Simone Dompeyre – curator

Simone Dompeyre (France)
director & curator of Traverse Video Festival Toulouse (France)

Multidisciplinary university education with diplomas and competitions in Philosophy – PhD Thesis in Modern Letters – Capes Aggregation in History of art with endorsements.
Professor of film analysis and semiology of the image; Lecturer for the first Net-based teaching, the first to be done with Chat: Aesthetic and Audiovisual and Aesthetics and Multimedia.
Jury of university exams and competitions. Jury of Scenario and comic strip. Jury of Film, short film, feature films, video art, intermediality.
Numerous articles on stage direction, experimental art. Articles for websites or artists’ exhibitions.
Annual publication for Traverse Vidéo’s book-catalog Video, 150 pages.
Production of documentary shorts: Toulouse, Petite Chine// Le Ciné m’a// Opus Opéra //Sémiologie, première leçon. //Baroque vous disiez ? Baroque vous saviez ? J’aime l’animation//Pourtant artiste//J’installe, tu installes, il installe//Dit du dedans//D’accordi//ils lisent et elles aussi//De la ferme à l’assiette// Pourquoi tant de performance(s) ? Chapitre 1

Participation in various symposia, round tables on stage direction, on experimental art at national and international festivals.
Speaker in many festivals with workshop on experimental cinema. Organiser of meetings and audiovisual artistic events.
Founder of Traverse Vidéo in 1997 of which she is the president and art curator for about fifteen places, several cities and interventions here and elsewhere.

curated selection

1
Mémoire (Memory) [total duration: 27:07]
– Sylvie Denet, Train Un (03:30)
– Marie Minot, Tropical Amnesia (05:03 / subtitled in English)
– Erwan Soumhi, Le Bateau de Thésée (02:28 / subtitled in English)
– Nathalie Joffre, He told me that his garden (09:30)
– Gérard Cairaschi, Magia (06:36)

2
Je est un autre [total duration: 30:56]
– Agnès Quillet, Paysage (00:59)
– Jonas Schloesing, Je ne suis personne (05:55 / unfortunately, there is no English subtitles of this film)
– Johanna Vaude, Inner Stranger (05:00)
– Sigfried Bréger, Catleyas (07:01 / I’m currently working on the English subtitles)
– Les Sœurs H, La Vie de Fraulein Erzebeth est une sorte de chaos organisé (12:01 / subtitled in English)

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Sylvie DENET

Born in Paris, Sylvie Denet has lived and worked in Aubervilliers since 2004. She also stayed in 2004 at the Canton Museum. Since 1999 she has participated in numerous solo or collective exhibitions in France. Decorations of theater, cinema, publications in the press, participation in various artistic projects, are his usual occupations. and for some time the production of animated films takes more and more space.
Several of these films have been selected in festivals (videoforms, the unexpected Lyons, Dieppe film festival, international film festival Meknes in Morocco, cross video in Toulouse, video moments in Marseille, national film festival In June 2010, the film “Une histoire” was awarded the Biennale of Contemporary Art by Cachan. In 2012, “Où-Vas-tu” took part in the exhibition “The eye on the streets” at La Villette, and in 2015 at the Villissima exhibition in Toulon. Last creation “crank”: video installation realized for the photography biennial of Tianshui (China).

Train Un (2012, 03:30)
Travel in a train, the landscape scrolls, the vision becomes hypnotic, other images are needed then. Dreams and memories.
“Train un” was born in an unexpected way, my previous films were drawn frame by frame starting with the first image and ending with the last one; the scenario, the editing, the animation advancing together with each drawing.
For this one I drew pieces in a set of sequences that I had made, at the request of a composer of contemporary music, Mr. Josep Grau, listening to his musical composition.
Video and music band, become a support of improvisation, during concerts, for the musicians.
The video alone does not seem finished, or at least it does not work. I extracted the passages I liked, and make a montage. Very quickly the scrolling images imposed me the sound of the train. And the movie was finished.

