The Beyeler Foundation, Art Basel and Theater Basel have joined forces to bring a special highlight to town for this year’s Art Basel: "14 Rooms," a major live-art exhibition curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Klaus Biesenbach. A continuation of the 11 Rooms project the duo originally presented at the Manchester International Festival, the group show features many well known artists such as Marina Abramovic, Damien Hirst, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Tino Sehgal, and Xu Zhen. The concept calls for performative art pieces in 14 different rooms by 14 participating artists. ARTINFO spoke about the show with Obrist, co-director of the London Serpentine Gallery and curator of the Swiss pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, and Biesenbach, head of New York’s MoMA PS1.

What makes "14 Rooms" special for you as curators?

HUO: Normally exhibitions have a very limited lifespan; they come and go. Our exhibition, however, functions differently as it can continue to exist indefinitely in the form of instructions for living sculptures. It started in 2011 and the research continues and new works are discovered each time we do a new chapter of the show.

Would you say the project is defining a new kind of exhibition space, one that adapts to the mobility of the art world?

KB: Completely. The project evolves and every edition is a new experience. It all began when the Manchester International Festival commissioned us to curate an exhibition for their 2011 edition. Shortly after we began speaking about the project, I was visiting Villa Borghese. In front of the building, there was a silver-painted acrobat who stood as still as a sculpture and then, as I entered the villa and walked from room to room, I encountered different sculptures in different rooms. The idea evolved; we came to the conclusion that we would create a sculpture gallery, one room after the other, but in each room there would be a “living sculpture,” always a man or a woman, but rather than the artists themselves, it would be actors who follow the artists’ instructions.

HUO: We decided to realize the exhibition only once a year and that every year an additional room is added. In 2011, 11 Rooms at the Manchester International Festival; in 2012,

12 Rooms in Essen as a co-commission by the International Arts Festival Ruhrtriennale; 13 Rooms in 2013 in Sydney with Kaldor Public Art Projects; and now in 2014, we are presenting a totally new version designed by Herzog de Meuron, who mirrored the rooms into infinity and built a spectacular structure for 14 Rooms, plus an additional small building for the additional room by Jordan Wolfson.

How did the artists react to the exhibition format?

KB: Each is a distinct experience, separated by the rooms. With Otobong Nkanga’s work, the theme of opening up public space takes on a further dimension. Her work “Diaspore” deals with migration and exile, looking back at the home left behind and forward at a new country. While Ed Atkins’s avatar project involves the projection of digital figures and approximates reality.

HUO: In addition to the "14 Rooms," we are also showing a work from the Baldessari archive. This

work consists of the documentation of an early work by John Baldessari, which he proposed

to the MoMA in 1970. In “Unrea-lized Proposal for Cadaver Piece,” Baldessari wanted to exhibit a cadaver in order to address how death is dealt with in art and in society. It’s not surprising that it still hasn’t been possible to realize this project. The archive presents our endless communication with local and global bureaucracy

and authorities.

Have people reacted differently to the rooms in different cities?

HUO: “14 Rooms” is not a theatre where one speaks to many, but an exhibition. As Dorothea von Hantelmann shows in her excellent writing on exhibition as rituals in the modern age, exhibitions have become a ritual that includes a crowd of people who can be addressed as individuals. As it is about separation, it does not produce connectivity. This takes us to exhibitions which go beyond objects and which address all senses, which leads us to “Touch.”

KB: I think that Yoko Ono’s project, “Touch” is especially interesting. She plays with the interaction of one visitor to another, and what will actually take place in this dark room is the question. The instruction “touch” implies that visitors are meant to touch one another. She creates a break with physical distance, integrity, and the untouchability of strangers. Is the touch of a stranger a more intimate transgression when the room is empty than when it is full? Or is it more uncomfortable?