The Talks
Ini Archibong: “I have to stay spiritually in tune”
Mr. Archibong, in your opinion, are the objects and furniture you create as an industrial designer art?
I think so. From the beginning, I've seen what I do as art, and design as the medium. Just like some artists use paint, I use design. And part of the narrative of any piece of art that I'm making is the assumed function of that piece. So the fact that this is a table, that is part of the narrative of the piece of art. It’s not an artfully done table, it’s a table-fully done piece of art. (Laughs) You know what I mean? I come from a culture where all the stuff that we would call art is actually just called design. In a lot West African cultures, there’s no word for art: all the masks, all the statues, things like that are just functional pieces of design that have a spiritual purpose. They weren’t just frivolous art. The idea that something has to be useless in order to be art is something I reject.
So when someone is buying one of your pieces, does it feel to you like they are buying your art and displaying it in their home?
That's exactly right! Like, if you go to Flos, and you buy a lamp, and you put that in your home and somebody asks about it, you’re not necessarily going to be say, “Oh, this is the name of the lamp, it was made in this year, it was designed by this person.” Now somebody walks in your house and one of my chandeliers is hanging over your table, they're going to be like, “What is that?” And you'll say, “Yeah, I spent a lot of money on that, because it is a piece of art.” So I do see it as different, especially because my pieces each have a kind of a narrative along with them.
“Writing itself should be so extreme, so wild, and so much fun that it doesn’t matter whether or not you ever sell the book.”
“It’s hard to watch the misses, it’s hard to be criticized. But you’re always trying to hit it into the rafters, and damn the consequences if you don’t make it.”
“The only thing that you have to be very sure of is that nothing can go wrong. You can’t get in the way of the whole thing by messing it up with great ideas or smart moves. Absolute trust is, I think, the crucial ingredient.”
“You have to open yourself. Just as in life you have to be open to other people, to other perspectives — it’s the same thing when you write. That’s what religion’s about, that’s what literature’s about, it’s what life’s about: the stories that you build.”
“I learned by doing. The rest is doing experiments and testing and not giving up. If something is not satisfying start again, turn everything upside down and find a new formula for printing. Everything is learning by doing.”
“If you work with somebody for a long time, you have to challenge them otherwise you jeopardize your relationship. You have to constantly reinterpret your work together and provide a new vision of your relationship.”
“I don’t like plan Bs. If you don’t have a plan B, then you can’t take plan B. Don’t give yourself an out.”
“I have the freedom to express myself. And it doesn’t matter if somebody’s going to pay me or pat me on the back for it. I chose to do things that I embrace, that I feel passionate about for whatever reason and I create my freedom around that.”
“Life is struggle. Life is about struggle. You’re not supposed to be happy all the time. It’s about challenging yourself and pushing yourself, you know? You become content. That’s not happiness.”
“I have a tattoo that goes around my right wrist that looks like barbed wire, but it’s actually ANDAND linked together, which stands for “A New Dawn, A New Day.” It’s about waking up every day knowing that you have a chance to start again and forgive and be forgiven and to let go of yesterday.”
“You can look at these tough times as an opportunity to get closer and to learn from each other. I learned a lot from my wife. There are so many things that pop up. If you are paying attention, you can learn every second of the day. Life is my guru.”
“I always try to concentrate on the process and where the real goal is, which is trying to get up every day and be the best possible version of myself and do the best work I can do.”
“I think the final circle in being an artist is connecting, making some conversation to the world you’re in. I think if you have that feeling of why you need to do something, you’ll find a way. And I think that really takes you forward! If you’re feeling that, maybe other people need that to.”
“You’re always looking for a second chance. You’re always looking to do a little bit better than you did the last time. And you hope that the readers will stay with you.”
“I feel very lucky. There is luck behind me, there’s luck in front of me, there’s luck ahead of me. But that is a perspective that requires a lot of work. It doesn’t come naturally.”
“The recognition of luck is extraordinarily important — as well as making the best of it and creating to the best of your capabilities on that one opportunity you’re given so that it doesn’t end up in the museum of errors.”
“My whole purpose in life is to communicate what I’m doing. I see myself as a modern nomad and a soldier at the same time. Being mainstream won’t change me because once I have something to perform, a task, then I’m a soldier. And I’ve always been a soldier.”
“Life is confounding and who knows what’s around the next corner. But in many ways uncertainty can be exhilarating—there’s a lot of freedom in it. It would be a shame to waste our snippet of time on this planet being afraid.”