Marie MINOT

Since graduating from the School of Fine Arts in Bordeaux in 2006, Marie Minot has been working in the field of image and installation. From image-sources from her wanderings on the web, or shooting accumulated in the form of collections and images, she produces in her words « digital compositions ». These are designed as interfaces between reality and fiction, they are fantasy, ecstatic and metaphysical visions which question the complexity and fragility of reality. She wrote in her diaries : « In my approach it is question of digital identity, I do not seek to represent the world. I produce digital compositions by play of simulation ». Marie Minot’s images bring the spectator into unspecified areas not referring to any underlying reality. The original and the authentic vanish and blend together to create a universe of icy and disturbing appearances.
Falsely sophisticated atmospheres stage impersonal subjects, abstract forms, meditation spaces which are no longer anchored in reality. Jean Baudrillard writes : « Reality does not give way to the imaginary, it fades in favour of more real than the real : the hyperreal. More true than the true : such is the simulation ». New images bear witness to a world now open to flux. Marie Minot’s «digital compositions » show undetermined identity. Her images are difficult to qualify : in French one might call them « hyper-estampe » or « estampe digitale » or « virtuelle », « imprimé » or « impression numérique » or in English « computer art print » or « digital art print ». They push the spectator to question what they see, that is their strenght. Marie Minot conveys beautifully the meaning of her artistic work : « Here is the epicentre of my intention, the emergence of a certain empty narrative. Through dreamed and sensory visions I question the Enigma of reality and its complexity at the time of digital era ».

Tropical Amnesia (2016, 05:03)

A bitter taste in the mouth, dry throat The skull that swells with each new heartbeat The unpleasant impression of not being master of oneself This is what we can read in Marie Minot’s last work, Through these images we see and feel the construction of a memory Built on the remains of the previous day, or even on another existence. The enigmatic Tropical Amnesia Evokes a return to oneself after a long apnea: memories Which rise to the surface in pieces, others that stagnate between two waters … This work touches the idea of a protective mechanism of consciousness, Transforming a shock whose memory has erased the memory into other illusory images. Applied to the photographic medium, the technique of collage The numerical method employed by M.M. proceeded precisely from this mechanism, since the origin of clichés is lost in favor of a new vision, a creation Similar to what Paul Ricoeur calls A narrative identity (Memory,History, oblivion). The sets of layers, overlays and masks go through many means of mourning which have been, The potentially traumatic image-source in order to free oneself from its Persistence – create mirages in short.
Alice Cazaux.

Erwan SOUMHI
Title
Le Bateau de Thésée (02:28)

Nathalie JOFFRE

Nathalie Joffre is a French artist based in Paris working with video, photography and installation.
Her work is concerned with our relationship to the past, as an intimate and performative experience that opposes a global, fixed and document based version of our history. Involving and mixing historical research, poetry writing, recording and (re)-staging,her process explores the intimate relationships we can build with places, objects and characters of the past.
Her video work was rewarded with the Sproxton Award for Photography 2012 (London), the ICART Prize for Contemporary Art 2013 (Paris) and short-listed for the Celeste Prize 2013, the Aesthetica Art Prize 2012 and the Prix de Nuit Photographiques 2013. She has been the recipient of various bursaries (French Ministry of Culture 2013, Katia & Marielle Labèque Fundation Roma 2014, NEARCH / Oxford University / European Union 2015-2016).
Her work has been shown in various exhibitions and festivals internationally. In 2016, her video & installation works around archaeology has been shown at the CENTQUATRE Art Center in Paris, where she was an artist in residence in 2015 in partnership with the Institute of archeology at the University of Oxford. Recently her work has also been selected for the international competition at Kino der Kunst 2017 (Munich/Germany). Nathalie Joffre owns a BA and a MA in Art History & Archeology from the University Paris 1- La Sorbonne (Paris), a Mres Visual Arts from the University of Arts in Amiens and an MA Photography from London College of Communication.

He told me that his garden (2012, 09:30)

An empirical exploration of a photographic archive from Bethlem Royal Hospital, Europe’s oldest institution for mental illnesses.
Archives tend to bring us back to the past through documenting it but they also inhabit our present. What kind of imprint do they leave on the memory, the body and the intimate space of the one who touches, smells, listens to them and studies them?
He told me that his garden… is the result of my own subjective exploration of the archives of Bethlem Royal Hospital and more specifically of a collection of patients’ pictures, taken by portrait photographer Henry Hering between 1857 and 1859. This adiagnosis, and in the case of criminals, the crime of each patient. Whilst studying these archives, I became more and more interested not only in the documents themselves, but also in the relationship I was building with them; with the place where they are located and the people on the pictures. My intention has been to consider the archives not as a fixed accumulation of dead material but as a living and travelling body, that one can access and appropriate physically and mentally.

Nathalie Joffre 2012, Bethlem Museum of the Mind.

Gérard CAIRASCHI
Gérard Cairaschi, multimedia artist, video artist, photographer and creator of installations, lives and works in Paris. His work has been shown and won prizes in numerous exhibitions and video festivals around the world.

His work questions the image’s cultural dimensions, its codes, its means of representation and its historical status and reference. He shows joyous or solemn images of nature or people, which refer to the history of art, to myth, to religion, to literature, to cinema, to a shared history and to that of the individual.

