Somewhere Totally Else

A Globalized Mapping of the 2010s

Since 2012, Hans Ulrich Obrist has made a weekly contribution to “Das Magazin,” the weekend supplement of the Swiss “Tages-Anzeiger” newspaper, offering, in the style of a diary, a survey of contemporary art and cultural affairs. Week after week he reports on the main events and relevant issues of our times through the lens of his extensive curiosity.

Proposing a very open, cross-disciplinary, and globalized mapping of the 2010s, this anthology also reveals the “cosmology” of this global citizen par excellence: from Etel Adnan and Lina Bo Bardi to Fischli/Weiss, from the importance of sharing and interdisciplinary thinking to the legacy of Édouard Glissant and the need to take into account climate change.

Introduced by Finn Canonica, this publication offers 80 entries written between 2012 and 2017—organized into three themes: “Rituals & Rules”; “Luminaries”; “Today, Tomorrow, Time”—, a series of drawings by British artist David Shrigley, and an index listing the names and places mentioned in the columns.

Hans Ulrich Obrist (*May 1968, Zurich) is the Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries, London. Since his first show “World Soup (The Kitchen Show)” in 1991, he has curated more than 300 exhibitions. He is the author of “A Brief History of Curating”, first published in 2007 and now in its eighth printing.

Second printing, first published in 2017.