In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen - Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

What can business learn from the art world? In this episode of In Good Company, Nicolai Tangen sits down with legendary curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries and a master of connecting ideas, people, and disciplines.Obrist shares how creativity starts with listening, why serendipity often beats rigid planning, and how bringing together art, technology, and culture can create entirely new experiences. From lifelong conversations with artists to exploring AI and multi-sensory exhibitions, his approach is all about curiosity, collaboration, and long-term thinking. A sharp, inspiring conversation on creativity, innovation, and navigating uncertainty.Many of the projects discussed in this episode can be explored further through Serpentine on Bloomberg Connects (available via the Bloomberg Connects app): https://www.bloombergconnects.org/In Good Company is hosted by Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management. New full episodes every Wednesday, and don't miss our Highlight episodes every Friday.  The production team for this episode includes Isabelle Karlsson and PLAN-B's Niklas Figenschau Johansen, Sebastian Langvik-Hansen and Pål Huuse. Background research was conducted by Isabelle Karlsson. Watch the episode on YouTube: Norges Bank Investment Management - YouTubeWant to learn more about the fund? The fund | Norges Bank Investment Management (nbim.no)Follow Nicolai Tangen on LinkedIn: Nicolai Tangen | LinkedInFollow NBIM on LinkedIn: Norges Bank Investment Management: Administrator for bedriftsside | LinkedInFollow NBIM on Instagram: Explore Norges Bank Investment Management on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi everyone and welcome to In Good Company. I'm Nicola Tangen and I am the CEO of the Norwegian Sovan 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 Surpatine 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 business behind your success, creativity,

how to connect with people, and what business can learn from all the kind of things you've done. So 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 car 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? I mean, I think the first probably most important step is to listen. The poet Ete Latnan 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 Rosmarie Troque, to Louis Bourgeois, to a message, to Fish Lovai. So artists kind of of all over Europe initially and then also outside Europe

and would just listen to them. And of course, I also kind of find out what they would like to do. So rather than to somehow squeeze their practice into a kind of a framework, it's to 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 these artist dream become a reality. become a reality. So in a way, to come back to your initial question, what is a curator,

I think it's also about enabling, about making things possible. Now, you put together things which weren't meant to be together often. What's the key to get kind of diverse things to play together? I mean, I think the key is to not stop the serendipity, because very often it's a chain reaction. And it's not necessarily a master plan. I think very often, when it's an example, in an example, exhibition has a checklist early on, and one would say that's what we're going to do. It's very limited. I think we go on a journey, we go into the Unknowable and on this path. We have to be open for many different surprises.

So one of my bigger projects of the last years has been my kind of handwriting project, and that is an example for that, you know, these two little books and it's also my Instagram account. And we basically, I was with Umberto Eko, the writer. and scholar. And he was very old and he said, basically we need to do something to save handwriting. So kind of left his apartment with his task somehow.

And I wasn't, of course, qualified to do that because I'm not a calligrapher. Now, could I found a calligraphy school? Then, in a way, I was with the poet De La Nannan, whom I quoted earlier, who said that we have to learn to listen again. And she also told me that we shouldn't sort of, we shouldn't sort of forget that handwriting matters.

And she started, whilst we were in a cafe to write a very beautiful poem in her notebook. And suddenly I realized I am with artists, with poets, with writers, with architects every day. So I could just ask them to write something and make my social media. I give it a mission, no? Because in a way, I didn't really know what to do with Instagram and with social media. I knew that I didn't want it to be about selfies. I knew they didn't want to be my food. I didn't want it to be about my travels.

It needed to have a mission, a purpose. And then I thought, wow, so I could actually do what Umberto Eko told me. And so in a way, it's the serendipity which leads to project. I think it's to be open and to be curious and let things flow. Not many people actively believe in serendipity. I kind of love it because it brings out surprising things. What is your relationship to serendipity? I think in a way, the idea of an encounter with artists can lead us somewhere

where we would never have thought or we would never think we could go. and I think that's what very often is the serendipity of such project but it's also I think the idea of going beyond short-termism I think we live in a world which is very much sort of ruled by short-termist deadlines by by deadlines where for a certain moment or up to a certain moment something has to happen and that's of course true in every field it's also true in my field the exhibition has to open But I think very often it's interesting that we go on a journey and that an exhibition has a longer life than that. Some of my exhibitions have been evolving for more than 30 years.

We started a project called Do It, where I ask artists to write instructions and recipes, and basically people, museums, people at home, people everywhere in the world can interpret and can basically do the artwork themselves. And so that project has been on the road for, for 33 years now and it's never stopped. There has always been a new version. It keeps learning. It keeps evolving.

