- Duration: Accessible on the festival grounds from May to October
- Location: Festival site
- Age: All ages
- Tickets: Free entrence
This large-scale open-air photography exhibition by photographer Samuel Buton presents striking images of the French Collectif XY from their site-specific project in public space, Les Voyages.
The project Les Voyages (“The Journeys”) by the French acrobatics collective XY consists of a series of spontaneous interventions in public space. It is – as XY themselves describe it – an experiment: over the course of several days, around twenty acrobats gently and quietly inhabit a selected neighborhood of a city, with the intention of opening up new perspectives on everyday surroundings together with its residents. Out of chance encounters emerge moments of mutual support, of carrying and being carried.
“By taking the ‘weight’ of people into our arms, we invite them on a moving journey into their intimate memories, where sensations of lightness, trust, and ease resonate” the acrobats explain.
Through the lens of photographer Samuel Buton, the exhibition Portons nous bien (“May we carry each other well”) transports us to some of the places the Collectif XY has passed through over the past nine years.
The exhibition, presented by the CircusDanceFestival, is freely accessible on the grounds of Latibul from the festival opening in May through October.
Tip: Selected photographs feature a QR code inviting visitors to immerse themselves in Samuel Buton’s multimedia sound and visual landscape—best experienced on your own smartphone, ideally with headphones.
The Photographer | Samuel Buton
The concept of territory plays a central role in Samuel Buton’s photographic practice.
With a background in geography, he moves between analogue film and digital pixels depending on the project, telling stories of the places he passes through and the people he encounters.
Regardless of the technique used, the principle remains the same: the focus is not on the iconic single image, but on storytelling—through the combination of photographs, texts, and sometimes sound recordings, in an artistic and documentary approach that deliberately blurs the boundary between reality and imagination.
For the Collectif XY, Samuel Buton has been documenting the project Les Voyages since its inception in 2017. Through original audiovisual works, he offers insight into this exceptional artistic project within the landscape of contemporary circus. He lives in La Rochelle, France.
