daniel buuren monumenta

MS: You have asked Patrick Bouchain and Loïc Julienne to help you with the technical side of your project. It is not the first time you have worked together. How did you establish a dialogue and collaboration with them?

DB: As you know, I have worked on a great number of pieces with Patrick Bouchain since the Paris Biennial in 1985. So the dialogue between us has been going on for quarter of a century and keeps going whether we are working together or not. He looks at my work and I look at his; sometimes he asks me to participate and I do the same for some of my pieces. So for Monumenta, we talk things over and, as always, it is very fruitful. Patrick Bouchain has an excellent eye and a sharp critical sense, which stops me going off the rails. If I have several different projects in mind and I have doubts about the quality of some of them in relation to the others, he will quickly analyse all that and push me towards the one that will be the richest, most direct and most complex, all at once. As he has often said himself, Patrick Bouchain knows how to be an assistant and he does it with talent – that is a great quality in someone who is himself a great creator. He is even the best “assistant” imaginable. He is familiar with all the administrative problems and safety issues that could make a fine idea unfeasible and he can therefore warn you straight away and stop you from rushing into dead ends. More than that, without losing sight of the essentials, he can guide you towards feasible solutions and avoid all sorts of pitfalls.