I think the idea also that exhibitions in a way don't start from this idea that they know everything, that we kind of set up vehicles or structures which can learn is very important. What's the recipe for a great exhibition? I mean, I don't think that there is one recipe. I think that in a way an exhibition needs to

kind of come up with new rules of the game. It needs to kind of come up with new connections, new encounters, needs to create an experience we haven't had before. And very often, it's also bringing disciplines together. I mean, for example, we've just had an exhibition at Serpentine of Peter Doig and talking to the artists, we figured out that his desire is really to bring the world of art, painting and music together. And little by little, we realized that it also includes poetry

because he collaborated with poets. And so we created an exhibition, we invited him basically to create an exhibition at Sorbentine, where on the one hand he presented new paintings. At the same time, he transformed the exhibition space into a listening space. People could sit down. They could have a chat. They could have a conversation. They could also lie down and just chill.

And they could listen to his music. They could listen to the music he has basically in his studio. He plays in his studio. But they could also come for special events. There were these basically sessions every Sunday. So it means that people came actually not only once to see the exhibition, but all of a sudden you have people who came every Sunday, who came every day to listen to new music.

And so in a way, created a completely new experience and also in a way binds people to spend more time. Because on average, people spend very little time in front of an artwork in a museum, a few seconds, sometimes longer. But I think it's interesting when we can create an exhibition. Are you fast when you go through exhibitions? Because I'm really fast. I'm fast until I'm not.

If all of a sudden I'm fascinated, then I can spend a lot of time. So it's kind of both. But I think it's interesting that we create multi-sensory experiences where actually visitors can spend more time, as they did in Peter Dock's exhibition. What's your imprint on this? Where can we see Oberist in your exhibitions? I mean, in terms of solar exhibitions,

when we do solar exhibitions at Serpentine, most of the time invite artists to take over the space and create their world and show their work as a kind of a world. building, then I think it's an enabling. It's making that possible. It's of course very different with group shows. With group shows, the curator kind of defines in dialogue with the artist the rule of the game. And we are working right now with my colleague Ben Vickers and Sandwar Collective on the Vatican Pavilion, the Holy See Pavilion for the Venice Biennale, which is going

to open next month. And there we basically came up with this idea of this interdisciplinary figure, this saint, Hildegar from Bingen, who lived in the 11th century. And so many musicians and artists today are inspired by her composing, by her music, by her writing, by the way she connected also to nature, by the way she kind of connected to healing, because she was also a healer. So we decided to kind of, in dialogue with artists, to sort of do a garden, a sound garden in Venice. It's a hidden garden near the railway station and this garden is basically going to be accessible for the exhibition and visitors will come there and listen to sound

interpretations of 21st century artists from Blood Orange to Patty Smith to the Bongna Canga. Many different artists will interpret Hildegov for Bingens' work for today. So here we kind of would define a rule of the game in which then the different arts. can intervene. So it depends a lot if it's a solo show or a group show. Tell me about the importance of multisensory exhibitions. What does it do to the visitor? You mean when an exhibition addresses multiple senses? Yeah. Yeah, what happens? How do you think about it? I mean, how many senses do you want to engage? I mean, 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 Dogg 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 subject in 2006, we started to think about what could be new departments, and we started to basically introduce an ecological department. So as to say, we looked at environmental aspects of what the museum does. But 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 kind of 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's sort of the niche medium has become one of the mediums of our time.

Many visual artists are engaging with that medium. So we created kind of mixed reality installation, physical installations by artists with video game components, and that again, exhibitions, for example, of Gabrielle. Marsan and also Daniel Berry Sway Charlie and others. These exhibitions really bind the view 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. And 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. Or also the same thing happened with K-pop. We did a whole collaboration with BDS and K-pop and the young artist, Jakub Knud Steenson, and all of a sudden the world of contemporary art and the world of K-pop came together. Are the best artists also the most technically accomplished

or using modern technology in a better way? Is there a correlation there? I think that... Because I remember I saw a Hackney exhibition where he had drawn on iPads, right? You remember that probably from the Royal Academy. Yeah, at the moment we actually show an exhibition of David Hockney at the southern time. We just opened. And it's there until early September, late August.

