Art will remain. An interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist
Simone Achermann and Stephan Sigrist
Art preserves the treasures of past cultures and supplies the templates for new developments, says Hans Ulrich Obrist. The Curator of the Serpentine Gallery in London talks about the causes of art hype, what makes a work a classic and the consequences of digitalisation – which has made all of us into collectors and curators.
Every day, millions of people visit museums containing art of past times. Why?
I think there are two reasons. On the one hand, museums are great time boxes with which we can revive the past – something we will always be fascinated by. On the other hand, museums containing old art function as toolboxes with which we can invent the future. The world of tomorrow is made out of fragments of the past, as the art historian Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968) said. Museums are in a way comparable to the way memory works: as an archive of the past as well as a dynamic process. They are a combination of time storage as well as laboratories for new art to develop. What makes a piece of art timeless? One aspect is the ability to remain relevant for other cultures and times. If art has no correlation with future happenings, it risks being static and forgotten. But mostly, art is deeply ambiguous and even historical paintings, created in and for a specific time and place in history, can become important in other contexts. Goya, for example, is most relevant to the present in relation to contemporary wars in the world. The other aspect that can make a painting, a film or a book important eternally is that we can actually “revisit” it and see something new and surprising. For example we always find details we haven’t seen yet in a film by Jean-Luc Godard or a painting by Gerhard Richter.
Pop-up galleries and installations show: much of contemporary art is intentionally short-lived, destined only for a specific place and time. What is the value of consistency in today’s art?
Time is becoming increasingly important in art. However, that moment of experience does not necessarily have to be short, but can intentionally be made long by slowing down the process. A good example is the 24 Hour Psycho by Douglas Gordon (1993), which expands Hitchcock’s classic to 24 hour length. There is a similar idea behind The Interview project I did, in which I recorded thousands of hours of interviews with artists, architects, writers and scientists. It also combines a limited duration of time with a certain consistency. So I would say both are relevant: ephemerality and consistency.
People are collecting more art than ever before. Is it the reaction to an immaterial, digital culture? Yes, it’s a form of resistance to the immaterial. One reason
surely is the wealth of society, as well as its instability. Also, when stocks and currencies are unstable, people tend to invest in things that keep their value. Not all collectors collect because they love art. But then again, more and more people do love art. In the 21st century, the art world is where everybody wants to be. One reason is that art has a great potential to bring together different worlds. Exhibitions have such free formats that they can bring in people from science, art, literature or film. I am interested in art, cinema, architecture, dance, science and design and I studied economics. I try to bind all these things through the art world. If Joseph Beuys said in the sixties that everybody is an artist, today everybody is a curator. When I grew up in Switzerland people did not know this profession. My parents thought a curator was some sort of medical profession. Today, everything is curated: The Ted conferences, the booklists on Amazon, blogs and personals archive of images and films on the computer.
Art can make something eternally valuable whereas most consumer goods lose their value as soon as they are bought. What can the economy learn from art?
Every business and every government of a big city should have an artist or a designer on the advisory board. This is the concept of the Artist Placement Group. Founded in 1966 by John Latham with Barbara Stevini as an artist-run organisation, the APG was seeking to refocus art outside the gallery, predominantly by attaching an artist to a business or governmental context for a period of time. The concept is again very attractive in a time when art has become so popular throughout society.
Three things that will remain of our culture in 50 years’ time, three things that will vanish?
What will definitely remain is art. I believe in art because it is the crystallisation point of every culture, it is what makes us see the true character of an age. Also, art is the highest form of hope. As long as hope remains, art will be always be around. The second and third things that will remain are architecture and literature, as they are just as representative of a period of time. What is at risk? The ecological crisis is a big risk for the variety of species, globalisation a danger to the variety of culture and languages which are in danger of vanishing. Moreover, means of transport as we know them will no longer exist. Conventional planes will be replaced by solar ones. The third thing that will vanish – well, we will vanish, the three of us.
Is there anything you feel nostalgic about?
I don’t really feel nostalgia. But I do protest against forgetting. My Interview project, which consists of hours and hours of interviews, recorded over many years, is a resistance against forgetting the past. However, there is one thing I do miss sometimes: letters. My archive of letters from artists who wrote to me in the 70s is just about to get published. But we should not feel nostalgic about the past, but try to make something new out of it – for example bring back letters to the present. A lot of correspondence I do is handwritten and I have started to send scanned letters per e-mail, which the receiver can print out as handwritten letters – a good way to combine modern technology and beautiful old media.
Hans Ulrich Obrist is co-director of the Serpentine Gallery in London. Prior to this he was Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and of museum in progress, Vienna. Obrist has co-curated over 250 exhibitions since his first, the Kitchen Show (World Soup) in 1991. These include 1st Berlin Biennale, 1998; Laboratorium, 1999; 1st & 2nd Moscow Biennale, 2005 and 2007; and Indian Highway, 2008–2011. Obrist’s curatorial projects are accompanied by editorial achievements, including the writings of Gerhard Richter, Louise Bourgeois and Gilbert and George. He is also the editor of a series of conversation books published by Walther Koenig. Obrist has contributed to over 200 book projects, with recent publications including “A Brief History of Curating,” The Conversation Series (Vol. 1–20.), and “Ai Weiwei Speaks.. In March 2011, Obrist was awarded Bard College Award for Curatorial Excellence.
