An aquamarine sparkling fish scale in the grass on the seashore conjured before my eyes the vision of a Buddhist-inspired gravel-and-rock garden formed from millions of scales – as a repository of the fish themselves – like blossoms or gems or river pebbles. It symbolizes the vast ocean of emptiness (無の大海), whose waters, as a medium of formless indifference, invite us to reflect on the dissolution of differences between the various forms of being and thus on their equality. The wind gradually carries the scales back into the deep blue.

To make this garden a reality, I spent five years collecting fish scales from the waste products of the fishing industry, washing them, laying them out to dry on rolls of paper, and letting each scale trickle through my fingers, like a gardener who wants to become familiar with every plant in his garden, in order to experience their sounds and, through their textures, the time they had lived through.

The garden was created on an uninhabited island in the Norwegian Sea. Director Victor Kossakovsky transformed it into the film ›Trillion‹.

It is dedicated to all fish beings and to my late sister Lara.