HANS-ULRICH OBRIST

Numerous are the posthumous museums and memorials devoted exclusively to one artist, architect or author and designed to preserve or artificially reconstruct the namesake's original working or living conditions.

At a certain moment, when I started doing my own shows, I felt it would be really interesting to know what is the history of my profession. I realized that there was no book, which was kind of a shock.

I met Gerhard Richter and Alighiero Boetti when I was a teenager, and I was really inspired by them. When Boetti died, I realized I only vaguely remembered so many things he told me. It was such a pity. Had I only recorded his voice, he would still be with me, and I could listen to it from time to time.

I always have coffee and porridge for breakfast.

Alex Poots has always made a bridge between highly experimental and the mainstream.

To be honest, I think, for me, the power is always with art. The art world clearly couldn't happen without art.

I still remember my first Giacometti exhibition, and going back to the museum every day, whenever I could, to look again and again at these long, thin stick figures, so beautiful, so graceful. That, I think, was the moment I became really obsessed by art.

In this new age of GPS, Google Earth and multidimensional digital maps, mapping is suddenly hugely relevant again.

The non-utility of my kitchen could be transformed into its utility for art. To do a show there would mix art and life, naturally.

I don't wake up in the morning and think about Franz Kline.

Our economy's growth functions by inciting us to produce more and more with each passing year. In turn, we require cultural forms to enable us to sort through the glut, and our rituals are once again directed towards the immaterial, towards quality and not quantity.

To record is a process against forgetting. I do interviews because it's what I've been doing every day for a few hours since I was a kid. I've always talked to artists.

Mr. Koons's work has always inspired architects, which I think is very interesting. I think he is an artist who has reinvented himself so many times and reinvented so many different series.

Making art is not the matter of a moment, and nor is making an exhibition; curating follows art.

Everything I do is somehow connected to velocity.

For me, it's always been very essential to work on projects that one can work on almost for their entire life.

I remember going to a monastery library when I was very young and being surrounded by ancient books. I fell in love.

During my time at high school and university in Kreuzlingen and St. Gallen, I traveled around Europe looking at art, visiting artists, studios, galleries and museums.

When I was a kid and started to be obsessed by art in the 1980s, the art world was in this polarity Warhol/Beuys, Beuys/Warhol. Both expended the notion of art extremely, but in very different ways.

I'm trying to expand the notion of curating. Exhibitions need not only take place in galleries, need not only involve displaying objects. Art can appear where we expect it least.

Fly-in, fly-out curating nearly always produces superficial results; it's a practice that goes hand in hand with the fashion for applying the word 'curating' to everything that involves simply making a choice - radio playlists, hotel decor, even the food stalls in New York's High Line Park.

To keep art stimulating, it's important to open it up to new horizons, which includes showing it in unexpected contexts.

I started going to exhibitions in Switzerland when I was 10 or 11. As a schoolboy, I would go every afternoon to see the long, thin figures of Giacometti.

For me, the idea of curating can be expanded. Curating science, curating art, music and theater and performance and not only bring those things into art but bring art into those areas.

My job is art curator, not artist. All I have ever wanted to do is immerse myself in art, to enjoy it, to learn about it, to write about it, to talk to others about it.