"A signet is a promise that you will return to yourself, even after a long edit."
The signet, photographed on the bench
A Saturday, late, October
Cold rain. The kind that doesn't reach you.
Aurélien works at night. We arrive at eleven; he has been at the screen since five. There is a cat. There is a single lamp, very low, with a green paper shade. The signet is on his right little finger, and he turns it, while we talk, the way one might turn a stone in a pocket. He has been cutting a film for two years. It is not finished.
His studio, lit by one lamp
"On a difficult day I turn it. The gold is warm — warmer than the room. I do not know why this helps. It does."
—Aurélien Cassen
He plays us a scene. It is forty-six seconds long. He has cut it sixty-two times. "Tonight," he says, "I will cut it once more, and then I will leave it." He does not seem hopeful. He does not seem unhopeful either. The ring catches the green of the lamp and looks, briefly, like an emerald.
A reel can, an empty glass, a cat's tail
The conversation
Q.
Why a signet?
AU.
A signet is older than a name. It is the mark a hand leaves before there is writing. I like things that are older than they need to be.
Q.
You wear it on the smallest finger. Why?
AU.
So that I see it when I type. It is at the edge of my attention. Most of the things that matter to me are at the edge of my attention.
Q.
One sentence on Debashi.
AU.
They make the kind of thing my grandmother would have left to me.
That day — Aurélienhad with her
Wearing
A black sweater, slept in
Drinking
Whisky, two fingers, no ice
Reading
Bresson's Notes on the Cinematograph, opened to page 41
Playing
Nothing — the room is silent
On the bench
A reel can. An ashtray, empty. A cat, asleep.
"They make the kind of thing my grandmother would have left to me."
It is two in the morning when we leave. He sees us to the door, the cat under one arm, the ring catching the hallway bulb. He is going back to the edit. We are going home. The street is empty. The city is louder than the room was.
— In conversation withAurélien Cassen,Brooklyn, NY.
She wears
Molten Band
Other features
Yuki Mori
Kyoto, Japan · Ceramicist
Léonor de Sá
Lisbon, Portugal · Poet & translator
Hana Achebe
London, UK · Jewellery conservator
Inès Lambert
Mexico City · Architect