Robert Cahen is a consecrated vioeo artist. He started his career at the beginning of the 70s as a concrete music composer then he applied himself to videoart. He was one of Pierre Schaeffer's students and today his career is at a turning point. As a video artist he has nothing else to experiment and now he is investigating in the video installation field. At the beginning of this year he has exhibited four installations at the FRAC Alsace. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of concrete music, Robert Cahen's works show how much Pierre Schaeffer who he considers as a "symbolic father", influenced the audiovisual creation.

How did the passage from music to image take place?

I moved to video thanks to electronics. I had never thought that it could have something to do with the visual production. I did not know what TV was, even if I watched it.
Actually, it is easy to notice how children do not realize how the TV images take shape while they are watching them. It is incredibly evident... And on the other hand, it is wonderful to look at an image whose provenience is unknown, which changes and becomes tangible just in front of the spectator. To have the possibility of manipulating an image, to give it life, that is what I am interested in, but I had to make my mind up and the choice was heavily weighed during my studies and also when I finished my training, when I was accepted as a member of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM). Shall I work with music, images or painting? I was not able to make up my mind, in all this production, in the world which was opening in front of me. I couldn't see what was growing. When you make a gesture, you do not think about it. One I needs time, and now I have gained a distance from it.

Were you conscious that you were doing videoart?

Going into the electronic manipulation studios at the ORTF Research Service did not I mean to work in the videoart field, even if we worked with the electronic image. It was a research space where everybody could talk about videoart. It is correct that today my name is associated to the videoart movement of the 70s, since I completely launched myself without asking if I was doing cinema or videoart. To express myself I just used anything I could

At the beginning of 70’ the videoart was a militant art. When you worked at the ORTF Research Service directed by Pierre Schaeffer, you created an art by itself. Why ?

At that time I had not found my own position yet. I was lacking in perspective and polictical education. The ’68 effects touched me very slightly since I had just finished my military service; I had no experience in life. I was twenty-five and I had to learn everything and that happen in the ’70.

 Starting from that period of time, which is your path?

I decided to begin what I believed in, to put it to light, to go beyond it. I was very interested in the emotional aspects rather than the aesthetic side, I wanted to individuate what provokes emotions.

The concrete music is an innovative art by itself, just like the manipulation of electronic image. But at that time, which were your tastes and influences?

Classical music, romantic sensitiveness, Monteverdi's power, Bach's writing in which voices sing. I was also fond of novels, such as The black and the red, Madame Bovary. I used to read a lot, but later I strayed from it in part.

Did the cinema play an important role?

My father was the founder of one of the first film club of France, in Mulhouse. And then I could watch the big classics, and often I even used to see essai films. In Mulhouse, there was the Federation of amateur directors who once a year met and for three mornings and three nights showed their own films, sometimes terrible, sometimes amazing. Another good experience was that one of the “Pathe-baby”. My brother and I showed on the sheet hanging from the wall different films, Charlot's as well as the first films with parachute drop. My brother operated the projector and just before the parachute was being opened he said: "Jesus, I have forgotten my parachute!" and he started the film again and the parachutist repeated the action. That impressed me a lot, since I was only a child. There are facts that have signed my life and then I have used them. I do not have any problem with the "avant et arriére" reading of the image, because I have never questioned myself on the logic of things. The important thing is to analize what the image provokes in the spectator, how it determines a dumb scene, with no words: how it takes the spectator to the dream, the astonishment and maybe to the development of a fiction.

Did you already know the first Paik's and Vostell's works in the 70s?

In those years I was discovering the machine for the electronic elaboration of images, without having any experience. I knew only Trinka's animation films and I watched many American videos at the American Centre in Boulevard Raspall, where sometimes I met Nam June Paik and Bill Viola. Moreover, Danny Bloch held an important role at the Modern Art Museum. Later on, along with Jean-Paul Fargier, Dominique Bellair and Patrick Prado, I became a member of an association, Grand Canal, which now is involved in the distribution of videos. Then, in very few years I filled my gaps.

Which was your relationship with TV in that period?

At the Research Service we had to produce 70 hours of TV programmes, and I worked as a composer and sound commentator very soon. Here there were also "machine for filming images" such as the Truqueur Universel and the Diafilm; then I had the chance to create sound tracks for experimental films. It was a job which, applied to audiovisuals, engaged myself in an interesting activity broadcasted by TV.

Do you still want to improve TV broadcast?

Pierre Schaeffer was the one who reflected upon TV, I was just one of his students. I was not involved in TV because I wanted to compose concrete music works or create experimental films like those produced at the Research Service working with innovative audiovisual means.

Which is you first video?

“L'invitation au voyage” made in 1973.I put in image my considerations on time, passage and transformation of images themselves. On the other hand, I had this chance as I was a researcher. Then, I experienced production and team work, and all that was great. In my work I had Schaeffer's imprint, and actually I tried not to use machines as they should have been used, but rather I used them in the opposite way and I waited to see what happened. First of all, I needed brilliant inventions. As Pierre Schaeffer said mentioning Picasso: " You must invent first, and then look for something".

All that made an author of you.

The sensation of being an author depended only on myself. I mean, it was impossible to influence myself saying: "Take this instrument and make it more sensible". For me it was necessary to make the instrument express itself through what I felt. Express oneself means tell meaningful things, a meaning that I took from my readings, my entourage, my world.

