Thanks to the K-Live urban art festival, in the city of Sète, the walls are more load-bearing than ever!

K-Live invites big names in street art but also lets young people express themselves. ANNA SAULLE

The 17th edition of K-Live, the urban art and contemporary music festival, is being held in Sète from May 29 to June 2. As for the open-air museum, we're expecting Arnaud Liard, Los Pepes Studio, Philippe Baudelocque and Les Murs Ont des Oreilles. On the music side, we won't miss the lives of Tshegue and Molecule!

We are not serious when we are 17, says the poet, but that does not mean that we should not be taken seriously. Thus, K-Live, today at the dawn of its 17th edition, may still be relatively young but it is already proving essential in the landscape of Sète. And for good reason ! Anyone walking around the unique island will not be able to miss the open-air museum (or MaCO) that the urban art festival initiated in 2008: it now has more than ;around forty curved works, painted, drawn or stuck on the walls of the city, and signed C215, Satone, Manolo Mesa, Jan Kalab, Maye, Tony Bosc, Laho, Zest or even Bault…

Democratization of art

"Yes, almost the majority, we're happy. But who knows what happens when you're an adult!", smiles the director of K-Live, Crystel Labasor. "I think that the majority leads us to ask ourselves “big” questions, to wonder about what really makes sense in what we do, sometimes the nose in the handlebars, for all these years." 

Without going faster than the music, or claiming to have achieved her goal, the founder of this hybrid festival which works to build a contemporary and trendy, cool and festive bridge, between urban arts, plastic arts and current music, can ;rsquo;allow for an observation: "We have never thought of things in terms of objectives. On the other hand, we had intentions and they have not changed: to claim more poetry in urban space; come humbly to awaken the sensitive part of each person or at least of a few; participate as best we can in the rise of urban art which has undergone great development over the past twenty years." 

With this very appropriate addition of singularity: "It makes sense that our open-air museum, which is among the oldest in France, is in Sète, a city which has a strong and long relationship with art", underlines Crystel Labasor who admits that it was essential that the Sétois appropriate the MaCO: "Seventeen years ago, this n&rsquo ;was not necessarily obvious given the illegal and vandal image that still stuck to street art. It seems to me that this is a win! To the point that today, people really come to Sète to visit our open-air museum which is unique (we don’t forget where we are!) bear witness to the eclecticism of urban art."

Four guests at MaCO

From May 29 to June 2, K-Live invites four new street artists to enrich MaCO. Finally, for one of them, Philippe Baudelocque, it will be a question of restoring the beautifully dreamlike work, as if organically abstract, that he had offered to Sète. A big Parisian name in urban art, Arnaud Liard will come to demonstrate his very personal way of applying his paint so that it seems to give life to the surface it covers. Little, if ever, involved in France, the young Lisbon duo Los Pepes Studio will take possession of a vast 14 m high mural in an explosion of euphoric colors. Finally, behind the eloquent nickname of The Walls Have Ears, hides a collage artist who has made a specialty of diverting details from classic paintings which she associates with aphorisms, thoughts or expressions more or less staggered. Crystel Labasor sent him the dictionary of Sète speech, so who knows what the outcome will be!

But that’s not all! Reserved for emerging talents in the region, the “K-Live Young” invites Auri, Kuro 222, Farenheit and Meta Arte to the island of Thau, where the free workshop for children is also being held on May 29 (of course entitled “K-Live Kids” ). La Ola private beach hosts the “K-Live Beach Party” which combines a DJ set from the OKOK collective and a live painting by street artist Margot Merandon.