PIERRE HUYGHE
Born in 1962
Pierre Huyghe’s works often appear as situated networks, a continuity between a wide range of intelligent life forms, biological, technological and matter that learn, modify and evolve. These situations are immersive, contingent and constantly changing environments, they are sites of possibilities, fictional excesses, indeterminate and indifferent to categories and witnesses. “It’s not a matter of exhibiting something to someone as it is exhibiting someone to something” says Huyghe. This reversal and mixing of areas, involving artistic subject and object, also occurs in the piece resumed and exhibited in Belgrade for the 58th October Salon: After Dream (1997). The work is based on a 1948 John Cage composition for piano called Dream, which was written for the homonymous choreography by Merce Cunningham. Huyghe further emphasizes the centrality of randomness already found in Cage’s musical research, ensuring that the notes of the composition, each played by one of the many bells that make up the work, are activated simultaneously by the inconsistent, unpredictable action of the wind blowing between the tree branches in the garden in front of the Museum of Yugoslavia. The complex orchestration offers unexpected and magical results, in an endless performance where natural forces interact with shapes and sounds to create a flowing and lively experience.