Out-of-competition 2025: Immersive exploration of otherness
L’Atérité, a window on the Other
Every year, the Out-of-competition section of NewImages Festival offers a cross-disciplinary, committed look at contemporary immersive practices. For this 8th edition, the common thread running through this selection was an obvious one: Otherness.
In a world of ever-increasing identity, social and political tensions, immersive creation enables us to transcend visible and invisible borders, to enter into the reality of the other – and, in so doing, question our own.
Rethinking our view of others
Far from exoticism, the works presented invite us to change our perspective, to feel in our own bodies the narratives of others. Whether through a performative experience, a sensory interaction, or a virtual environment, they force us to radically decentralize: to confront the unknown, the marginal, the excluded – but also the beauty of difference.
Virtual bridges to elsewhere
HUK, The Jaguaress is an interactive installation in the form of a feminist, indigenous AI. It reverses traditional roles: here, it’s the tool that questions the human, rather than the other way round. An invitation to take a different stand, to listen, to learn.
In Oto’s Planet, a displaced humanity attempts to rebuild coexistence on an alien planet. Playing on the codes of science fiction, the work offers a poignant metaphor for contemporary migration.
Impulse: Origin of Ideas offers a sensory dive into the workings of ADHD. This immersive work makes visible the often misunderstood non-linear pathways of thought. By destabilizing our cognitive reference points, it enables us to better understand the inner experience of another, and invites us to broaden our perception of normality.
Otherness through Industry Days: thinking about narratives, identities and the ethics of immersive media
The theme of otherness is also at the heart of Industry Days, the professional highlight of the NewImages Festival. A number of conferences and round-table discussions explore the political, social and cultural dimensions of immersive creation.
Decolonizing cultural identities: immersive technologies and the reappropriation of narratives
An essential conference questioning the power of XR technologies in the restitution of marginalized narratives. How do indigenous, diasporic and minority communities appropriate these tools to deconstruct dominant narratives and bring out other voices?
Identity and Immersion: Exploring inner worlds through XR
A round table dedicated to autobiographical and introspective narratives, showing how immersive environments can be used to express complex forms of subjectivity, from neurodiversity to the experience of gender, from trauma to emancipation.
AI and immersive environments: rethinking creative processes and interactions
Otherness is also about machines. By exploring human-machine collaborations and AI-generated narratives, this panel questions new forms of non-human otherness and their artistic, ethical and social implications.
These moments of reflection complement the Out-of-competition works, making the festival a veritable laboratory for thought and experimentation on otherness in all its faces: visible or invisible, human or technological, familiar or distant.
The Out-of-competition selection can be seen from April 9 to 13, 2025, at the Forum des images and the canopée des Halles in Paris.
Not yet accredited?
Whether you’re curious to discover new forms of storytelling or passionate about immersive technologies, NewImages Festival 2025 offers a rich and accessible program to explore the future of immersive creation. Come and experience something out of the ordinary!
Discover the full festival program here!