Reporter: As it happens, I’ve been editor of Art Forum for four years now—my very first issue, in fact, coincided with the first Frieze Art Fair~and so I remember well the moment I first heard about your plans to create the fair, since it involved, to my mind, some reconception of an art magazine, if only by extending the infrastructure around it. In this regard, precisely what made me excited about the fair also gave me pause: At a moment when art seemed in ever greater proximity with culture more generally—and when commercial culture was increasingly interested in offering what had traditionally belonged to the terrain of art, in terras of transformative experiences, education, etc. —Here was an effort plainly situating art within that broader landscape. There was a real risk for the reception and perception of art and criticism, I thought, but also amazing potential in shaping a public sphere and consciousness; either way， it seemed a gesture very much true to its time. But this is my experience from afar. Why did you create the fair? Where did the idea come from?
记者：碰巧，我在《艺术论坛》做编辑 已经4年了，我记得我做的头一期，恰 巧就是跟第一届Frieze艺术博览会有关 的，我记得当我第一次听到你们要创办 博览会的消息时，我觉得这是通过扩大 杂志的外部构造，对艺术杂志的一个重 新构思。我很激动，但也让我不得不冷 静下来思考：这个时代，艺术与普遍意 义上的大众文化日益靠近一商业性的 文化也日益有兴趣地从改革经验和教育 方面提供以前只属于艺术领地的一切， 你们是在这样一个更为广阔的前景下， 为艺术找寻位置。对于艺术和批评的接收与感知，这个行动是个真正的冒险， 但也可能就此形成公众的参与范围和艺 术意识；或者说，看上去这是一个很适 应时代需要的举措。这只是我遥远的感 受。为什么你们创立艺术博览会？怎么 会有这样的想法？
Sharp: You know, it’s interesting, because it didn’t in any way come out of conversations about developing the magazine. London was a major arts city and, when all the other major arts cities had art fairs, it was just incredibly surprising to us that there wasn’t one here—particularly given the developments in the city over a ten-year period. When we started the magazine in 1991 there were, what, maybe five serious international galleries in London, and now there are somewhere between forty and fifty? And then you’ve got a massive change in London as a financial center, with different kinds of people moving to the city, many of whom already have an interest in contemporary we were just a reflection of this, managed to bring everything more tightly into focus.
夏普：你知道，这其实很有趣，我们也 从未谈过要进一步发展杂志的事。伦敦 是个重要的艺术城市，当其他的很多艺 术城市都有博览会时，伦敦却没有，这 令人难以置信，尤其是这个城市经过了 10年的发展仍然没有。我们1991年创 立杂志的时候，伦 敦可能有5家严格 意义上的国际画 廊，现在，大约有 40-50家左右？伦 敦作为一个金融中 心，已经有了巨大 的变化，各类人都 来到这里，他们当 中的很多人对当代 艺术有兴趣。创办 这个博览会，我们 就是想真实地反映 这一切，或许我们是想方设法把各种事 物更集中地集合在一起，引起关注。
Slotover: I also had very fond memories of the Cologne art fairs of the early 1990s, especially the Unfairs. They were fantastic When we started the magazine and began traveling to look at art, fairs were already very important places for learning about artists and meeting people—for working out what was going on, basically.
斯洛托夫：我对于上世纪90年代初 科隆艺术博览会的印象很好，尤其是 Unfairs。他们非常棒。当我们创办这个 杂志并开始旅行欣赏艺术时，博览会已 经是可以见到艺术家和认识人的重要地 方了，去那儿起码可以知道人们都在干 什么。
Reporter: You were quoted recently in The Guardian as saying you first had the idea for the fair in 1998，which was surprising to me, given what I understand to have been the surrounding context at the time. There were fewer fairs, certainly. And I imagine, perhaps naively, that they did not yet have the complexion of creative entities. How were you looking at art fairs at that point?
记者：《卫报》最近引用过你们的话说 你们最早是1998年有创办博览会这个想法的，这让我很惊讶，因为想到了当 时的环境背景，那时的博览会更少。也 许我想得有些天真，那个时候他们还没 I有创造性实体的特性。从这点上看，你 是如何看待博览会的？
Slotover: Well, I actually don’t think there’s been such a huge change; they were important culturally then, as they are now. Cologne had the kind of energy that I think Frieze has now. But I do remember our thinking that when you get all these interesting people together in one place, you could make the whole experience less trade-fair-like and more art-like, or more festival-like. Not to say there aren’t great distinctions between these endeavors, but we saw ignored opportunities for making fairs more interesting places.
斯洛托夫：实际上我不认为有这么大的 |变化；就像现在一样它们当时在文化上 是很重要的。科隆具有的那种活力，我 想Frieze现在也具备了。但是我记得我 i们的想法，当你让所有有趣的人汇聚到 ! 一个地方时，你应该让他们感到这里更 具有艺术感，而不是商业感，或者说， 更像个节日。不要说这些努力之间没有 差别，但是我们错过了让展会更有趣的 !机会。
Sharp: The first person we employed was actually a full-time curator, Polly Staple, with whom we set up a nonprofit foundation to really arrive at what would be most interesting to us within this particular context.
