PHOTOS SIMON WATSON him
PHOTOS SIMON WATSON him to Lopud the building was still a ruin. He looked up at the sky through the hole in the roof and told her to leave it that way. She didn’t, but she embraced the idea of preserving all the layers of history. The result is a structure that has all the significance of an ancient space but with modern conveniences. Over the years, even during the renovation, Thyssen-Bornemisza would bring TBA21 and TBA21-Academy-related groups to the island for what she calls “convenings”. “The last time I was there for a convening I heard the sound of a cod having an orgasm,” said Rasmus Nielsen, one of the three founders of Superflex, a Danish collective that creates art that questions economic and social systems. “It was a recording played by an ichthyologist. And then soon afterwards there was a discussion of Middle Eastern politics in relation to the European Union. Being on Lopud is like being on a boat or a floating island. It has a very different kind of energy than the usual art-world conferences.” What makes Thyssen-Bornemisza unique among collectors is that she invests a lot in the artistic process; in some ways, she is more interested in the journey than in the final result. The life cycle of a project commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza typically begins, she said, by “sensing an urgency in an artist who has a compelling story to tell”. In the case of Superflex, it started with several expeditions in the South Pacific on the Dardanella, during which they filmed and recorded underwater around Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai, one of the world’s newest islands. The artists started to imagine a world where humans have to leave their habitat because of rising sea levels. “Let’s say in a few hundred years there will no longer be humans there, but only fish,” said Nielsen. “What kind of architecture should we think about that considers both humans and fish?” After a three-year-long research phase, in 2020 Superflex will show its final work at Ocean Space in Venice. “I think of these Above, from top: a Thomas Struth photograph at Lopud 1483, Thyssen-Bornemisza’s cultural space on an island in Croatia; 18th-century sculptures on display there spaces – Dardanella, Lopud, Venice, Jamaica – connected like a cultural atoll,” said Nielsen. “Francesca is spearheading attempts to redefine institutional practice. How will the Louvre of our age look? We need to create new places that supplement the old ones.” Chus Martínez, the director of the Art Institute at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel, Switzerland, explained that Thyssen-Bornemisza’s method of collecting “replaces market investment with social investment”. Martínez, who has led TBA21- Academy expeditions on the Dardanella, added: “Francesca, and some other women collectors of her generation, have discovered in art a fundamental aspect of our culture to enhance values, equality, environment, freedom. Too often we address climate emergency as a technical problem, but it is a cultural problem at its depth.” Shortly after visiting Lopud, I went to the Venice Biennale to attend a performance by Joan Jonas, which was part of a programme to celebrate the opening of Ocean Space. Every chair in the cavernous ancient church was taken; Thyssen-Bornemisza, sitting in the front row, was greeted by artists and collectors. For the next 90 minutes, like some kind of divine oracle, the 82-year-old Jonas interacted with underwater video footage and rang bells and read the names of fish from a scroll. Although the acoustics of the church were problematic, the religious environment was a perfect backdrop for the performance and for Thyssen-Bornemisza’s almost spiritual belief in art. I remembered that Eliasson had told me that she believes deeply in the meeting of art and science. “Francesca knows that culture is a powerful muscle that can move things.” • CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 45
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