AntiVJ presents: St Gervais

Posted by Joanie Lemercier on Dec 22, 2010 in Antivj

We love the mapping festival. 

It’s a great place to discover new artists, installations, vj sets, talks and workshops, meet visual artists from all around the world, and start collaborations, and also a good occasion to party hard !

The festival takes place in Geneva, Switzerland, and is spreaded over many locations across the city: the contemporary Art Gallery (first time I ever saw contemporary VJ installations mixed with interactive pieces and workshops, in a gallery space), l’usine club (where most of the good European VJ have played at least once), Artamis: an artists squat, and many other venues all around Geneva, with also outdoor projects and happenings.

The name of the festival has actually nothing to do with video mapping, and the first edition was in 2005, way before architectural projections started being trendy in the VJ community, and the use of the word mapping is more about connecting elements: art, people, technology, clubs, gallery spaces..

A long history with the mapping festival.
Yannick Jacquet (legoman) being originnaly from Geneva, he has his very first VJ residency at le Zoo / L’usine, and also designed their flyers for years. Being at the time a user of the great Mac VJ software: Modul8, he quickly met Boris Edelstein, the main guy between M8 and also curator / director of the festival. Legoman then played at the very first edition of the mapping festival, in 2005, alongside other visual artists, such as D-Fuse, Exyzt, Lab-au, Olivier Ratsi …

I went there for the first time in 2007, to present a mapping installation (an early version of the light sculptures), and this is where I met 1024, and the infamous Sigma6 for the first time.
The label did not exist at the time, and seeing 3Destruct live for the first time was like a blast for me, and it is the first trigger that gave me the idea of working with Yannick and start a visual label: AntiVJ.
A year later, for the 2008 edition, we were back as a team: Romain Tardy, Olivier Ratsi, Yannick Jacquet and myself, to present our first collaborative project together: Light sculpture v2, and the very first project under the label AntiVJ (a structure to develop and promote our work), thanks to Boris and the mapping team.

St Gervais
For 2010, the focus of the festival was architectural projections, and the idea of using existing buildings and structures as a canvas. Since the Audiovisual performance we did in Breda: Grote Kerk, and another project he did: Gesu Church, Yannick Jacquet wanted to do a project combining religious architecture, and rather minimal visuals. Doing something in the St Gervais church for the mapping festival was then a perfect opportunity.
Yannick went on site to prepare the project, calibrate the projections and get some inspiration from the actual space. Here’s the video teaser he made, a couple of months before the festival:

The piece was then produced in Brussels, in collaboration with Thomas Vaquié who composed the music, and Diego Innocenzi who played the organ live (“Annum per annum” by Arvo Part), as part of the performance. Here’s a short extract of the piece, with an interview of Yannick and Thomas.

The interview was captured by Jerome Monnot and Ilan Katin, on the 8th of May 2010.

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