Gaëtan Gaudissard presents his series “Conscience” at the High Five Festival
One after the broadcast of the film of the same title, Gaëtant Gaudissard returns to the High Five Festival to present the “Conscience” series. Still in the theme of the environment, the professional skier wants to raise awareness by highlighting all that the mountain can bring us.
Gaëtan, is there a particular event that you a license to become aware that we had to change our habits, and more particularly the practice of skiing?
“For me, it was a little by little awareness that made me get here. From the moment when I started to document myself really on the question that I started to think. I watched the integral of Jean-Marc Jancovici, you really become aware of what energy, to comment has arrived there, what are the orders of magnitude to put in place to get out of this direction -there… It was strong for me, because you understand that you don’t just have to remove straws. Documenting myself on the subject was the first lever!
My journey was then personal, the first thing was my diet. But, in the beginning, I mainly did it to be healthy. When I was a student, a meal couldn’t cost me more than three euros. I was lucky, not because I couldn’t make ends meet, but because I wanted to save gas to go skiing and kayaking. Food was first a click to respect me. »
Do you also limit your possible trips by car as much as possible?
“When I was a student, I drove up to 40,000 km in a year with my car. Last year I was at 6000 km, this year I’m trying to do less than 5000… I use the bike and the train a lot now. The train that I never used until two years ago, before “Conscience”. I started with the movie. I still do now. I also do a lot of electric bike for daily trips. And then even a normal bike. Today I came by bike to the High Five, to mix sport and movement. And then to reduce the impact of my journeys.
It was Tony Lamiche who distributed this to me. For me there is no one way to do things. I wanted to stop taking the car and suddenly I called Tony who had an electric bike and I said to him: is it just fashion or does it really work? He told me he used it all winter. I find that going to play sports using your car is not always logical. By going there by bike, you are already warming up, you see the mountain differently. Sometimes it’s an adventure, other times it’s just fun. »
In addition to the car, you no longer want to take the plane…
“My personal reflection is: why do we fly? I took it, because I was sold one day that it was so cool to go skiing in India. I did, and I haven’t had better skiing than in our mountains. I’ve been to Mexico, haven’t done the best kayaking here. I think that was also the starting point of my thinking.
Flying to play sports in 2022 should no longer be thinkable, it is to deny the obvious by abstaining from the problem. In short, it’s not serious. »
What you advocate is to put more meaning into the reflection of our travels?
“You have to have real reasons for doing things. You shouldn’t limit yourself to saying “no one leaves their country anymore”, on the other hand, going to Mexico for two weeks to enjoy in an all-inclusive hotel or going to enjoy two weeks in the mountains in Nepal, I don’t think that’s responsible . It is intellectually and sportingly poor.
I think that’s progress: putting meaning into our actions. For example, I was offered to go to Sweden in the spring. Obviously the goal for me is to go there by train. There is a 48 hour outward journey, a 48 hour return journey. And I don’t know if I’ll go there, because I don’t know if I really want to go to Sweden. If I had been offered to go there by Easyjet, I wouldn’t even have thought about it since you spend 35 euros and you haven’t even reached your destination in an hour. It doesn’t require any personal commitment from me, I arrive quickly, I shoot three photos and it’s good. And within a year it won’t have changed anything in me, but I would have had an environmental impact for not much. »
By posing this reflection, does transport itself become an integrated part of the trip?
“If I go there by train, it will be a real life experience, because we will cross Germany, Denmark and all of Sweden to arrive in the north. I will document myself to know what I want to find there and if it is something that drives me. You have to stop flying for reasons that won’t.
If I go to Sweden, it’s to get away from it all. If I go there in an hour, it makes no sense. An hour is the time I can take by car between Lyon and Annecy. Driving 1200 km in an hour doesn’t make sense to me. If I put 48 hours, it’s a real trip. Travel is a state of mind. So I don’t want to take the plane anymore, except pro deadline knife under the throat, but I don’t want to anymore. I know too well the impacts of the plane, I no longer have any reason to do so. »
So you come back this year with “Conscience” the series, one after airing the film at the High Five. So the series format will be an extension of the long format?
“With Alex Chambet, my co-director, we decided to make a series to have more regular content and deal with themes that were not mentioned in the film, where we mainly talked about my awareness and that of other athletes.
With this series, we want to deal with environmental and cultural subjects, while showing what the mountain brings to us in the broad sense. We will release a video every 15 days on my YouTube channel from November. So we broadcast the first video in preview at the High Five Festival… We meet Mathieu Schaer, a Swiss professional snowboarder. We talk about his vision of performance which has changed over the years. In particular taking into account the environmental factor. When freeriding, we ask ourselves the question of the commentary on going up the mountain before going down it. Wouldn’t performance have a whole? »
The full movie
“Awareness the series”, to discover this Sunday at the Pathé cinema
A year after the broadcast of his film “Conscience” (1h10mn), Gaëtan Gaudissard returns to the High Five Festival, still with “Conscience” but in series format this time! See you in session X this Sunday morning, from 10 a.m. at the Pathé cinema in Annecy, for the broadcast of the first episode lasting 16 minutes. On the program, the meeting of the Swiss professional snowboarder Mathieu Schaer to put into perspective his notion of freeride performance.
