The meeting, the project
When you start out on your own, you'll come across people and journeys that may be very different from your own, but which nonetheless harbor that tawny glow your eye instantly recognizes: passion, drive, joy, enthusiasm, fierce will, sensitivity, contagious fervor, courage, stubbornness, ardor, unbridled curiosity...
La Venelle was born of one of these encounters, transformed into a friendship over the years, and fueled by a shared love of books, storytelling, fiction and its power of "life in life".
At a time when there's a salutary need to get away from the main roads, existential highways, standards and manuals claiming to hold all the keys and limits to a successful existence, the project for an activity based around cultural care and accompaniment emerged quite naturally.
The project and choice of care, not cure, i.e. the choice of taking care rather than treating, without strict prescriptions or verticality, but rather in invitation and proposal.
Invitations in a caring, intimate and creative setting, using recognized and professional tools, as well as humanistic resources, linked to the diversity of our respective experiences.
On the one hand, there's the man who can always see where to start, who knows how to lay the foundations and patiently build the framework for the long term;
on the other hand, there's the one who sees beyond the big picture, into the immediate detail of the word, of a word that will shift the vision or the word beyond the surface of things.
Garden side
Typhaine
Marc
"Over the years as a bookseller, I've collected the testimonials and wanderings of readers in search of the reverberation of nourishing books in their lives. Today, I've made the choice to accompany those who wish to do so, towards words of action, gleaned from reading or writing, words that build a caring, inclusive society, responsible for itself and populated by individualities that are creative, inspiring and happy to be so."
Typhaine started her career early, right after her studies, which were resolutely literary and theatrical, and took up the profession of bookseller at the age of 19, with a curiosity that has never left her, preserving her lively pupils, her infinite desire to read, and her need to share all the glimmers of light that reading can provide intact.
Typhaine has always been on the side of those who doubt, question, explore, discover, and pay attention to under-represented voices.
A literary columnist for a cultural webzine for several years, her keyboard pen has never stopped searching for the right phrase, on social networks or in professional journals, to bear witness to the breath of a text, its beauty and mystery.
Typhaine has always been keen to explore different creative ways of transmitting texts, whether through her bookshop-based "rendez-vous coups de coeur" on French-language literature and translation, poetry or the catalogs of independent publishers, or by moderating literary meetings and leading writing workshops (for which she trained in 2021).
Discovery, pleasure and sharing: a trio of simple intentions that stand the test of time and miles of books read, from classics to contemporaries, from poet Emily Dickinson to Tolkien, via Italo Calvino, Toni Morrison, Christian Bobin, Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Marguerite Yourcenar, Alice Rivaz, Nicolas Bouvier...
So it was only natural that, after almost fifteen years in the book trade, this enthusiast felt the need to get back to the roots of this "sensitive experience" that is reading, and so, in spring 2024, she will be leaving the bookshop, but not the books.
With a Voltaire* certificate obtained in 2021 to enable her to proofread and correct texts, Typhaine decided to add a more sensitive string to her literary bow, and in 2024 trained in creative bibliotherapy © alongside the woman who democratized and renewed this practice in the French-speaking world, Régine Detambel, librarian-therapist, writer published by Actes Sud and chevalière de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres, so as to be able to offer sensory and immersive workshops, capable of transmitting words and stories through the body and not just through the head.
Rest assured, Typhaine doesn't just read and write, she also walks a lot, with her nose in the air or glued to the slope, picking and gathering the delights of each season, playing a few role-playing games, observing her cat a lot, relearning to be bored, savoring every cup of coffee, talking to her jasmine, swimming in the Atlantic whenever she can, and creating time-spaces to enjoy the people she loves.
Her pocket quote: "To have the absolute authority of a daisy when writing, that was my ambition", from Louise Amour, by Christian Bobin, published by Gallimard.
*The Voltaire Certificate is a diploma that certifies your skills in French spelling and oral expression.
Courtyard side
Patrick
Bissinger
"As a good rope captain, I've always been keen, through my various entrepreneurial, artistic and personal experiences, to take part in this ascent of different individuals in the service of a sudden common goal or dream.
What counts, and will always count, is the impetus of adventure, with all its unexpected variables within a collective, which brings out the possibilities in each and every one of us, and reveals the beautiful.
Patrick set foot on the creative and entrepreneurial ground fairly quickly, with the crazy yet wise stride of a marathon runner.
Fearing neither the initial spark nor the miles that would follow, Patrick, a.k.a. "Meta", echoing the Meta-barons of a certain Jodorowsky, never ceased to lay the quiet but vital foundations of several projects, before letting them live on their own and joining some of them years after their launch...
With one eye on the ground and the other on the horizon, Patrick began his professional life with "junior entreprises" at a time when he was studying international business at university.
After specializing in operational logistics (which later became an expertise in supply chain management), it was only natural that this man, who loves to explore and discover, should give his career a multi-cultural dimension: Germany, Scotland, the US, Argentina, Brazil, before arriving in Switzerland in 2003, where he settled for a time.
Inspired by motor racing and its rigorous mental and physical preparation of drivers, Patrick has developed a team approach within major international logistics groups and airlines that is totally opposed to micro-management. With a definite taste for liberating management and radical candor, Patrick invites each member of a team to realize his or her own area of genius and talent within the larger project entrusted to them.
Plurality of profiles and multiplicity of supports, key axes to help each person become aware of their potential and express it.
A catalyst, a transmission belt, Patrick believes in trusting "the emptiness and the fullness" of everyone.
His passion for fiction, narrative and the ongoing dialogue between art and reality has fueled his managerial practice as much as his more personal and creative choices. Fascinated since adolescence by the human-machine interface, he notably scripted the Dreamers comic strip, published by Paquet, from 2001 to 2011, and took part in the production of online television content in the early days of the web (Demoscene.tv then Besançon.tv, from 2004 to 2013), before humbly slipping into the patronage of various cultural projects since 2016.
His pocket quote: "Art puts things in their right place". Krishnamurti