Multidisciplinary artist, your practice involves about directing, dramaturgy, and singing. How did you find your way into the artistic world? 

My path to becoming an artist was quite winding. As a child, I wanted to be a singer, but unfortunately, I was very good at school and was directed towards academic studies. It wasn't until I was thirty that I made the decision to truly become an artist. The real turning point was leaving university to dedicate myself to my artistic practices. In the meantime, I had shifted from music to theater, but my current artistic practice reflects this blend of disciplines, encompassing music, academia, and theater. Ultimately, I define myself more as a performer because I cannot identify with just one field. 

From April 29 to May 4, you presented ສຽງຂອງຍ່າ (The Voice of My Grandmother) at the National Theatre of Bordeaux in Aquitaine. Can you tell us about this project? 

This is a project in which I share the stage with my father, which is obviously very powerful since he is both a life partner and a stage partner. This creation emerged in several stages, but I would almost say it was born with me. It is an attempt to understand my experience of mixed heritage, starting from our little inner music, our acoustic imaginations. My paternal grandmother died giving birth to my father, and we have always had this ghostly figure in our lives, marked by this tragic fate. One of the few things we knew about my grandmother was that she would have liked to sing. Since I wanted to be a singer as a child, I wondered what we would have sung together if I had known her. Thus, it is an attempt to sing a duet with the ghost of my grandmother, a grand adventure halfway between spiritualism and ethnomusicology. Lao culture has truly healed something in me: it opens up other ways of communicating with our dead, other relationships to memory, different from what Western culture allows. 

As a laureate of the MIRA program (International Mobility of Artistic Research), you received support from the Institut français for your research in Laos. How did the mobility unfold and what was its objective? 

These mobilities are long and leave a lot of room for the unexpected and transformation, alongside what is predefined: that’s the beauty of it. It was a journey that will be decisive for my life, there were very personal, profound things I needed to experience there. On paper, I needed to write the text for this performance and visit my father's village to understand what sounds my grandmother might have heard. I needed a deeper immersion, to listen to these sounds, but also to make a cognitive shift by trying to culturally understand how my grandmother might have perceived them. One of the main objectives of this mobility was to practice the music of this part of Laos. I just had time to start training in traditional instruments enough to play melodies in the villages where people came to improvise. 

With this new creation, you draw on autobiographical material and trace the footsteps of your late grandmother through various mediums. How did you develop this staging?

I always work very collaboratively. I start with improvisations guided by my creative partners. It was important for me to work with people who are affected by mixed heritage. I collaborated with a Franco-Vietnamese scenographer, Kim lan Nguyễn Thi, and a Swiss-Sri Lankan sound designer and composer, Robin Meier Wiratunga. Together, we sought to create spaces where ghosts could return. We thought that, for the spirits to come back, we needed to give them signs that reminded them of their past lives, so we aimed to create resonances. Specifically, we went to Laos to capture sounds on-site and tried to see, 80 years after her death, what possible voices of my grandmother remained. We positioned ourselves near the rice fields of her native village, in the mountains, letting the microphones run for hours and asking ourselves what heart-to-heart paths we could find through these sounds. 

Without photos or archives of your grandmother, what were the main challenges you faced in the conception of the project?

Lack is a raw material for artists: if there is no lack, there is no imagination. I realized that if you open your ears, and the image may be a bit cliché, if you open your heart, you have access to much more information than you think. There is a culture of memory, knowledge, and archiving that is very Western, but there are also other ways to remember. Our bodies are genetic archives of our ancestors. It was almost as if I had to make that part of my grandmother, which is archived inside me, resonate.

Your works are often infused with the theme of death, viewed as an idea of renewal. How did you approach it when discussing a deceased person you never had the chance to know?

I had the great fortune to immerse myself in Lao culture, which has a much closer relationship with the dead compared to Western culture. In Laos, there is a significant ancestor worship, where people have picnics on the graves of the deceased and talk to them regularly. In this performance, the relationship with the dead is vital because there is this idea of a strong continuity between life - and death belief in reincarnation is an example of this. Death is just another trance. What interests me in life is seeing how we move from one state to another. I do not deny at all the importance of this crisis that is death, but death is not an end; it is a transition. Our lives are marked by ruptures and transformations, and for me, my relationship with the concept of transition, while acknowledging the aspects of loss, primarily lies in the hope of transformation.

Where will ສຽງຂອງຍ່າ (The Voice of My Grandmother) be performed this year? Are you planning to perform this show, conceived as a quest between two countries, in Laos? 

The desire is certainly there, but the possibility is different. The show will be performed in Montluçon on May 14 and 15, and then it will tour France next season. There is a strong desire to perform it not only in Laos but also in Southeast Asia, because this show also explores post-colonial migrations. I am speaking on behalf of a community of children and artists from these diasporas. It would be important for us, knowing that the Laotian infrastructure is very different from that in France. Increasingly, I aspire to great simplicity in my artistic forms, so I would love to bring this story in its simplest form to Southeast Asia.