In conversation with Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen, Heavens
Part of Serpentine’s Back to Earth
January 2021
Courtesy of Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen
Lucia Pietroiusti: It’s lovely to have this conversation with you. Part of the reason I wanted to speak about these two bodies of work, The Odds and Heavens, is because your work addresses economics, politics and so on in very complex ways. One research project can lead to various different kinds of outputs and objects. I wondered if you could speak a little about how these two works began to take shape for you?
Tuur Van Balen: With Heavens, which is currently in development, we have been thinking about the octopus as a radical other being – and about what constitutes animal consciousness. What is ‘an experience’ for an animal? Can an octopus feel that it’s an octopus?
Revital Cohen: In terms of process, in many ways making the work is always a self-directed experience. Which is to say that it’s never about reporting as such, it’s about trying to capture something of the very particular moments or experiences of feeling ‘alive’ that we have either witnessed or staged, and where these moments come from.
LP: Heavens has an origin myth coded into it, right?
RC: Yes, Heavens is inspired by a sort of origin myth, a scientific hypothesis claiming the octopus was originally in fact a squid that was infected by a virus from outer space.