The Transported Man: Marc-Olivier Wahler on the New Direction of the MSU Broad

For Marc-Olivier Wahler, the new director of the MSU Broad, a museum is independent from the building that houses it. He equates it to software: a versatile apparatus that can be mapped onto any hardware.

He’s not interested in the physical objects that make up the art world, but the ideas and language by which they’re shaped. Art, he says, is like magic: the artist has to transfigure normal objects into something that transcends its material reality. It has to make you believe. However, Wahler is not above simple tricks. For one, his debut exhibition at the MSU Broad, “The Transported Man,” takes its name from a 19^th century-era magic trick in which a man is teleported between two places on stage. For another, at the show’s opening on Saturday, April 29, he delivered his remarks inside a live alligator.

Before the opening of “The Transported Man,” Wahler sat down with ARTINFO to discuss his progressive beliefs about the function of contemporary art institutions, and the future of the MSU Broad.

Can you tell me about your idea of the museum as software?

When we want to talk about the future of the museum, we have to find parallel and different domains. The evolution of software is interesting, the way it freed itself from hardware to obtain its own identity, while maintaining its ability to be graphed onto different types of hardware. From the beginning—for centuries now—museums have developed in the same way: as hardware. We know now that the museum is going to change over the next 10 years, and everyone is trying to figure out what the next step is. But, for the moment, everyone is thinking within the existing model of the museum as hardware—meaning you have a building, visitors come in that building, and the questions becomes, “What can we do for them?” When I ended my term at the Palais de Tokyo, I started to think, “Okay, now if you could think about the ideal museum or institution, with no boundaries, a complete dream, what would it look like?” And I didn’t have an example. So I thought, “Okay, I don’t have any examples, I have to build my own institution to test things and see where it goes.” That’s what I did with the Chalet Society. It was the beginning of this idea of the institution as a software. I want to continue this at the MSU Broad.

It seems like, at the MSU Broad, it would be harder to distance yourself from the “hardware” than it would be at other institutions. The hardware of the Broad—with its star architect-designed building and identity as a symbol of the new wave of institutions built around individual collections—is relatively famous itself.

Perhaps, but it’s a university museum. It’s not like a typical private institution where you have a board of trustees. It’s a research university. You’re expected to do research. You have the flexibility to take chances.

How do you navigate the line between trying to reinvent the way we think about museums, and maintaining the institution’s role as an educational resource for the campus and community?

If we achieve our goals as an institution, then we’ll be a fantastic tool for the campus, for the region, and for the art world in general. Because the idea is to go beyond the museum, we can develop projects outside the hardware that are still within the identity of the museum. It extends the reach of the institution. If it does that, then it’s a strength for the community. Part of the identity of the museum is about collaborating with scientists and different types of communities—architects, builders, wildlife departments, and so on—while also trying to give the art world something which goes beyond the simple object. It’s not about this or that. It’s not “or”; it’s “and.” “And and and.” This is very important. It’s one of the keys of what we want to do.

Contemporary art is not only good for creativity and contribution to culture and self-fulfillment; it’s good also for science. That’s why I’m so excited to be at Michigan State University—because of the collaboration we’re building with scientists. Is not only to help artists, which has always been the case—so far its more or less that scientists have been helping artists build new productions. But also artists are now helping scientists to infuse creativity into their research, to help it take the next step.

You also spoken to the importance of a “digital identity.” In a literal sense, the institution is employing several new forms of advance digital technology, including VR. But I interpreted it metaphorically as well. How does the digital identity play into your vision?

Again, it’s one way to go beyond the hardware. We’re trying to develop such different types of software—literally software, in some cases. Of course the website is important, an “efficient internet tool.” But what we can also do is to provide an experience in the virtual world, which goes beyond what we see so far. Now when we see people doing projects on the internet and experimenting with virtual reality, it’s always based in the same world. It’s an alternate world, but it’s more or less the same thing everywhere. Because, again, it all starts with the same foundation, and people rarely veer from that. What we want to do is reinvent this. Talking with an architect, we came up with this idea to recreate in a virtual world the physical experience we have in an exhibition. The exciting thing, which is also a bit scary, is that we have absolutely no idea of what this work will be. We have no examples. But it’s an experiment. Everything we do is an experiment, and there will be failure, as there is in every experiment, but that’s part of the process, and its contained within our concept. And, because we are a university-based museum, we can do research as if we were in a lab. Just like in any lab, there will be successes and failures.

The museum seems to have a real commitment to science in general. Why is that such an important mode of engagement for you?

There’s an Umberto Eco quote in which he says something along the lines of, “To teach people about semiology, you must teach them everything but semiology.” That’s how I want to talk about contemporary art as well. We try to talk about anything but contemporary art to help people find keys to enter what is at stage in contemporary art. I think it’s crucial to develop a language that is determined outside its parameter. You can’t teach people about contemporary art using a language developed by those in charge of contemporary art.

Art is not only good for creativity and contribution to culture and self-fulfillment; it’s good also for science. That’s why I’m so excited to be at Michigan State University—because of the collaboration we’re building with scientists. Is not only to help artists, which has always been the case—so far its more or less that scientists have been helping artists build new productions. But also artists are now helping scientists to infuse creativity into their research, to help it take the next step.

How does the “Transported Man” embody some of these ideas you’re bringing to the museum?

For me it’s an exhibition on the ontology of the artwork: why an artwork is an artwork, how a normal object can be transfigured into an artwork, etc. From the beginning of my career, I’ve always been fascinated by the moment where in which an object is transformed into some different, even though it never physically changes. For instance, you could see a glass as a glass, and you could see a glass transfigured into something else. Again, it’s a question of language. There’s no definite answer or explanation. For a hundred years now, since the advent of the readymade, we’re still trying to come to terms with it.

Think about science fiction. The movie “Blade Runner,” for example. You see human beings for half of the movie, and then suddenly they’re not human anymore; they’re alien. There were no visual hints telling you that he’s an alien. But once the transfiguration happens, everyone gets it. Even a child, having no knowledge of typical science fiction tropes, gets it. Why? Because science fiction develops a language that allows for this flexibility. In art, we can’t make those jumps as easily. We take things for granted. We see a painting and immediately understand its simple truths—we know that it’s framed, it’s a certain aspect ratio, it hangs on a wall, etc.

We take the magic of art for granted. Pigment on canvas, disappearing in front of our eyes, and reappearing as an artwork. To achieve that is the biggest challenge for an artist. Marcel Duchamp tried; he realized early on that it was very easy to go from zero to one, but it was impossible to go from one to zero. He tried all his life, but the public was not ready for that. I think now is a fantastic moment to explore what the artist has always wanted to do: to make us feel that an artwork is not only an object stuck in one pole or another; it’s about what happens between these two poles. Like electricity, energy is created by going back and forth. If it’s stuck in one pole, you have nothing.

What’s central to the “Transported Man,” is the notion of belief. As with any magic trick, art is a trick of the mind. The skill of the magician is to trick your brain. The artwork is not so far from that. In order to see an artwork as an artwork, you have to believe.