21616389 the Curators Obrist

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Independent Contemporary Art Curating:

(Hans Ulrich Obrist)

Abstract

This paper aims to consider and examine the curatorial practice of Hans Ulrich

Obrist, a Swiss curator who can be identified as modern day trickster, coyote, a

middleman, provocateur in the contemporary artworld. His practice and indeed

his lifestyle seemed to start out as a freewheeling traveller with no fixed abode to

institutional manager and a much feted and powerful figure in contemporary

curating worldwide. By analysing his trajectory from his initial encounters and

opportunities for curating projects to significant player in the history of curating,

an important model for curating can be identified.

"The new type of art institute cannot merely be an art museum as it has been

until now, but no museum at all. The new type will be more like a power station,

a producer of new energy." Alexander Dorner (1893 - 1957)

The current term of producer for the maker of art events and experiences could

be employed on Hans Ulrich Obrist, he makes things happen, he has ideas fornew forms of production, he collaborates, his productions are successful, ground

braking, exciting and are evolving the notion of the art exhibition in many ways.

But this term seems too literal, it deals with health and safety, budget,

interpretation and audience, it deals with the authorities and communicates with

the detractors and the not convinced, so his work, or his art is something else,

something more than. Obrist to me has a constant appetite for ideas in curating.

He improvises with the context of curating, building up his appetite to do one

more version, possibility and experience of curating. The trickster has a constant

appetite, although he does not always eat what he cooks as the appetite is

continual. If he eats, he will be satisfied and no longer need to look for his next

meal. Perhaps the idea of comfort and contentment leads to lack of newness and

creativity. Tricksters make themselves hungry by tightening their belt, removing

their intestines, vomiting up their last meal so that no meat will satisfy its

stomach.

This might be a heavily metaphorical way of illustrating Obrists work, but he

does seem to continually look for the next opportunity, constantly moving on

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testing, trying out, making a statement, standing against but for the work he is

drawn to, but in a positive manner, not competitive or territorial, but open

democratic and inclusive. In June 1995, the CCA, in Glasgow was a venue for the

exhibition, Do it! This was curated by Obrist. Nicola White, who was the

exhibitions director at the time, had pursued Obrist to secure the exhibition. We

met him in Venice at the Biennial of 1995, where we met him in the hotel which

dickens and Byron used to hang out in. We met him for coffee in the foyer; Yoko

Ono came over and said hi to him. Once the meeting was over he suggested that

we just got up and left without paying for the coffee, as the hotel wouldnt make

a fuss over the price of 3 coffees, so we just walked out. This is what he would

do; use the foyer as his office. We then tracked him down to an exhibition at the

Serpentine Gallery in London, called Take Me Im Yours (whether this was named

after the old Squeeze punk hit I wonder), but I didnt go in as Nicola was on the

mission to secure the show, so just hung about outside and spoke to Cathy de

Monchaux, as I didnt have the appetite at that time. Although, we did end up

in a small bar in North London, where the artists and hangers on got together, inc

Gilbert and George. The elder statesmen of Brit art were being feted and probably

enjoying themselves. Demonstrating our interest and determination, but also that

we were a gallery in Glasgow, and at the time Obrist saw the activity of Gordon,

et all we were the second venue to carry out the Do It exhibition.

Even at this time, early 1990s Obrist was playing with the possibilities of the

exhibition and curating. Do It consisted of a list of selected artists, who composed

a manual of instructions to make the work for the exhibition. The artists never

needed to get involved with the making of the work. The exhibition included

Christian Boltanski, Maria Eichhorn, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Paul-Armand Gette,

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Fabrice Hybert, Ilya Kabakov, Mike Kelley, Alison Knowles,