夏普：我们雇佣的第一人是全职策展人 波莉斯戴博，与她一道，我们建立了 ；—个非盈利基金，以触及这个特殊的环 境里我们觉得最有趣的事物。
Reporter: Polly created a remarkable program that, I should say, gave me the opportunity to see things I wouldn’t have otherwise. But I would like to take a step back and ask how these and other moves—some art-like, some no-set your fair apart from others. You’ve already mentioned the earlier example of Cologne, but what about our own day?
记者：波莉创造了一个非凡的项目，可 以说，这使我有机会去观看一些事物，而 这些事物是在其他地方看不到的。但是我 想后退一步了解一下，这些或那些运动 ——其中一些和艺术有关，一些和艺术无 关，将你们的博览会与他人的区分开。你 曾经提过科隆博览会这个早期的例子，那 么现今我们又是什么情况呢？
Sharp: That’s hard to answer, because we didn’t set out to purposely be different from everyone else. But, that said, I do think that our desire to integrate artists into the fair through the projects program has changed the feeling of the whole environment.
夏普：很难回答，因为我们并未有意识 地和其他所有人不同。但是我可以这样 讲，我们将艺术通过各种项目融入博览 会的愿望改变了整体环境的感觉。
Slotover: I think we were the first fair to commission artists’ work.
斯洛托夫：我想我们是第一家授权委托 画家艺术作品的博览会。
Sharp: As far as I’m aware, that’s the case. Also, the talks program has brought major thinkers and artists to the fair; the music program even brought Karlheinz Stockhausen to London. And so the atmosphere changes as whole different audiences come to the fair than would have come otherwise. I also think the simple fact that we put the fair in the middle of a beautiful park in a major city gives you a completely different feeling from a convention center. And by having brilliant architects designing temporary structures for the fair, and deliberately confounding people’s expectations by physically changing the entrance of it each year, we’ve tried to create a place of discovery and excitement. And the galleries have used it，I think, to do incredibly interesting projects that they wouldn’t feel comfortable doing in the environment of any other fair. Klosterfelde’s Elmgreen & Dragset project~where the stand was divided in two, and one side replicated the other, complete with a bewigged stand-in for Martin Klosterfelde一is a case in point. Or the presence of the Wrong Gallery, which showed Tino Sehgal the first year. Bringing his work to audiences in this context was very, very powerful.
夏普：据我所知，确实是这样。演讲环节将重要的思想家和艺术家带到博览 会；音乐环节甚至把卡尔海因茨斯托 克豪森带到了伦敦。不同的观众群体来 到这里，整个氛围也发生了改变。另 夕卜，很简单的一点是我们将博览会的举 行地放在城市美丽的公园中心，与在会 议中心举办博览会相比，在公园举行能 给人一种完全别样的感觉。这里有智慧 的建筑师精彩设计的临时场馆，每年人 为地在入□处做些改变，让人们出乎意 料。我们努力创造一个给人新发现与兴 奋的地方。画廊也都尝试新奇的方法， 做出一些令人难以置信的有趣的项目， 这在其他博览会上是难以想象的。克洛 斯特费尔德的艾尔姆格林和德拉格赛特 艺廊，将展位分成两个，一个复制另外 一个，马丁 克洛斯特费尔德的复制品 戴着假发。还有“错误画廊”，第一年 展出了蒂诺塞加尔，将他的作品带到 这里，真的是非常非常有影响力的。
Slotover: So there’s a kind of art feeling when you walk in and, as Amanda said，a kind of confounding of expectations. I don’t know if that’s good for the market side or bad for it, but for us the program makes the fair a much more interesting place. It’s much more engaged.
斯洛托夫：就如阿曼达所言，走进来你 就有一种艺术的感觉，有种出乎意料的 感觉。我不知道这对市场方面来说好还 是不好。但对我们来说，这种设计使得 博览会成为一个更有趣的地方，互动性 大大加强。
Reporter: In fact, the thought immediately conies to mind that confounding expectations is actually essential to a successful business model~or at least according to various theorizations of business during the past decade where, say, a store might double as a community center of sorts. And so the fair presents this interesting little crystallization of potential and problem when it comes to art’s presentation.
记者：事实上，大脑里立即产生的出 乎意料的想法实际上对成功的商业模 式非常重要——或者至少是依据过去 几十年不同的商业理念，一个作为社 区中心的百货商店的营业额可能会翻 倍。因此当博览会涉及艺术表现时， 就会呈现出这种可能性的有趣结晶和 问题所在。
Slotover: Well, both the potential and problem do exist, and it’s important to remind people of that. But I think of what Gavin Brown一who’s on the committee of the fair~once said to me，which is that galleries should be places for radical thought. We’re supposed to enable artists, who are making the most bizarre propositions about life，to do their work. I think almost ail the galleries in the fair have that in mind somewhere一that they’re not just selling beautiful things to wealthy people. There’s another important aspect to it.
