ONE MILLION KINGDOMS, 2001

Beta digital, 6mn

© Marian Goodman Gallery Paris/New York

In 1999, Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno bought the rights to a manga figure from a Japanese character design agency. This is the first outline of a collective project : No Ghost Just a Shell.

The first two episodes, Two Minutes out of Time (Pierre Huyghe) and Anywhere out of the World (Philippe Parreno), make up a prologue to a series of films by different artists. Each film is part of a contemporary tale in which a sign attracts different authors before gaining its freedom. The original character will vanish, taking her copyright with her.

The film One Million Kingdoms originates in an other project of Pierre Huyghe called Les Correspondances (1998). The journey to the center of the earth by Jules Verne begins in Iceland, in the Snoeffells Jokull crater in the northern part of the island.The conquest of space started in these same deserts of lava. The first images of Neil Armstrong hopping in his spacesuit in the middle of a desolate landscape were first shot here.This is on the threshold of two stories. The access to two topologically similar territories. An expedition project began in 1998; the novel serves as a guide for a technical crew composed of the film's actors and the astronaut.

One Million Kingdoms tells the story of this documentary that turns into a tale. Annlee is the narrator. The character walks trought a landscape drawn with graphic curves produced by her voice. She is moving in what she is saying. Her voice is synthetic ; it is made from the voice of Neil Armstrong.