“There is something quite beautiful with the art thing, that you can only hold it back for so long and then you have to do it.”
“Everyone’s life comes to an end. We’re all going to come to the same fate. So you just keep going while you can, doing what you like.”
“I act on intuition. I just let my intuition go in situations of fear. I live from my heart. I will continue doing things the way I have done them my whole life. And it gave me mostly a great time.”
“When I was training as a ballet dancer, I know that I was often tired or in pain, but you just work through it. You go home crying and your parents almost want you to quit but then you just do it. And I use that stamina now as an actress because it’s normally quite uncomfortable to make films.”
“If you’re doing one thing, you can burn yourself out. But for me, if ever one of those things burnt out, I would have moved to another one. So it makes it difficult but it makes it possible to keep going.”
“It’s important to say no – especially earlier in your career – because life is short and you want to be proud of things that you have done, not ashamed of them.”
“Sometimes when you lose faith and you understand that something will never be possible the way that you dreamed, but you keep trying, suddenly one thing flips and everything re-accommodates. It totally flows. You don’t give up — and suddenly it’s almost a transcendental thing.”
“I think an ambition as a performer, and maybe even in life, is to become less afraid. Some boundaries are necessary of course and some are accepted, but the ones that I don’t want, I want to remove.”
“Part of being a designer is to fail every day, to try things that don’t work out. In a way, every project fails every day until it succeeds! That’s what the iterative process of design is about. Timing in many ways is key.”
“We're not having to run from predatory animals like we did for hundreds of thousands of years before. So now we have to make up new activities to fulfill those emotional needs. There is a certain something about the ever-present danger of death that makes living so great.”
“I’m doing things more personally than ever before because that’s what my project is based on, that’s who I am and I have never been this happy my whole life — but it was a long road to get here.”
“At what point do you feel you’ve achieved it and you can move on? I think you usually have to start thinking, ‘So what’s next?’”
“The more experience you have, the more time you’ve spent on this earth, the more regrets you accumulate. It’s normal. You can’t do everything right, nobody’s perfect. But if you think too much about that, you’re not here. You have to make some efforts to stay open-minded.”
“I always say ideas drive the boat. Ideas are a huge, huge blessing. That’s the thing you try to catch – an idea that you fall in love with. The whole thing doesn’t come at once, but fragments of things come and these fragments form themselves into a script. It’s a process.”
“Everybody is amazing at something — some people write music, some people are leaders, some people raise children, some people cook food. If you find what it is that you can offer to your fellow.”
“I just want to do everything as good as I possibly can but it is also good to act on an idea and fail — and then you get something out of it. I think it’s really important to not be afraid of failure and to push yourself to try things and jump in the cold water.”
“Having come out as a gay man and the self-confidence that gives you is huge! It affects every aspect of your life, including my work. People like honesty. They respect honesty. And my film career took off once I came out.”
“I wouldn’t ever compromise on the essential, on the essence of a project, the ideas or the themes.”
“I have an irrational fear of boredom. That’s why I now have this tattoo that says “Carpe Diem.” That’s what we should live by!”
“If you are ambitious, you are running in a tunnel that never ends. You will always find something new to go after.”
“I think my photographic career has been one of growing, learning, experimenting and trying different things. That was a big journey for me! It’s always a progression, it’s about challenging the idea of what photography is.”
“Right now we are 40 people working in Osteria Francescana, for 28 or 30 covers a night. So, it’s totally the opposite of a business. You cannot survive with that. But we believe in those kinds of dreams and so I keep investing, and reinvesting, and reinvesting.”
Hans Ulrich Obrist: “I believe in generosity as a medium”
Mr. Obrist, you are an art curator, a critic, a historian, an author, and the artistic director at Serpentine Galleries. Where do you find the time to do all this work?
(Laughs) It’s not that the work gets faster or easier over time. It still takes a lot of time to do all this work, but I’ve come up with certain systems. One big change in my way of working came around 10 years ago: I realised that I wanted to work with a night producer. There are people who don’t want to work during the day, so to liberate someone from working during daytime, I would hire them to work with me at night. During the day, I have interviews, scholarly things, team meetings, meetings outside the gallery… At night, I then do correspondence for my books, or I’ll do research, or I produce and continue to work with my night producer. This routine is a great excuse to leave dinners and parties early, as I still have to work.
What is the curfew you give yourself?
There are only very few exceptions, but I basically almost never go home past 11:00pm. I go to sleep around midnight and my night producer continues to work, so when I wake up at 6.00am the next morning, a lot of things are already done, and I can just continue.
