Think Like Clouds by Hans Ulrich Orbist book trailer by Ian Cheng

Think Like Clouds collects for the first time the diagrams, notes, and drawings curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has made for the past twenty-two years. Obrist has curated exhibitions worldwide and has interviewed personalities in nearly every field of endeavor: from architect Rem Koolhaas to painter Gerhard Richter to journalist and activist Studs Terkel. During conversations and curatorial work he draws and takes notes obsessively in order to help him remember and expand the topic at hand. But what ends up being drawn on hotel stationery or printouts of emails are more than mere memory aids. Beautiful and enigmatic, they are visual portraits of conversations or exhibitions made up of names, dates, quotes, and loose bits of information entangled with wavering lines and undulating scribbles. Taken as a whole, Think Like Clouds maps the intellectual and historical terrain of one of the most active and curious minds in contemporary art today.

In his introduction to the book Paul Chan notes “In making this book, Obrist’s notes, doodles, drawings, and sketches teeter on the edge of being recognized as artworks… they capture— as any work ought to—the presence of a real presence in the act of becoming something neither predicted nor pre-established. But are they real works? Who knows? Then again, nobody who recognizes what they really are cares.” Along with the introduction by Chan the book includes an essay by Michael Diers.

Think Like Clouds by Hans Ulrich Obrist Softcover book, limited edition zine, and enhanced e-book for Apple iBooks and Amazon Kindle, 228 pages.

Music by DJ PomDeter

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter