Director, puppeteer, performer, scriptwriter

Aati Hanikka enjoys being a director of puppet manipulation. For him, puppetry is above all about movement: matter in motion. Matter offers a language of movement that transcends biological reality, a surface for exploring imaginative otherness. Hanikka approaches kinetic expression from two different angles: on the one hand, using the principles of character animation, which Hanikka also explored in his thesis, and on the other hand, from a material perspective, searching for the material’s own tenacity and individuality.  

There is one element that inspires Hanikka unconditionally: water. Hanikka loves its elasticity, its flow and its underwater world. For him, water represents play, adventure, meditation, life, connection and otherness. Hanikka performs in Theatre d’Illusia’s Cantique Aquatique, a piece of Vietnamese water puppetry.

In his free time, Hanikka consumes animations and comics, visual forms of storytelling free from the yoke of the human body’s limitations.