Rist for the mill.

In her art, Pipilotti Rist operates under a variety of guises, whether that means plan in a band with Anders Guggisberg or founding Sister Rist Productions, which oversees the production and distribution of her video work. Now the artist, who is in the process of preparing a large exhibition for Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof, tries out yet another role, that of artistic director of the Swiss National Exhibition scheduled for 2001 in Neuchatel. In our discussion, Rist imagines her working process over the next three years - from the "laboratories" she intends to organize to the "Arteplages" being set up on several lakes in the Alpine nation. For Rist, the Expo is a social sculpture with tremendous boundary-breaking potential.

HANS-ULRICH OBRIST: In 1997, you were nominated artistic director of the Expo 2001 in Neuchatel. Could you tell me about your initial ideas for the Expo?

PIPILOTTI RIST: I consider expo.01, the Swiss National Exhibition of the year 2001, to be a big collective sculpture, an enormous pulsing organism. While the last Swiss expo of '64 was still a hymn to progress, registering perhaps a hint of skepticism here and there, I am chiefly interested in investigating the consequences of progress: What has the notion wrought? How should or could it be rethought in the future? For me it's not only a question of showing future possibilities, but of preparing for "complexity" and "chaos," provoking contradictions and oppositions at the level of both form and content. For that reason, didactic action has a place alongside passive voyeurism. It will be a "work in progress," and participants will have to come with an open mind. There will be "Arteplages" (art beaches) at four locations on the lakes - Biel, Murten, Neuchatel, and Yverdon-les-Bains, while a fifth "Arteplage," in the Canton Jura, will be mobile. It's crucial that each "Arteplage" be extremely disparate in form, character, mood, and color. In Biel, for example, the theme is "Power and Freedom," and the key word is "Reason"; in Murten, the theme is "Moment and Eternity", and the key word's "Transitoriness"; in Neuchatel, "Nature and Artificiality" goes with the term "Need"; and so on. All projects on the Arteplages are artworks, and interior and exterior spaces are of equal value; whenever you leave one project, you step simultaneously into another. The idea is to allow the visitor a philosophical or sensual journey in which art, technology, and science are connected in different expressive forms. I also want a lively mix of physical, intellectual, and emotional nourishment, as of "high" and "popular" culture.

HUO: You told me before how you have structured the office in Neuchatel. Didn't you discuss the conceit of the kitchen as a laboratory of "applicable" and "nonapplicable" models?

PR: The artistic direction of expo.01, on which I'm currently working with a team of nine people, is organized as a service enterprise. As such, we coordinate the exhibition projects thematically and formally, and then look for partners to realize and finance the projects. We have three main sources of inspiration. The "Join-In" campaign accepts proposals from all sectors of the Swiss population. "Die Cuisine" [the kitchen] is the germ cell of the artistic direction - a kind of pantry for good suggestions, or a laboratory for ideas, philosophies, images, concepts, and project sketches. Here we test ideas, develop models, and work out solutions to problems. And finally, of course, there is the active search for creative potential. For each project, the Direction artistique sets up a "coach" who serves as adviser, messenger, and mediator shepherding several projects through to realization. He knows what information has been compiled in "die Cuisine" and what kinds of specialized knowledge are available to him in the "Centers of Competence" where, by the way, teams of highly qualified specialists work amassing information. Finally, the backbone of the Direction artistique consists of a rigid management and control center with a multimedia database.

HUO: Like the Universal exhibitions of the nineteenth century, the Expos have always created very strong symbols that stand for their time. But most of the decisive processes and inventions of our time are invisible (e.g., nanotechnology). Is the time of localizable, purely exterior monuments, such as the Eiffel Tower or the Atomium, over?

PR: Yes, absolutely. Actually, it's been that way for about the last 100 years, ever since the idea that it is the viewer who completes a sculpture was introduced. Still, in expo.01, we are trying to build visions that people can experience with their whole bodies, because virtual worlds cannot replace the need for sensual perception.

HUO: Expo 2001 is defined a priori as a national exhibition, yet it seems to offer the possibility of initiating a global event.

PR: I think that the frontier-crossing potential of expo.01 is enormous. Switzerland was founded 150 years ago as a "Willensnation" [an independent or "voluntary" nation], and is thus a miniature model of globalization - though one that needs a bit of tuning, to be sure. I see expo.01 as a global event with multicultural projects and meetings initiated and executed by international partners as much as by those on the local, regional, or national levels. It is also an event to which, I hope, guests from all over the world will travel.

HUO: You mentioned in our last conversation that ecological issues prevailed in the various proposals you've received. Are there other trends?

PR: There seems to be a great need to speak about collective morality, even about a new global ethics for a global society. For example, some people have submitted proposals for locations where discussions can be held. This hunger for immediate communication goes hand in hand, remarkably, with a trend toward total individualization and extravagant eruptions of ego, though at the same time people are overcome with the feeling that they can no longer express themselves. They want to communicate, but they don't know how.

HUO: How do you intend to create bridges, or trigger dialogues, between the different disciplines?

PR. We will organize conversations between different experts from the worlds of art and culture, show business, the media, economics, and science. It is my fundamental view that every work has poetic and artistic value.

HUO: Gilbert and George have talked about "Art for All." Do you think art has the potential to be popular?

PR: Yes, when I said that I see expo.01 as a big collective sculpture, I was suggesting that I see myself in the tradition of Beuys. But I don't want this social sculpture to remain local to art; I want to bring people into the art ghetto.

Translated from the French by Jeanine Herman.