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dentally, I picked up and started reading as
soon as I got home, and it’s an inexhaustible
book. I think of those plants. The French
writer Joris-Karl Huysmans doesn’t invent
them the way you do, but he does give them
a semantic twist and puts them together in
a certain way.
CI: Yes, he uses them as in an art installa-
tion. It reminds me a bit of the overlappings
that there can be in the editing of a film. He
undertakes a total work that has something
cinematographic about it, that explains how
one is supposed to walk. There’s a script
on how the journey toward the work or the
building is supposed to be, how you are to
enter it, how to come upon the work. He took
great pains over this.
ED: It’s something that has to do with a
world that’s not fiction, but fictional. That is,
a world that is in fact going to exist, but on
a completely different plane. And the script
you mention has a lot to do with the Prado
Museum door, which in my view is like an
18th-century robot.
CI: Exactly, it’s a robot. That piece sug-
gests you enter a forest and build a pas-
sage. It’s a transition between the city and
the museum, the temple, but with a vegetal
invention.
ED: It shows plants that are almost fos-
sil-like. It’s complex because it’s fossilized
at the same time, but it’s also constantly
changing. I have a feeling that when I return
to that door, many things will have hap-
pened in the interim. And it’s more than the
patina you like to speak of, or more than
the bugs that may be inhabiting it. That’s
precisely what I find most intriguing. The
idea that something petrified is not really
so petrified, and so we enter a world of
science fiction.
CI: A world of science fiction which, to
boot, was science fiction in dreams. In the
descriptions of dreamed or invented places.
And what’s interesting is that nature can
grow where it didn’t exist before. That it can
create life in a place.
ED: You’re constantly talking about
dreams. What are those dreams?
CI: Dreams are fantastic places. They
are a way to tell a story. As you know, I
use science-fiction texts, especially in sus-
pended constructions, for obvious associa-
tion reasons. Because the suspension makes
the viewer enter them and see them move,
but without showing the person. And all
of this is connected to the dream idea. I
have used writings of J.G. Ballard, such as
The Crystal World or The Drowned World,
where scientists discover how the world has
changed after a great disaster on Earth,
what buildings are like after being sub-
“That piece suggests you
enter a forest and build a
passage. A transition between
the city and the museum“
