HIGHLIGHTS: Hans Ulrich Obrist

0:00Hi everybody, tune in to this short version of the podcast which we do every Friday for the long version. Tune in on Wednesdays. Hi everyone and welcome to In Good Company. I'm Nicolai Tangen and I am the CEO of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund. And today I'm joined by somebody who I think probably is the world's greatest connector of ideas, people and art. Hans Ulrich Obrist is the artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London and widely considered the best art curator in the world. You created unbelievable amounts of exhibitions, and today we're going to tease out the reasons behind your success, creativity, how to connect with people, and what business can learn from all the kind of things you've done.

0:47So, warm welcome. Thank you. Very nice to see you. What does an art curator actually do? yeah I've always followed this definition the writer J.G. Ballard gave me when he didn't really understand what was my profession so I was describing it to him and he says so basically what you're doing is you're a junction maker you create unexpected connections and I think that's kind of what is at the core of my practice it's bringing artworks together bringing people together, creating situations and using also the exhibition as a kind of a medium to create experiences. What's the key to create interesting experiences?

1:30I mean, I think the first, probably most important step is to listen. The poet Etel Adnan said once that we sort of need to learn to listen again. And I think listening to artists is always the beginning. So I would go to studios. It's something I've been doing ever since I'm a teenage. When I was like 16, 17, I traveled all over Europe by night train. And I went to see artists from Gerhard Richter to Rosemary Trockel to Louis Bourgeois, to Annette Messager, to Fischliweiss. So artists kind of all over Europe initially and then also outside Europe and would just listen to them. And of course, also kind of find out what they would like to do.

2:15So rather than to somehow squeeze their practice into a kind of a framework, it's basically kind of listen what they've maybe not been able to do in the context of the art world. So how we can basically change the art world or shift it slightly to make this artist's dream become a reality. So in a way, to come back to your initial question, what is a curate? I think it's also about enabling, about making things possible. Tell me about the importance of multi-sensory exhibitions. What does it do to the visitor? You mean when an exhibition addresses multiple senses? Yeah. How do you think about it?

2:57How many senses do you want to engage? And is more senses better? I mean, I think we can never say an exhibition has to be this or that way, because each time it's a different situation. But I think if we want to bind the viewer and if we want the viewer to spend more time in an exhibition, it's important to appeal to multiple senses, definitely. And I think that's something, I mean, the example of Peter Doig is the case in point. People spend hours, they kept coming back. And that's also what's happening, for example, with our experiments with technology. When I joined the sub-in-law in 2006, we started to think about what could be new departments, and we started to basically introduce an ecological sort of department, so as to say, where we looked at the environmental aspects of what the museum does.

3:47But we also felt it would be important to kind of connect to technology, because around 2012, 2013, most of the museum work with technology happened maybe on the website, but it wasn't really central in museums, but it was clear that it would become a very important dimension of art of the future. So we started new experiments in art and technology. And many of these exhibitions are very multi-sensory. We created, for example, exhibitions with video games because today more than 3 billion people play video games. It was a niche medium, has become one of the lead mediums of our time. Many visual artists are engaging with that medium.

4:27So we created kind of mixed reality installation, physical installations by artists with video game components. And that again, exhibitions, for example, of Gabriel Massan and also Daniel Braceway Charlie and others, these exhibitions really bind the viewer and visitors spend a lot of time. And it also brought in a completely new generation of kind of visitors who otherwise wouldn't visit the museum. So we also kind of think in relation to that, it's interesting to create new alliances to kind of connect because obviously museums always work with other museums but we think it's interesting to create new alliances also with brands with companies in technology so for example for the cause exhibition we partnered up with fortnite and that partnership meant that all of a sudden serpentine was on the landing page of fortnite and we had in two weeks 150 million visitors on that space, which is more than any exhibition we've ever done.

5:23And that brought us a lot of visitors into the physical space. The same exhibition basically happened in the virtual space on Fortnite and in the physical space. The physical paintings were actually in the gallery. And all of a sudden, you know, teenagers brought their parents to the Serpentine, which in a way otherwise would be the other way around. Hans-Orig, let's talk about relationships. What is key to establishing good relationships with artists? I think relationships with artists are about liberating time. I think it's something which always begins with a studio visit. It begins with a long conversation.

6:04So I think it's something which has to do also with attention. And you visit them typically in the galleries? Yeah, I would make studio visits. I mean, some artists don't have a physical studio, then we meet in a cafe, but that's also a studio visit. Yeah, I do that every day. How many artists have you visited? I mean, I've been doing it since 1986 because I started when I was a teenager, so it's been 40 years. So if you would think that on average I visit the studio a day, it's 40 times 365. It's a lot, huh? You also record some of your conversations. Yeah, I started at a certain moment in the early 90s to record them.

6:47I mean, initially, because I didn't really remember everything artists told me, but also because I started to think that maybe it could be interesting for the future as a document to have the voices recorded. How much do you sleep? More now than before. So basically, I had different experiments with sleep. so initially when I began I wanted to write many books and so I was inspired by Balzac because Balzac had this rhythm that he drank up to 50 coffees every day and then and I realized that that's not really sustainable I did it for about six months and it was actually quite productive but not sustainable I mean Balzac also died in his 50s so it wasn't sustainable then I found out that there was the Da Vinci rhythm and the da Vinci rhythm is basically to sleep every three hours for 15 minutes.

7:41And that proved to be very productive and also not very stressful. I was quite somehow balanced whilst I did it, but it didn't work when I started to have an office because obviously in an office we can't then after three hours suddenly lie down for 15 minutes. It wouldn't work. Or we have meetings and then it wouldn't work. So then I stopped the Da Vinci rhythm. And then at the moment I realized that I needed, because I think we all have an inner kind of rhythm and I needed about six, six and a half hours sleep. So then I came up with this idea of having a night assistant, a night producer. So always after dinner in the evening from sort of 10.30 to 11.30, I would work another hour with a night producer and who would then realize correspondence or transcriptions or editing overnight.

8:37And in the morning when I wake up, it's done. And so since I have this system in place, I can sleep. You have it still? Yeah. So you have somebody, you have like an assistant who works during the night for you? Yeah, 24 hour. What can business people learn from the art world? I think there are many things. I think, of course, artists are really good at pivoting. And I think today we live in an environment where it's more and more difficult to predict the future. So I think in a way, the way, you know, artists work with the unknowable, the way artists work also with questions often more than with answers, is something I think which can be very relevant today.

9:16And I think it's interesting. In the 60s, there was this idea of John Latham and Barbara Stevini, where they had this idea of APG. They had this idea of an artist placement group. where they thought that every governmental structure, but also every company and every corporation should have an artist in residence and maybe also an artist on the board. And I think the time has come that we should realize that. I think it will be very exciting.