Vanessa Desclaux
art critic and curator
This monograph, thought in close connection with the issue of the performance archive and its possible activations, traces the work carried out over a decade by the transdisciplinary artist Violaine Lochu, anchored in the field of contemporary art, experimental music and sound poetry, with central pivot performance.
Considered as a book to perform, this book, whose contributors have always accompanied or accompanied the artist in his research, draws up a subjective inventory of the languages - voice, sound, textual, visual, graphic, stage... - it explores and links projects.
The texts of Vanessa Desclaux and Florian Gaité, the interviews with Nadine Hounkpatin, Bruno Latour, Nastassja Martin, Anne-Françoise Rouche, enlighten the recent developments and the adventure of this unique creative path. The book is also invested in the practice that made Violaine Lochu known; its purpose and materiality are « replayed » in a series of performances that accompany its publication. « Performing the book » is still a how to play and proliferate flows, fragments, images, sounds that draw the languages of Violaine Lochu, and year after year a work in perpetual renewal.
Bird, cyborg, cloud, healer, antenna, Priestess, alien drag, crab, grenade, mermaid, queer buffoon... The plural, mobile, abundant universe of the visual artist, vocalist Violaine Lochu (born 1987 in Laval) draws his of experiences and encounters initiated or experienced by the artist. Since entering the art world in 2012, Violaine Lochu continuously sought to push the limits of his research territory and its vocabulary. First and foremost and focused on the voice, his practice expanded, series of proposals and exhibitions, to other mediums - installation, video, drawing.