fire in December 2010
was
the trigger action of the revolution in Tunisia...
Poetic
revolutions / Politic revolutions
Les
Instants Vidéo have
been
involved for long with countries from South Mediterranean banks
(Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria...), and we felt
the necessity
to say something about the revolutions (or insurgency) that are
shaking the so-called "arabic" countries at the moment.
Discredited
for a long time because being an expression of authoritarian regimes,
the world "revolution" suddenly recovered a positive
meaning. Then, the first question which come to our mind was : how to
revolutionise the revolution so that our dreams do not step into
bloody dead-end ? Our proposal is to create new languages to think
differently. That's where we find our legitimity : to question
Revolution from our poetic and artistic position.
To transform languages is to step into new territories
of the thought in action.
Video art, the contemporary art of "arabic" revolutions,
says a lot when choosing to confront with all the other languages
(poetry, music, dance...).
The 24th
Instants Vidéo
will welcome works of art from all the continents considering each
one of them as a sentinel watching over the horizons. We will open
our eyes to poetronic works from the South Mediterranean. We will
present a "Return from Palestine" to echo the 2nd
edition of the Festival /si:n/ which took place last June. We will
question politic and poetic utopias with Jean-Baptiste Para, admirer
of the most revolutionary poets of all, the Russian Velimir
Khlebnikov. With Michaël La Chance from Quebec we will approach les
oeuvres bombes that
allow some governments to take the artists as terrorists.
Preparing
the 50th
anniversary of video art in 2013
The festival
will also give a glimpse of the spirit we want to share during the
celebration of the
50th
anniversary of video art in 2013, a happy and combative event ! We
will for instance discover the VideoPoemOpera SqueeZangueZaùm
(1988) by the so inspiring Gianni Toti.
And
we also invited one of the pioneer of this history, Michel
Jaffrennou, who will present an installation Story-board’s
stories,
and a performance on November 12th
Ma
vie, Mon œuvre Mes bugs which
recounts the extraordinary and jubilant story of the artist from 1974
up to now.
Marseilles
: our
anchorage ground, our new homeland as well as our runway.
The
main encounter of the festival will take place from November 9th
to 13th
in La Friche la Belle de Mai, but other important events (exhibitions
of installations, screenings, performances, encounters....) will be
criss-crossing the town from November 4th
: Espace
Culture (shopwindow), les grands terrains, ADPEI, Mémorial la
Marseillaise, La Traverse, La Tangente, Où, Art Position, Bastide St
Joseph.
Finally,
thanks to our intense nomadism, we will go from October to December
to
Port-de-Bouc, Martigues, Vitrolles, Bédarieux, St Denis, Paris and
to Italy, Cuba, Mexico and India.
Carried
along by the revolutionary
euphoria
of the Tunisian and Egyptian people who ousted the tyrants from their
thrones, the people from Syria and Yemen who don't give up, the
people of Morocco, Algeria or Iran who protest as much as they can,
the Palestinian people who has never stopped resisting since 1948, I
started to dream of a poetical accompaniment for these emancipating
accomplishments:
Video
art is no more merely a contemporary art. From now on it is an art
that is contemporary of the revolutions which set the southern
mediterranean countries on fire since the beginning of this year. It
would be an intellectual crime to protect ourselves from their
spatter, to not let ourselves get covered by this froth on the
daydream, passed through by its tornados, pervaded by its scents
which finally make life breathable in this greedy world that nips in
the bud all creative attempts.
Poetry
is against order enforcement.
Political
revolutions... Poetical revolutions... Same combat! Liberation is
from now on spelled in Arabic: Tarhir." .Marc
Mercier (short extract from the editorial of the festival)
