artist interview by DONATIEN GRAU on danger portrait by GIASCO BERTOLI DONATIEN GRAU — You like to quote Peter Sloterdijk’s famous saying, “You must change your life.” However, the capacity for art to change one’s life doesn’t seem all that possible today. How can a work of art change a life? ADEL ABDESSEMED — I met Peter Sloterdijk in Vienna — he was supposed to write something in the catalogue for my exhibition at MIT. His idea was to elaborate on a chapter in his book, which had that statement as its title. We talked about the Rainer Maria Rilke poem in which appears the mysterious sentence, “You must change your life.” Something in it has always interested me: the theory of change and of evolution. In art history change is clearly visible: in Florence, Masaccio’s paintings were severe, with little color. But in Venice, especially in Titian’s work, there…