The Legend of Two Islands:
A conversation between
Pierre Huyghe and Cheryl Kaplan
Shooting for "A Journey That Wasn't", Central Park, October 2005
©Copyright Cheryl Kaplan 2005. All rights reserved.
For his film "A Journey That Wasn’t," the French artist Pierre Huyghe
transformed an ice skating rink in the middle of New York City into a
chunk of Antarctica – complete with artificial icebergs and penguins. The
premiere is scheduled for the opening of the Whitney Biennial 2006. "The
Journey of the Penguins" in Midtown Manhattan? Not in the least, because
Huyghe is concerned in his fantastic excursions with the assertion and
reconquering of identities. Cheryl Kaplan visited him and his
camerawoman Maryse Alberti on location in Central Park.
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Pierre Huyghe, Central Park, New
York, October 2005
©Copyright Cheryl Kaplan 2005. All rights reserved.
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After eight days of rain, Central Park is looking like the
Mekong Delta. This isn’t exactly what
Pierre Huyghe envisioned when he decided to use New York’s Wollman Ice
Rink as the setting for part two of A Journey That Wasn’t.
Huyghe’s crew is hard at work maneuvering three Sony 900 high-definition
cameras and fake icebergs. There’s also a forty-piece orchestra led by
composer
Joshua Cody. Everything is in plastic, including the audience-extras and
the ice rink, which is covered in a black tarp.
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Shooting for "A Journey That Wasn't",
the orchestra, Central Park, October 2005
©Copyright Cheryl Kaplan 2005. All rights reserved.
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Deutsche Bank, the presenting sponsor of A Journey That
Wasn’t, will follow this complex initiative to the 2006
Whitney Biennial. In collaboration with Whitney curators Chrissie Isles
and Philippe Vergne, Public Art Fund Director Tom Eccles has organized the
Central Park episode. But the story begins in February 2005 as Pierre
Huyghe and a small crew set out from the Port of Ushuaia in Tierra del
Fuego, the southeast point of Argentina, to Antarctica in an extremely
high-tech boat searching for a rare albino penguin. A Journey That
Wasn’t is an actual journey, an event, a two-part film and an
installation.
The work of the artist Huyghe, born 1962 in Paris,
ranges from events and installations to films. His work has been seen at
the Venice Biennale in 2001 and
at the Guggenheim
in New York, where he won the prestigious
Hugo Boss prize in 2002. His 2006 exhibitions include the
ARC, Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the
Tate Modern in London.
Shooting for "A Journey That Wasn't", Central Park, October 2005
©Copyright Cheryl Kaplan 2005. All rights reserved.
CHERYL KAPLAN: In 2002, for
Miami Basel, you created a project with a souvenir, Annlee, an
anime character, and even bought the copyright for her together with the
artist
Philippe Parreno.
PIERRE HUYGHE: We bought the copyright
and it was used by several artists to give different voices to this sign
Annlee. Then we removed this sign from representation, letting the sign
have its own copyright. I can’t even use it myself. Annlee could come back
as a song or a book, but not as an image.
Pierre Huyghe, One Million Kingdoms, 2001.
Video installation with sound, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
©Copyright Pierre Huyghe 2004. All rights reserved
Your projects often focus on a transfer of power from one character to
another. The other day we spoke about how tourists bring back items from
abroad with the hope that these souvenirs will give them a piece of that
culture. And here you are in Central Park, working on part two of your
Antarctica film, A Journey That Wasn’t, and you’ve relocated a rare albino
penguin from the Antarctic to New York.
PH: I’m interested in translation and movement and corruption from one
world to another. I have doubts about exoticism, this fascination for
bringing an "elsewhere" here, believing that "there" is "here." Elsewhere
always remains a story: to bring it back, you have to create an equivalent.
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