MMP: Philippe Parreno

This one-minute long film entitled “The dream of a thing” turns up in the middle of the ordinary block of commercials. In this work, and its specific context – cinema advertising – Parreno continues his investigation and questioning of different conditions of production and generalized forms of communication. Shot in a remote and seldom visited location, a fjord on the Norwegian Svalbard, and using existing summer light, the film shows an almost unreal landscape. Suddenly the ground opens up and the landscape changes, all accompanied by the French composer, Varese´s dramatic, de-constructed music. But what is the film advertising?

Moderna Museet in collaboration with Rönnberg McCann. The project has been supported by RMB Sweden and AFAA, Association Francaise d’Action Artistique.

There is neither a product nor a clear message. Philippe Parreno’s music video for Dave Stewart made some years ago became a form of playful albeit redundant commercial, for a sweet that no longer exists. In the project, “No ghost just a shell” Parreno and the artist, Pierre Huyghe bought the rights to a figure, Ann Lee, from a Japanese manga company, which produces cartoon caracters. The more complex are more expensive and those that are second-class figures, with little prospects of “living on”, are cheaper. Ann Lee belongs to the latter category: she is an empty sign and she is given a history by the two artists, who also asked Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Liam Gillick to give her more substance in separate episodes. Parreno himself describes “The dream of a thing” as the beginning of a fairytale. As in earlier projects, for instance, “Snowdancing” at Le Consortium in Dijon in 1995, Parreno´s ambition is to link the artwork together with a text he has written himself, which is then published in book form.

Philippe Parreno´s work is pervaded by an interest in structure and in democratic concerns. He often presents reality, images and comments together and he problematizes the classic exhibition as a form of presentation. His installation, included in the exhibition “What If: Art on the Verge of Architecture and Design” at Moderna Museet, in the summer 2000, was the result of a questionnaire about a place at a particular time: a French suburb in 1976. A number of different subjective views as regards young people´s protests against a “green campaign”, which destroyed their meeting place, were gathered around a memorial. The music was composed by AC/DC´s guitarist, Angus Young and a photograph by Inez van Lamsweerdes functioned as the film´s credit sequence.

Philippe Parreno was born in 1964 in Oran. He lives and works in Paris.

Curator: Maria Lind