Daniel Buren

Interview by Liam Gillick

from Audio Arts Volume 14, Number 2, 1994

Transcript

Liam Gillick: Back in the Central Hall of Southampton City Art Gallery talking to Daniel Buren. This is one of the spaces that houses part of the permanent collection of the museum and now we have the addition of a new piece by Daniel Buren, which was made for the show ‘Wall to Wall’. It’s different in character from the other works in the ‘Wall to Wall exhibition because it’s using a space that also includes other work and people are using it.

Daniel Buren: They gave me that room as one of the possibilities and it is very difficult, because the space is quite gigantic, but I knew immediately that there would be technical problems but I make very little hesitation to accept it. I usually like to work with let’s say, spaces which are a little more open and not just defined by the walls like the rooms where the exhibition will be. This is half an entry hall and it’s also a room for the collection, maybe the biggest in the museum. It’s an entrance, so it has the kind of characteristic which I think is interesting because it’s ambivalent, or polyvalent and I found myself excited to see what could done in such a place, where they cannot install works of art from the collection. I always think that even if you do something in the full museum for yourself you are always fixed or lead by the boundary, not only of the architecture, but the boundary of the spirit of the history of the place and, of course, I think this exists, even if you take out all the works. And then a kind of dialectic between the existence of the work, the reality of this work and, the non-autonomy of the work, which is one of the thing I really work with, shows itself very strongly, almost immediately instead of being so deluded and it’s still true but you don’t see it. For example, in a normal room you can get the idea that you are in a very specific world of, ‘who did the room’? So, being in a room where you don’t have that makes sure that no one can think that it’s my room.

LG: Something that seems to come up with some of the projects that you do is that it seems to cut through this very simplistic dilemma of public and private. Is it a whole question about what is possible with art?

DB: Oh, I think it’s still existing in my work. Not to say that it’s the same questions as had twenty-five years ago, but I think the question by itself is still in my work and it develops depending on the space and on myself too during those years. But I am still very concerned to see what are the limits, what doors are closed, what doors can be opened even within the limits of the museum. And I think today it’s maybe a little more possible to put these questions within the limit of the museum and not only outside the museum, to make such question to the museum. I don’t know if I am clear but it’s a kind of interesting thing which happens to be possible today. First of all because the museum has changed a lot and I think, twenty five, ago the museum was really the beginning and the end, where art was really safe in a way: and being so safe, and one of my criticism at that time was to say that you cannot discuss any more, ’if a work is in a museum it’s automatically a work of art’. So if, as a young artist you want to ask the question: ‘What is a work of art?’ it’s already destroyed. Because if you make that in the museum, which I think is the most interesting place to do it, you already have at the top of your head, the answer, yes. So, whatever you do, it’s over. I think the museum has changed a lot because so many museums exist today for contemporary art, at least in the Western world. So, now I am not sure. I am even sure of the contrary; the museum is no longer the place that has the power to say what we exhibit is art. Which I think was true up to twenty-five years ago when museum were rare for contemporary art and we are giving the strength of the idea of the museum to anything. So, with that change I think today it’s more possible to put this question again to museums and then to re-open this kind if discussion. So, it’s opening a lot of different doors and that changes very strongly the opportunity to do works with the museum. But you cannot behave as was possible twenty years ago.