How did you approach the architecture of the Rotunda?

I began to do what I generally do all the time, in any expression, which is to... I call it reading the space. This is to understand the architecture a little, the way that it is exposed or closed to its environment. I quickly became interested in the fact that this is a summery exhibition, a necessarily scorching one in a space and time, at a moment of extreme heat. The solar aspect had to become an active agent of the exhibition at a certain point. To be able to read the space, I began to work a little with Philippe Rahm, an architect who has always been interested in principles of climate and how architecture can at a certain point integrate such parameters. So, that’s what we talked about. How could we or couldn’t we turn on or, to the contrary, try to hold an exhibition without air conditioning? So, we began by situating these somewhat climate-oriented principles in the process. We saw that there was a part that is always in shadow, which we demarcated with the carpeting, and a part which is constantly exposed to the sun. Then came the heliostats with which I had already worked for an exhibition in China. So, things started to come together like that. A bit by using one element, but it begins with reading the space.

What environment or experience do you want to offer visitors?

There is a certain number of objects, let’s call them objects or hyper-objects. There are the heliostats, which react to the sun. There are three of them. There is a loudspeaker which is automated and roboticised. There is a wall that has a phonic quality, which also moves. There is a fan positioned on the northern side, which blows from the north, a northerly wind, which will ventilate the space. There is a bioreactor and the “brain”, which is where all the computers are. So, that is the ensemble of elements and agents that will be arranged together to form a kind of creature that is at times heliotropic, meaning that it faces the sun. And when the sun disappears, when it is no longer there, the bioreactor will remember and recompose the elements it perceived when the sun was present. So, we had an exhibition with two sides or phases to it: the solar phase and the organic phase. The bioreactor literally digests the information it receives when the sun appears through the cupola. The moment the sun disappears, the exhibition becomes, comes alive again, but in an organic way. This is the general flow of the drama, more or less. That is for what concerns the, shall we say, the programme. And then, Tino Sehgal’s participation is added to that. This is the human agent, let’s call it, which interacts with this ensemble. We in fact have AI with the sound, which was composed by Arca and Nicolas Becker. This is an artificial intelligence that actually “tills” a granular sound. There is the bioreactor, which is obviously organic. There are all the machines, which are mechanical. And then, the human agents that interact with all of this, that compose with it all. And then there is the solar and the extreme heat component.

The exhibition space seems unstable, changing. Why?

Exhibitions are customarily always isolated. It’s the box, modernity, inventing boxes to isolate forms from their context. So, we have the museographic white cube, the black cube for moving images, and the nightclub for dancing. In French these are all “boites” or boxes.

When I consider an exhibition in general, what I always do is try to see how we can open these boxes and ensure that the space is aware of the place in which the event unfolds. All these elements, these agents are conscious. And what these objects do is begin to look before addressing one another. So, they are already conscious of themselves; each object knows where the others are. They are necessarily drawn to one another, and so, the mirrors will look at each other, the sound will attract, the movement of the mirrors will attract the sound, which is related to it, and so on. So, the elements see each other, are drawn to each other, reject each other, and together they act out a kind of play in which we are the witness, but this play continues even when there is no one there to see it. It keeps going at night, even though no one is there to watch it. So, once we make, once we launch the machine or the organism, the creature has been awakened and continues to live.

Echo2 refers to Echo1, which was the first version of something that is very different today, but which came into existence at MoMA in New York City, where we already had a kind of small creature occupying the lobby of the MoMA’s new extension, And this creature, Echo, the nymph, is the nymph who was punished for her love of Narcissus. Her punishment was to be able to repeat only what she heard and never to be able to say what she thinks, especially the love she felt for him. Echo repeats what she hears. And this nymph came into being in New York City. Nymphs are interesting because they are creatures who are always tied to certain spaces. So, Echo was tied to this lobby, and she repeated what she heard; the movement of the cars outside, the noise outside, the sun, the weather, and everything else influenced her, and now, she has come here. So, she has in fact changed; this is a second version of her. And the sound is now influenced by the sun and the bioreactor, which now takes over from the sun. So, generally, in the exhibitions, what I am trying to do more and more is show that things are never... first of all, that they never stop. And when an exhibition ends in one place, its soul is reincarnated elsewhere.  I would like for things to progress in that way, for things never to stop completely.

What are the heliostats in this reconfigured nature?

There are three heliostats. They are there to capture the sun at all times. The third one only sees by means of the other two. So, in fact, this creates a kind of cosmology. I think this also creates a floating attention. We see lights, colours, reflections appear that draw our attention. We also see movements being related to sounds and with that, moments of synchronisation. These are the points when a form appears for me, when things synchronise, even though this isn’t supposed to happen. So, these capture your attention, somewhat. They are machines, but there is something animal-like about their composition.

