HIKU, by Eric Minh Cuong and Anne Sophie Turion

HIKU explores the Japanese phenomenon of the Hikikomori, a community that has chosen to isolate itself from society and whose only contact with the outside world is through television, the internet and online video games.  

The piece creates a space for a meeting that would not have been possible otherwise.  On stage, or more accurately through their tele-presence, three Hikikomori—Shizuka, Mastuda and Yagi—in the process of resocialisation speak, interact with the audience, move parts of the scenery and display banners. They each operate a robot from their bedroom, thousands of kilometres away, while Yuika, their interpreter and fellow performer, accompanies them on stage in flesh and blood.

Interspersed with actions on stage, the film sequences open a window on their privacy, revisited or even fantasised here, as they sift through memories of their years of social withdrawal and their present sensations. Plagued by the motif of the Hikikomori demo, an event through which these recluses claim their right to withdraw from society, the piece casts this sensitive disappearance, this flight from reality, in a less critical light than the attempt to convey it as a dissident erasure, a means of resisting contemporary mandates.

Eric Minh Cuong

The choreographer and visual artist Eric Minh Cuong and his company Shonen (“adolescent boy” in Japanese) combine dance, new technologies (humanoid robots, drones, augmented reality, etc.) and the body in situ in their shows, installations, performances and films. Their work has been shown in France and Europe (Palais de Tokyo, Tanzhaus NRW Dusseldorf, Festival de Marseille, Charleroi danse, Nuit Blanche Paris 2018, etc.) and has received numerous awards (Audi Talents 2017, Bourse Beaumarchais SACD Danse and the 2021 LE BAL-ADAGP award for young contemporary creation).

Eric Minh Cuong Castaing was an associate artist of the Ballet National de Marseille (2016–2019), and since 2020 has occupied the same position at the Comédie de Valence.

The company Shonen is funded by the DRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur and receives operational support from Marseille City Council. It receives financing for projects from the Région Sud and the Bouches-du-Rhône department. In 2023 it was supported by the “Artiste citoyen engage” programme of the Fondation Daniel et Nina Carasso. Eric Minh Cuong Castaing has been a member of the Ensemble Artistique de la Comédie de Valence and associate artist of ICK Dans Amsterdam since 2020.  

Anne-Sophie Turion

A visual artist and performer, Anne-Sophie Turion explores reality and reconfigures it, drawing it into the realm of fiction. In 2014 she co-founded the company Le parc à thèmes with Jeanne Moynot, through which she creates pieces that are part visual art, part live performance.  She has presented her work at numerous venues and events, including the Actoral festival (Marseille), the Hors-pistes festival at the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Frac PACA (Marseille), and the Drodesera festival at Centrale Fies (Italy).