Echotopia
Performance, 2023
Venice Architecture Biennale, French Pavilion, Italy

Artistic direction – Violaine Lochu
Performers – Yannick Guédon, Violaine Lochu, Anne-Laure Pigache
Curators – Jos Auzende, Anna Tardivel, Studio Muoto
Graphic designer – Christophe Hamery
Photos – Jacopo Laforgia
Video – Mathieu Carmona
Production – Institut français

The multidisciplinary collective formed by Studio Muoto, Stanishev & La Sagna, Jos Auzende and Anna Tardivel invites the French artist Violence Lochu to invest the Ball Theater at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2023. Over the course of a week, the artist, accompanied by two singers, will present a series of polyphonies. This experimental performance follows a specific protocol that brings into play and voices scores, impromptu meanderings and interactions with the audience to sketch the outlines of an ‘echotopia’.

Singing, murmuring, whispering or grunting, cooing, yelling… all vocal registers are summoned and invite us to reflect on our relationship to the environment, not in terms of reciprocal exteriority, but of continuity. It is not about singing about a place or a landscape, but growing into a becoming-landscape, a becoming-mountain, a becoming-river.