You don't just find an empty museum and say, "I should do something here." I was looking for another kind of venue or exhibition format. I was trying to find a site where something could happen over a long period of time - something that could slowly transform itself and the place as it went. And I was also trying to stand out of the art-world system. Strangely enough, I stumbled on vacant museum.
Pierre HuygheI'm more interested in the diversity of people in New York. I like to be lost. I like to feel like a foreigner. I like not to know everything. I'm trying not to burn the whole city. I try to consume it in slow motion.
Pierre HuygheI don't want to exhibit something to someone anymore. I want to do the reverse: I want to exhibit someone to something.
Pierre HuygheI put an octopus in aquarium, and it would eat the others. But if you put an octopus in with a school of tiny fish, he might not be able to catch them. That's an archetypal structure: a powerful individual versus the multitude, the crowd. You can relate to that.
Pierre HuygheI had the chance to play with a ghost of the museum. The function and the institution are gone - it's closed - but there is still the building. I was looking for something between an experiment and an extended ritual. I asked 15 actors to be in this museum and take the position of the museum's personnel. I put this small group under certain conditions and influences, interpreted by another group of actors or by real professional performers, like a magician, a psychic, a model, a hypnotist, a singer, a psycho-dramaturge.
Pierre Huyghe