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Focus – Thursday, March 17 – 2 pm
OVNi
The Biennial
Direction: Odile Redolfi
Artistic direction and programming: Nathalie Amae
OVNi is an international festival dedicated to the history of video art, from its beginnings to the latest technological developments that accompany artistic creations. The festival unfolds over 18 days, punctuated by 2 Itineraries: one in the City(ies) and the other in the Hotels. The festival includes 3 weekends of events, including a 1 Rencontre Art & Science, 2 prizes for writing and directing video films, the Prix Cosmopolis and the Prix OVNi Sud Emergence, accompanied by two international juries.
In ten editions, nearly 1,000 artists will have been shown thanks to our patrons, public institutions, foundations, art centers and various cultural, production and distribution structures, in a wide range of often unusual heritage sites.
A festival is a ritual, an intense, festive experience that balances artists, their work and the audience. The general program is an arrangement that integrates the representation of creation from both the local and international scenes, including that less visible from certain regions of the world. It also contains another challenge, that of an underlying journey through the history of the video medium, 60 years in 2023. A recent history whose evolution is intrinsically linked to technology, making it the most current and interesting medium there is.
Three works by three artists emblematic of the editorial orientations of the OVNi festival, developed by the OVNi Biennial, whose next edition is scheduled for autumn 2026.
Our aim is to trace the history of video art over more than 60 years, and to present it for what it is: avant-garde, since it has the potential to evolve constantly in line with technological innovations.
In addition, we support emerging artists, artists from the South of France and hybrid practices: artist Jérémy Griffaud is the perfect synthesis of this, who is now an international reference, and has been supported by the Festival, and Odile Redolfi in particular, since its inception. He blends the art of watercolors with that of pixels, the carnal and material dimension interwoven with the syntax of video games.
Justine Emard’s work is part of this historical trajectory, not only because she is interested in the relationship we have with the need to represent our experience of the world (both inside and outside our individuality) through images, but also because she has seized on A.I. as a tool for extending both the structure of thought and the evolution of humanity.
The choice of Giulia Grossmann has enabled us to focus on a number of areas: the breadth of programming, since we presented one of her documentaries as part of an exhibition; our desire to give OVNi a production impetus, over and above our Residencies to support writing and directing; and finally, OVNi is developing its image education activities, in addition to our Rencontre Art & Science events, and we attach great importance to the quality of mediation in innovative ways. In particular, we have initiated a project with an expert in disability and culture, a ministerial referent, concerning the transmission of visual objects to a blind public, whose methodology is applicable to all types of public.
FOCUS SCREENING:::
Jérémy Griffaud | The Garden | 2024 | 10’ | color
The Garden is presented as an immersive projection, created specifically for the Grotte du Lazaret in November 2024.
This project, originally conceived for a VR experience that plunges you into a fantastic garden filled with unique plant species, the backbone of a mysterious technological production, evokes our relationship with living beings, evolving in step with scientific innovation. It questions our ethic of the artificialization of life and our concept of productivism.
This experiment was supported by Villa Médicis, CNC, Fonds [SCAN], Institut Français, Festival Nouvelles Images and HUBLOT (Nice), and conceived in collaboration with programmers Alex Bourgeois and Rémi Lelaidier. A first interactive version of The Garden was shown in Kuala Lumpur at the DAG Gallery in August 2024.
Julia Grossman | Mer intérieure | 2024 | 10’13 | color, sound
I had the opportunity to meet Jamila and Robert through an invitation from the OVNi festival and a proposal to make an experimental film in connection with the Cultural Olympiad. Our common interest was in water sports, partly because I’m developing a body of work on the sea, and partly because Nice is a city that looks out over the Mediterranean. Spontaneously, the Nice yacht club, which we had contacted, put us in touch with a couple who were passionate about sailing despite their visual impairment. So I boarded their sailboat with the initial aim of highlighting their exploits at sea, despite Jamila’s total blindness and Robert’s partial blindness.
However, what really captured my attention was the discussion I had with them about their ability to perceive complex nuances influenced by their sensations and moods, as well as by the emotions experienced by being on board.
This conversation inspired me to visually retranscribe this ability to express emotions through altered images and sound work reflecting the emotional state of their experience at sea.
Despite her blindness, Jamila is able to visually sense weather variations through black and white contrasts. This extraordinary neurological ability, known as the “Riddoch phenomenon”, was first described by Scottish neurologist George Riddoch in 1917. He described how certain patients could perceive colors and movements in their blind visual field, even in the absence of perception.
This film is an attempt to convey the emotional experience of boarding Jamila and Robert’s sailboat, through image and sound.
Justine Emard | Hyperphantasia, from the origins of images | 2023 | 12’ | color, sound
From the depths of the cave to the depths of our brain, Hyperphantasia creates a meeting place for 36,000 years of image technology, in search of the origin of images. In the Paleolithic era, we plunged into the depths and darkness of the cave, with the human desire to inscribe a work of the mind on the cave walls.
In 2022, computational sciences enable us to analyze vast quantities of data and generate predictions.
Using a scientific database from the Chauvet Pont-d’Arc cave, an artificial neural network has been trained to create new images of prehistory for the artwork. A video wall slowly comes to life, revealing a “new” prehistory and the parallel imaginations of our ancestors. In 2021, a Cnes and ESA mission will study the evolution of sleep in space. Encephalographic data recorded over several nights enabled the artist to work with dream signals from space.
These signals from the depths of our unconscious are embodied in 3D-printed dream architectures. A landscape of mental images appears in the light of video. From the generation of new images of prehistory by a machine learning model to the extrusion of dream sculptures from outer space. We follow the birth of new images from the depths of our imaginations, as they merge and synchronize.