Neither festival nor exhibition, it is an event unlike any other. And it takes place in the middle of the forest in Saint-Vit (Doubs), this Saturday June 15, 2024. Back to the trees invites you to join artists from all backgrounds and universes for a unique walk in the woods.
18 shows, 25 works, and a forest of artists, 80 in total! The invitation is beautiful. Last year, 1,500 people had the experience. Back to the trees awaits you once again in the corner of the woods near Saint-Vit (Doubs), Saturday June 15, 2024, from 5 p.m. until 1 a.m.
With the promise, we assure, of appointments, discoveries and meetings that “rustle, ring, parade, flower, stridulate, leap, crack, hoot, roar, paw, chirp, grow and croak in a luxuriant effervescence.”
Music, theater, dance, painting, sculpture, photography, sound or visual arts, all possible expressions are represented. Diversity is the very essence of this event, unlike any other. “It is both an exhibition with many that are presented but also full of occasional requests, visual or sound, like in a street art festival, explains Lionel Viard, president of the Elektrophonie association and founder of Back to the trees. All of course linked to the living world. It’s an artistic walk under the trees.”
The concept was born in 2011. With 100% Franche-Comté roots. The organizers of The Blue Night, this electroacoustic festival which vibrated the Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans from 2002 to 2010, felt the need to go green. Hence the name of their new meeting: Back to the trees, “back to the trees” in English. Since then, different editions have followed one another all over Franche-Comté, in Besançon, in the Chaux forest, in Chambley and in Saint-Vit. The event even “swarmed” in Ardèche, Gironde, Tarn, Pyrénées-Atlantiques and even abroad in Switzerland, Quebec, Togo and Bangladesh.
This 2024 edition will once again be an opportunity to discover numerous original creations, imagined by artists or collectives from the region, or from even further afield: Marseille, Lyon, Brest or Belgium. Artists all ready to venture down this strange path.
When you find yourself in the forest, it’s something different than in a concert hall or a museum. In this setting, the works resonate differently, our perception of the works is also different, everything changes!
Lionel Viard, founder Back to the trees.
“Come and take art in the forest”, summarize the organizers. Like all the volunteers, 60 in total, they are very attached to the framework of the event. Because Back to the trees is also the opportunity to explore this Amber forest with its many faces, from the Sobant stream to the Peupleraie, via the Fontaine des barroques. Or even be able to stop at the foot of the majestic “president oak”.
“We don’t know much about what gave this tree its name, nor who or when it was given its name.recognizes Sylvestre Soulié, retired ONF forester, who will offer guided walks with his aptly named accomplice Jean-Paul Grosbois. But the tradition of celebrating the most beautiful specimens of the forests is ancestral. These are the persistent traces of ancient pagan rites, through which populations paid homage to the forests, which constituted an essential resource for their survival. In any case, we can understand why it was chosen: this oak is probably 150 to 200 years old and exceeds 40 meters in height. ” Places that naturally lend themselves to exchanges.
We also wanted to invite “knowledge bearers”, from scientific fields or the wood industry so that they could share their knowledge, to go beyond the poetic approach carried by the works.
Lionel Viard, founder of Back to the Trees.
But there is no question of making it a militant gesture, an ecological manifesto. “We don’t pretend to be able to change thingssmiles Lionel Viard. It remains an artistic event. If this makes you want to protect the forest, so much the better. But there is undoubtedly already this sensitivity which brings together the public and the artists.”
Notice to amateurs finally, the price is “free”visitors set the amount of the entry ticket themselves. “Charging for access to the forest would have seemed strange to me”assures Lionel Viard.