He's always gone beyond paintings. He's a painter who always had the curiosity to go into other fields. So he wrote secret knowledge, which is a book. at the same time he worked with opera he worked with opera sets and theater sets and then he always came back to painting and then I would say already in the 80s he was very fascinated by technology

but it was too slow for him that drawing was still faster but then around 2006 789 I don't remember exactly the year but about approximately 20 years ago 18 years ago he started to all of a sudden really experiment more with technology and then he started to make these extraordinary works

on the iPad. And initially it was flowers and then landscapes. And it really intensified when during the lockdown, he was in Normandy in France. And he created this amazing work here in Normandy. And it's, of course, a very physical, deeply embodied piece because it's printed. It fills the gallery. It's a panorama. It's in a way an homage to Bayeur, one can say.

It's inspired by the tapestry of Bayeur. So it's interesting because later this year... Which is now coming to the British Museum. It's coming to the British Museum. So our show is basically ending when that starts. So it's kind of a segue almost. And for Hockney, it was very inspiring to visit the tapestry of Bayou. He created hundreds of works outdoors, a bit like Monet.

The impressionist would paint Plenair. Hockney was Plenair, but he wasn't there with the easel and the paint. He was there with his iPad. And he was basically painting and then combined about a hundred of these works into one very long work, which is inspired by Bayeux and which is basically going around the corners of the space. So one has to walk in order to experience it. And then at the same time, you know, he would return again to painting as he always did. And in the two powder rooms in Sarpentine North, the two central spaces, there are two new paintings. So yeah, that's definitely, it's a very physical experience, but it's being created using technology.

And it took him a long time to basically learn how to use that tool. What's going to be the function of AI and art? I think it's interesting right now to see how many artists are working with AI. And we started, of course, when we 12 years ago began these experiments in art and technology at serpentine, And we quite early on also focused on AI. Last year, we had an exhibition of Holy Hand and Matt Reihurst, and they worked with choirs all over the UK. They created a book of hymns.

This is the book of hymns, basically, which then was interpreted by these different choirs. And the choirs kind of are forming, these recordings are forming a data set. And visitors could actually experience. this data set because normally one wouldn't see and understand how a data set actually works. It's kind of a paper. But does it matter for you whether art is created by AI or people? I think it's always both. I mean, the case of Hollihan and Matt Reihers, the artist worked with people and it was a

collaborative situation with AI. And what was interesting is that, I mean, Parclair once said that art makes invisible, visible and in a way a lot of kind of AI functions we use we don't really understand and don't really know they're kind of opaque we don't really understand how it works

and they really wanted to make the process of forming a data set visible or audible for the viewer and then I think at the same time choirs are a very old coordination technology and AI is a form of coordination technology so they create that connection. And interestingly enough, it was for the viewer or for the visitor who, you know,

who came to Surbiton and experienced this AI work, the call of Hollihan and Matt Reihers, also a way to understand how actually artists can use a data set and AI ethically. And the same thing also happened with Rafi Ganadol. I mean, Rafi Ganadol created this very immersive installation in close collaborations, of course, also with Google. He's been collaborating with them for a long time, with Navidia. And he created very big data sets, but all ethically sourced. Smithsonian from National Geographic. So I think it's interesting also how artists can set an example, how AI data sets can be ethically sourced. Hans-Orish, let's talk about relationships. What is

what is key to establishing good relationships with artists? I think relationship with artists are about liberating time. I think it's something which always begins with a studio visit. It begins with a long conversation. So I think it's something which has to do also with attention. And you visit them typically in the galleries? 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. I 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. I basically was very inspired by Vasari and how Vasari wrote the lives of the artists and wrote the lives of the architects. I was very inspired by the book of... So this was during the Renaissance?

Yeah, the Renaissance. And then more recently, David Sylvester, who in the 20th century would talk again and again to artists like Philip Gaston or Francis Bacon, as a matter of fact. He did a whole book of its conversations with Francis Bacon. It's an incredible book. And it's an incredible book. And I read that book as a teenager and I started to think, you know, because I have this long,

I started to have this long-term relationship with artists that I could maybe do something similar. I could sort of record. And, I mean, today I've, it's, it's, the archive is about 4,500 hours. Jeez. It is a data set. What are you going to, what are you going to do with it? I don't know yet completely. I mean, so far...

So that's the most comprehensive collection of interviews in the world, right? Yeah, it's probably, I don't know. But it's definitely also not only very broad, but it's also deep in the sense of that I would talk to the same artists again and again. With certain artists, I have 20, 30, 40 interviews over the years because I would interview them every year. couple of times. Do you ask the same questions? Yeah, there is a couple of recurrent questions. What are they? So one question I always ask is, is the question about the

unrealized projects, because I do think it's very interesting. I mean, I think we all, not only in the art world, we all do have unrealized projects. And it's interesting that it's only in very few professions that actually these architects, these unrealized projects are being published. I mean, architects do publish them because the competition culture in a way the architectural competition very often leads to them being published but we know very little about

poets, visual artists, filmmakers but I suppose also in your field at the end of the day I don't know a lot about CEOs an unrealised project so I think it's interesting

what can we learn from them so let's say now we interview a CEO hey what is your unrealised project What do you think we can learn from that concept? I think what we can learn is, no, it's an interesting question what we can learn from it. But I think in terms of artists, what we can definitely learn is what maybe we need to kind of look at the range of the unrealized projects. I think there are many different types of unrealized projects. There are certain projects which are too big to be realized.

