Silences

JPC: What prompted your desire to organize this exhibition?
MK: It was triggered by a chance encounter in 2006 with Fabrice Hergott, who was director of the Musées de Strasbourg at the time. During our conversation, we discussed certain historical and artistic movements that had never been the object—to my mind—of an adequate re-analysis, even though they had considerably altered the state of things in France. On the one hand, this situation concerned the 1950s, more particularly the period from 1950 to 1965, when France simultaneously endowed itself with a new constitution, a new magazine—L’Express—a New Wave in the cinema, the Nouveau Roman in literature, and the Nouveau Théâtre (meaning Beckett and Ionesco). But there were also key developments in the realm of painting and sculpture—I feel that Giacometti’s greatest work was done during those years. The other decisive period was post 1968, from 1968 to 1973, to be precise. Here again, there was the founding of a new newspaper, Libération, the emergence of the Narrative Figuration school of painting, and the early careers of artists such as Christian Boltanski. And it was also the time when many intellectuals—like Foucault, Barthes, and Deleuze—became interested in artists and wrote forwards to exhibition catalogues.
So I therefore raised the idea of a show that I thought might be interesting, based on the stance toward art taken by philosophers and writers during those two periods. If I agreed to act as curator—even though I don’t like that term very much—it was because I wanted to get some distance on my activities in the film industry. […]

EP: How would you describe your role in organizing this exhibition—an artist, an enlightened art-lover, or a curator?
MK: Certainly not an artist. Having made movies myself, I’m perfectly aware of the difference between directing a film and producing it. My role is closer to that of curator, although, as I’ve said, I don’t like the term—it somehow implies policing art, imposing order on it, whereas art creates more disorder than order, in my opinion. For this particular project, I see myself above all as a conduit for ideas and feelings. As soon as someone gives you the floor, you have to speak up, whatever the medium—film, exhibition, whatever. My only goal is to try to understand and then to convey—to convey an experience or idea through an emotion. Understanding the past and then handing it on to the present seems indispensable if we hope to change the future. Only by keeping a utopia in mind can we change things, could I build on my work and develop my ideas for this project.

JPC: What kind of ideas? Is this show a self-portrait? Or a philosophical vision of the world?
MK: At first, I wanted to base it on philosophers’ and writers’ confrontation with contemporary art via their writings, and to select works that would illustrate their ideas. But that was a mistake on my part, and I pretty quickly revamped the project. And I’d like to thank you for sticking with me, despite my change in direction. I realized that the only way to talk about painting—and it’s the same thing with movies, literature and music, for that matter—is to start with the artwork itself and try, as honestly as possible, to respect the artist’s effort. […]
It all began with the following observation: I was struck by the fact that at a certain historical moment, several artists were almost forced to break the “silence of painting.” Obviously, the status of painting had already been manhandled by the Surrealists, but here we were seeing, in an initial form just after the war, an upheaval whose emblematic figures were, in my opinion, Dubuffet, Bacon, and Tapiès. Then, in the 1970s, painting totally shattered apart, leading to new approaches such as installations, video, and performance. Suddenly, a certain number of artists were adopting speech in a totally new, original way, breaking the silence by introducing words, sayings or writings into their work. […]
The artists I’ve selected all make a statement about the world, something of universal scope. What I feel is, that through their works they attain the ineffable, they manage to make the idea of God perceptible. Few artists are able to transport us in this way. But it’s also true that all these artists affect me personally, in the context of my own story, what I am. In this respect, Silences is a very personal exhibition.

EP: […] How did you approach the question of exhibition design?
MK: I wanted to work with Patrick Bouchain, who I knew, and who I asked to be as respectful as possible of the works themselves. The upshot is that the works are never placed right opposite one another—each is given its own space, its “home.” Each work is therefore surrounded by its own silence. Thus we come back to the idea of “building houses,” in the context of exhibiting the works. […]
To go from one “house” to the other, visitors to the exhibition do not follow a distinct path, they always have a choice between several possible directions. It’s up to them to decide how to move forward. At first, I even had the idea of designing a labyrinth, in the physical as well as symbolic sense. Finally, we took great care when doing to the lighting, and also the sound. There are several sound pieces in the show, notably the works by Raysse and Kabakov […]. Not to mention the whispering figures in Boltanski’s piece and the endless counting in On Kawara’s. Everything had to function together, while respecting each individual work. […]
The path I envisaged has a beginning, middle, and end—it’s the kind of story I learned to tell in the movies. This experience taught me that film can either be mere illustration—pictures placed end to end in a certain order—or else can truly recount a tale while raising the issue of the path to be taken. I wanted to organize this exhibition the way a screenplay is conceived, bearing in mind the “need to tell a story,” and the necessity to stage it properly, two reflexes that I acquired in the movie industry. […]But it’s true that along the way, not everything is handed to visitors on a plate. To a certain extent, everyone has to bring something to it, on the principle of a pot-luck supper. Visitors can make their own way through the show, but might get lost. […]

EP: Reading between the lines of your comments and ideas about the exhibition, we perceive a very personal approach to the world. Would you say that this is a philosophical vision?
MK: Yes, philosophical, without a doubt. There’s an anecdote that perfectly sums up my general attitude. I was returning from New York, where I had just left Kieslowski, and in the plane I met Élie Wiesel, for whom I feel profound admiration and affection. We’re always running into each other by chance, and are always happy to see each other. In anticipation of these fortuitous meetings, I always keep a story ready to tell him. In Hassidic tradition, having a story ready to tell someone is a sign of affection. So I always keep in mind the story I’m going to tell Élie when I run into him. I told him that I had just spent some time with Kieslowski, and that we had decided to found the “Solitude Party.” I asked Élie if he wanted to join. He said okay, “on the condition that you add the word ‘Silence.’” This request startled and troubled me, because silence made me think of Kieslowski, who repeatedly said that he was seeking silence; and of Bergman, who stopped making films in 1984; and of Beckett, obviously. Ultimately, it forced me to think about myself, my own silences. So if we added “silence,” would dialogue still possible? What’s more, insisting on silence means learning to listen, and these days we need to learn to truly listen.
January 2009