Orlan 'Self-hybridations'

"Technology has never been the most important thing for me, but my work has always been very multimedia oriented. My work cuts across different disciplines, and has often used new technologies such as video installations and satellite broadcasting systems. As for digital imaging, I had already worked with morphing software when I had my seventh surgical operation, for a large piece called "Omniprésence" using both digital and traditional photos. I'm not fascinated by technology, I'm just interested in all the methods available at a given time. I don't consider myself a 'digital artist', but sometimes my work does involve digital technology.

To me, digital technology is just another way of constructing images. In any case, the final result is an enlarged photograph or perhaps a light box. The work itself is prepared in various ways: fingerpaintings I do with my own blood during my surgical operations, reliquaries containing pieces of my flesh, etc.

Some people might think that using digital technology is a way of protecting myself, but I think virtual reality has never cancelled out reality. Reality is not the opposite of virtuality, and I use both, either separately or simultaneously.

My role as an artist is to use these tools in a new way, to work them into an artistic approach and a process of thought. What I am looking for is not the best quality, the best definition, the best likeness. I don't make special or precise demands on digital technology or software publishers, I just try and master the technique so that I become more than just a 'user'. It's true, though, that using new technologies is not innocent: it involves a number of different constraints. When you use software like Photoshop, the software necessarily affects the way the work turns out. This means that you have to distance yourself so that you can control the software, balancing it with other visual components and making it less intrusive.

I use Acrobat and Photoshop and also morphing software. I work with Pierre Zovilé, who is based in Montreal and gives me technical support. We communicate via e-mail, I choose the sculptures and photos we are going to use and we exchange the various stages of the image over the Internet, until I decide there are no more changes to be made".

Orlan


Biographical notes

Orlan was born in 1947 in Saint-Etienne. She did her first performances at the age of 17. Her first surgical performance was in 1978. In 1982, she created the first on-line contemporary art magazine, Art-Acces (at the time this was on Minitel). Since 1990 she has had nine surgical operations, and the operating theatre has become her artist's studio, with blood drawings, reliquaries, written texts, photos, videos and films). Orlan has now embarked on a kind of 'world tour' of the canons of beauty that prevail in other civilisations and periods.

This work begins in Mexico with pre-Columbian civilisations. Orlan uses her images to test skull deformations practised by the Mayas and Olmecs, strabismus, false noses worn by Mayan dignitaries, etc.

Her "Self-hybridations" offer new standards of beauty that go beyond today's norms for bodies in a state of mutation.

The Arcimboldo Award is organized by the Hewlett-Packard France business foundation, the Gens d'Image association and the Picto Pictorial Service. The award aims to encourage creative and artistic work using the most recent fixed image technology. Each year the jury chooses a winner, judging artistic value and the quality of the artist's creative approach. Qualified personalities present each candidate's work to the jury.

It was decided to award first prize to Orlan in Paris on 16th November 1998. The decision was made by a jury headed by Mr Philippe Quéau, Director of the information and computing division at UNESCO.

The prize of 10,000 euros, provided by the Hewlett-Packard France business foundation, will be officially awarded on 7th September 1999 at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, where the winner's work will be exhibited.