Sjhlrùl is a film where the viewer is immersed in the world of pigeons. A world that is both very real
and completely imaginary : the pigeons interact with each other, comment on what they see, complain
or ask questions...Although the voice we hear is human, the dialogue was written by the pigeons
themselves, pecking bread on a computer keyboard...
This is not a work about pigeons, but with pigeons. Indeed, they are everywhere, they play all the roles and write their own dialogues. It’s a real collaboration, resulting for me in a multi-species cross where pigeons and humans become one.
A third non-human element participates in the experience: the computer. This one was taken out of its natural environment for the experiment ; laced on the ground, in the street, in the pigeons' territory. They were wary of him for a long time before understanding that he was not a danger for them. In the end, the acceptance was total and the pigeons started writing a lot.
Later, I asked around ten people to read the text produced. They all interpreted it freely and in a very personal way, letting themselves be carried away by the particular rhythm, the sounds, the sequences of consonants, the punctuations, the repetitions, creating a dialect of pigeons, a language - or perhaps languages - completely imaginary both close and completely far from what we have already heard.
From these recorded sounds and these images taken, I began to associate the two, finding similarities in the movements of the pigeons and the sounds produced by the voices.
These therefore became, through association with the image, inner voices, dialogues or sound effects.
The rhythm of the pigeons corresponded surprisingly well with the rhythm of speech, as if they had translated, through writing, their behavior, their rapid and repetitive movement.
Opening up to the world of pigeons, and to all other living beings, is opening up to other visions of the world. This awareness and this decentering of human – necessary today – is only possible by leaving our usual patterns of thought through alternative and fictional worlds, incongruous associations, hybrid characters, new imaginations...Or not so imaginary, since many other worlds already exist, we just have to look at them.
