Artlog

Since the early 1990’s, Hans Ulrich Obrist has conducted 1,400 hours of interviews with over 400 artists, scientists, architects, writers, composers, and other influential figures in contemporary art and culture. Rigorously interdisciplinary and publicly engaged, Obrist’s interviews are a central component of his curatorial practice. Through the interviews, he seeks a deep understanding of the social architectures of cities and their diverse and overlapping domains of cultural production.

As Van Alen Institute New York Prize Senior Fellow, Obrist has furthered his lifelong Interviews project with a particular focus on New York. He has revisited interviews conducted over the last fifteen years with quintessential New York figures who have played critical roles in shaping the cityscape, and he has initiated a new series of interviews with Rem Koolhaas and Yoko Ono asking them about their formulas for the 21st century.

Inspired by an interview he conducted with Albert Hofmann, the inventor of LSD, in which Hofmann drew the equation for LSD on a scrap piece of paper, Obrist began in Spring 2006 to ask artists, writers, architects, mathematicians, and scientists: What is your formula for now? In Obrist’s words, the project’s “success resides in its elegant simplicity: the crystallization of a potentially complex idea translated into a single equation. If activities such as these succeed in familiarizing audiences with the expansive, even absurd, thoughts occupying some of our greatest minds they have fulfilled their basic charge. It is my ultimate hope, however, that they inspire new forms of cultural dialogue and can perhaps even serve as a template for related ventures to come.”

As the culmination of his senior fellowship tenure, Obrist presents at the Institute, and for the first time in the United States, a selection of unedited interviews with New York artists, architects, and cultural leaders, including:

- Marina Abramovic (December 2007, Miami Art Basel, 35:00) - A.A. Bronson (October 2006, taxi in Zurich, 52:02) - Paul Chan (March 2008, Launch of the Conversation Series, USM Modular Furniture Showroom) - Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio (2006, Miami Art Basel, 1:01:47) - Philip Johnson with Rem Koolhaas (2001, Johnson’s studio, 51:36) - Taylor Mead (May 2006, Lower East Side Apartment, 17:29) - Jonas Mekas (2001, Anthology Film Archives, 1:02:28) - Rirkrit Tiravanija (February 2006, Tiravanija’s car in Chelsea, 56:19) - Frederic Tuten (May 2007, Japanese restaurant on Broadway, 22:41)

The recorded interviews will be accompanied by new conversations with Rem Koolhaas and Yoko Ono, both of which are taking place at Van Alen Institute. An advance copy of Obrist’s forthcoming book Formulas for Now (Fall 2008), generously provided by Thames & Hudson, will also be on view as part of the project.