Charles Arsene-Henry

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.… (mehr)