Marilyn

The film Marilyn is "a portrait of a ghost embodied in an image" says Philippe Parreno. A long, dreamlike sequence invokes Marilyn Monroe’s presence in the Waldorf Astoria hotel suite where she lived during the 1950s. As the camera tries to give her point of view, an algorithm recreates her voice and a robot her writing.

This three-part equation both embodies and disembodies the iconic actress in the carefully staged image of a space perceived as increasingly alienating. The work’s subjectivity, however artificial and automatic, and the intervention of unplanned events - the sound of rain pattering on a window, the ringing of a telephone - seek to evoke her sadness and solitude.

Parreno's Marilyn was screened for the first time by the Pinault Collection at the 2019 "Luogo e Segni" ("Place and Signs") show at the Punta della Dogana.