There are certain projects which are too time-intense to be realized. There are certain projects which are maybe unrealizable, their utopias, their dreams. There are certain projects which are censored, that can be a reason for it not be realized. And then, of course, there is also projects which are self-sensor. Torres Lessing, the writer always said one category not to be underestimated is the self-censorship. Projects we would like to do but don't dare to do. And I mean, in terms of the art world, very often artists have projects outside their kind of daily routine because they're basically invited to be in biennials, artists are invited to do gallery shows,

invited to do museum shows, they're invited to participate in collection exhibitions, but very often they have projects outside these parameters. And these are very often the most interesting projects. And so then we need to think how could we make them happen, no? Of course, the obvious follow-up pair is what is your unrealised project? Yeah, so my unrealised project, it's a long list because I think a lot of exhibitions, you know, I want to do early on, fell through and I still one way or the audience. still one way or the other would like to do some of them.

The Hildegab from Bingham project we are doing now with Ben Wickers and the Soundwork Collective and these different artists is one of these unrealized projects. We always wanted to do something about Hildegab from Bingham, so that's now happening. I always also felt having organized many exhibitions, worked in museums, being the artistic director of an institute at Serpentine, I've always been thinking, you know, what is missing in the art world. And I think what it's really missing today is a kind of a new Black Mountain College, which is missing. What is that? The Black Mountain College was this extraordinary school in the U.S. after the Second World War, Yosef Al was taught there, Cage,

backminster Fuller. It was a very interdisciplinary moment where art, architecture, music, science, it all sort of came together. And I think today there is a real necessity. for such a school. I think it's, and that's something we're starting to work on. Lorraine Powell Jobs basically saved

this building, the San Francisco Art Institute. When that ended, you know, there was a very big question what it would become in the future and it has this Diego Rivera painting and she decided to actually buy it and then guarantee that it would be a school

for the future and ask every Churchill and me to work with her to gather on ideas how such a school could be and so that's definitely a still unrealised project which now will be realized which I think can be very exciting do you ever think about the fact that you have to sell tickets yeah can I finish on the unrealised projects

because there's a couple of them now and also I haven't answered your question you have a long list of unfinished projects yeah I mean I think another another question because maybe the unrealized project we did enough, but you ask me what questions I always ask. My favorite question is about the unrealized project

because I think it's interesting what people would like to do outside the box, outside their parameters in which they work. Because I think very often people have dreams, people have unrealized project which they would want to do, but they're somehow caught in a daily routine or maybe they're caught also by the parameters of their industry. And very often these projects could actually be very exciting. Then I think the second question which I always ask is, what's your advice to a young artist?

What's your advice to a young curator? What's your advice to a young practitioner? The kind of Rainer Maria Rilke question, when he wrote this wonderful little book, which is an advice to a young poet. I would say another question I always ask is, who were your mentors? What was the most important message you received from a mentor? Another question I always ask is the way a practitioner connects to other practitioners. So have they been part of a group?

Has this group had a manifesto? Are the individual practitioners outside the group? It's interesting because obviously in my archive of more than 4,000 hours, a lot of the conversations connect to each other. And so it's interesting how artists connect to other artists. Do you connect to other creators? Yeah, definitely. I've always had conversations with colleagues.

from the beginning. I mean, initially, with people who were much older than me, I mean, I was very lucky to have these great mentors. And I think mentorship is super important. I think that we can mentor the next generation, and that's what happened when I began. I had a mentor in Caspar Koenig and in Suzanne Pache, two great professionals who were like 20, 30 years older than me and taught me how, taught me the profession in a way. You started to travel around and meeting artists when you were. you were a teenager, what would you have told your young person then, your young self? The advice. Yeah, it's interesting because I've just written a text about that. I need to find it

of seven points, which... How much do you actually write? Because here I got six books, and I think you all written them recently. And, you know, I did read your Life in Progress book over Christmas, and I totally loved it. Thank you. But how much do you write? Yeah, about, I mean, in a way, I always write early in the morning when I kind of wake up and then I try to liberate some time in the morning before going to the office. I do some spots and then I write. And so I try to write a little bit every day. And then, of course.

