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Hans Ulrich Obrist

lines on the record: 79
first: 2026-04-15
most recent: 2026-04-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“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 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, a couple of times.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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-term relationship with artists that I could maybe do something similar. I could sort of record. And I mean, today the archive is about 4,500 hours. It is a data set.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, the Renaissance, and then more recently, David Silvestre, who in the 20th century would talk again and again to artists like Philippe Gustin or Francis Bacon. As a matter of fact, he did a whole book of his conversations with Francis Bacon”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. Basically, it was very inspired by Bazari and how Basari wrote the lives of the artists and wrote the lives of the architects. I was very inspired by the book of”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 with it. Yeah, I do that every day”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who came to Sarpatan and experienced this AI work, the call of Alejand and Matt Rihurst, 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 NVIDIA. 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 datasets can be ethically sourced.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's always both. I mean, the case of Holly Hound and Matt Rihurst, the artist worked with people and it was a collaborative situation with AI. And what was interesting is that, I mean, Paul Clay once said that art makes the invisible and in a way a lot of kind of AI functions we use, we don't really understand and don't really know. opaque. We don't really understand how it works. And they really wanted to make the process of forming a data set visible, audible for the viewer. And then I think at the same time, choirs are 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.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. We quite early on also focused on AI. Last year we had an exhibition of Holly Herndon and Matt Rihurst 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.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 Bayer. He created hundreds of works outdoors, a bit like Monet. The impressionist would paint Planaire, Hockney was Plenaire, 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 Bayer and which is basically going around the corners of the space. So one has to walk in order to experience it.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Intensified when during the lockdown he was in Normandy in France and he created these amazing work A year 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 Bayer one can say it's inspired by the tapestry of Bayer so it's interesting because later this year”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, at the moment we actually show an exhibition of David Hockney at Sabentime which 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. It was that drawing was still faster. But then around 2006, 7, 8, 9, I don't remember exactly the year, but about approximately everything 20 years ago, 18 years ago, he started to do all of a sudden really experiment Marvis technology. And then he started to make these extraordinary works on the iPad. And initially it was flowers and then landscapes.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 BTS and K-pop and the young artist Jaku Knutstinsen. And all of a sudden the world of contemporary art and the world of K-pop came together.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Clear that it would become a very important kind of dimension of art of the future. So we started kind of new experiments in art and technology. And many of these exhibitions are very multisensory. We created, for example, exhibitions with video games because today more than 3 billion people play video games. What was a 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 exhibits, for example, of Gabriel Massan and also Daniel Breiswelli and others. These exhibitions really bind to 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.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 Darg 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 sort of department, so as to say where we looked at the 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.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 Paddy Smith to Bangla Kanga, many different artists will interpret Hildegard von Bingen's work for today. So here we kind of would define a rule of the game in which then the different dances can intervene. So it depends a lot if it's a solo show or a group show.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, in terms of solar exhibitions, when we do solar exhibitions at Serpentine, we 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 artists the rule of the game. I mean, we are working right now with my colleague Ben Wickers and Sandra Collective on the Vatican Pavilion, the Holy See Pavilion for the Venice Bienale, which is going to open next month. And there we basically came up with this idea of this interdisciplinary figure, this saint hildegaard von 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”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm fast until I'm not. If I was done, 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 multisensory experiences where actually visitors can spend more time, as they did in Peter Dorg's exhibition.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 study 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. few seconds, sometimes longer. But I think it's interesting when we create an example.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 a 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 Serpentine, 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.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 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.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think in a way. Idea of an encounter with artists can lead us somewhere where we would never have thought, we would never think we could go. And I think that's what very often is the serendipity of such a 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 deadlines 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 the 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”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a way, I was with the poet Nan, whom I quoted earlier, who said that we have to learn to listen again. And she also told me that we shouldn't 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, because in a way, I didn't really know what to do with Instagram and with social media. I knew that didn't want it to be about selfies. I knew that it wanted 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 Eco 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.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think the key is to not stop the serendipity because very often it's a chain reaction It's not necessarily a master plan. I think very often when an 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, you know, 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, these two little books, and it's also my Instagram account. And we basically was with Umberto Eco, the writer and scholar, and he was very old, and he said, basically, we need to do something to save handwriting. And so kind of left his apartment with this task somehow. And I wasn't, of course, qualified to do that because I'm not the calligrapher now. Could I find a calligraphy school?”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. 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.”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think the first, probably most important step is to listen. The poet Etelan said once that we sort of need to learn to listen 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. I was in 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 Trokel to Louis Bourgeois to Anne Message to Fischlivis so artists kind of all over all over Europe initially and then also outside Europe and who just listened to them. And of course 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 basically kind of listen what they've maybe not been able to do in”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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”
2026-04-15 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Hans Ulrich Obrist: What business can learn from the art world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source