PROGRAMMING : Marie-Frédérique Hallin and Thierry Leviez (curators of the exhibitions), Franz West (curator of Hamsterwheeel in Toulouse), Jean Lelièvre (Nocturnes), Isabelle Gaudefroy (Soirées Nomades)

The last three editions of the Printemps de septembre in Toulouse have allowed the festival to undertake an important mutation, to pass a milestone and to assert a new identity. This has resulted in the development of its local, national and international audiences. The constant increase in attendance, reaching nearly 140,000 visitors in 2006 over three weeks, attests, if proof were still needed, to the considerable expectations of the public, and more precisely of all audiences here, towards contemporary creation in the heart of the Cité. 

But behind the figures, we are dealing with an important cultural and societal phenomenon. If it has been at the heart of the festival since its inception, this phenomenon represents more than ever a considerable potential of energy, desire, and envy, which motivates both its raison d'être and its future developments. 

This is why the Printemps de septembre Festival has undergone a double revolution. First of all, by understanding the necessity of deploying and opening, beyond the problematic of the image, the field of possibilities in order to remain available, attentive, and reactive to the most sensitive evolutions of art as well as the contemporary world.

es Abattoirs, Le Château d'Eau, the Maison éclusière, the Espace EDF Bazacle, the Fondation espace écureuil, the Espace Croix-Baragnon), with a series of exhibitions and projects offering a focus on the very young French art scene? Little known and yet in full effervescence, this emerging scene has an endemic, atypical and unexpected dynamic, just like a very spontaneous generation. 
Wheeeeel, a very young French scene aims to show, through a selection of some thirty artists, some of the main lines of force that currently run through young creation in France. The landscape that emerges is neither exhaustive nor definitive, but is in the process of being reconfigured. The situation has never been so open, varied, fragmented, divergent and uninhibited. As if liberated from the dominant aesthetics in favour of a new artistic biodiversity which, it seems, only asks to be seen and received outside. There is undeniably something else at play through art, in the necessary renewal of our relationship with the world. And this is undoubtedly what underlies this dynamism. As a whole, this programme should allow the public as well as national and international observers to take note of the exciting mutations that the current artistic scene, both French and international, and with it the festival, are experiencing.
This is the least we can expect from the September Spring Festival. 

Marie-Thérèse Perrin
President of the Printemps de septembre Association 
Director of the festival