You publish a book, how often? Maybe seven books a year. Seven books here. Yeah. But lots of them are conversation books. Yeah, sure. So what did you write about? Yeah, so the advice.

to a young curator or creator is kind of a DIY idea that the work can start anywhere to be curious and learn constantly I think to build long-term relationships. You asked me before about relationships. I think it's important that these are lasting evolving dialogues

with artists and other practitioners. I think a protest against forgetting that that's also why I record these conversations because I think we live in an age where we have more and more information but that doesn't necessarily mean that we have more memory. So the protest against forgetting to embrace collaboration, I think to facilitate and foster new alliances and to be global and local at the same time,

I think is maybe another important aspect. And then I think to follow what excites you and meet it with enthusiasm And probably most importantly that generosity is at the core of everything. That in a way my advice would always be to someone to kind of be generous, to kind of have almost like generosity as a medium. Well, these are very powerful thoughts. Where is the art going now? I think the future, as Martha Rosalban says,

always flies in under the radar, and we can't really predict the future of art. It would be preposterous for me to do that. I learn from artists every day. But I think what we can see right now, we can talk about the extreme present, no, what's happening right now. And I think we can see that a lot of artists are interested in longer duration projects which go beyond event culture, which kind of, I mean, it's interesting right now that many artists are working with farms

as kind of projects with land with farms. Otobong Ne Kanga in Kashanibari, Nigeria, Adrian Villa Rojas in Argentina. It's many examples for that. Artists who work with gardens, we invited Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

to do a project for the serpentine and she proposed a pollinator garden. So we realized this project basically were in collaboration again with AI. It was again enabled by AI. The artist created a garden, not necessarily for humans, but foremost for pollinators. So it was the biggest artwork, the biggest artwork we ever did in Kensington Gardens.

And it attracted pollinators from all over London. It was a pollinator kind of meeting. And at the same time, it could be enjoyed by humans as well. And so I would say that idea that artists want to work on more long-durational projects is definitely a pattern we can see. Is the big difference between the various parts of the world or is art becoming more one global movement? Yeah, that is a very, that is kind of complex. I think in a way, artists, I mean, we live in an age which has more and more homogenizing forces of globalization,

and we kind of have a counterreaction to that. We can see which are new localisms, which are, which is a lack of tolerance, which are new nationalisms. So I think we've got these two extremes. We've got the extreme globalization and the extreme counter-reaction. And I think the most interesting practices right now do what the Martiniquean philosopher Eduard Lissin, who has always been a big inspiration for me called Mondialite. They kind of negotiate ways of working

which are kind of enabling a global dialogue, but at the same time are deeply locally anchored in a way. So they resist the homogenizing forces of globalization, but they also don't fall into this trap that one goes from the local into the localist and no longer is open for a global dialogue. Gleissons calls his mondiality. So I think that's what the... You read him every morning, I gather.

Yeah, exactly. That's a ritual, one of my rituals. Because exactly that's one of the reasons why, because I want to think every morning how we can contribute to this idea. of mondiality through what you do. You read the same pages every day or you read different pages? No, he's got a very big body of work. He's written poems, he's written novels.

He's written a very beautiful novel called Sartorius, about the people whose identity is really defined through relations and at the same time he's also written on art. It's a very, very big, big body of work. We can always find new texts. 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 more difficult to predict the future. So I think in a way, the way artists work with the unknowable, the way artists work also with questions of a modern with answers, is something I think which can be very relevant today. And I think it's interesting in the 60s there was this idea of, of John Latham and Barbara Stavini, 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 would be very exciting. Do you ever think about the fact that you have to sell tickets? I mean, we are at the serpentine,

we have free admission. We're in a park, we're in Kensington Gardens and we want the experience to be for everyone. So we've always had free admissions, but we of course think a lot about visitor figures. We want the experience to be there for as many people as possible. Does that influence what shows you put on, the fact that you need to have visitors? I think the program has to be a mix. I mean, for our CEO, for Bettina Karek, for myself, for the teams.

But it's really important is that we have moments where we can show extremely well-known artists like David Hockney or last year Peter Doig or soon to come next year Lisa Bryce alongside younger emerging practitioners and I think sort of a good program in the museum is a mix of that it's a mix of new unexpected position where visitors can basically discover artists they haven't seen before and at the same time they can see artists maybe they already know but from a different unexpected angle.

So it's about finding the right balance, finding the right mix, no? But also the program, because I think in your questions, I really like that question about what makes a good program, and I think your question leads in a way to that.