Bertrand Lavier, Jean-Jacques Rullier and Rirkrit Tiravanija. The artists did not

involve themselves in the making of the work, this was done by the staff of the

gallery, although Maria Eichhorn came into the gallery while we were making her

work, and told us that this was not what she meant or wanted as her work! We

had carried out her instructions to lose a silver ring in the city, but we also

photographed it, by Simon Starling and showed the photos, in retrospect I know

understand what she meant.). We made the photos, built the structures did the

drawings, made the humus and recorded the white noise of the local ghostly

projectionist. Mike Kellys instructions were for us to find a local venue where a

ghost or spirit was thought to be and record the sound of the space. Therefore,

we went to the ABC cinema next to the CCA on Sauchiehall Street and asked

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about possible ghostly movement and there was indeed a projectionist who had

committed suicide in the projection booth one Christmas party in the 80s. The

cleaners were sure that they felt a presence and tales of the doors opening the

wrong way and a chill in the air, made us think this was our source. Therefore,

we were nstructed to construct a padded box, which the microphone sat in, and it

was to be connected to a speed variable reel-to-reel tape recorder. The recorder

would be recording a t a faster speed that the playback. This we did. The

recording was then played back at a slow speed and high volume. The sound was

of screeching white noise, but in the cacophony, we believed that there was

talking, spooky. It felt like a Kelly work, I had seen things in catalogues like this

that he had done with old spirit hunting techniques and images with ectoplasm,

so this seemed to fit, but where was the author in this. Instructions in art making

were nothing new, Sol Lewitt, etc, but it did cross a boundary in terms of curating

and exhibition making. Curating became a process, as opposed to a historical

marking of achievment and status in much the way that contemporary art in the

late 1960s did, and in the Szeeman exhibition When attitudes become form. At

this earlier time critics began to define curators activities in these changing times

as the Curator became the creator1 and (Lucy Lippard) is in fact the artist

andher medium is other artists2. So was it new or just the time was right to

appropriate a previous model, for exhibition making at the time. It fitted with his

globetrotting image, where he mysteriously only had n email address as acontact, no one knew where he stayed. When Obrist turned up at our Do It

opening, he had a very quick look in the door of the gallery then asked to use the

office phone. He had already moved on and was organising the next project.

Obrist speaks of, when he was eighteen years old had was helping out at the

Kunstverin Museum in Geneva, and saw all the artists coming in and making their

exhibitions in the tried and well-tested context of the museum and white space.

He started to think about where the artists would really like to show their work.

So he asked the artists when they cam to the museum. He talks of asking

Alighiero e Boetti, as he was bored with the museum, the gallery the art fair, why

are we only ever asked to show in these spaces. His vision would be for his art to

reach around the world and travel ion aeroplanes to all corners of the earth so

that the world could experience it. Therefore, if you can arrange this, Hans I will

do it with you. So Obrist did, even though it was just Swiss air, he negotiated to

1Althuser, B. The Avant-Garde in Exhibition: New art in the 20 th Century, Harry N Abrams,

New York, 1994 p 236

2 Lippard L Lucy, ed, Six Years: The Dematerialisation of the Art world from 1966 to 1972,

New York; Praeger, 1973 p111

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have Boettis work on the planes to fly around the world. This shows at an early

age that he could ask questions, although not have the answer and make

something of it happen and give the concept a reality.

At age 18 Obrist may well have just been highly influenced by the avant-garde

art making and its associated curatorial practice, as it was 1986, the year that

Jan Hoet curated the seminal non white space gallery exhibition, Chambre dAmis

in Ghent, Dan Camerons Art and its Double at the Fundacio caixa de pensions,

Barcelona, 1987 Skulptur Projetk, Munster, Szeemanns 1985 New Aperto at

Venice. If the curator had now become an artist whose medium was other

artists, everyone involved seemed happy to participate.

Obrists career may well be seen as a free spirit and independent but he too, like

Szeemann, had an umbilical cord attached to the failsafe art institutions in one

way or another. He was the curator of the Muse dArt Moderne de la Ville de

Paris since 1993, as well as curator of museum in progress, Vienna, from 1993-

2000. He has curated over 150 exhibitions internationally since 1991, including

do it (CCA 1995), Take Me, Im Yours (Serpentine Gallery March 1995), Cities on

the Move (Hayward Sept 1999), Live/Life (Paris 1996), Nuit Blanche, 1st Berlin

Biennale, Manifesta 1, and more recently Uncertain States of America, 1st

Moscow Triennale and 2nd Guangzhou Biennale (Canton China), Il Tempo del

Postino with Philippe Parreno for the Manchester International Festival 2007lecturer at Facolta delle Arti, IUAV in Venice since 2001 and since 2006 is the Co-

director of exhibitions and programmes and Director of International Projects at

the Serpentine Gallery, London

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21616389 the Curators Obrist