The European Nurseries of Creation (carried by Transcultures Europe since 2018), an international network promoting mobility and international collaborations among artists and cultural structures with a particular focus on emerging talents, creation/research relationships, and intermedia practices, joined forces with the VIDEOFORMES festival in 2024 to support young talents in today’s audiovisual and digital creation. They proposed 3 awards aimed at artists from all countries under the age of 35.
On Sunday, March 17th, at the Maison de la Culture in Clermont-Ferrand, during the 2024 VIDEOFORMES festival, Philippe Franck, director of the European Pepinieres of Creation, awarded the 3 Emerging Video prizes selected by the jury.
The international jury paid particular attention to:
- the imaginative dimension and poetic quality of the work
- the perspective on contemporary world, its challenges, and its changes
- the mastery of the chosen technical means
- the dynamic and personalized connections between image and sound
Aesthetic hybridity was favored over videos that were more directly “documentary”, “fictional”, or too close to the classic “music video”.
The jury consisted of Sung Nam (Interdisciplinary festival of Tokyo, Jp), Victoria Ilyashkin (CYAND/CyFest, Arm), Stéphane Le Garff (OFNI Festival, Fr).
Prix et avis du Jury Pépinières Émergences Vidéo – Festival Videoformes 2024
1st prix : Via Dolorosa, Rachel Gutgarts, 2023, Israël – France
An aura is placed above the heads of urban youth, reminiscent of a religious painting. The sacred and profane values are inverted here. This piece manages to express, through the artist’s realistic experience, the adolescent period where there is no hope for a future and nowhere to go. The simple modeling and diverse camera work make the piece elegant and personal.
Amidst drug abuse, initial sexual discoveries, and a perpetual state of war, the filmmaker seeks her lost youth by wandering the streets of Jerusalem.
2e prix : Slaughter (Besmel), Sahand Sarhaddi, 2023, Iran – Royaume-Uni
This conceptual montage of audio and visual archives transforms a historical document into an allegorical and plastic manifesto that resurrects the spirit of the time.
The video explores the archives of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, depicting a symbolic narrative around the ritual of animal sacrifice, called “Besmel.” It presents an allegorical representation of national sacrifice amidst political transformations.
3rd Prize: CYCLEPATHS, Anton Cla, 2023, Belgium
An elderly woman carries her grocery bags.
A child with a rifle on his back rides a scooter.
Birds fly.
A city collapses.
A group ignites.
This 3D animation boldly plays with the aesthetics of video games, breaking their rules, capturing the ambivalence and fragility of notions of comfort, speed, and human safety in the new techno universe of artificial civilization.
VIDEOFORMES (Fr)
Trend Observatory, laboratory, producer, and disseminator of emerging art forms in which digital technologies and poetry shape possible worlds, VIDEOFORMES organizes an annual international festival of hybrid and digital arts in Clermont-Ferrand and reports on the effervescence of multifaceted creations: installations, videos, performances, virtual realities...
Within the event, dynamic encounters with various professionals are open as part of the Digital Acts and address artistic, cultural, and societal themes.
Since 1986, the year of the first festival, VIDEOFORMES has attracted the greatest names in video art and digital arts: Nam June Paik, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Ed Emschwiller, Robert Cahen, Bill Viola, Gary Hill, John Sanborn, Jacques-Louis and Danielle Nyst, Michel Jaffrenou, Klaus vom Bruch, Bruce Nauman, Thierry Kuntzel, Studio Azzurro, Juan Downey, Ko Nakajima, Gianni Toti, Reynold Reynolds, Catherine Ikam, Alain Fleischer, Tania Mouraud, Grégory Chatonsky, Miguel Chevalier...
In the same spirit of disseminating innovative art, VIDEOFORMES welcomes many young artists and has presented the first works of artists such as Pierrick Sorin, Rosangela Renno, Lucas Bambozzi, Golnaz Behrouznia, Mihai Grecu, Hee Won Lee, Momoko Seto, Benjamin Nuel, Philipp Artus, Gabriel Mascaro, Fanny Bauguil, Samuel Rousseau, Boris Labbé...
VIDEOFORMES hosts artists in residence every year, participates in national and international cultural events, offers a program of multidisciplinary experimental performances (VIDEOBARS), a digital magazine (Turbulences Vidéo | Digital and Hybrid Arts), digital archives, and a program of actions in Artistic and Cultural Education.