It's the question of what makes a good program in an institution. I think it's about finding the right mix between very well-known artists whom one shows from an unexpected angle, new artists whom visitors can discover, But then at the same time also, if you want to understand the forces which are effective in art, it's important to somehow also understand what's happening in other discipline.

That's also why for us, for example, it's very important that we have this dimension with architecture, because if we look at Vasari in Renaissance, lives of the artists and lives of the architect, which is the book, which is somehow the reason why I became a curator because as a teenager, I would always read it and read it and I was thinking, I mean, Vasari's book kind of gave me the idea that one could meet the artists of our time. Because that wasn't an obvious idea initially, but all of a sudden I kind of realized

they're actually amazing artists out there of our time and I could go and meet them. And that prompted when I was 16, 17, 17, this idea of visiting studios quite feverishly all over Europe. Of course, also having been so inspired by this book means that I always felt that we need in a program, in a museum to kind of connect art and architecture.

And that's what we do with our pavilion. We are now in a 26 year. And initially when the program started, when Julia Piedon's began it in 2000 with Zah Hadid. So the Pavilion program began in the year 2000 with Zahadid. It was really about artists who haven't built in London before, who haven't built in the UK. And that is still the rule of the game.

but initially it was very well-known artists because it's interesting that London is such a global city for many different things, for business, for many art forms. But it's interesting, it has also produced, London has produced an extraordinary generation or several extraordinary generations of architects. If you think of Zah Hadid, if you think of Norman Foster, if you think of Richard Rogers, if you think of David Chippofield,

if you think of the Archiegram Group, We think of Farshit Musavis. They think of Cedric Price and and and, right? So it's an amazing, it has an amazing architecture scene here, but it was always quite closed for architects from abroad to build. And that's really what the serpentine pavilion tried to do from the beginning. It's inviting international architects for the first time to build here and open the discourse. But then, of course, at a certain moment, after about 12 years in 2012, I joined the gallery in 2006.

And then around 2012, we realized that the scheme had become very well known and it would actually be a great opportunity now to open it up for a younger generation of architects. So we invited Sufujimoto, was the first younger architect we invited, which just last year has become very well known since and has done the Osaka, the famous ring, the biggest wood structure ever built. The year after we invited the Chilean architects Milian Radich, who just was announced last month to have won the Pritzker Prize. this year. And so that was 12, 2012, 13, 14. And so over the last, so 12, 13, 14 years, we've continued in that direction. We've invited younger emerging practitioners. And that means we could also, through that, make the architecture discourse more diverse, more open, invite more female architects. It's fascinating, for example, that architects like Frida Escobedo, Lena Gottme, whom we invited, now went on to win very big competitions.

Nina Gottme won the British Museum competition. Freda Escobedo is building a foreign ministry in Qatar, is also building the new metropolitan wing. Sumaya Bali was the youngest architect we've invited. She was 29 when we invited her. He's now building and is now involved in a very important bridge project. So you were basically part of making them famous? Yeah.

And in a way, it allows us to bring art and architect. together in an institution and now it allows us also sometimes to have artists who actually have a desire to work with architecture to do the pavilion. For example, Bolafore Eliehson or also Theaster Gates where the artists who did the pavilion. Our last year, Marina Tabasum from Bangladesh and this year it's a very young office from Mexico at the Elanza and that happens concurrently to what we do with visual art and then we do the same thing with poetry, we connect a lot to poetry, we do the same thing also with music,

as explained with Peter Dark. So in a way, we also believe that in a good program, or in a museum program, we need to show the visual art in connection to the other art forms. Hansuric, how has art changed? I mean, one of the things which has changed a lot, I think over the last 30, 35 years that I've been in the art world, is that we have very much a polyphony of centers now

and that that's also being recognized. I mean, there has always been a polyphony of science. centers. But when I entered the art world, it was very limited to a few centers where basically the focus was. And I think today, and that happened through many new structures, that happened through the biennials, that happened through many new initiatives, through many curators, I think through many artists' initiatives. I think today we have incredible art initiatives on all continents, and we do have really a polyphony of centers. And that also means that for artists, I mean, the idea was always what's the center of the art world.

And after the second world, Paris, lost the center to New York eventually. But I think that question of where is the center is redundant today, because I think artists can work anywhere today. I mean, and very often artists set up their own structures also, which I think is very important. The idea that artists create their own, you know, artists run spaces, their own initiatives, their own schools. So yeah, we do have, I think, a very strong polyphony in the arts today. I think the other thing which certainly has changed a lot is that there has been an increased number, I would say, of private foundations, of private initiatives, which have really created new possibilities and opportunities for artists.

