In a world that was spinning long before our arrival, how simple a task is it to declare a beginning or an end? When is a gesture truly our own? The interviews showcased this week pluck knowingly the strings of experience, and answer these questions in song.
Differing in approach, yet synthesized by interests, the unflagging minds of Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell have surmounted a variety of sculptural and digital manifestations, regardless of logistics. United in their pursuit of the personal undercurrent exposed by artistic expression, the two London-based artists have sought out a kind of collaborative poetry written in the language of architecture. Despite any formal training in architecture, intuition has proved itself, for the duo, an invaluable canary in the coalmine of public semiotics. Whether they are refining the aesthetics of the oldest underground railway in the world or experimenting with conceptual and immersive gallery installations, their earnest admiration for the swarms of animated discourse that chatter beneath the panels of our visual world comes to the fore.
Zurich-born curatorial juggernaut Hans Ulrich Obrist is both the glue of the contemporary art world and the applying hand. A paragon of interdisciplinary dialectics, Obrist passes through the junctures that separate objects, ideas, and people like an impulse through a synapse. The medium of his art is the exhibition, and his program is boundless experimentation. Endeavoring to uncover those rare and perceptive thinkers who add new rules to the grand game of art, Obrist follows the straightforward but proven methodology of intimate and repeated conversation – discussions with creators and organizers can sometimes span an entire career. The ideology behind the curator’s voracity for material (one that results in the archiving of nearly 3000 hours of interviews) is that of an inclusive and Darwinian global dialogue, adapting and evolving without erasing or replacing. Speaking from the self-ascribed moniker of flâneur, Obrist reassures us that our present and future identities will not be engulfed by the competing diversity of perspectives, but rather enriched and matured by their fervor and ambition.
Additional interviews include: Will Corwin and Marco Antonini.
Tell us what you’ve been reading! Kulapat Yantrasast is exploring Off the Wall by Calvin Tomkins, an engaging and comprehensive summation of the exponential changes to the international art scene set in motion by famed American abstract expressionist Robert Rauschenberg. Joan Waltermath, another one of our users, is perusing Triple Canopy’s publication Speculations (“The future is…”), a noble symposium of thinkers, from all disciplines, keen on articulating their particular economic, cultural, and existential predictions of the ineluctable global soup.
For the learned and experienced few, the rare opportunity to become a Member of the Chorus in the upcoming documenta 14 exhibition has presented itself. Occurring every five years in Kassel Germany, the illustrious exhibition showcases the cream of the contemporary crop, garnering immense national and international attention. Until December 5th, applicants have the chance to join the exclusive team of thinkers whose role is to critically engage with and inform visitors, fostering a reciprocal, diverse, and heightened level of discourse.
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We are all honored, at first, with a keyring. What we add, or remove, is forever our decision.
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As always, here are the links to the interview archive and free resources page.