The Interstice festival dedicated to visual, sound and digital arts returns for an 18th edition in Caen. It will take place from May 7 to 20 around the theme of “unnatural landscapes”. This year, two new locations are being added to the route.
Gap, this is the name of the free festival dedicated to visual, digital and sound arts which begins in Caen on May 7. This 18e edition is structured this year around a very specific theme: THE Unnatural landscapes.
A subject at the heart of the news with 150 years of impressionism, celebrated this year in France. The relationships between technology, landscapes and nature will be questioned and interpreted by different artists through installations, exhibitions, performances, DJ sets and conferences.
These unnatural landscapes could be “digital, photos, videos, models and other dating formats“, lists Luc Brou, co-director of the festival. This Gap artistic will last until May 20 next.
In total, 24 artists from 8 different nationalities will participate in the event. They come from France, the United States, Poland, Canada, India and Norway, the Netherlands but also Belgium. The festival is designed in the form of a route which has no imposed meaning.
Caen artists will also be present with the KL&D agency which designs light installations. For example, they will present CūBE at Saint-Sauveur Church. It’s about a “light and sound sculpture“. A large cube suspended in space, made up of LEDs which react in real time to a sound creation.
Since its creation in 2006, the festival initially dedicated to sound has evolved. “The approaches are hybrid and multidisciplinary, there are smaller formats, photography, AI, huge projections, light installations… explains Luc Brou. The idea is to mix visual and sound forms“.
All the artists are spread across 12 very varied sites in Caen. “Heritage sites like churches, like that of the Sepulchre, but also contemporary places“, explains the co-director of the festival.
Esam (higher school of arts and media), for example, hosts several exhibitions. In particular, there will be Flow, an installation composed of rocks suspended in movement. It is a work by Pierce Warnecke and Clément Édouard which tells the story of a disappeared river.
Or, on a completely different register, a Minecraft Explorer landscape sculpture by Thibault Brunet. This is a topography of an exploration mission in the world of the famous video game Minecraft. This artist was already present in 2022 as part of the festival.
Several new features for this 18e edition, two places are entering the festival route. There is the Saint-Georges chapel at the Château de Caen, in which a moving sculpture by Vincent Leroy will be visible. A mix of “poetry and technology“, the work plays with light and transparency.
But also the banks of the Orne, two cells will, in fact, be occupied for the festival. Two very different installations can be observed, on one side a robotic platform to observe moving landscapes and on the other side projectors assembled to broadcast an urban landscape.
A format “conference” will also take its very first steps, in partnership with the Paul Valéry University of Montpellier, from May 13 to 15 with different artists interviewed, on the theme: “For other types of spaces, thinking, producing, practicing space in digital arts“.
The festival Insterstice lasts until May 20. However, an exhibition Species without spaces by Thomas Pausz will be presented from July 5 to August 25 at the Abbaye-aux-Dames as part of Normandy Impressionist.
