Once the symbol of a genuine culture springing spontaneously from the masses, festivals have become the ultimate form of the cultural industry, that of the mass, which consumes it passively. Can we still live a spiritual experience in these new consumerist sanctuaries? Do the individuals in the audience succeed in creating their own subversive experience ?
With Cultes, a trip in the heart of a crowd, of a community of bodies united by their love of music, (LA)HORDE captures the concrete manifestation of worship that translates into ritualized practices and performances.
These questions drove (LA)HORDE throughout the making of this art film. As they scanned the crowd with their cameras, they captured this gigantic gathering as a form of grace. Unexpected suspended moments makes the film oscillate between disenchanted paganism and animal spirituality, jubilation and anxiety, ecstasy and descent, disenchantment and light.
Through this project which combines a film and a performance, (LA)HORDE explores a choreographic language that the three performers of the film will transfer to the festival fans so that they can in turn embody a mass jubilation. They will together create in situ a mass jubilation such as the ones of festivals, a consumerist mass between vice and grace.