Visual of the Italian artist Francesca Fini :
“Starting from my self-portrait, I try to reinterpret the ambiguous and ambivalent figure of Arlecchino, with its references to the tradition of the Commedia dell’Arte and its dark and underground origin.
And even in this case, the mask is a simulacrum that comes to life, but in the atomic and unstable dimension of augmented reality.”

Organizing an annual event requires a commitment over time and, simultaneously, a clear-sightedness and sensitivity to the present, to the spirit of the times.
2021 is a strange year. VIDEOFORMES has worked for the artists, the actors of the cultural world, for the public, for this passion that moves us, because art is to the mind what sport is to physical health.
This period saw the blossoming of the “non words”. It is precisely the case of culture categorized as “non-essential” while economists affirm that “the non-essential is essential to the happiness and well-being of individuals” (1). Other researchers point to the fact that we “miss our artists” (2), that art and culture are indispensable actors for society as well as for citizens and that they are emerging means of reconstruction in the context of crisis and post-crisis (3). The danger is the risk of generating a feeling of exclusion, or even of engendering a society of contempt (4).
Art and culture are there to augment reality. Isn’t this the most pressing need today, when periods of lock-down loom large, or the never-ending cancellations of cultural events and encounters around sensitive works of art?
A need for dreams, travels, exoticism, explorations, exchanges, surprises, flavors … all the spice that art and culture offer.
And even if for the first time the journey is mostly virtual… we are committed, with equally motivated artists, and we will be there to exchange dreams, reflections on our condition, our environment, our relationships with others and the world, to give back to our daily life this part of humanity that is so essential!

Elise Aspord, art historian
Loïez Déniel, president of VIDEOFORMES
Gabriel Soucheyre, artistic director
February 2021

(1) Claudia Senik, a professor at the Sorbonne, director of the Observatoire du Bien-être.
(2) François Legault
(3) Research team of the Canadian Observatory on Crisis and Humanitarian Assistance. Université du Québec in Montreal (UQAM)
(4) François de Singly, Le Monde, November 24, 2020