I think, you know, when I began in the 80s, 90s, there were very few private museums, private foundations with exhibition spaces. And today, I mean, Norway is a great example. There is an increased polyphony of spaces. And I think it has contributed a lot to the dynamics, I think, in the art world. And I've been involved quite from the beginning in the Luma project, which is the vision of Maya Hoffman in Arl. and I think that's a very interesting example for a very interdisciplinary art center. The art is also connected to ecology.

The art is also connected very much to a local bioregion. The art is connected to design and to architecture. And part of my archive is there in Al at Luma. Is that where your archive will end up, do you think? I mean, for the moment, it's where the books are. How big is your archive? It's maybe about 40, 50,000 books

and it's a lot of papers and notes and things like that. But I think what is interesting is what is interesting is that obviously the biggest part of the archive is on the cloud and it's on hard drives because that's the filmed conversations. I mean, I suppose like the same with you. It's the archive of your podcast. It's digital, no? And I think the question which I'm not yet sure and which I'm very interested in exploring more in the future

is of course what's going to happen with these what's going to happen with these more than 4,000 hours of conversations because it is definitely there is a great possibility that these conversations are more connected than that because there is so many patterns which emerge from this archive. And I think that's what I want to focus on the years. to run it through a proper AI model and bring out all the connections that we weren't aware of. And in terms of the archive, I think one thing which is also kind of interesting is that, of course,

there are so many artists in the archive with whom I spoke again and again, so there can actually be exhibitions just on one specific person from my archive, which we started to do, you know, because in a way, if I have like 30 or 40 conversations, it's the same artist, you know, that is almost like a project in itself. Absolutely. But I wanted to ask you about that. Do you think about to do something with your dataset of your podcast? Because that's also an amazing data set. Well, we have made a book out of it,

and that's being translated now into German and English, so we'll see what comes out of that. Yeah. But for me, it's more important to do it as well. We have learned as an organization. and we have implemented many of the ideas and the findings into how we now work in the fund, and that's been important. Yeah.

And do you have any unrealised conversations? I think we all have unrealized conversations, even though there were fewer than before. Yeah. But I think it also develops because you have new technologies, you have new sciences, you have people coming up in other parts of the world, which I wasn't aware of. And so there are always people to interview. And I think it needs to come from your sincere wish to learn more because you need to be interested in the person you meet.

Otherwise, it's not going to be a good podcast. Which is why I think this is so much fun because I read about you, I read your books, I love what you do. And so that's such an incredible starting point. And that is, of course, the paradox of people who don't want to give interviews. I wanted a conversation with the artist Stanley Brown who never gave an interview about why he doesn't give him. interviews and

these are my unrealised conversations on Kavara who also never gave interviews whenever I went to interview him he said we're not doing an interview

but playing chess so in a way very good well this has been an interview and not chess that's for sure so you talked about time

some of the projects you've been working on that's been going on for 30 years your relationships go back very far art is becoming more long term

just what is the kind of the offsetting forces of on the one hand continuing to do what you do really well and at the same time reinventing yourself because you need to do that as a gallery as well right? Yeah no it's a really interesting question about

continuation and reinvention. I think repetition and variation. Yeah, Adelaus wrote the book called repetition and difference. Yeah, I think it's a super interesting question. I think in a way certain

projects like the pavilion or also our solo exhibitions where the artists take over the whole building and can create a kind of a Gesam Kunstwerk or can kind of show their world, they remain very relevant but we always need to add new layers, no, and that's the kind of thing which I sort of mentioned briefly before, which means to also kind of introduce new departments, no. I think in a way, if we look at the organigram of museums, they're quite similar all over the world. And there are these different departments. And I think it's interesting that given the fact that we live in the time of extreme change,

how we can actually add new departments. And that's kind of what we did with technology. You know, we added a whole department. We now have five curators who work with technology. And for our CEO with Dina Kourke, for myself, it's super important. And for our teams that we can actually, with this department

produce reality for artists but also through the future art ecosystem reports which one can download from the serpentine website for free hopefully make the work we do with art and technology accessible for the sector

and I mean the same thing happened with ecology. We worked very closely with the artist Gustav Metzger already around 2007 and he said it's extremely important that within an institution, there's a kind of an environmental dimension to the work. And so we've invited artists to do projects for Earth, to create projects for Earth,

and have done that also over the last years. And I'm sure there are going to be new dimensions to that. I mean, another thing we realized, particularly during the lockdown, is the even bigger importance of art in the park. the idea that actually people can see sculptures outdoors, because that was all people could visit during the lockdowns. The museums were closed, but one could see the art in the park. So that really encouraged us to do more of that.

