Saturday 24th of May 2025
10 pm > 12:30 am – Loop screening
Duration of the creations: approx. 3 to 10 min
Free
> Facebook event
Video mapping tour in the city
Facade of Labanque: 44 place Georges Clemenceau
Facade of the Bethune Theatre: Boulevard Victor Hugo
Facade of the Béthune-Bruay Tourist Office: 3 rue Aristide Briand
Beffroi: Grand’Place
Sculpture: Rue Sadi Carnot / Rue de l’Église
Facade of the Royal Beaulaincourt: Rue du Tribunal
62400 Béthune
Recommended parking: overground car parks in the city centre and the “Grand’Place” underground car park (caution: entrance to the “Grand’Place” car park closed from 9 pm).
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Video mapping tour
The Video Mapping Festival is back in Béthune with a new tour! Discover the different forms of video mapping, with monumental creations on the Beffroi, the Béthune-Bruay Tourist Office, the Municipal Theatre and the Royal Beaulaincourt; a performance combining mapping and live music on Labanque’s facade, in connection with the Visual System exhibition ; and a creation on a sculpture placed for the occasion along the tour…
Practical info:
. Total distance: approx. 1 km
. All the creations are shown on a loop from 10 pm to 12:30 am.
. All the mapping are outdoors, with free access.
. For the best experience, we advise you to follow the itinerary in the direction indicated..
> And also: performance by the Follement cirque company
Light circus performance
Rue Sadi Carnot / rue Marmottan from 10 pm to 12:30 am
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Facade of Labanque
Duration: approx. 6 min
► The Abyss Stares Back
The installation plays with the complexity and contradictions that arise at the verge of the mundane and the abyss of the subconscious.
Inspired by the history of Labanque and the works of Visual System, currently on display inside, this installation takes the building as partner in its choreography – its facade and a fleeting public space, its vaults an intimate dreamworld.
By blending generative visuals, electronic music, and live performance, the piece explores depth, rhythm, and perception, inviting the audience on a journey of immersion, self-reflection, and rediscovery. Seeking to achieve a state of connection to pure emotions through abstraction – an invitation to confront the unknown, where the abyss might stare back.
The show will alternate between live performance and recorded music.
Direction and animation: Francisca Cardoso Lima
Original music and live performance: Géraldine Kwik
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Facade of the Bethune Theatre
Duration: approx. 10 min
► The Little Servant
The Little Servant is a tribute to the little light that is turned on in every theatre in the evening before you leave. It protects the building from its ghosts, those who have not been able to leave in peace. Here, it is also a nod to the character of the maid, a supporting role that comes to the fore when Goldoni falls in love with an actress in this role.
The Little Servant immerses us in the settings of classical theatre, an eloquent theatre with emblematic people and frightening, romantic and ruthless adventures.
Direction: Les Yeux d’Argos
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Facade of the Béthune-Bruay Tourist Office
Duration: approx. 4 min
► The remains of yesterday
Inspired by the recent history of the city of Béthune and the Hauts-de-France region, this mapping transposes the region’s mining past into a device where words, rather than coal, are the material to be extracted.
Playing with new media codes – social network interface, generative AI, alt text – the work stages an excavation in the sediments of contemporary images taken from a photo library: selfies, screenshots, still lifes, vernacular photographs… Gradually, these images give way to their textual descriptions, which are gradually refocused on the landscapes of Hauts-de-France.
They converge on the image of a “black mountain”, a reference to the mine dump, yesterday’s waste that has become a characteristic feature of the contemporary landscape of the coalfields. The mine dump here does not refer to a precise location, but is generated by AI, creating an imaginary, digital representation of these artificial hills.
Like a mining operation, a sentence rises to the surface: Beyond invisible walls, images defend memory from fading. The words themselves are extracted, fragmented and then reassembled in the form of a shifting deposit. Ultimately, this is what this mapping is about: reactualising the memory of a place through images.
Direction and animation: Martina Stella
Original music: Gabriele Stera
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Beffroi
Duration: approx. 5 min
► Quantum Echoes
The particle dance
Quantum Echoes is a visual experience that invites us to explore the mystery and beauty of our universe through the language of light particles.
Each spark, each reflection tells stories of infinite possibilities and connections, between the tangible world and the imaginary world.
The show plays with perception, suggesting that reality can be transformed by our imagination.
The lights become the messengers of an ever-changing cosmos, revealing how, by changing our perspective, even the familiar can seem extraordinary.
An exciting journey that challenges the boundaries of reality and invites us to look beyond.
Direction and animation: Davide Sinapsi
Original music: Virgile Guiost Flore
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Sculpture
Duration: approx. 3 min
► JANUA
Or the opening of doors to the soul. In many tribal cultures, paintings and masks reflect the evolution of the being within its community. And when shamanic rituals are performed, the spirit becomes clouded and lets its most primitive states escape, the very ones that sooner or later bring it back to the starting point.
Direction and animation: Rémi Soyez
Plastician artist: Fred Martin
Original music: Malik Djouad
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Facade of the Royal Beaulaincourt
Duration: approx. 3 min
► Reminiscences
Dive into the history of a building through the ages. Reminiscences invites you to take a journey through time, revealing the transformations of a place that, since 1750, has stood the test of time, changing function and soul. The video mapping reveals how its uses have changed over time.
Direction: Cédric Potier
Animation: Pauline Haghbin, Cédric Potier
Original music: Birdd – Renaud Watine
An event offered as part of the Video Mapping Festival organised by Rencontres Audiovisuelles.
With the support of the Hauts-de-France Region, DRAC Hauts-de-France, the Communauté d’Agglomération de Béthune-Bruay Artois Lys Romane and the City of Béthune.
In collaboration with Labanque and the Béthune-Bruay Tourist Office.
The works for the Beffroi, the Tourist Office and Labanque are made during creation residencies organised by Rencontres Audiovisuelles as part of the Video Mapping European Center.
With the support of the European Union (Europe is committed to the Hauts-de-France Region through the European Regional Development Fund)
The work for the Bethune Theatre is made as part of a support programme for regional companies carried out by Rencontres Audiovisuelles / Video Mapping European Center for the development of the video mapping industry in the Hauts-de-France Region.
With the support of the European Union (Europe is committed to the Hauts-de-France Region through the European Regional Development Fund) and DREETS Hauts-de-France.
The work for the sculpture is made during a creation residency organised by Rencontres Audiovisuelles as part of the Video Mapping European Center and the VideoMap project.
With the support of the European Union, Interreg France – Wallonia – Vlaanderen programme.
