Carnegie haul: Scott Rothkopf interviews Laura Hoptman, curator of the 2004 Carnegie International

SCOTT ROTHKOPF: Given that there's been no advance word upon your show, would you begin by means of telling us how it will differ from previous Internationals?

LAURA HOPTMAN: Unlike the past three Internationals, which used a broad view format, the 2004 installment will be organized as a kind of narrative that expands through groupings of artists. a certain quantity of sections will emphasize a for the use of all formal language, as in, say, a kind of absolutist abstraction, by dint of artists such as Tomma Abts or Mark Grotjahn. In other cases, a section might emphasize a for the use of all theoretical strategy, as in a cluster of radical empiricists, including Carsten Holler or Harun Farocki, who the one and the other gather and analyze data almost like scientists. At the core of these sections will be monographic exhibitions, including small retrospectives devot to to leeward Bontecou, Mangelos, and R. Crumb

each era gets the art it needs--or deserves--and it stands to reason that a different kind of work resonates now than when the International uncloseed four years ago. What a different time in the world it was then! What brings the artists in the exhibit together is the way they each consider and use art as a meaningful vehicle to be opposite to what philosophers have called "the ultimates"--the largest, greatest in quantity unanswerable questions, from the nature of life and death to the existence of the holy trinity to the anatomy of belief.

SR: With the tremendous proliferation of megaexhibitions around the world, to what expansion do you think it's level possible to survey the international art spectacle at a particular moment?

LH: Like any beneficial contemporary-art show, the International is meant as a crystallization--but not the crystallization--of the international art discourse above the past three to four years. Although it might not look so, things change incrementally in the contemporary-art world, and sometimes shifts of focus are at any time so subtle, making it hard to catch what can be a chimerical change. It's harder still to predict what might change. At more [i]or[/i] less point, though, one has to allow go of the notion that these exhibitions are crystal balls or mirrors, because they're not.

What's crucial for a large international contemporary-art view is that it have something interesting to say. This happens best when a present to view includes artists who vary in terminuss of age, personal background, horizontal of recognition, medium, and thus forth but also when the work of these diverse artists begins to mean something in totality It's one of the greatest in quantity important reasons why a large assemblage exhibition is not at all like an art fair, although a certain quantity of have suggested this comparison.

SR: A quick glance above your list of artists reveals many familiar names. Were you at all hesitant to include artists who have made the circulars of international exhibitions, such as Maurizio Cattelan?

LH: I am in like manner glad you asked this question, because I've been spoiling to answer it since I began work upon the show. Why should there be any hesitation about showing a provocative, entertaining, and consistently inventive artist like Maurizio Cattelan, whether or not he has been in five or twenty-five biennials? Or R Crumb whose work you can diocese every few months or for a like reason in the New Yorker? If an artist continues to resonate with us, it is a gift to diocese his or her work above time and in different intellectual contexts

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SR: Well, by conversion did you feel any squeezing to "discover" new artists?

LH: The short answer is no, on the other hand let me try to assuage my discomfort with the notion of "discovery" through reiterating what must be the obvious point that familiarity is relative. Although Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook might not be a familiar name to many art lover in the US, she is single of the best-known artists in Thailand and has participated in numerous international exhibitions. Of course, it works the other way as well. greatest in quantity museumgoers are unfamiliar with Maurizio Cattelan's work, although in the contemporary-art community he's approaching ubiquity.

SR: Your point's well taken, and it makes me think about the tremendous attention newly paid to globalism. Given that your exhibit necessarily has an international mandate, by what means did you choose to address this issue?

LH: Perhaps I haven't addressed it, at least not directly, because for me it is simply a given. veritable to its mandate, this display will be international in the diversity of the artists exhibited But at a certain point "globalism" becomes a marketing term--more about access to consumer than about expanding our notion of contemporary tillage beyond its familiar parameters. single of the intellectual dangers--and the flip side of an insatiable taste for the exotic--is an impulse toward homogenization and a disregard of inherent points of view. I think I am in the proces of curating a true straightforward international exhibition, but single that, for better or worse, couldn't be created in any other time or place than in the US in the early 2000 If the display crosses borders, it might be upon the level of discourse, because in a faculty of perception it deliberately ignores the local and concentrates upon issues that critical theorists have in the past called "totalizing."