On more than one occasion, the Cuban art historian and curator Gerardo Mosquera has criticised the kind of temporary art exhibition that descends on unsuspecting locals like a flying saucer, meets with bafflement and incomprehension, does its own thing among fellow Martians and then takes off and vanishes without a trace. Continue reading Letter from Okayama and Kobe
This piece appeared in the “Conference Room” section of LEAP magazine, in Chinese translation: DATE: 2015.10.17-18 LOCATION: Serpentine Gallery and Serpentine Radio PARTICIPANTS: Hans Ulrich Obrist, Saskia Sassen, Bruno Latour, Gilbert & George and Victoria, Tino Sehgal, Alice Rawsthorn, Eyal Weizman, Etel Adnan, Dorothea von Hantelmann, Juliet Jacques, Kim West, Judy Chicago, François Jullien, Marcus du Sautoy, Jimmie Durham, Gabriella Coleman, Julieta Aranda, and many others. Now in its tenth year, the annual Serpentine Marathon at the close of Frieze Week has become a London institution. Initiated by Hans Ulrich Obrist in 2006, the inaugural 24-Hour Interview Marathon was co-curated … Continue reading Transformation Marathon
This account of Sehgal’s Kiss at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds appeared on guardian.com: Photograph: Corbis A man and woman walk briskly past a fully clothed couple who are engaged in foreplay on the pavement outside the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, despite the freezing cold. “That’s unusual,” the woman says. “Don’t they have motels here? What do you think it’s about?” the man replies. This is Kiss, a live project by the artist Tino Sehgal, first staged in Nantes in 2002 and now taking over Leeds city centre. The public’s perplexed reactions as they stumble across Kiss are … Continue reading Tino Sehgal’s Kiss
This piece appeared on artforum.com: Left: LUMA Foundation founder Maja Hoffmann with architects Annabelle Selldorf and Frank Gehry. Right: At the “Solaris Chronicles” event. (All photos: Herve Hote) THE TWENTY-ACRE PARC DES ATELIERS, a defunct SNCF railway yard on the outer edge of Arles, might only be a fifteen-minute walk from the train station. But as I stood in midday heat last Sunday, with no taxis in sight, Maja Hoffmann’s proposal to build a station closer to the Ateliers made perfect sense to me. Not so to my French travel companions, who saw it as a sign of how out … Continue reading Solaris Chronicles
This portrait of the Gensollens and their collection appeared in the FT: A marble plaque on the outside of La Fabrique – a converted textile mill in Marseille that houses one of the most rarefied private collections of contemporary art in France – commemorates a “conspiracy” between the Swiss artist-activist Gianni Motti and the collector couple Josée and Marc Gensollen, which took place behind its walls on November 15 2013. The exact nature of this act, apparently directed against the contemporary art market, is a secret the Gensollens will not divulge. To conspire, from the Latin conspirare, literally means … Continue reading Twin Passions: the Gensollens and La Fabrique
This piece, written for Guardian professional, appeared on guardian.com: Photograph: Johnny Green/PA Six weeks ago, an unusual request landed in my inbox. A Swiss-French filmmaker I’d not heard of before, Benoît Rossel, emailed me out of the blue to say he was looking for a London-based character-cum-situation hunter to assist him with a documentary film about artists. Someone close to the wheels of power in the art world, who, like me, had participated in Tino Sehgal’s These Associations at Tate Modern last year, had recommended me for the job. Since leaving a full-time, secure position as a university lecturer … Continue reading Frieze or Faculty?
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