The term Yokai refers to a Japanese monster and means, in its broadest sense, a supernatural phenomenon / whatever is not human.
The technical research and artistic exploration – at the intersection of puppetry and magic – has been geared toward interrogating the boundary between humanness and the supernatural creature.
After graduating from ESNAM in October 2014, Violaine Fimbel started the company Yôkaï, touring the first show VOLATILE(S) in Finland, Germany, Brazil, Japan and Avignon (France).
The company’s artistic identity is characterized by unsettling atmospheres and fantastic forms originating from Violaine Fimbel’s imagination or drawn from visual arts (cinema, painting, sculpture, illustration, etc.) and literature.
In order to develop her instinctive approach to magic, which is present in her first show, Violaine Fimbel attended the New Magic training led by Raphael Navarro and Valentine Losseau – from the 14:20 company – at CNAC. There she discovered a medium and an anthropological approach that mirrored her own research and gave her the theoretical background to support her instinctive process.
POSSESSION, the company’s second work, from 2017, intertwines the worlds of Lewis Carroll and Antonin Artaud in a game of double intellectual and psychological possession. The show, which caught the attention of the company 14:20, performed at the “New Magic young talents” night at Théâtre du Rond-Point in 2018, and led to the installation KILLING ALICE.
The latest work by the company, GIMME SHELTER, explores the supernatural and the line between reality and fantasy. The show premiered at the World Puppet Theater Festival in Charleville-Mézières and Manège de Reims-Scène Nationale where Violaine was also supported artist for two seasons.
Violaine Fimbel designs and creates the puppets that appear on stage. Her creative process is geared towards one particular goal : to confuse the audience’s perception constantly by intertwining magic with puppetry. In 2020, she and device fabricator Marjan Kunaver initiated a research program connecting the special effects of film with puppetry and magic onstage. The project, whose research and creative focus is invisible puppetry, is called INVISIBLE AWAKENING.
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VILLA ALBERTINE USA – RESEARCH RESIDENCY MAY-JUNE 2024
The research project Invisible Awakening has been selected among 50 residency projects as part of the 2024 season of Villa Albertine.
Largely modeled after the villa residencies for creators, thinkers and professionals in culture, such as Villa Medicis in Rome or Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto, Villa Albertine has, for three years, opened a new chapter in the history of artist residencies in the United States. It offers artists customized residencies and connections with a US location of their choosing. Key cities for traveling or outdoors residencies include New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans.
Three members of the company Yôkaï will do a two-month research residency in May and June 2024 in New York and Los Angeles. This is the ideal setting to follow up on the research project Invisible Awakening, which began in New York and Los Angeles in September 2022. During that first trip, several members of the company Yôkaï met with key practitioners of invisible animation in film in order to adapt specific devices to hidden manipulation on the theater stage.
La MaMa will host the company Yôkaï for 2 weeks in June 2024 for an experimentation residency around the dramaturgies of the invisible as part of the residency program Villa Albertine.