Animaginarium - charleville-mézières

In Charleville-Mézières, the company Yôkaï installed a mural on the theme of the “invisible dream”. A dreamy façade at 4 and 6 rue Pierre-Gillet, between Place Winston Churchill and rue du Petit Bois, created as part of the Puppet Festival.

Through a window you can see snatches of invisible animation slowly taking shape.

“Yôkaï” denotes a fantastic being, but its meaning is broader, more open and can also mean “supernatural phenomenon”, or even “anything that is not human”.

" Animaginarium is a made-up word, a portmanteau, that mixes the anima (the soul, the breath of life, a term dear to many puppeteers) with the animal, the imagination , but also with the vivarium /aquarium; which normally remains hidden but which can be seen as a privileged witness behind a glass wall…

Animaginarium is a made-up word , a suitcase word that mixes anima (the soul, the breath of life, a term dear to many puppeteers) with the animal, the imaginary, but also with the vivarium/aquarium ; which normally remains hidden but can be viewed as a privileged witness behind a glass wall...

That was the main idea behind this concept: to use the large windows of what used to be a music store to share our puppetry and magic "backstage", visible from the street, in the heart of Charleville-Mézières...! We wanted to share in a direct and visual way the research fragments of our Réveil Invisible programme, based on the animation of autonomous beings, in the form of a dreamy and playful laboratory... These "shop windows" are intended to testify to the progress in the research we are making in the field of invisible animation , by delving into the world of special film effects.

Willem Vandenameele