In Conversation with Julien Creuzet

July 2020,
Arles (FR)

In conversation with:
Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries, Core Group, Luma Arles

Julien Creuzet was invited to take part in the It’s Urgent! installation, held in Arles in the summer of 2020. During this conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Julien Creuzet talks about his filiation with the poet and philosopher from Martinique, Édouard Glissant, through his definition of the concept of “opacity”. He also explains his work on posters, his interest for the multiplicity of images and the way shapes can be connected so as to enable him to reinvent different forms of storytelling. Amongst the great figures who have inspired his work, he talks about his exchanges with the linguist, philosopher and trumpet player, originally from Martinique, Jacques Coursil, who died last June. Discussions around the semantics of the words “blackness” and “negritude” but also around his condition as a black individual. Finally, he ends on the dream of his unfulfilled project: the idea of a breath without end.

Julien Creuzet is an artist, video maker, performer and poet. He spent most of his childhood in Martinique. These first years in the Caribbean, at the crossroads between the African, Indian and European cultures, have impregnated an oeuvre where the mixture of visions and imaginations has a central place. Through the environments made up of composite assemblies, he creates footbridges beween these constructs and Elsewhere, between the social realities of here and the forgotten stories of minorities.

http://www.juliencreuzet.com/

Hans Ulrich Obrist
Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries, London, and co-founder of 89plus, Hans Ulrich Obrist was prior to this, the Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show World Soup (The Kitchen Show) in 1991, he has curated more than three hundred exhibitions. He has lectured internationally at academic and art institutions, and is a contributing editor to the magazines Artforum, AnOther Magazine, 032C, a regular contributor to Mousse, Kaleidoscope, Kinfolk, Numero and Hero, he also writes columns for Das Magazin and Weltkunst. In 2011 he received the CCS Bard Award for Curatorial Excellence, in 2015 he was awarded the International Folkwang Prize for his commitment to the arts. In 2018, The Appraisers Association of America presented Hans Ulrich Obrist with an award for Excellence in the Arts. Ways of curating (Faber and Faber, Inc. New York, NY 2014). Lives of The Artists, Lives of The Architects (Penguin Design, 2015). The Age of Earthquakes with Douglas Coupland, Shumon Basar (Penguin, 2015). Conversations in Mexico with Patrick Charpenal, editor Karen Marta (Fundacion Alumnos47cosentino, 2016). Mondialité Or, the Archipelagos of Édouard Glissant with Asad Raza (Skira, 2017).