Diaghilev and Friends

"It is certainly connected. I believe that all the disciplines should meet and I have a very trans-disciplinary idea of art. Salons obviously bring people together who otherwise wouldn’t meet. I observed that in London everybody is so busy, it is such an intense city, therefore improvisation has become very difficult. So you can’t just decide, for example, ‘OK, tonight I will get together with my friends.’ It’s crazy. I need improvisation to survive, so I thought, ‘How can I inject improvisation into the London of the early 21st century?’ I realised that if I do it at 6.30 in the morning nobody can say,‘I already have an appointment’. As long as people can get themselves up we can arrange it the day before just by making a few phone calls. The connection to Diaghilev is that inter-disciplinarity. Definitely, for me, he is one of the great curators of the 20th century. With his Ballet Russes, in the years between 1909 and 1929, he obviously revolutionised the world of dance. But they also gave incredible input into theatre design, into collaborations between artists, dancers and choreographers, between ballet, architecture, music and sound. If you think about these encounters – it was almost like a gesamtkunstwerk [an ideal synthesis of all the arts]. Composers of the importance of Stravinsky would do the sound, artists of the importance of Picasso or Braque or the Russian constructivists Goncharova or Popova would do stage sets. The dancers would be the likes of Nijinksy. Massine and Jean Cocteau are involved. And Diaghilev is the impresario who brings it all together and orchestrates it. In my very first exchange with J G Ballard, by fax, I asked him about my profession, about curating, and he defined it as ideally a kind of a junction making. Diaghilev is the great junction-maker of the 20th century. Curating is not only about bringing people into contact with objects. It is also objects and objects, and also about people and people. Diaghilev is a constant inspiration. I also love his quote: ‘I do nothing but I’m indispensable.’ And these conversations between Diaghilev and Cocteau where they say ‘Etonnez-moi!’ [‘Surprise me!’] They wanted the opposite of routine."