Magia (2006, 06:36)
A young boy molds objects with clay that he then manipulates, combines and associates, in an obscure ritual. As the objects/representations he creates combine and develop a narrative, the fast alternation of images on the screen imbricate and shape images/apparitions that only the “lanterna magica” of cinema and the magic of editing allow. Magica means enchantment.

Artists:

Agnès QUILLET

During she studied Fine Arts, she discovered the video medium. In 2008 she is graduate of the Art school of Aix-en-Provence with her video work. After releasing some video installations for experimental video festivals and some short experimental movies, she works now with theater and dancer company between France and Mali.

Paysage (2008, 00:59)
Little girl body’s is an image, landscape is her body. Silence.
Found footage, editing: Agnès Quillet

Jonas SCHLOESING
Title
Je ne suis personne (05:55)

Johanna VAUDE

Artist and film director, Johanna Vaude creates eclectic and hybrid movies.
Her career reveals wide influences, starting from a background knowledge in fine arts and experimental cinema which she extends to new technologies.
Produced out of the traditional ways, her films are subject to specific focusses and obtained critical recognition.
ARTE, the french-german cultural channel, has produced a portrait of the artist for its Court-Circuit program.
She was allowed a Carte Blanche at the Cinémathèque Française on her research about hybridization : « Transplant, fusion, heredity : hybridization and new technologies according to Johanna Vaude. » followed by an edition of the « Hybride » DVD.
Since 2011, Blow Up Arte, webzine dedicated to cinema, gives her Carte Blanche on a regular basis on various themes and directors.
Johanna Vaude is laureate 2016 of the Prize label image awarded by the Passeurs de Lumière at the SCAM.

Inner Stranger (2012, 05:00)
Like an introspection, « Inner Stranger » explores, through Leonardo DiCaprio’s dialogues and acting, the psychology of the modern man being a prey of his doubts and fears. The crossing through the inner hardship will guide us to a last survive instinct. « Inner Stranger » is also a tribute to Leonardo DiCaprio work.

production: Blow Up Arte and CAMERA LUCIDA – Sound design and editing: Johanna Vaude

Siegfried BRÉGER

Siegfried Bréger was born in France in 1971, and currently lives and works in Nantes.
Video artist and filmmaker, he studied at the academy of the Fine Arts of Rennes in
Rennes and then in Le Fresnoy, National Studio. For about fifteen years, he creates
films from which arise a real poetic sensitivity to words, images, human consonances
and disonances. His relation to poetry, to literature, is deep, extremely personal,
marked with a melancholia expressed with both sophistication and violence. Those
“poem-films”, very symbolic, succeed in avoiding classifications, and their singular
style is also the result of a entirely independant creation process.

Catleyas (2014, 07:01)

It could be Vinteuil’s musical sentence brought up by Marcel Proust in « In Search of Lost Time : Swann’s Way ».
Directed by (image, sound, editing): Siegfried Bréger
Production: Siegfried Bréger
With the participation of: Valentine
Thanks to: Marion Hermouet
Cited autors:
Marcel Proust, “Un amour de Swan” dans «Du côté de chez Swann »
Aleksei Fedorchenko, “Ovsyanki”
Claude Chabrol, “Le beau Serge”

Les sœurs H

Les sœurs h are two sisters : Isabelle Henry Wehrlin and Marie Henry.
The former is a video artist and lives in Switzerland. She is a graduate in photography of Ecole nationale supérieure des arts visuels de La Cambre (Brussels, Belgium) and has produced several video films which have been presented in international festivals in Europe. The latter is a playwright and lives in Belgium. She is a graduate of Institut National Supérieur des Arts du spectacle (Brussels, Belgium), a former member of the late “Groupe Toc” and was awarded the Prix Triennial de Littérature Dramatique in 2010. Her plays have all been published by Editions Lansman.

As daydreaming teenagers les sœurs h soon realized they would never be able to do anything to eradicate famine in Africa, or fight injustice anywhere in the world, or for that matter have any leverage in politics in general. Gradually turning in on themselves, they soon developed a particular taste for the trifles of life. Spending their days in wistful languor, shunning reality, they came to prefer the show, the formal, the fake, the specious, the spurious to the real.

In an assertive, cliché-ridden rendering of everyday life, les sœurs h love mixing and opposing their respective arts by disturbing the narrative codes of writing and image.

La Vie de Fraulein Erzebeth est une sorte de chaos organisé (2012, 12:01)
Fraülein Erzebeth’s name is rather outlandish
She is something of a fright too
In a strange / low-brow / English-French she conveys to us a childhood memory that is as weird / poetical / as it is tasteless
Doubts linger on, while the unspoken steals in
And our imagination insidiously steals into the gaps of this story

Directed by: Les sœurs h
music: Clara de Scott Walker