School Spirit

The first in a new series from Dis Voir, Encounters asks a well-known contemporary artist to decide which subjects he or she wants to discuss in their book. Each artist's book therefore offers a specific experience in terms of content. In accordance with this principle, each artist also selects a person -- due to certain elective affinities -- with whom he or she would like to share this exchange. At the very least, the resulting collaborative volumes serve as an artistic and political laboratory of the present. In this first installment, French artist Pierre Huyghe chooses to encounter Canadian writer Douglas Coupland, author of Generation X, because of the influence Coupland has had on his generation and on Huyghe's own work. Together they discuss the construction of characters, of narrative techniques based on chance, and the political dimension present in Coupland's work -- themes that are also fundamental questions on Huyghe's projects.