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EDITO 2005

The organisation of the festival rests upon the interrogation of the image in the bosom of its important production and diffusion. The usual function attributed to it by our society is that of the interwoven attraction of mystified consumerism. The mimetic function plays, therefore, a précis role in mass communication to which, from necessity, adheres and participates a majority, an implicit rule of behaviour, sometimes seen as arbitrary.
A more controversial and less directive approach, to the subject is to aboard it from the bias of sensation, a particular sensation, one that we do not understand. Thus notions of pleasant and unpleasant no longer permit the qualification of a work of art. If pleasant and unpleasant are classed as invalid criteria, the sentimental community disappears. The mimetic function vanishes into thin air. The idleness of the spectator, evidently no longer rests upon contentment but upon stupefaction. Thus the experimental widens the margins of lecture. One behind the other the images construct interpretable objects. On top of this, the obliteration of the subject, peculiar to identification, as to illustration, leads to undifferentiation. Nothing allows the assertion of one signification over another. The work does not plagiarize from the environment of he who regards it. This supposes a collapse of a priori. In practice this formal, technical research results in neither a technical application nor an aesthetical one; it provokes subjective categories and delicate perceptions.
The selection retains only those videos judged experimental. Amongst these are chosen those that will compose the five programs Space, Time, Movement, Perception and Senses. These are not imposed themes but rather landmarks for grouping the films according to the image and its workings.
The presentation method is still the darkened hall, with no more consistence than an agitation luminous. An instantaneous reality upon which we cannot act, the phenomenon of apparition itself. In this context, the tool does not act as an instigator of a system of values, bringing artistic innovation to that of technology. Undeniably, our societies, by their multiple and complex methods of communication, redefine the place of art and its methods of recognition. The image is seen on a mass scale. We can share the same visual landscapes. In adopting the experimental point of view, the festival endeavours to be each year, an encounter, between spectators, directors and programmers around a continuously renewed point of reflection.
H.B.