Stellar Acoustics Station
A performance by Violaine Lochu
Auditorium
Free entrance, subject to availability.
A performance by Violaine Lochu in the context of the exhibition "Topologies of Air" by Shoana Illingworth.
The Centre National d'Études Spatiales has an important archive: photographs, surveys, machine plans, technical notes, maps of the sky... Motifs extracted from this corpus will be used as material for a performance in which vocal interpretation and filmed action will enter into resonance and dialogue; the documents will be reactivated by the sound of the voice, and manipulated live; through this device, by unexpected formal connections, it will be a question of "making space heard".
Duration of the performance, 30 min,
CNES production, 2018
Born in 1987, Violaine Lochu lives and works between Montreuil (93) and Cotonou in Benin.
Violaine Lochu's work is an exploration of voice and language, and of notions of transformation and transposition. Her artistic practice, which unfolds between the fields of contemporary art, experimental music and sound poetry, creates bridges between eras, milieus, and so-called learned and popular cultures. Her projects begin with a phase of immersion in a specific environment, in which she collects various sound, narrative and visual elements (recordings, notes). From this material, she creates, by collage, recomposition, reinvention, performances and installations where sounds, videos and drawings interact.
The fictional worlds she invents unfold according to their own logic, and at the same time echo our contemporary world and the questions that affect it (us). Based on these questions, Violaine Lochu questions and subverts classic oppositions - dream/reality, true/false, feminine/masculine, science/magic... - and seeks to create new narratives.
The notions of relationship, collective and care are at the centre of this work, nourished by human encounters (the babbling of babies in Babel Babel, the divinatory words of a clairvoyant in Madame V., collective memory of the inhabitants of a city in Mémoire Palace) or non-human (song of the birds of Lapland in Hybird, artificial intelligence in E.V.E, the mineral world in Vestiges de Roncevaux...), readings (anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis, science fiction, tales, mythology...), and multiple collaborations (musicians, choreographers, circus artists, visual artists, researchers in the human sciences...).
Winner of the 2018 Aware Prize and the 2017 Performance Prize of the Salon de la Jeune Création, she has performed at the Centre Pompidou, the Palais de Tokyo, Parade for FIAC 2017, the Jeu de Paume, the Playground festival in Leuven (Belgium), Performative at MAXXI in L'Aquila (Italy), Ars Poetica in Bratislava (Slovakia), the Quadrum gallery in Lisbon (Portugal), the Kunstverein in Munich (Germany), the Centre for Contemporary Art in Geneva (Switzerland), and at the Ars Poetica in Bratislava (Slovakia), at the Quadrum gallery in Lisbon (Portugal), at the Kunstverein in Munich (Germany), at the Centre d'Art Contemporain in Geneva (Switzerland), at the Rickundgarden Museum (Sweden), at the Centre in Cotonou (Benin), at the Théâtre le 4e Art in Tunis... His work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions, notably at the Philharmnie (Musicanimale, 2022), MAC Lyon (Storytelling, 2019), MAC VAL (Tous de Sangs Mêlés, 2017), at the Ferenczi museumi centrum in Hungary (Reconstructing Eden, 2018), at the GAMU Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic (Desire of changes, 2019), at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery in Toronto, Canada (Something more than a succesion of notes, 2013). FRAC MECA Nouvelle Aquitaine in Bordeaux (Hoxo, 2023), La Villa Arson in Nice (Moving Things, 2020), Musée National Pablo Picasso in Vallauris (Battle, 2021), Carpintarias de Sao Lazzao in Lisbon, Portugal (Twin islands, 2022), Institut Français de Cotonou in Benin (Hoxo, 2021), the Analix Forever gallery in Geneva, Switzerland (MblaHa, 2022), the Dohyang Lee gallery in Paris (Hinterland, 2018) as well as the Centres d'Art Contemporain La Traverse in Alfortville (Modular K, 2020) and Albert Chanot in Clamart (Hypnorama, 2018) have hosted his solo or duo shows.