If you’ve ever stood in a line for a home-cooked meal at an art exhibition, you might be familiar with the work of Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, which foregrounds interactions between people and their surroundings. Over the years, Tiravanija has served up Turkish coffee, pad Thai, and tea—all of which can be experienced in his exhibition “A Lot of People” at MoMA PS1 in Queens, New York.
In constructing these scenarios, which he refers to as plays, Tiravanija invites museum-goers to participate and consider the ways we interact with one another. As human interaction (or safeguarding against it) came to the forefront during the pandemic, Tiravanija’s plays have only become more relevant. And if they are not enough to satisfy, the show also includes films, drawings, and works on paper.
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On the occasion of his show, which runs through March 4, 2024, Tiravanija talked to Art in America about restaging older works and being present in the moment he’s in now.
How does it feel to have your first US survey at MoMA PS1?
It feels like just another day. It’s interesting to see the works all together, but I never really made them to be seen like that. It’s kind of like an experiment. They were always made in very specific contexts and situations.
Untitled 1993 (café deutschland), for example, which is one of the older early works, started as a fax that I sent to Cologne. With things happening then in Germany, I sent the friend who curated the show to the Turkish neighborhood to buy a list of specific items and to set it up in a certain way, according to the instructions. But, to understand the piece, you have to know the things that were happening around it. The whole idea was that he would go to get all these things in places he would otherwise never have gone. Whether people read [into] the Turkish coffee or not, it’s another layer. The Middle Eastern way is the oldest way to make coffee, which is to boil the bean down to a ground.
Everything has different relationships and layers within it, and I never thought about having to redo it. A lot of it, however, is about the experience. It’s not about the objects or looking at the thing or standing around the thing because it’s going to tell you something. It’s more about being in the place, doing the thing, and being with other people.
Your works can change based on context and many were conceived before the advent of social media, which has greatly impacted the way we interact and experience our environment.
There are two parts to this exhibition. One part is a more active, open space, and the other is a set of plays that come with more instructions. There were different possibilities or different situations that I had to think about. For instance, if I had to do the work in a certain kind of condition, how would it be possible to present the idea? You cannot, say, cook in any place now. Maybe in galleries or some private spaces, but in institutional spaces it’s impossible. But, of course, untitled 1990 (pad thai) itself is already from the beginning addressing that difficulty or shift in how a museum thinks of itself.
The plays are a kind of experiment, but also a solution to presenting something that’s a bit more alive and also addressing the problem of being alive. To be a play, it’s already hinting at the fact that it’s not the real thing. You’re set up to watch something that’s happening in real time and space, but it’s not a performance or theater. The word “play” describes this in-between so that the possibility of viewing and experiencing can shift. There is a stage, but that stage is very low.
It’s a play with the opportunity to play. The people who are activating the work by serving coffee and pad Thai, etc., how were they selected?
It’s usually who’s available. A lot of the people participating are present and former students. I’ve been teaching for so long that I know many people who have an interest in taking part. When I first realized I wanted to do the plays, I thought about casting people, but it’s not so much about acting or doing—it’s about understanding the stream of the idea. There’s a kind of instructional score, but it’s very loose. When you give people instruction, they tend to follow it too well, and many things in the show appear as you see them. Just put it down. Don’t think about it. Just do it. It’s not about how the thing looks. It’s about the interaction. It’s about having been in the space, putting this coffee cup here, and that’s it. You don’t think about placement. That’s the way it should be. And that’s also what I feel the idea of the play is about.
The work becomes like the serendipity of the action or the action at play.
You cannot fix anything down. You cannot fix the reality. It’s about letting things happen. It’s about letting go.
That’s what I’m looking forward to, in terms of how we rethink the work, both the ideas and the ways they can be executed. I really want people to pay attention to details because we’re missing so much only focusing on a little screen. It’s important that one starts to look and to read or that one is carried into certain spaces. It’s a slowing-down.
This kind of exhibition is interesting post-Covid—the idea of bringing people together to create interactions and personal experiences after things became more centered around screens.
I started working on some slower works with less people during that time that prodded our speed, attention, and the tension that is between us. In Thailand, I put a glass wall in the middle of a space that people could approach from both sides. There, they could meet each other with a barrier of glass in between.
What do you hope visitors will get from experiencing this show?
Don’t come once. Come for the next five months. There will be different things happening. Why not spend time doing things like making coffee and tea, meeting people, and playing some music? Use it. And bring your friends.
There is time and space to do and to think, to pay attention, to read. There are some works that are about movement and moving through places, but they take time. It’s about making space for people to decide. I don’t see things as defined by a beginning and an ending. I see it as continuous time and space. It’s not about the work being finished or beginning somewhere. I keep it open. And maybe that’s also why, as I said at the beginning, it’s just another day.