The Bivouac residency training took place in Villefagnan between the 13 and 22 of May 2024. The members of the Gigacircus collective met in Villefagnan at Sylvie Marchand and Lionel Camburet studio. The first task of the residence was for Sylvie to share with us the concepts leading «THE MIGRATING BODY» project.
The aim of the artistic residence was to explore how we can create a collaborative online and offline space in the context of the WALC project to bring to the project the question of borders, the possibilities and limits of walking with a special focus on the human flux between South America, Asia, Africa and Europe.
For this first experimental opus, we established a communication between local exiled people, us and the local community with people from Egypt and the Ivory Coast. We were looking for a first “borderless WALC metaverse” in terms of location but also technology, trying to erase visually and conceptually every kind of cultural, geopolitical and technological borders.
« BIVOUAC » , A MOBILE SCENOGRAPHIC & TECHNICAL DEVICE.
The second task was to share technological resources Fred Adam studied during several months previous to this residence to be able to achieve technically the conceptual goal. The aim was to be able to combine a physical audiovisual multi-screen installation using the bivouac sculpture created by Lionel Camburet as the skin for the video projection with live video meetings. Fred identified Millumin, the specific hardware and software able to achieve this goal during the live sessions.
As a third task, we studied a more experiential dimension of the bivouac to respond to the need of mobility. We envisioned moving this bivouac in different locations of the WALC network and we were looking for the most simple and light solution possible in terms of technology and nomadic structure for the encounters and the projections. With the expertise of Jacques Bigot we experimented with wireless live streams between devices with the NDI protocol. With the expertise of Lelio Moehr we integrated some 360 degrees high resolution video recordings from Egypt we could navigate in real time. We explored the integration of live maps and started to study some modes of interactions for a version of the bivouac as an artistic and autonomous installation. We created a Live Streaming video channel to open the participation to the WALC community by potentially sending video content to the bivouac. The audiovisual core of the future installation is based on the artistic content developed by Sylvie Marchand.
On Saturday the 18th of May 2024 at the Villefagnan studio, we delivered the fruit of our work with a first prototype of a bivouac with a live session.
Sylvie Marchand drew a link between the local community and Poncet, the Congolese writer she is working with in Egypt. Then she introduced us to writer and poet Hamad Omer who fled from Soudan, and to Souleyman Solo, an Ivorian singer who literally took us to his native village. The result was an exhilarating feeling of joy and deep thinking relative to our desire as human beings to cultivate peace and promote a free mobility in the World. This experiment helped us evaluate how people could feel this other kind of metaverse. The feedback was very positive and the integration of the local community to the live conversation was a big achievement, opening up the conversation widely. We can confirm that we have resolved a great part of the technological aspect of the metaverse but it has to be challenged by a real display outdoors and/or indoors at the location of the WALC partners.
As a result of a wonderful first WALC creative encounter in Villefagnan, we believe that bringing the topic of a borderless metaverse related to the act of walking and cultural exchange is an important contribution to the WALC project. We certainly can say that the community of walkers, artists or not, are exposed to the growing limitations of free mobility resulting from poverty and war. That’s where we all can advocate for peace from our practice.
Now it is time for us to ask you to share your stories of encounters with people from other cultures and countries, the most beautiful of which we might bring with the help of the Bivouac into the « Migrating Body » dialogues . You will find on our web page* a video call from Sylvie you are very welcome to answer. This call has been sent to the WLC community by Andrew Suck and Babak Fakhhamzadeh and we are looking forward to making contact with people we don’t know yet about this topic.
*https://gigacircus.net/walc/
Walking Arts & Local Communities (WALC) is an artistic cooperation project, co-funded by the European Union, Creative Europe, starting in January 2024 for four years. With seven partners from five countries, WALC establishes an International Center for Artistic Research and Practice of Walking Arts, in Prespa, Greece, at the border with Albania and North Macedonia, backed up by an online counterpart in the format of a digital platform for walking arts.
WALC builds on the previous work of hundreds of artists and researchers already practicing Walking Arts as a collaborative medium, and having met at the significant previous walking arts events and encounters in Greece, Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, and during online activities at walk · listen · create.
We acknowledge the support of the EU Creative Europe Cooperation grant program in the framework of the European project WALC (Walking Arts and Local Community).
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
