The Incas used to say : Man is earth walking. We live together on a wandering earth. Our roots lie where we go.We are at the same time sedentary -that is where our roots develop- and nomadic -to encounter the unfamiliar as well as the Other. I live in a suitcase, Mahmoud Darwish used to claim during his long years of exile. Same old story. Wanderings that establish endless territories piercing through the walls of space and time. Only to sketch new places for taking off is our event deeply rooted in Marseilles. Unveiling new centers of the world everywhere we land. Paranoïa only can drive the illusory urge to maintain borders that make the world older untimely. Takea look at a geopolitics map and see how borders draw wrinkles on the beautiful face of the planet, digging scars of control and regulation, of dominion and detention. As opposed to that, our map surfaces from the stars that shape constellations of fertile friendship. This year, the Instants Vidéo will be setting their passions on a nomadic trail linking Marseilles to Martigues, Port-de-Bouc,Nice, to Paris and St Denis, Strasbourg, to Beirut and Damascus, to Ramallah, Gaza and Montréal, to Buenos Aires and Caracas -with 29 different organisations welcoming us.The meteorite video works that we are presenting come from 55 countries(1). This 21st edition of the Instants Vidéo states that electronic poetry is a binding force between what stands as different and deferring. It states that video art is here as it is elsewhere and that art itself is always an « elsewhere », even when it’s here. A pataphysical festival filled with imaginary solutions to problems over which no-one muses. Solutions are indeed the problem. Truths are found by chance, not by reciting what we’ve been taught. Research threads are the only thing to be unearthed. The smartest will readily label us as accidantiquated. We’re strivingto achieve a state of being, not of parading, nor of grazing like sheep yearning to become butchers. Oh, the unbearable lightnessof grazing! Dionysus will be our guest of honour. Wine will flow. Bulls will jig. Some songs will leave us speechless. The unsung won’t need any legal ID to raise their voice. Words will roam about, ebb and flow, for the coast will clear and free voices. Pictures will erupt in outbursts and impulsive heart leaps. We’ll toast glasses makingsure not to craze the crystal that is inside us. We are no dream spoilers. Weare such stuff as insurrectional dreams are made on, uplifting us to the wisdom of the wild cat. The presence of Dionysus is essential, more than ever.He will come to put passion, excess and overflow where the economic rationale has fossilized our existence. No mind need be gutted, but guts required. Of the type that make us move forward in the dark. Video poets do not cover events, they discover things and can’t believe their eyes. The childhood of perception, that is. Consciousness comes later. To carryout the montage of thought, and that’s what we call a film. Eisenstein said : Dionysus = Birth of montage. There is no montage without putting to death (cutting up) and setting something in motion (the dancing of pictures). A whole day -November 9th-will be devoted to this idea with artists such as Marcel Hanoun, Alain Bourges, Marie Herbreteau, Béatrice Kordon, Mariana Vassileva, Guido’Lu …, with winegrowers from Banyuls, and with bullfighting writer and Libération newspaper columnist Jacques Durand… Let the sybaritic waves of unhindered delectation be overwhelming.The deye hasn’t been cast yet. Rien ne va plus! Art should be freed from the rulebook. Never take orders. If order be the delight of Reason, let disorder be that of imagination. Jean-Paul Labro’s installations will then enfold you in their rapturous arms, so will the performance art by Daniela Muttis and Carolina Mantovano from Argentina, the work of Franco- Russian-Argentine Natacha Muslera, as well as that of the exquisite humixte artist who’s busy with life itself, A.Strid… There’ll be screenings galore -as so many Intifadas of electronic poems- hurled at the marketers’ shopwindows, there’ll be performance art, wine, music and singing. Louise Bronx and Jean-Louis Accetone will present us, through a video-concert, with an expounding of how to make a butterfly.We’ll inevitably stand in praise of Laliberté -Sylvie, that is- whose sensible work is set to enchant us on opening night -Nov. 7th- through her playful and delicate joyfulness. We want a festival that won’t bow down to unanimous acclaim. We want aPublic Laboratory of Outrage, of defiant pictures and speech acts, defiant and undefinably phenomenal, dissen(t)sual -and tenfold sensual- acts by tens, that will be poetic above all. We want a bullring that will stage the fight between language confined by the powers that be and language unbound -poetry. A dance-floor where everything is sent packing for a ride, and no-one dances to any tune. « Clarity, no matter how the word is understood, is harmful to enthusiasm. To all poets I say : be obscure! Poetry wants something that is tremendous, barbaric and wild, » said Diderot. And even if our unindexed desires are labour-encamped by the magistrates of minced cuckooing and marketable art, they indeed wear no loincloth to cover their crotch. Our pictures stand erect as a high-strung bow ready to shoot the arrow of delight. Collective goods are meant to be shared around. All acts, be they textual, sexual, video-al, poetical, or musical are so dear to us that they can’t be but infinitely free. Of charge too. And to make sure it never ends, we’re organising from February 18th to 28th 2009, along with the Qattan Foundation, the 1st Video Art and Multimedia Festival in Palestine. Now, let’s get going, friends, set the sails, put your wings and your stilts on, let’s jump over the walls, Ramallah, mon amour (Title of Mahmoud Abou Hashhash’s splendid novel) is waiting… The 21st Instants Vidéo’s crew of buccaneers. Great thanks to Mathieu Rhoufari for the translation [1] Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Cyprus, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark,England, Egypt, Spain, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Lebanon,Luxemburg, Macedonia, Morocco, The Netherlands, Palestine, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Scotland, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tunisia, Turkey, Uruguay, USA, Venezuela. El hombre es tierra que anda to him who always talked to us about love the Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, to the giver of pictures André Iten, to the lovers of sounds Daniel Caux and Daniel Charles, all passed away this summer, and to all those living who inherited their passions
