From the 2nd to the 4th of June, the second reiteration of EXIT festival will take place. The first was held in 2021, and the festival takes place every two years. The festival will see the participation of eight Catalan companies and three companies from the Balearic Islands, which has been made possible thanks to the support of the Ministry of Culture through the Institut Ramon Llull (IRL), who will focus on Catalan and Balearic artists, and the Institut Català de les Empreses Culturals (ICEC) who will organise the meeting between industry professionals that will take place on Friday the 2nd of June.

EXIT is a festival dedicated to street art and art in public spaces organised by L’Usine Centre National des Arts de la Rue et de l'Espace Public (CNAREP), which is located in Tournefeuille, on the outskirts of Toulouse, Occitania. This year, the theme is ‘Sharing, Otherness and Exchange’. Under this theme, the festival aims to bring together the public, artists and street art professionals in Occitania with their counterparts in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands.

The Catalan and Balearic companies that are part of this year’s programme with the collaboration of the IRL are: Vilaró with S.O.S.; El Conde de Torrefiel with Se respira en el jardín como en un bosque; John Fisherman/Sergi Estebanell with Money for free; Joan Català with Idiòfona; Silere Arts with Proyecto X; Emília Gargot with Street is lava; Marie Gyselbrecht with Nest; Joaquín Collado with Aproximación a un sol negro; Baal with Alek&Sophie; Cia. d'Es Tro with Poi and DAUS with Oficis Oblidats. The performances will take place in Tournefeuille and Toulouse, as well as at other locations around the metropolitan area.

Apart from the artistic performances, the objective of this collaboration with the festival is that of establishing sustainable, long-lasting relationships between the members of Catalonia and Occitania’s creative sectors. To this aim, four Catalan companies have been co-produced by the festival and numerous artistic residencies have been carried out. Further collaborations with Catalan festivals are expected in the future.

On the 2nd of June, the professional activity in which the ICEC is participating through its internationalisation brand Catalan Arts will begin with a debate organised by Occitanie en scène, Occitania’s cultural agency, in which Lorena Abelenda-Castro from the Euroregion Pyrenees Mediterranean, Martha Gutierrez from Relais Culture Europe and Florian Goiffon, from Horizon-Europe will participate. The event will be moderated by Yohann Floch (On the Move and FACE).  

At 14:00, the Institut d’Estudis Baleàrics, FiraTàrrega and Escena Poblenou will present their projects and their collaboration with EXIT and l’Usine.

Then, there will be a session where two Catalan companies, Sergi Estebanell and El Conde de Torrefiel, will share their experiences around current processes of creation in public spaces.

Afterwards, a debate will take place that aims to answer two questions: How much room for manoeuvre do we need to start a cultural project in the public space? and How can practises from other places be implemented so that together we can create projects that cross boundaries? in which French programmers and Catalan-Balearic artists will participate: Caroline Raffin (director of the Fourneau – CNAREP in Brest) with Silere Arts, Olivier Lataste (director of Cratère – Scène nationale d’Alès) with Sergi Estebanell and Sébastien Bournac (director of the Théâtre Sorano in Toulouse) with the company D’Es Tro (Balearic Islands).   

The events on the 2nd of June will finish with a meeting organised by Catalan Arts that will offer a space for informal, relaxed conversation and networking so that different street artists can exchange opinions, points of view and solutions with one another. There will also be a showing of the documentary produced by the ICEC: ‘Street Arts in Catalonia: landscape of creativity’

Furthermore, a digital leaflet has been created with all the information on the Catalan-Balearic companies and artists that are participating in EXIT.

EXIT is the first of three festivals in the months of June and July that will present Catalan and Balearic street art in Occitania. From the 2nd to the 4th of June, Kamchatka and Quim Bigas will perform at the Point de fuite festival in Capdenac, and from the 7th to the 9th of July five of the companies now performing at EXIT are programmed to appear at Surfaces festival organised by la Scène national d’Alès: le Cratère.