(Im)materiality and gesture

For its 29th edition, Rencontres Internationales Traverse places at the heart of its program a profound reflection on what escapes the gravity of the world as well as what anchors it: the immaterial and the gesture.

The immateriality invoked here is not a simple erasure of matter, but rather what remains when objects, media, or devices seem insufficient to contain everything. The festival recalls the UNESCO definition of intangible cultural heritage, which includes practices, skills, representations, and expressions—all elements that are essential to our humanity and yet threatened by indifference or oblivion. Les Rencontres Traverse bears witness to the intangible as a heritage by creating a space where the invisible, the intangible, and the unknown find a form of hospitality.

At the same time, gesture appears as the direct manifestation of human presence, an act that brings about a work as much as it reveals an intention, a doubt, a tremor. The cinematic gesture—light, shot, movement, editing—is placed on the same level as the performative or plastic gesture, which manipulates matter, disturbs space, or transforms a place. The experimental art championed by Traverse favors the initial sensation, the narrative fragment, the visual intuition, all of which are ways of touching on what precisely escapes discourse but is inscribed in the body. The notions of (in)visible, (in)tangible, and (un)known, which structure this edition, clearly express what is at stake: an exploration of the interstices, thresholds, and zones of uncertainty where image and gesture take on meaning, where the viewer is invited to see differently, to slow down, to let themselves be carried away.

Thus, “(Im)materiality and Gesture” is an invitation to inhabit the world differently, to recognize what is transmitted without being stated, to see in each movement an inscription, in each form a memory, in each disappearance a new presence.

Program 1

Sandrine Deumier
On the edge of the wild, 2025, film, 5'30 (FR - Occitanie)

Patrick Doyon
Cavalerie étourdie, 2025, film, 1' (CA)

Maria Rieger
Frontier, 2024, film, 3'22 (FR/PL)

Ron Kenley
Reflets, 2025, film, 8’12 (FR)

Giulia Magno
Bubble Bath, 2025, film, 3’30 (IT)

Cassandra Lesage Fongué
AUTO|BIOGRAPHIES, 2025, film 12’50

Anne Golden
Glint, 2025, film, 3 min 55 sec (CA)

Kim Saebom
This book is over, 2018, film, 2 min 35 sec, (KR / DE)

Benjamin Poumey
Comme la rosée face à la foudre - Vol 1, 2025, film, 4 min 50 sec (CH)

Michel Pavlou
Inconsolable, 2023, film, 4 min (BE)

Arnaud Darne
SOPHIA (les Desseins du Corps), 2025, film, 9 min 30 sec (FR - Toulouse)

Vesperalia
The Ancestral Bride, 2019, film, 13 min 1 sec

Cassandra Lesage Fongué
Imagine Democritus, 2025, film, 1 min 31 sec (CA)

Edoardo Mulato
I see you, 2024, film, 8 min 20 sec (IT)

Performance: Isabel Pérez del Pulgar, Dans la peau de Sisyphe (FR)

Program 2

Juha van Ingen
Monumental, 2025, film, 8’45 (FI)

Lorenzo Papanti
Confined to partiality, I inhabit my contradiction, 2025, film, 3’12 (IT)

Stuart Pound
Objets Trouvés, 2025, film, 1’19 (GB)

Yuliya Tsviatkova
Evergreen, 2024, film, 13 min 10 sec (BY)

Sergey Shabohin
Atlas of Tectonic Landscapes: Through the Eclipse Corridor, 2023, film, 23 min 56 sec (BY)

Florian Schonerstedt
Invisible Walls, 2025, film, 4 min 47 sec (FR)

Cecilia Araneda
Lessons on Flight, 2024, film, 4’27 (CL / CA)

Florence Miailhe
Papillon, 2024, film, 15’ (FR)

Charlotte Dalia
SPEECHLOSS, 2023, film, 15’ (FR)

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Since 1997, the Traverse Vidéo association has been promoting experimental art, first in Toulouse, then throughout France and abroad. It has established itself as a pioneer in programming not only experimental cinema but also performance and installation art, forms related to this cinema. The programming ranges from film to video art, having recognized digital art very early on and now including creations made with the help of AI. More than 4,000 artists and works have been programmed during the Rencontres Internationales: films in various formats (Super8, 16mm, etc.), magnetic signals, digital writing, and various animation techniques. The events welcome installation artists, performers, and photographers, with an openness to other media depending on the occasion.

https://traverse-video.org/