Interview with Daniel Buren

It’s snowing when I meet Daniel Buren at the Press Restaurant of the Bologna 
Art Fair. He’s just arrived and despite the clatter of cutlery and din and row of loud voices he’s easy and relaxed, and quite willing to answer my questions. After all, any place will do when one meets with the “genuine article”.

To quote from one of your statements: “If consideration is given to where a work is sited then the work cannot be moved elsewhere but must necessarily perish once the exhibit is over”. Does this mean that “place” itself becomes the work of art?
Not precisely. What I meant to say is that a work is made to fit into a given context. The work and its location come to be tightly bound one to the other and do not brook being separated. A work may of course be taken down and away. But it cannot be set up elsewhere, for it simply wouldn’t belong, while the place where it stood will revert 
to what it was. Essentially, the idea is that the presence of a work of art in any location changes the setting and once it has changed what caused it to change becomes part and parcel of that setting. Whether the work be left in place for decades, as in the case of a public monument, or for a month or for whatever the short time of an exhibition may be, once the objects, forms and signs that go to make up the new setting are taken down they simply cannot be set up elsewhere. The kind of works I’m talking about are those I generally call in situ.

Are there settings that you find stimulating and others not? What is it in a setting that elicits your creative powers?
Your question calls for an answer that may be interpreted in two different ways. Like anyone else, there are places I like and others I don’t. But I may be called on to work in either. In most cases the proposal is put forward by an individual, regardless of whether the proposed space be a public or private venue, a museum or a collector’s premises. What really interests me is the challenge that a place totally foreign to me affords. When I accept a commission it isn’t necessarily because I like the place where I’m to work. Some I do and I feel them stimulating and inviting. Others are refractory, uninteresting, dull. Be it as it may, when I set to work in them I leave whatever mood they may elicit out of my work. If the idea I’m working on proves unsuitable to the setting, or unfeasible in the context, or a 
potential hindrance to those who have to occupy the space where the work is to be located, then I may reject it. In any case, with regards the place itself in which I’m called to operate, I concentrate on what can actually be done in it, regardless of whether the location be prestigious, anonymous, lack-lustre, or even repellent. My feelings for the place don’t make myself accepting or refusing it. It is clear on the other hand that the place will affect what I will do in it.

People conduct their lives within given settings, at work, at home, at school. Can there be a form of art suitable for everyday living, capable of fitting in with routine and commonplace activities?
As far as I’m concerned that’s precisely one of the motives inspiring my work, and it’s been that way for more than thirty-five years now. My first concern when I undertake a new job is to prove to myself as much as to others the viability of artistic endeavour in a non-artistic context; that’s definitely what interests me most. 
I feel there’s greater general awareness on these issues now than twenty-five years ago, so there are far more opportunities today for the artist to work in the urban landscape for example. 
I think, or at least I hope, that this trend is bound to continue to growe. There are several reasons, I believe, for which this is the best way for an artist to work today. In the first place, it obliges the artist to think of artistic endeavour in a different way, outside the context of a museum. It will be interesting to watch developments. Not that the museum doesn’t interest me. Indeed, it interests me a great deal, but it currently has severe limitations, especially as far as continual public involvement is concerned. The best opportunity for the artist to relate to the public is afforded by those places that are commonly shared by all, such as the city in general, or even other venues such as offices and the like. But that’s another story. Anyway, to stick to the city at large and those places in it where people dwell, meet, work, and, when possible, dream even, the work of art in such contexts takes on a new meaning. Actually, it recovers a dimension it still had up to a century and a half ago, not to speak of five centuries ago. It’s a dimension that’s been overlooked in the last hundred years or so but that’s at last become viable again. Personally, what fascinates me aside from the opportunity of working in a public square and being amidst the public as such is the fact that the whole idea of artistic production gets submitted to radical revision. The street doesn’t allow for the same kind of freedom as the museum. It entails another kind of artistic freedom whose potential still needs to be fully disclosed. Easy or difficult as it may be, it’s without a doubt a fascinating challenge.

Interview by Ariella Risch