Violaine Lochu’s work is an exploration of language and voice.

In her performances, videos and radio plays, she mixes her own vocal research with a free reinterpretation of written or oral traditions (myths, tales, popular songs...), theoretical reflections (inspired by psychoanalysis, linguistics, sociology...), and sound material collected during the many meetings occasioned by her practice. For example, the performance created for the Mémoire Palace project is a reinterpretation of the words of 200 people from all background encountered during her three-month residency at Le 116 art centre (Montreuil). At each of her interventions, Violaine Lochu explores the full spectrum of her voice’s aesthetic possibilities, including the most unexpected, in an attempt to take it towards a realm beyond the sayable.

Residency Project

Violaine Lochu wishes to create an abecedarium drawing from the human social, animal, historical and environmental landscape of the Lindre-Basse area. This abecedarium will be in the form of sound compositions, videos and performances. She wishes to collect the whole abecedarium on a DVD accompanied by a booklet to include sketches, notes, scores, and readings that were used in her research. A final performance will conclude her residency.

“A for animal, B for bégayement [stammering], C for chuchotement [whispering], D for diphonie [diphonics], E for eau [water]... Based on this principle, which is simple but rich in possibilities, this project will consist in exploring different states of the voice, trying to get it to produce something extraordinary.

From this perspective, it is a matter of orienting the terms of the vocal abecedarium so that they all refer to the territory, to its components (landscapes, structures...) and to its inhabitants (humans, animals, objects...). For example, R for Resonance could refer to signing the same melody in several places (church, lift, forest, pool...) in order to hear it in different timbres. Other entries in the abecedarium require specific encounters: artisans (butchers, bakers, jewellers...) could transmit J / Jargon words; elderly people could speak in P / Patois [dialect] during encounters around the residence and elsewhere. For several years, she has also been trying to work with people who know how to imitate O / Oiseaux [birds]. In this sense, she would like to get close to the Maison du Pays des Etangs.

You can listen to some of the sound works composed by Violaine Lochu during her residency on the r22 Tout Monde webradio: here. 

The residency program is organsied in collaboration with Parc Naturel Régional de Lorraine and the city of Lindre-Basse.