The three feet are for practical reasons as well. It has to be able to attach to Tadao Ando’s wall without making any holes. So, you hang on as best you can, and it does thus have a kind of claw; that’s how to grasps. But often when I work in this way on an exhibition, one decision leads to another. So, we began with this claw, and this claw became a kind of tripod, and the tripod became a kind of creature. These are decisions you make when you begin to develop things, after one decision leads to another. 

Is the bioreactor the spirit of the place embodied by the cell?

I have been working with this bioreactor for a long time. I had begun a decade ago in New York City, after it had been at the Tate, when I did the Turbine Hall. The bioreactor controlled all the events. I used the bioreactor at first to try to produce non-cyclical events. In other words, when you programme, there is always a tendency, even when using mathematical algorithms, there is always a tendency to... It’s hard to generate chance or randomness. We tend to produce cycles all the time, and life doesn’t generate cycles. 

It then went to the Gropius Bau in Berlin, so it’s been in several exhibitions. And in these ten years, the yeasts have changed; for being exposed to the stress of the exhibitions, they have begun to change. So, the mutating form comes here, which will change once more, because it will be exposed once more to certain situations. So, it’s also an archive for me of all these exhibitions; they have them in their genetic sequence, we could say. The entire rhythm of these exhibitions that we no longer see but of which they preserve and carry a trace within them. There are two states: there truly is a state that is forced by the sun, and then there is a state that has been pre-digested by the yeasts that will, by the microbes that will represent what they have perceived, what has happened. What they perceive, what they give back to us will surely be very different from what we give, what we see. But in any event, it is another perception – a perception by this colony – of our environment.

Cellular intelligence versus artificial intelligence?

It’s instead a question of collaborations and negotiations between two agents who have to learn how to negotiate their co-presence together. And there is an image too, because a film is being projected. So, there are agents, images, bodies, and machines, and this ensemble of agents cooperate during this period of extreme heat. That’s more or less how I grew to think of it.

What role do sound waves play?

Sound is what I actually call “Echo”, and it’s what I had conceived at the outset for MoMA. It’s a fairly sophisticated composition system that is AI-assisted. It’s a granular sound, actually. So, this creature is melodic. It could instead have been tonal. That was a decision we made for it. Ultimately, what Arca got for us... this sound in fact developed and has been influenced continuously by why it has perceived. So, it’s somewhat the orchestra conductor of all this. But at the same time, we can’t say that there is anything... aside from the sun that forces, this was definitely the case at the start. After that, everything responds to everything else. They all influence one another... and the sound follows. Sometimes it is the main actor, and at others, it is merely an accompaniment.

What about the title “A second of eternity” inspires you?

I think it has to do with Broodthaers, as well as Nietzsche’s eternal return. The idea is... producing, the word “right now, immediately” is a moment of eternity that can never be repeated. The idea is that a unique, singular event can by definition never be repeated, as it exists now and can never be brought back. I imagine these unique, singular moments that never repeat themselves.

Can you come back to Ann Lee and her appearances in the exhibition?

We gave Ann Lee, together with Pierre Huyghe, her own copyright I don’t know how many years ago. Her image belongs to her. And in fact, no other film can be made with her unless she authorises it, and since she is not alive... we came up with a legal loophole. But the film that was made with and by me is being used and continues to be seen. That is one of her manifestations. The collaboration with Tino also took place at the Palais de Tokyo. It’s the film itself, except she appears in a different manner. The film itself hasn’t changed. The text is the same, and the character is the same. There isn’t a new film, just a new appearance.

How does one subject a work to the test of time?

I think forms are always somewhat ghostly. That means that, whether it’s a painting or... it doesn’t matter, it appears and disappears, regardless of its format or material. In fact we see it and we don’t see it. And this ghostliness or... forms part of its nature. We are all ghostly; we are there and not there. So, you have to work with a presence, a form. We are dealing with its presence as much as with its disappearance. That’s what interests me in art, because when you play with the two, a form appears, but it disappears too. So, working with the two movements. I am interested in this. Appearance and disappearance are two things that interest me. They are two sides of the same coin.

What is a quasi-object?

The quasi-object is a term, a concept used by Michel Serres, a French philosopher who defined a quasi-object as a football. If you take 22 people and give them an hour and a half on a square patch of ground, you get a war, and if you put a ball into play, you get a football match. So, the ball creates a kind of community around it and a ritual is produced in the process; hence, the quasi-object, this particular object that isn’t there, which lies just outside everything else, because at a certain moment, it produces something around it. So, it’s either one object less or one object more. I think it’s one object more, and I think this is often because this is a definition we can give to an artwork. It’s an incomplete object, but which produces a whole once it is activated.