Claude Ciccolella
French video artist
biography
Interview:10 questions
2 June 2022
1. Tell me something about your life and the educational background
I studied physics, oceanology, automation and computer science at the Marseille Universities until marine biology and the automation of aquaculture stations doctorate that I did not ended up.
2. When, how and why started you filming?
I started in 1998, after stopping the sculpture for lack of space, with a Sony Hi8 camcorder and a Casablanca editing station.
3.What kind of subjects have your videos/films?
Disappearance and existentialism. One of my first video “Crushing the cherries” was about Monochrom, Malevitch and Klein.
4. How do you develop your videos/films, do you follow certain principles, styles etc?
At first I was writing screenplay, film cutting technical. For 15 years I have been using filming or the found footage directly editing in following an intuition or through an edit that will develop according to the moving images. Nourished by experimental video and art video.
5. Tell me something about the technical equipment you use.
Currently I film with a Panaonic HC-VXF990 4K camcorder or I use found footage and edit on Final Cut Pro.
6. What are the chances of new media for the genre videos/films in general and you personally?
I am not in a conflict between the moderns and the classics. The virtual can develop artistic forms but however requires means. The importance for any artistic form is to be in contact with reality.
7. How do you finance your films?
By my own financing and some support by my association P’Silo.
8. Do you work individually as a video artist/film maker or do you work in a team? if you have experience in both, what is the difference, what do you prefer?
I have worked with musicians, actors, directors… Solitary work or group work are interesting, motivating, the first to develop one’s intention as much as possible, the second to exchange with other artistic forms, other languages.
9. Who or what has a lasting influence on your film/video making?
Stanley Brakhage, Kenneth Anger, Chantal Akerman, Werner Nekes, Jonas Mekas, Michael Snow, Nam June Paik…
10. What are your future plans or dreams as a film/video maker?
I started a Quadriptych on the traumas of natural disasters. A second version of “Under the Ground” and the jolt of conflicts in 2022 including the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, “Between Heaven and Earth” on cyclones and the evocation of sexual consent, “Under Water”, I was born from water… I was born by water… and tsunamis, the fourth video will be about desertification and the economic and political surveillance we are subjected to, inspired by Shoshana’s book Zuboff “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”.
Try to participate in raising awareness if we don’t want irretrievably destroying the earth’s fragile balance.