Through his career, Chris Dercon, 52, has pushed the boundaries contemporary art. Born in Belgium, he studied art history and film theory. He was a curator at New York’s PS 1, Rotterdam’s Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and is currently director of the Haus Der Kunst, Germany’s most innovative museum for contemporary art.
In Munich, he has not only commissioned a number of original film-based works, but has pushed the program to include collaborations with fashion designer Martin Margiela, and the space to include the exterior of the building, which last year Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei covered with thousands of book bags, a commentary on the May 2008 Sichuan quake and the high number of dead school children.
In the spring of 2011, Dercon becomes director of London’s Tate Modern, arguably the world’s foremost contemporary art museum. An edit of our recent Q&A over the phone:
ALEXANDRA A. SENO: What is the place of film in museums?
CHRIS DERCON: The question that the famous film theorician Béla Balázs asked in the 1950s: “Where is cinema?” That question can now be answered: the cinema is everywhere. Also in museums. Because there are no film funds in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, getting support of museums and galleries is almost a normal procedure for many filmmakers like (Taiwan’s) Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang, (China’s) Wang Bing, (Indonesia’s) Garin Nugroho, (India’s) Amar Kanwar, (Thailand’s) Apichatpong Weerasethakul. In their approach of the image, their work can transcend different formats and one of them is in video museum installation. More and more museums not only have “solar wings” – daylight structures, but also “lunar wings” – artificial nighttime structures because there are more and more projections in museums.
AXS: What do these projections mean to the international museum and the art gallery audience?
CD: Video works and film installations have been quite normal for the museums since the 60s and especially the 70s. And the advantage for the public is that instead of going to sit through the film, they can walk in and walk out so they move in front of the image instead that image moving in front of them. So they can look in a very contemporary way at cinema. That means that the role of the spectator for these works is as important as the roles of editor, as the role of image, as the role of dialogue, as the role of sound. Because this filmmakers conceive their works for the spectator, walking by, standing in front and going in and out and that makes it very interesting. I compare it with photographs who start to move, I also compare to paintings who start to move.
AXS: Is it also because of the way that we now consume information?
CD: It is also the way we consume information, but it’s also the way artists and creative individuals from Asia try to link up with the international art world. They take a medium that speaks to many. And we know that cinema is a modernist, universal cosmopolitan media. So these artists are not going to look for ink wash paintings, they are not going to look for traditional painting. They pick a medium, which speaks an international language, and that is the cinema.
AXS: What convinced you Apichatpong was the right person to commission?
CD: He understands the medium of exhibiting film, he understands the medium of installation. He is not just a filmmaker, he is an amazing architect as well, he can work with space. And what Joei (Apichatpong) does is not just show fragmented images on image screens. He really creates an environment. And he creates a kind of architectural space to perceive the cinema and to hear the sounds of the cinema and the bits and pieces of dialogue in a very different way. And Joei understands that in such a perfect way and so that’s the reason why we invited him to work with us.
AXS: Your own track record as a curator at PS1, in Germany and in Rotterdam has been very culturally inclusive. How do you reconcile the need for cultural context with the needs of an international museum audience?
CD: I think it’s very, very important to open up the museum as we know it for other cultures. That is also because the museum as we know it is not a fortress anymore to celebrate the geniuses of artists. The museum is not a mausoleum anymore, to discuss if a late or early Picasso is better. The museum now is a kind of a secular cathedral where many things happening for many, many people. I would say the museum is a platform for cultures where we celebrate the genius of the audience. And the audience expects us to speak about the world. They expect us to speak about basic democracy, they expect us to speak about political issues and that’s the reason why we also have to open up the art world. Artists have to use the mediums of free speech. Because other mediums are not fit. The Iranian artists are using visual arts, the Chinese artists are using visual arts. Because visual arts is not as controlled as for instance literature, or “normal” cinema. In the case of Thailand, depicting monks and politics, for example, can be complex.
AXS: How do you navigate this sensitivity? Can a film mean something else in the director’s home culture?
CD: That’s a terrific question because this is not only true for Joei, it’s true for many Chinese films. Wang Bing cannot even distribute in China. It’s true for many Iranian films. These films, they have a double face. Because of their very specific visual language and visual structures and narrative structures and dialogue, they work one time for the local audiences, which only the understand completely. And at the same time, they are fit for western audience who looks at them in another way. We look at them like an outcome of modernism and postmodernism of the cinema. And that makes it so interesting that Iranian films in Iran will function differently in the west and that’s a great, great advantage.
AXS: When you commissioned “Primitive,” no one expected the protests. How does the project help us understand contemporary Thailand?
CD: Joei presents an alternative to Thai commercial cinema. Joei in all his work is telling always these local histories and local stories whether it is about politics, whether it is about family structures, whether it is about sexual identity. I think it’s enormously important that he’s giving a voice to many different people to many different classes. But he’s not doing that in a propagandizing way, he’s doing it in a very poetic way. And I think that gives the public also an amazing freedom because they can look at Joei without being taken up by a propaganda machine. So they can find their own messages, they can reformulate their own thoughts. I think this makes his work so rich. His work will be received completely differently in five years and in 10 years and in 15 years.
AXS: What is the role of the contemporary artist is in the larger world?
CD: Because in many, many, many, many Asian countries, but also in the Middle East and I think of course of China, indeed visual arts is a kind of free speech, it’s an experimental speech. Maybe because it has still to be completely understood and completely created. But it gives an enormous kind of leeway. And this is the reason why we do not have to underestimate the importance of the art. Suddenly these works are taken seriously not only in exchanges of social and cultural values but also a kind of monetary value, which makes their works even more important. I take the local art markets very, very seriously.
AXS: Art commerce reinforces the importance?
CD: That why in many Asian countries suddenly these so-called creative industries are much more taken seriously than ever before. I think that’s a positive thing because it’s very hard to control these markets, and it’s very hard to control these platforms, whether it be international biennials, whether it be galleries, et cetera. How does one evaluate the quality and the relevance of film. Should it be in a forum of a Cannes film festival, should it be in a biennial or an art fair, or a museum collection? It’s very important to look at film as films. Not making a difference in my approach in my criteria between so-called art films, or experimental films or films by visual artists. For me it’s very important that it works as a film as a filmic structure. So I would rather look at the history of cinema of the 20th and the 21st cinema than saying uh oh this is visual arts and therefore it’s much more important I have to put other criteria. But I must say I’m one of the rare persons to do so because most collectors look at cinema from a visual arts background. And that’s the reason why works created by Wang Bing or Joei or (Iran’s) Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf or Middle Eastern filmmakers still have difficulties to succeed in the art market.
AXS: Can we expect more museums to be collecting video and film-based works?
CD: Absolutely. The MoMA in New York but also Tate Modern, and other places, we have terrific film departments. We have to accept there will be many more video works and many more film works, especially from non-Western artists because that is the medium they understand, that is the language they want to speak. The Tate Modern has a very important new media collection, video and film, installations, it has created a new image trust. I am very happy that I will be working for a museum that is trying to break open the door of the western museum [to let in other cultures] and we cannot just do that by creating, we have also to do that by collecting.
xx
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