Violaine Lochu

Violaine Lochu’s work is an exploration of the voice as a vector of metamorphosis. Her artistic practice extends between the fields of contemporary art, experimental music, and sound poetry. Her projects begin with an immersion phase in a specific environment, in which she collects different sound, narrative and visual elements. From this material, she creates, through collage, recomposition, transposition, translation, reinvention, performances, and installations where sounds, videos and drawings interact. Violaine Lochu questions and subverts classic oppositions – dream/reality, true/false, feminine/masculine, science/magic… –, seeks to create new stories (Eden B4, HypnoQueen, Love Circle, Orpheus Collective, Modular K…). Violaine Lochu, a holder of many prestigious awards, and her work has been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions around the world.

In recent years, many of her projects seek to politicize seemingly intimate issues; cancer (Crabe Chorus, C’est la peau, OrganOpera, Magnetic Song), childlessness (O Child), artistic crisis (MblaHa), mixed love (Xoxovi).

Her approach is nourished by human encounters (babble of babies in Babel Babel, divinatory words of a fortune teller in Madame V., socio-professional jargon of the world of contemporary art in Animal Mimesis) or non-human encounters (birdsong from Lapland in Hybird, underwater worlds in W Song, artificial intelligence in E.V.E, mineral world in Vestiges de Roncevaux…), readings (anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis, science fiction, tales, mythology…), and multiple collaborations (musicians, choreographers, circus performers, visual artists, researchers in the human sciences, etc.). She has notably developed projects with musicians such as Julien Desprez (guitar), Méryll Ampe (electronics), Joëlle Léandre (double bass), Serge Teyssot-Gay (guitar) but also with choreographers João Fiadeiro and Marcel Gbeffa, the poet Tomomi Adachi, sculptor Sara Bichão and others.

Peformance: Violaine Lochu

W Song: Interpreting in turn the songs of a siren, a whale, or the signals of a military device, Violaine Lochu transforms her voice to address the phenomenon of echolocation and the impact of human technologies on natural environments.