Echoes of Change

CONTEXT Echoes of change is a video mapping directed by Anna Bacheva with collaboration with Carl Cordonnier in photography and Géraldine Kwik in the original music composition. It is a video mapping composed by 5 steps in 5 different villas facades along the seafront promenade in Mers-les-Bains highlighting and exploring the issue of coastal erosion from an artistic perspective. The artwork is based on discussions with experts and residents that took place during the 1st local debate on the impact of climate change on the Bay of Somme coastal communities. Along reflections on the threats to coastal landscapes, especially cliff erosion and rising sea levels, the ecological and cultural loss tied to industrialization and tourism, the need for collective awareness and resilience was brought up. The personal perception of each participant as citizen and exploring (difficult) emotions served as inspirations and raw material for the artistic process. The visual artist Anna Bacheva intended to create an artwork that would present locals' perspectives, concerns, emotional states, through words, voices, sounds, animation, video, photos and architectural elements, so as to address climate change on the Bay of Somme seaside region. Following the 1st local debate, interviews with 6 Bay of Somme residents were conducted by the artists. Some of the residents interviewed have foreign origins, highlighting, thus, the universality of the topic. Their testimonies, voices and photographic portraits are displayed in Echoes of Change video mapping. The artwork weaves together memory, emotion and vision turning the buildings into storytelling surfaces and speaking to audiences on a deeply human and emotional level. ARTISTIC DIRECTION (by Anna Bacheva) Visual concept — This project explores the tension between the raw forces of nature and the fragility of the human condition through a powerful visual language. It blends documentary-style images capturing natural phenomena and dramatic landscapes with large-scale slow-motion portraits, presented in various formats, including monumental triptychs and evolving compositions. At the heart of the visual approach lie the principles of deformation, disintegration, and defragmentation. Human faces, like architectural facades, are subject to subtle digital erosion, evoking themes of decline, resilience, and transformation. The atmosphere is deliberately raw and impressionistic—a blend of documentary realism and poetic abstraction. This dialogue between digital manipulation and architectural context reinforces the idea of impermanence and the layered narratives of place and identity. The result is a visceral and evolving visual experience, straddling the line between realism and digital impressionism—where the human face becomes landscape, and nature a force inscribed in urban memory. Interviews — This project unfolds as a psycho-artistic journey, inviting participants into a symbolic and sensory dialogue with the climate crisis—not through facts or figures, but through intuition, metaphor, and inner landscapes. Inspired by a series of evocative and open-ended questions, the process gently activates the imagination, the body, and emotions. It doesn't seek rational answers, but personal truths, revealed through movement, storytelling, or silence. Each question opens a portal: What would the ocean write to you today? Where in your body do you feel the erosion? If your heart were an island, how would it withstand the tides? These reflections become the seeds of a visual and sound composition, forming a collective map of ecological intimacy, vulnerability, and resilience. Rather than illustrating climate change, the project embodies it—through gestures, textures, and dreamlike images born from a profound connection between self and planet. Rooted in a non-directive and non-constraining methodology, this approach prioritizes emotional safety, intuitive access, and symbolic language. It creates a space where inner and outer ecologies meet, and where the creative act becomes a discreet form of care, memory, and transformation. This is not about performance. It is about listening—to oneself, to the Earth, and to the spaces between. Credits: Direction and animation — Anna Bacheva; Photography — Carl Cordonnier (Dailylife); Original music — Géraldine Kwik; Interviews — Anna Bacheva, Carl Cordonnier; With testimonies from: Elmar Aguirre Kiik, Linda Aguirre Kiik, Elisabeth Höhne, Jean Bosco Kanteng, Kaia Kiik, Paul Labesse. Produced during a creation residency organised by Rencontres Audiovisuelles / Video Mapping European Center as part of the Video Mapping Festival #8 and the Co-Vision project – Creative Europe programme.