24-HOUR INTERVIEW

Moore interviews 24 artists in 24 hours in this conceptual art book.

For this book, art historian and curator Moore staged two dozen interviews with various artists over the course of as many hours, all conducted from Miami’s Betsy Hotel. (If that seems like a marathon-level feat, know that Moore is, in his off-hours, a marathon runner.) “Like a puppeteer of dialogues, I had meticulously orchestrated the schedule, balancing time zones, language barriers, and artistic sensibilities,” writes the author in his introduction. It’s an international affair, with artists and curators calling in from London, Beijing, Kyoto, Dubai, Tbilisi, Rio de Janeiro, Milan, Capetown, Bogotà, Berlin, and elsewhere to answer Moore’s questions about inspiration, practice, art-world trends, geopolitics, migration, and what it’s like to care about art in the 2020s. Ceramicist En Iwamura describes what he learned about installations from working with a gardener. Sculptor Miler Lagos discusses the experience of constructing clothes out of paper made from natural plant fibers. Nadya Tolokonnikova, a multidisciplinary artist and member of the performance art group Pussy Riot, muses on the limited, stark color palette she’s used in her work since leaving Russia: “I live in exile. I’m a geographically anonymous person, practically living on the moon, with no home. I think it translates into art and into colors.” The tone of the interviews gets slightly silly toward the end of the 24-hour period—the sleep-deprived Moore spends part of his interview with the Berlin-based artist Ana Prvački practicing his German—but the questions always lead to intriguing responses by the interview subjects. The time constraint, which necessitates keeping the interviews brief, makes a fun game of the project. Readers will feel as though they are gallery-hopping with Moore across a cosmopolitan city as the conversations build upon one another to create a panoramic portrait of contemporary art.

A free-wheeling and eclectic discussion of creativity.