Purple Magazine
— The Cosmos Issue #32 F/W 2019

philippe parreno

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…

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