Since 2012, Hans Ulrich Obrist (born 1968) has made a weekly contribution to Das Magazin, the weekend supplement of the Swiss Tages-Anzeiger newspaper. His weekly column offers a survey of contemporary art and current cultural affairs in the style of a diary. Offering an open and globalized mapping of the culture of the 2010s, Obrist’s writings for Das Magazin are collected in Somewhere Totally Else for the first time. The anthology also serves as a portrait, revealing the personal cosmology of this curious-about-everything global citizen par excellence: Obrist writes on everything from Etel Adnan and Lina Bo Bardi to Fischli/Weiss, from the importance of sharing and interdisciplinary thinking to the legacy of Édouard Glissant. Somewhere Totally Else collects 100 entries written between 2012 and 2017, with drawings by British artist David Shrigley.
Author
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.