So it's kind of, yeah, there's always new dimensions added. How do you continue to reinvent yourself? In my own work. I mean, it's a permanent process, I think, of reinvention. I think every conversation, I mean, that's also the amazing thing of working with artists is that it's very transformative. When we do a project with an artist, we are no longer the same person afterwards. We have to allow to be changed by it. So I would say the reinvention happens each single time when there is a collaboration with an artist.

And how should we go about learning and reinventing ourselves based on, exhibitions and art and music and poetry what is the key as somebody who visits exhibitions or like just how should we think about how should we think about our lives and our learning yeah yeah I suppose

the the most important thing in terms of in terms of reinvention is openness no I suppose very often a lack of openness prevents us from that somehow are we less open than we were in the past I think we always need to be more open. I think there is a tendency of, yeah, I think particularly fear of taking risk is certainly something which, because of course, exhibitions which try to be new experiments can also fail, no.

If an exhibition is a routine, I've always believed in, I mean, when I did you, my first exhibition in the kitchen. You were old, you were... Yeah, I was like in my early 20s. I had already traveled and made all these studio visits and then invited artists to exhibit in my kitchen and 29 people came over three months. And the exhibition happened also in the fridge.

And it was obviously a risk. And it was also a very big excitement because it was the first time. And I always felt that with every exhibition it has to be that way, you know, it cannot be a routine. Because if it becomes a routine, you know, something gets lost. What was the biggest risk you took? What was the biggest disappointment you had ever with an exhibition that just surprised you on the downside? The biggest risk was an exhibition. I mean, we did an exhibition called Utopia Station, which was a truly utopian exhibition,

with Rick Ceremanator Molinespitt at the Venice Bienale and it was basically in itself an utopia and I think that was the biggest risk we took, yeah. And what's the exhibition that has surprised you the most on the upside? That you just liked. But I mean I did at the same time think that exactly that risk with Utopia Station continued to resonate for a long time. I think for me, in addition to Utopia Station,

another exhibition which was very, you know, which was really an experiment with an uncertain outcome, but which continues to, I think continues to be inspiring, was when we did Laboratorium. There was an exhibition about art and science, and we wanted to basically look what is the laboratory of a scientist and what is the studio of an artist. We did that with Papa Fandelion in 99 in Antwerp. And we declared the labs of the scientists basically visitable. So we organized visits in the scientific labs. We organized studio visits and we organized an exhibition where artists could basically work on this idea, what is a laboratory, what is a lab, what is an experiment.

And that continues to resonate somehow. 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 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 50, 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. And 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 need to, 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 hour 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. And 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. So it's a 24 hour. So you are like a totally international business machine and a proper IBM? No, it's also, it's kind of, it's also quite creative,

and productive because in a way I get another hour work done in the evening and when I wake up in the morning a lot of things are done. Sounds pretty good. You also have something called brutally early club. So the brutally early club

began in 2006, 2007 when I moved to London and we kind of realized that it's become quite complicated to make meetings with friends because everybody is so busy and so it always takes days and days to organize

and it has to be planned weeks in advance. And so we thought, how could we do meetings which are more improvised? And then we came up with this trick. We thought if we do it at 6 in the morning, nobody can say that they have prior schedule. So we basically convened coffee meetings at 6, 6.30 in the morning. And astonishingly, almost 100 people showed up and it became a club.

How do you relax? I would say to liberate time, for me, it's a very relaxing experience to be in a studio with an artist and switch off all the phones and disconnect completely and just focus on a conversation and forget time. So I think that's a way of slowing down. I also relax through reading a lot and jogging is very important, listening to podcasts.

Listening to your podcast. I was very surprised, actually, that you do listen to it, but thank you. What is driving you? I think what is driving me, I think that we live in a world. I mean, the departure point of what is driving me was and still is that I want to work with artists and realize their projects and enable their projects and support artists and their visions. And that's a driving force which never went away. But I think in addition to that, there is another driving force.

I think we live in a world which is increasingly polarized and separated and people don't talk to each other. And I think it's super important that we have situations where we can bring people together. And I think that's what exhibitions can do. I think that's what we're trying to do with our program at Serpentine. That's what I try to do with all my exhibitions. And I think that idea of also breaking down silos and bringing different fields of knowledge together, going beyond the fear of pulling knowledge,

I think that's very much a driving for us. Well, you've broken down more silos than most people, and you also created more shows and created more pleasure in life than anybody else I know. So a big thank you. Thank you very much.