A conversation about art, time and moving images with Pierre Zandrowicz. A Brooklyn-based French artist was selected by Peruffo’s Creative Director, Marta Martino, for the new digital movie. A short film titled The Awakening brings the public into a meditative and dreamy reality enhanced by Peruffo’s iconic pieces.
How do you think you can fully express yourself?
I think I fully express myself at the border between memory and fiction. Through cinema, VR, and now AI-generated films, I explore stories that often start with a crack in reality—something off. I’m not interested in showing things as they are. I’m trying to reach a more profound truth that hides inside our anxieties, our rituals, and how we reimagine our past.
What would it be if you had to choose a symbol to represent yourself?
Probably a screen. But not a new one—an old CRT screen, glowing softly in the dark, slightly buzzing. It represents memory, distortion, and the projection of our inner world. It’s also the place where dreams are broadcast, recorded, and sometimes erased.
If you could subvert the rules, which law would you overturn?
The law of linear time. I’d love to dismantle the idea that stories—or even life—must unfold in a straight line. I’d rather everything happen at once: memories, futures, mistakes, desires. A loop, maybe. Or a spiral. That’s more honestly how we experience life.
What is the material to you?
Material is a trace. Whether it’s a piece of jewellery, a film, or even an AI-generated image, it’s something that remains after a feeling. I’m very drawn to physicality—textures, weight, imperfections. Even when I use digital tools, I try to keep that tactile sensation alive. Material is a memory that doesn’t vanish.
Could you tell me about the collaboration you did with Peruffo, how it was born, and what the genesis of the project is?
The collaboration with Peruffo was born from a fascination with contradiction—how something so small and precise like a piece of jewellery can evoke massive, cosmic ideas. I was drawn to their obsession with gravity, and we started discussing how to visually explore that concept. The video became a poetic experience around levitation, time suspension, and weightlessness. It’s not a commercial—it’s more like a meditation with metal.
Time, Reality, Feelings, what do these concepts mean for you and in your poetry?
To me, they’re not separate ideas—they’re entangled. Time distorts memory, memory distorts reality, and our feelings are the lens through which we experience both. In my work, I’m constantly trying to capture that blur: the moment where a memory feels more real than what’s in front of us, or when an emotion creates its timeline.
Reality, for me, is not fixed. It shifts depending on who is watching, remembering, or dreaming. I love when a story makes you question whether what you’re seeing is external or internal—whether it happened, or just felt like it did.
Time is elastic in my films. I often stretch it, loop it, fragment it—because I believe our inner experience of time is never linear. It’s shaped by longing, by grief, by obsession.
And feelings? They’re everything. They’re the architecture of my stories. Sometimes quiet, sometimes overwhelming. But always the thing that survives, even after memory and reality have faded.
Which technology are you using in the video, and why did you choose it?
I used a mix of live-action footage and AI-generated sequences, particularly tools like Sora and image-to-video diffusion. The live-action was very controlled, with a model isolated against white, almost clinical environments. But the AI allowed me to expand those moments into something dreamlike, like a memory that mutates. I wanted technology that doesn’t just illustrate but distorts and hallucinates.
Please tell us about your most successful project and your design style.
Success is difficult to define. Creatively, I, Philip, was a turning point—it allowed me to connect immersive storytelling with philosophical questions. My style? I guess it’s cinematic, melancholic, and surreal. I love it when an image feels like a memory you’re not sure is yours.
What do you think about collaborations? Is there someone you would like to collaborate with?
Collaborations are like conversations with time. When it works, it reveals parts of your work you didn’t know were there. I love collaborating with musicians, sound artists, and poets. I’d love to work with Ryuichi Sakamoto if he were still with us. Today, maybe someone like James Blake or even Laurie Anderson.
Could you tell us about a contemporary artist and a designer you find important and why?
As an artist, I’m deeply influenced by Philippe Parreno. His work dances with memory, architecture, and temporality in ways that deeply resonate with me. As for design, I admire the purity and emotional intelligence of Peter Zumthor’s architecture. Both of them create spaces—physical or mental—that breathe and shift.
A short-term project and a long-term one, you would like to realise.
I’m currently working on a sci-fi TV series that I’ll be shooting this winter. It plays with themes of memory, perception, and the way technology alters our emotional lives. It’s fast-paced, contemporary, and deeply character-driven, with a strong visual identity—almost like fragments of dreams trying to make sense of the present.
As for the long-term project, it’s a feature film called Waves. It’s a more intimate and existential story, centred on the fragility of what we call “reality.” The narrative questions whether our world is truly shared, or if we each live in our version of it. It’s a film about invisible forces, emotional noise, and the beauty of doubt. It’s been growing in me for years, and I see it as a culmination of many themes I’ve been exploring: paranoia, the instability of identity, and that haunting sensation that something is slightly off.
Pierre Zandrowicz. Born and raised in Paris, he began his career in digital content at the advertising agency Première Heure. As a director and filmmaker, his passion for visual storytelling has earned him awards and recognition at top festivals including SXSW, Sundance, and Tribeca. A pioneer in narrative VR, he created the first VR short fiction broadcast in Europe. Known for his innovative techniques and strong visual style, Pierre crafts immersive, emotionally resonant work. In 2023, he debuted his photography at the group exhibition Les Rencontres d’Arles in France. Now based in Brooklyn, he continues to explore film, experimental video, and photography, integrating AI tools into his process. His latest film, In Search of Time, co-directed with Matt Tierney, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.
