Hans Ulrich Obrist on the delights and dangers of curating

"I've never thought of the curator as a creative rival to the artist," says Hans Ulrich Obrist. "When I started curating I wanted to be helpful to artists. I see my work as a catalyst - and a sparring partner." Read more...
Image: Hans Ulrich Obrist

Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews Billy Apple

Earlier this year, Billy Apple was in Hong Kong for The Immortalisation of Billy Apple®, an art/science project by Apple and artist/scientist Craig Hilton presented by Starkwhite at the first edition of Art Basel Hong Kong, where he caught up with Hans Ulrich Obrist. Last week they met again in London where Obrist is conducting an interview with Apple for his epic anthology The Interview Project.
Image: Billy Apple at Serpentine Gallery's new restaurant designed by Zaha Hadid.

Who is responsible for the future?

The Serpentine will stage the 89plus Marathon, the 8th Festival of Ideas on 18/19 October. Conceived of by Hans Ulrich Obrist, the Marathon brings together a diverse array of world-leading figures to investigate a topic from a variety of angles and over a two-day period. Past Marathons have covered subjects ranging from Manifestos (2008) and Maps (2010) to Memory (2012).

This year's Marathon takes its name from the multi-platform research project 89plus, co-founded by Obrist and Simon Castets, which investigates innovative work by the generation born in or after 1989. The event will look to the future considering how the internet and new social and economic networks are changing the world as we know it. Some of the brightest lights of this generation will consider what he future will look like and, more crucially, who will determine that future.

For the first time, an online 89plus Clubhouse, hosted by HP Cloud, will enable remote participation from around the world.

Hans Ulrich Obrist's latest house-museum project in Sao Paulo's Glass House

Thirty artists and architects including Tamar Guimaraes, Isaac Julien, Olafur Eliasson and Norman Foster have created new works for an exhibition in Sao Paulo's Glass House in a homage to Brazilian Modernist architect Lina Bo Bardi. Staged in the architect's former home, The insides are on the outside is the latest "house-museum" project organised by Hans Ulrich Obrist. He has previously staged exhibitions in the homes of architect Luis Barragan in Mexico City, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in Sils Maria, Switzerland and poet Frederico Garcia Lorca in Granada, Spain. "I started my career as a curator in a kitchen," he says. "Artists do different kinds of work than they would in a museum or bigger space. That sense of intimacy is important" Read more...
Image: Lino Bo Bardi's former home the Casa de Vitro (Glass House), Sao Paulo

Gioni and Obrist revisit 'do it'

Massimiliano Gioni and Hans Ulrich Obrist teamed up recently at the New Museum to discuss do it, the ongoing curatorial project of instructions by artists for artworks exhibited as manuals that began in Paris in 1993 as a conversation between Obrist and artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier. "I think it's Richard Hamilton who once told me that we mainly remember exhibitions that invent new rules of the game," Obrist said on the panel. "And that's what Boltanski and Lavier and I said at the cafe, that we wanted to invent new rules." Read more...

Hans Ulrich Obrist selects winners of the Independent Curators International award for emerging curators

The ICI's Independent Vision Award for emerging curators has gone to Jay Sanders, curator of performance at the Whitney Museum in New York, and Nav Haq, a curator at MuHKA in Antwerp. The biennial award goes to emerging curators from around the world who have demonstrated "exceptional creativity and prescience" in organising exhibitions, coordinating research and for related writing.

Sanders and Haq were chosen by Hans Ulrich Obrist from a shortlist nominated by 15 internationally recognised curators. "Nav Haq fredquently takes us into the polyphony of art centers, creating shows and projects that broaden the scope of our thinking," he said. "Jay Sanders stays close to artists, gaining a strong understanding of an artist's body of work - both emerging and overlooked - so that ultimately audiences can know an artist deeper."
Image: Haq and Sanders

Hans Ulrich Obrist on fly-in, fly-out curating

In an article in the Financial Times, Hans Ulrich Obrist urges curators "to shape exhibitions as long-duration projects" and dismisses "fly-in, fly-out curating" which he says nearly always produces superficial results. "It's a practice that goes hand in hand with the fashion of applying the word 'curating' to everything that involves simply making a choice - radio playlists, hotel decor, even the food stalls in New York's High Line Park," he says. "Making art is not the matter of the moment, and nor is making an exhibition: curating follows art.". Read more...
Image: Hans Ulrich Obrist in India

Hans Ulrich Obrist's Institute of the 21st Century

Hans Ulrich Obrist's Institute of the 21st Century (i21c) will be launched on 29 July. i21c is a non-profit initiative to consolidate and digitally archive Obrist's Interview Project archive so that his interviews with major figures of the 20th and 21st centuries can be shared as a searchable database. Over the launch weekend Obrist will conduct public interviews with artists John Baldessari and computer engineer Danny Hillis.

You can receive i21c news and be notified when an interview has been posted here.

Unrealised projects at Documenta

Some events, like the Sculpture Project in Munster and Documenta, have a history of attracting projects from artists that are too difficult or costly to realise, like Gabriel Orozco's Munster proposal in '97 to build a ferris wheel, half of which would be below ground level. Some may even be designed to fail, like Alina Szapocznikow"s plan to make a double-sized Rolls Royce out of marble for the 1972 edition of Documenta, which she termed "completely useless and a reflection of the god of supreme luxury." Her correspondence about this project has since been exhibited in various exhibitions.

Art Agenda reports that this year's Documenta has at least two ambitious failed projects. One is represented by two walls of correspondence from official organisations that once more address the Artistic Director, this time to answer her proposal of nominating the earth's atmosphere for UNESCO's World Heritage List, a project by American artist Amy Balkin. The epic, yet failed attempt to transport El Chaco meteorite to Kassel, undertaken by Argentinian duo Guillermo Faivovich and Nicholas Golberg, is also widely documented by various exchanges.

They are projects that may also find their way into another edition of Hans Ulrich Obrist's compendium of unrealised projects.
Image: Cover Unbuilt Roads, edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist

Hans Ulrich Obrist's latest domestic intervention in Sao Paulo's Glass House

Hans Ulrich Obrist will curate an exhibition of 15 to 20 artists' projects in Sao Paulo's Glass House, the former home of modernist architect Lina Bo Bardi. "Lina is one of the great women architects of the 20th century and her major projects haven't been recognised enough", he says. The project is the latest in a series of domestic interventions by Obrist. He has previously staged exhibitions in the homes of architect Luis Barragan in Mexico City, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in Sils Maria, Switzerland and poet Frederico Garcia Lorca in Granada, Spain.

Hans Ulrich Obrist on India's rising art scene

Hans Ulrich Obrist was recently in New Delhi to begin the Indian chapter of his marathon interview series. Sahar Zaman sounded him out about his views on the contemporary Indian art scene, it's growing international impact, and its place in his interview series. Read more...

Image: curator Hans Ulrich Obrist in India