Well, as Philippe Parreno puts it, “La chaine est belle” [roughly: “A series is a beautiful thing.”] The marathon idea started when I was invited to do a project for the Theatre Festival of Europe in Stuttgart. I suggested interviewing 24 people from Stuttgart for 24 hours; this was the first marathon. A year later, [Serpentine Director] Julia Peyton-Jones and I invited Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Balmond to design the annual architecture commission, the Serpentine Pavilion. Koolhaas wanted the pavilion to be a “content machine,” so we decided to do a new interview marathon together, focusing on London. A year later we invited Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen to design the 2007 pavilion. Olafur was enthusiastic to continue the content machine idea, but to push it on from conversations into experiments. After discussions with Olafur, we decided that it would be good to continue the marathon as a series of public experiments involving practitioners from all disciplines. We invited Israel Rosenfield to curate a series of science experiments.

You brought artists together with “renowned scientists, architects, and thinkers.” Do you believe that the possibilities of art are greater than have been previously imagined?   

As Alexander Dorner, the visionary director of the Hanover Museum, showed as long ago as the 1920s and 1930s, in order to understand the forces that function within the visual arts, we must look into other fields of knowledge.

So what are these possibilities for art?

As Leon Golub once told me: “Art is a gate to possibility.” I feel a necessity to go beyond the fear of pooling knowledge. I feel an urgent need to produce communities.

Could you suggest an experiment that ARTINFO readers could participate in?

This question leads on to another project of mine, “DoIt,” where we invited more than 100 artists to make an instructional piece for a museum. This was followed by “DoIt (Home Version),” where we asked artists to make a similar piece to be realized at home. This led to “Formulae for the 21st Century,” a book project where I asked different practitioners to submit their formulae or equations. For ARTINFO, I suggest the following experiments from “DoIt (Home Version)”:

From Marina Abramovic:

“Mix Fresh Milk From The Breast
With Fresh Milk of the Sperm
Drink on Earthquake Nights

“On Your Knees, Clean The Floor
With Your Breath
Inhale The Dust

“Wash Your Bedsheets In Lemon Juice
Cover The Pillow With Sage Leaves

“With A Sharp Knife
Cut Deeply Into The
Middle Finger Of The Left Hand
Eat The Pain

“Facing The Wall
Eat Nine Red Hot Peppers

“Take Uncut 13 Leaves Of Green Cabbage
With 13,000 Grammes of Jealousy
Steam For Long Time In Deep Iron Pot
Till All Water Evaporates
Eat It Just Before Attack

“Fresh Morning Urine
Sprinkle Over Nightmare Dreams”

And, from Jonas Mekas:

“Do it …
move your finger
up and down for one
minute every morning”