art PHILIPPE PARRENA
a cephalopod aquarium in an artist’s studio with a cuttlefish for a friend: man and mollusk engage in a cosmic dialogue on film, pushing the frontiers of art
interview by OLIVIER ZAHM
portraits BY OLA RINDAL
OLIVIER ZAHM — Anywhen is a film about the cuttlefish that lived in your aquarium?
PHILIPPE PARRENO — Yes. It’s a cinematographic portrait of an animal. All of the documentary aspects are there: the close-up, the voice-over, and so forth. But the voice is strange, as it was recorded by the ventriloquist Nina Conti. She tries to make the image speak — and the constantly changing colors of the cuttlefish, with the chromatophores, turn into the image’s pixels, as it were. It’s as if the image itself were speaking.
OLIVIER ZAHM — It’s as if the cuttlefish were changing the colors of the image.
PHILIPPE PARRENO — Right, and the closer…