The Transmission Impossible programme—conceived by the Festival d’Avignon, the Hermès Corporate Foundation, and choreographer Mathilde Monnier—brings together for two weeks 50 students from various countries and diverse disciplines such as theatre, dance, circus, or visual arts. Its title—a contradiction—seems to be questioning the very idea of transmission. Why?
Tiago Rodrigues: Because transmitting the performing arts is an infinite—and always ongoing—process, which rests on a paradox. The Festival d’Avignon is part of a history. It is the custodian of a heritage, a memory. We can celebrate that memory by publishing texts, exhibiting photographs or video recordings. But how can we transmit the immaterial, that which is written on the void and precisely eludes texts, photographs, recordings? How do you transmit what is alive in the performing arts? What remains of them beyond the bodies that carry them? We have chosen to answer those essential questions through this programme in the form of an agora. Transmission Impossible invites young artists from France and abroad to experience Avignon through shows, encounters, and workshops with creators, to seize the Festival’s heritage to make it theirs, recreate it, and share it. It is about accepting the idea that any transmission is an act of re-creation.
Many of the participants are recipients of a grant from the Hermès Corporate Foundation. What prompted to Foundation to commit to supporting this project?
Olivier Fournier: The Hermès Corporate Foundation is deeply committed to transmission and solidarity, two pillars of its action found in the Artistes dans la Cité programme and which are integral to Transmission Impossible. This programme was conceived to enable the artists of tomorrow to fully dedicate themselves to their studies and to the learning of stage arts professions, notably through a scholarship programme created in 2018 in partnership with nineteen national higher schools of dance, theatre, and circus. At the end of their studies, the Foundation offers each scholarship recipient the opportunity to undertake a post-graduate project under professional conditions by collaborating with an established artist and partnering with a local cultural institution. This year, following Cyril Teste at the Théâtre de la Cité internationale (Paris) in 2022 and Marlène Saldana & Jonathan Drillet at the SUBS (Lyon) in 2023, the Foundation is partnering with choreographer Mathilde Monnier for Transmission Impossible. For us, this is a very concrete way to promote equality of opportunity, sharing, and cross-disciplinary collaboration, offering these young graduates a springboard to the professional networks necessary for the development of their talent.
Mathilde Monnier, can you tell us more about this programme you co-authored?
Mathilde Monnier: The rule of the game is to invite those young artists to invent their way of being spectators of the festival-machine; then to offer them the opportunity to share their ways of feeling, understanding, and reacting, in the form of presentations in the Église des Célestins. In concrete terms, we will immerse these young artists into the heart of this 78th edition and give them the opportunity to explore this cauldron of all possibilities that is the Festival. Together, they will watch shows, but also shadow artists—directors or choreographers—at work on extraordinary stages, talk to scenographers, lighting, sound, costume, and set designers, playwrights, stage managers, and people working in administration, production, subtitling… We are interested in what is transmitted not as organised knowledge but through happy accidents and unforeseen circulations within this inexhaustible reserve of memory, know-how, experiences, and tools that is the Festival d’Avignon.
Tell us about Patric Chiha, Stéphane Bouquet, and Cristina Morales, who accompany you in that school of the gaze…
Mathilde Monnier: Stéphane Bouquet is a writer and poet, as well as a screenwriter and film critic. He has also served as the director of the Danse et Cinéma pedagogical programme for the Centre national de la Danse. He addresses the dramaturgical questions raised this summer at the Festival d’Avignon, focusing particularly on the central question of narrative. Patric Chiha is an Austrian filmmaker of Hungarian and Lebanese descent. He is well-versed in dance, notably for adapting Gisèle Vienne’s Crowd for the screen in 2020. He is an artist and educator who works on issues related to screens and images at a time when everyone produces images. Cristina Morales brings a unique perspective as a choreographer, writer, and activist. Her work explores the connections between bodily movement, speech, and social consciousness. She is in tune with the preoccupations of young people on the issues of gender, ecology, minorities, the status of the artist, and counterpowers.
The international dimension of the project seems as important for the speakers as for the participants…
Tiago Rodrigues: The 50 students of Transmission Impossible hail from France, Bolivia, South Korea, Lithuania, Mexico, Portugal, Taiwan… Avignon has been an international festival since the 1960s—it’s part of its DNA—and has always been a space for encounters where future collaborations are born—transcending borders. For these young artists at the start of their careers, it is about broadening their horizons, facilitating the discovery of other countries and cultures, enabling the exchange of languages, and creating experiences that might just transform them.
Interview conducted in February 2024 and translated to English by Gaël Schmidt-Cléach