Hans Ulrich Obrist

Interviews, Volume 2

By Hans Ulrich Obrist

2009

First Published

4.77

Average Rating

950

Number of Pages

29H00M

Audio Length

Since Hans Ulrich Obrist—museum director, curator, writer, cultural instigator and professional conversationalist—released his bestselling first volume of interviews back in 2004, one wonders if there is a living artist, musician or writer left with whom Obrist hasn't recorded an interview. Happily, of course, there are plenty. Obrist—who was born in Zurich in 1968, and who joined London's Serpentine Gallery as Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects in 2006—makes it his business to cross paths with the most significant thinkers of our time, from in or outside the artworld. Since 1993, he has conducted literally hundreds of interviews. The 70 published here are taken from an archive containing nearly 2,000 hours of recordings and organized by interviewees' dates of birth. Volume 2 is another collection of insightful dialogues with a diverse group of architects, artists, filmmakers, historians, musicians, philosophers and writers—including Björk, Miranda July, Studs Terkel, Czeslaw Milosz, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Emmett Williams, Merce Cunningham, Richard Hamilton, Doris Lessing, Beno"t Mandelbrot, Kazuo Shinohara, Jacques Herzog, Ai Wei Wei, Arto Lindsay and Michel Houellebecq—a rich trove of international cultural thought spanning the past 100 years. Encyclopedic in scope but intimate in tone, these exchanges provoke unexpected torrents of biographical trajectories, theoretical adventurings and inklings of projects to come.

Avg Rating

4.77

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

77%

4 STARS

23%

3 STARS

2 STARS

1 STARS

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Author

Hans Ulrich Obrist

Author · 28 books

Hans Ulrich Obrist is Co-director of the Serpentine Gallery in London. Prior to this, he was Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris from 2000 to 2006, as well as curator of Museum in progress, Vienna, from 1993 to 2000. Obrist has co-curated over 250 exhibitions since his first exhibition, the Kitchen show (World Soup) in 1991: including 1st Berlin Biennale, 1998; Utopia Station, 2003; 1st & 2nd Moscow Biennale, 2005 and 2007; Lyon Biennale, 2007; and Indian Highway, 2008-2011. Obrist is the editor of a series of conversation books published by Walther Koenig. He has also edited the writings of Gerhard Richter, Gilbert and George and Louise Bourgeois. He has contributed to over 200 book projects, his recent publications include A Brief History of Curating, dontstopdontstopdontstopdontstop, The future will be…with M/M (Paris), Interview with Hans-Peter Feldmann, and Ai Wei Wei Speaks, along with two volumes of his selected interviews (Interviews: Vol. 1 & 2). The Marathon series of public events was conceived by Hans Ulrich Obrist in Stuttgart in 2005. The first in the Serpentine series, the Interview Marathon in 2006, involved interviews with leading figures in contemporary culture over 24 hours, conducted by Obrist and architect Rem Koolhaas. This was followed by the Experiment Marathon, conceived by Obrist and artist Olafur Eliasson in 2007, the Manifesto Marathon in 2008, the Poetry Marathon in 2009, Map Marathon in 2010, and the Garden Marathon in 2011. In 2009, Obrist was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). In March 2011, he was awarded the Bard College Award for Curatorial Excellence.