19 April 2012

Rennes

Today, Wilfried would like to spotlight a cultural phenomenon in France – the decentralization. During centuries France was rules centralized from Paris as the capital -differently to Germany, which is existing in the current form only since 1949 – and additionally ruled according to the federal structures of the German constitution. When people were speaking of French culture it was always meant “Paris”, France was identified with its capital, the rest of the country wasn’t that relevant. But since the European Union is existing, the regions- thus, decentralized structures get more relevance, also in France, motivating the capitals of each of the numeous French departments to develop regional culture and art – cities like Lyon, Nancy, Lille, Clermont Ferrand, Toulouse, Grenoble, Mulhouse or Rennes were opening important cultural institutions, many initiatives started in France from the provincial areas. In previous articles, Videoformes Festival from Clermont-Ferrand, Video Festivals from Toulouse and Lyon were spotlighted where Wilfried was participating as a video creator and curator. This article is focussing on the

ArtChSo Festival in Rennes

(Bretagne) taking place in 2011 (18 March – 1 April) and 2012 ( 26 April-9 May), taking place not at a central venue, but diffenerent small venues all over the town, partially installed in street windows of stores, so it is the aim to bring videoart to the audience instead of waiting that the audience is attending an event at a certain central venue, so the organizer are following democratocized decetrally orientated concepts. Art is understood not as a kind of luxury good for privilegded people, but as a part of an open culture. These ideas are very sympathic, but they are representing also a logistic, technical and conceptual challenge, that’s probaly why after 2012 this festival idea wasn’t continued.