Antoine Mesnage

“Not a day goes by where I don’t think about walking on a highline”…

Suspended between heaven and earth, Antoine Mesnage defies gravity like a bird on an invisible wire.

For the past fifteen years, this highline prodigy from Annecy and pioneer in an aerial form of art explores spires and summits, applying his own unique approach to the ridgelines in a balancing act dozens of meters above the ground.

Interview with a mountaineer who transformed his preferred sport into a truly audacious way to contemplate the vastness of the mountains.

It is not by chance that Antoine is a photographer, videographer, and director who specializes in mountain photography and making movies about the mountains.

He caught the bug as a kid when his dad first took him rock climbing. Later, he discovered slacklining, a sport that began in California in the 1980s (not to be confused with tightrope walking), where one walks on a sling and without using a pole for balance. The sport grew in popularity in the early 2000s.

Highline walking is a version of slacklining high above the ground, most of the time in the mountains.

At just twenty-nine years old, Antoine has established a dozen new highline routes in France, and figures among the sport’s pioneers.

In highlining, installing the anchors and preparing the highline represents almost as big of a challenge as the traverse itself, especially for longer highlines. However, the young artist is not alone; he is a member of the Passagers du Vide Collective, a group of “energetic highliners” bound together through longstanding friendships and a shared passion for the mountains, their everyday playground.

For those highlines involving a more perilous setup, they attach a string to a drone to tighten the slackline between two anchors. This is how they set up the highline this past fall across the gap between two peaks 200 meters apart at the iconic Porte des Aravis. This incredible first also represented an amazing technical achievement. A sneak preview of the about this amazing feat will be screened at the Street Art Festival in Val d’Arly next March.

In spite of appearances, none of them are senseless risk takers. They take calculated risks and are connected with a safety tether to the slackline. The challenge is primarily psychological, overcoming your fear of heights and the dread of a misstep that can send you falling. Each step on the highline is calculated down to the millimeter, transforming the traverse into an extraordinary dance between heaven and earth.

“Every step creates a moment of wonder mixed with the sense of determination to do what no one else has ever dared to do, somewhere halfway between an amazing feat of athletic skill and poetry.”

“When it comes down to it, this is a team sport. We work hand in hand with the members of our collective, and everyone contributes their mountaineering skills and experience to make every adventure possible. It is the true incarnation of teamwork and pushing beyond one’s limits,” Antoine explains.

 “It is a pretext to spend time in the mountains with people that share the same passion and emotion. Our motivation is to push the limits of what is possible, to explore the unknown, and to accomplish something for the first time. It’s being pioneers.”

 “While I may be the most well-known of the group due to media coverage, and given that I am a photographer and videographer by profession, everyone plays an important role,” Antoine emphasizes.