Riot grrrl.

Bice Curiger's activities are myriad. She mounted her first major exhibition, "Saus und Braus" (Revel and riot), in 1980, and four years later cofounded the bilingual art magazine Parkett. Curiger is a permanent independent curator at the Kunsthaus in Zurich, an unusual arrangement that perfectly accommodates her role at the museum: she keeps an office at the institution and regularly organizes major exhibitions them even as she continues to serve in the role of Parkett's editor-in-chief. The occasion for this interview is Curiger's forthcoming "Freie Sicht aufs Mittelmeer" (Unobstructed view of the Mediterranean). Opening at the Kunsthaus on June 4, the exhibition - a hybrid vision of Swiss art at the end of the millennium - will spill over into various outdoor sites around Zurich. As one often curators Invited by David Neuman to each organize a show for "Archipelago" (a series of small exhibitions to be held around Stockholm as part of the program that will mark the city's turn as the 1998 Cultural Capital of Europe), Curiger will bring the work of a number of young international artists to the Swedish capital.

HANS-ULRICH OBRIST: You are currently preparing a big Swiss exhibition for the Kunsthaus Zurich this spring. It's then scheduled to travel to the Frankfurt Kunsthalle Schirn, where it will be on view during the book fair, which has taken Switzerland as its theme this year. What is your concept for the show?

BICE CURIGER: It's a survey exhibition. The Kunsthaus Zurich is a big museum with important holdings ranging from fifteenth-century old master paintings to a comprehensive collection of video art. Since its founding - by artists, it's worth noting - this museum has always exhibited contemporary Swiss work, from Hodler to Roman Signer. What's totally new about the current exhibition is that we have taken over the entire facility, and we are also juxtaposing new work with the permanent collection. Sylvie Fleury's Bedroom Ensemble (after Claes Oldenburg), 1997, for example, will be placed between a Canaletto and a Baroque representation of Venus; Thomas Hirschhorn is installing a shrine with candles and handwritten notes on the outer facade, not for Lady Di but for the writer Ingeborg Bachmann; and so on. "Unobstructed view of the Mediterranean," by the way, refers in an amusing way to the early '80s, when the youth of the city hit the streets, mixing dadaist wit with tactics from '68, and demanding the immediate establishment of a municipal fund for alternative culture. At that time, they chanted: "Down with the Alps! Unobstructed view of the Mediterranean!" If they were reacting in part to '68, it's important to note that the current generation doesn't really have anything to protest. They have it all, they're extremely privileged. Of course, the expression also refers ironically to Northern European romantic longing for the "sensuous" south.

HUO: When we last talked you mentioned that, throughout your research for the Swiss show, you saw a dynamic new generation involved in artist-run and other new spaces. Could you tell me about this "Swiss miracle" of the second half of the '90s?

BC: Thanks to the extremely dense network of museums, art galleries, and fringe exhibition halls in Switzerland, which must be unique in the world, today's twenty- to thirty-year-olds have grown up in a cosmopolitan environment, and are leaving behind the last vestiges of parochial smugness, which was still a feature of Swiss art in the late '80s. The present exhibition tries to show Swiss art as it interacts increasingly with the outside world. Gone are the days when Swiss artists led lives of sequestered contemplation or voluntary, exile. Art is now one big rave. Young artists are using various media, making inroads into cyberspace. Closeknit collectives - in rural settings, suburbia, or abandoned industrial spaces - do their bit, in flashes of group inspiration. The outcome is a spectrum of things ranging from fluffy sound carpets to works in a variety of elastic synthetic materials. At the Kunsthaus we are presenting what has previously been hidden away in some backwater, or seen in metropolitan centers only after-hours, and revealing a Switzerland unknown to most.

HUO: Many new spaces and initiatives have appeared in Zurich, Geneva, and Basel. But you can also find a remarkable number of venues in smaller towns.

BC: Urban events also take place in the countryside, in Frauenfeld, Liesthal, Fribourg, Belinzona, among other places. There are many kinds of crossovers today, between the global and the local, but also between day and night events, art and music, and so on. Switzerland is in many respects also an ideal country as far as social services are concerned: the infrastructure is excellent, and every child is raised to be multilingual. As a result, we have a tradition of translation; we also have a history of presenting international art in our museums and galleries. The Basel Kunsthalle presented a huge Abstract Expressionist show - the first exhibition of these artists as a group - as early as 1953.

HUO: Due to the nonexistence of art schools in Switzerland for many years, and also to the country's parochialism, many contemporary Swiss artists - Christian Marclay (Geneva and New York), Ugo Rondinone (Zurich and New York), Silvia Bachli (Basel and Paris), Beat Streuli (Dusseldorf), and Francesca Gabbiani (Los Angeles) - live abroad. Will your exhibition deal with the Swiss diaspora?

BC: Absolutely, but today Swiss artists circulate more as a matter of course, not out of a need to escape or repudiate the country. Streuli, Marclay, and Rondinone are largely Mitropaer cosmopolitans, who leave but always come back again, whether to seek sponsors, see family, exhibit, or accept a prize.

HUO: Will there be non-Swiss artists in the show?

BC: Switzerland is a very small country consisting of three important cultural regions and four official languages. As a result, it has no monolithic identity. It seems absolutely self-evident to us that international names should also be represented.

HUO: One of the first exhibitions you were involved in was the legendary "Saus und Braus" of 1980. What do you see as the main differences between the '80s and the '90s?

BC: While at the time museums were considering young Swiss artists as autonomous talents, I indulged in the chaotic and the trashy, admitting the whole climate surrounding art production. Fischli/Weiss' photographic work "Wurstserie" (Wurst series) was seen then as a childish prank. Today, their humor and strategic intelligence is widely acknowledged. I am hoping that the more sensual, relaxed, and less didactic attitude of the late '90s might allow the museum to emancipate itself again from its role as bulwark of art - to redefine itself in terms of the demands of the times. The museum is challenged by the work of young artists all the time; my aim is to actively solicit these challenges.

HUO: You balance your work at the Kunsthaus with running Parkett. How do they affect one another?

BC: The situation is ideal. I profit from the infrastructure, the influence, and the renown of the Kunsthaus. The museum profits from my mobility and from the contacts that I make as editor-in-chief of Parkett.

HUO: What projects are you working on after the Swiss show?

BC: After a smaller Kippenberger show for the Kunsthaus, I will curate a show called "Pink Fluid" in August at the Maritime Museum of Stockholm. This is part of the Cultural Capital of Europe festivities, and includes work by Fleury, Rist, and Hirschhorn. And a show called "Hyper-Mental" that looks at what I think of as post-Surrealist art - work using imagery that refers more to mental than material reality - opens in May 1999.

Hans-Ulrich Obrist is a contributing editor of Artforum. Translated from the German by Diana Reese.