What do you now think about L'invitation au voyage?

I consider it as a work made by a young author who discovers a new language and expresses it with his own poetry. It contains everything which gave me emotions, such as photos of people I loved and of an important journey to Italy, images that I electronically coloured later on. There is part of myself, my attempt to make something new, my first attempt.

When one talks about you, your attitude of working with time is always mentioned, saying you "sculpture time". But doesn't the manipulation of time mean, in a certain way, obscuring a forest with a tree?

Actually it is through the criticism on my works that I have realized how time is the clue of my research. Now I take in great consideration what critics say about my new projects or write in retrospectives dedicated to
me. On the other hand, I have found out that like the writer uses very precise words to describe a character I rework movements making them slower. It is as I transposed the writing: instead of words I use a deforming instrument which underlines what a word I cannot tell, such us the movement of the body. It is a question of shadows or of what a shadow let you imagine: what does it remain of a shadow which is gradually or quickly discovered? The video allows you to give voice to this shadow. Often when I create something, I have to give many technical information to the editor or the technician himself, rather than tell them what I am thinking. Often I use scenographic references, or pictorial colourings from other art forms, to explain the effect I want to reproduce in the moving image. I can also use a sentence from a book to express what I want to be shown in that framing. In the 16 mm film, “Arret sur  marche”, the script wanted black and white images. To explain to technicians the different shades of colour, the different nuances I wanted, I showed them pictures from the magazine Vogue whose background, behind the models, was exactly what I wanted.

When you make a film, during its shootting and editing, do you think to the spectator's point of view?

At the beginning of the 70s, when I went into the manipulation studios, I was soon enveloped by the magical aspects of it, since I had the chance to play with all kind of machines. I could use all my time for experimenting, as I had no expiry date. My work was not for TV so I could even not to finish it. I had many hours for experimenting colourings, manipulating, playing like a child with crayons. All that changed with time, since I realized I could show my videos to people. I did not really wish people would understand my works. Eventually, I understood that a video can be directed in many different and personal ways and that my intentions can be interpreted differently The narration of my videos is very smooth. Actually I do not have rigid direction or dialogue registers, in order to make comprehension easier. On the contrary, I would like rather to share with the spectator a certain vision of the world.

In the 80s many videoartists worked with installations but you. Why?

Once I had the opportunity. In 1984 the Centre Georges Pompidou commissioned a video installation to me. I was not ready for it, then I asked a friend of mine, Alberto Mecarelli, a plastic artist, to elaborate a project with me. The project did not go on, as the Centre was asking for an installation I made by me only.

How can you explain that?

Actually, I was improving my skill in working with one screen only. I just wanted to make films. On the other hand, I do not know a lot about plastic arts and that is why I am not good in using space.

When did you change your mind?

In 1993 with the permanent video installation in Lille. When I showed my project I was with an architect, François Seigneur, the author of the pavilion in Seville. Then I worked with another architect, Paul Achard, which finished my project. Along with them and while we were working at the installation, I found out what there is beyond the image-screen. I also realised I could apply myself in a plastic work which I though not to be authorized to work at.

How did you conceive your first exhibition, last November?

Along with Dimitri Konstantinidis I organized the exhibition and then the spectator's route. Paysages-passage was the clue of the exhibition. Accompanied by a sound track by Michel Chion, it was made up of a serpentine of 18 monitors which showed images of landscapes. This installation was like a path which took spectators to two of the three installations. It expressed movement, flowing, passing of time.

Tombe, another installation of yours, belongs to a different genre. It is a video that fascinates the spectator with image appearance. It underlines what is more tangible in your video: the pleasure of the discovery and the pleasure of being able to dominate it. This installation give out an atmosphere which we can feel very rarely today, except in Bill Viola's works. Did you learn something new when you were making it?

I learnt to use images that come to me by chance. For twenty years I have been thinking how to film something or somebody falling down without slowing the image too much. When I was making Tombe I realized that things in the water sink very slowly: it is a false ralenti. It is something very extraordinary, one asks if an object has lost his weight even if air bubbles are evident. The important thing is to make fun of the object which passes in front of us. When I was collecting the objects to be filmed I realized that any object would be good, since the falling would give them a new vitality, a new condition. They are not meaningless anymore.

Did the installation get more positive connotations when you placed it into the space, as it happened for Sept visions?

No. I would say it became more concrete. In Tombe I used a tritubes projector which did not allow me to change the distance and the size of the image, which actually is the best or my installation. I could not tell technicians to use a 4 x 3 mt image. I only considered the immersion of objects. The size I chose for the image gives small objects an excessive size, which compared to the human scale alters the relation between image and person.

What are you studying and looking for at he moment?

I would like to find a compromise between Tombe and Paysages-passage. Flowing is a concept which is still dear to me but I cannot reuse any images anymore to create installations. I am looking for what can provoke an impression in order to create an installation around it. It is my intention to re-create the condition in which a subjective experience becomes objective for all spectators.

Are you changing your tendency?

No, the fact is that I am not very interested in installations. I am still interested in films, poetical narration, even if, after Lille project, I have found out how fascinating the image laced into space can be.