斯洛托夫：可能性与问题都存在，提醒 人们注意到这一点很重要。我认为作为博览会委员之一的加文布朗说的一句 话很对，他曾经说，画廊应该是具有根 本性思考的地方。我们应该让艺术家， 这些对于生命能阐发出最奇异的主张的 人，去做他们的工作。我认为在博览会 上，所有的画廊都应该记住，他们不仅 仅是在向富人们售卖艺术品，还有其他 更重要的方面应该关注。
Reporter: That reminds me of a text Okwui Enwezor wrote for Artforuni's September 2007 issue, arguing that art fairs’ becoming more like grand shows has changed the critical context to some extent—that the seeming conflation of terms makes people pay more attention to the market than, perhaps, to artistic practices. And yet, as you say, there are still meaningful differences between the grand show and the fair.
记者：这让我想起了 2007年9月《艺 术论坛》期刊里，奥克维恩维佐曾写 过的一篇文章，认为艺术博览会正变成 了大型的展览秀，让决定性的环节在某 种程度上发生改变，表面上的条件合并 使人们开始更注重市场，而不是注重 艺术行为。但是，正如你说的， 在大型的展览秀和艺术博览会 之间，仍然是存在着重要的差 别的。
Sharp: Our fair can be successful only if work is sold It is a market, first and foremost. That isn’t true of a biennial.That’s a simple definition that separates the two.
夏普：只有作品卖掉，我们的 博览会才能算是成功。它首先 是个市场，这也是最重要的。 但这又并非一个真正的双年展。 这个简单的定义就可以将二者 分开。
Slotover: Of course, works are sold from biennials，and works are exhibited but not sold at fairs as well. But at a fair you’ve got two or three thousand objects never intended to be seen together. Unlike biennials, where there is some kind of relationship conceived for the objects, here we have a distributive method of exhibiting. It’s a completely different thing, and we’d never pretend otherwise. You can try to view an art fair like an exhibition—and you might actually get some fantastic moments—but you’ve got to have your blinkers on, because when you’re looking at one thing you’ve got a hundred others shouting for your attention. A lot of people can’t focus in that context, though I think we’ve managed to train ourselves to do it.
斯洛托夫：当然，双年展可以 卖掉作品，但是博览会上，只是展览， 而不是卖作品。在博览会上，两三千个 作品集中在一起展示，在其他场合是不 会看到它们在一起的。我们的展示方式 极为分散c而双年展上，作品之间总是 有些联系的。这完全是不同的，我们从 不假装如此。你可以把艺术博览会看作 一个展览，实际上也确实能发现很多令 人惊异的时刻，但你必须集中精神，因 为当你看一个作品的时候，还有另外100个在吸引着你的眼球呢。许多人在 这上面无法集中精力，尽管我想我们已 经被训练得适应这一点了。
Reporter: Speaking of training, did you find at the outset that you already had the business acumen for a fair? Up to that point, you were running a magazine.
记者：说到训练，从一开始，你们就有 组织博览会的商业头脑吗？因为你们之 前一直在运营一本杂志。
Slotover: Well, by default, when Amanda and I started the magazine we had to manage the business side. No one else was going to do it. So while we were editing the magazine, we had to do accounts. We’ve had to do cashflow projections.
斯洛托夫：当阿曼达和我开创这个杂志 的时候，我们必须将杂志的商业方面做 好。那时，也没有其他人来做这个。当 我们编辑杂志的时候，我们还得学会做 账。我们必须处理现金流规划。
Sharp: We’ve done every single job，both of us，on the magazine and every single job on the fair.
夏普：每一项工作我们都做过，无论是 杂志还是博览会上的任何一项工作。
Slotover: You know, I remember someone saying to us， “Oh，my God, you were intellectuals, and now you're businesspeople.”
斯洛托夫：你知道，我记得有人跟我说 过：天呀，你们以前可是知识分子，现 在竟然变为商人了。
Sharp: Oh, yes.
夏普：嗯，是的。
Slotover： And it was hilarious for us to hear that, because we don’t see a huge change.
斯洛托夫：听到这种想法我们觉得有些 可笑。因为我们并未发现这么大的变化。
Sharp: Oddly enough，I think people’s conception of what we do is quite different from the reality of it, because we always had to manage the business side, but it’s not as if we are directly involved with the sale of art now in any way.
夏普：很奇怪，我觉得人们认为我们做 了什么和实际上我们做了什么，这之间 有很大区别，因为我们一方面必须维持 它的商业面，但这并不是说我们就直接 做艺术买卖。
Reporter: What does a gallery want from a fair organizer?
记者：一个画廊想从一个博览会组织者 那里得到什么呢？
Sharp: If a gallery comes to a fair, they want the logistics to work. They want to walk in and see that their walls are good, the light’s good, the floors-everything that enables them to get on and do their work. And that includes providing a place that attracts curators，collectors, and critics. They want a productive environment.
夏普：画廊参加博览会，是希望一切工 作能有后勤保障。他们希望进来以后， 看到他们的展台墙面很好，灯光和地板 也好，方方面面都能够保证他们顺利开 展工作。所以，这就需要提供一个地方， 能将策展人，收藏家和评论家吸引过来。 他们需要一个具有生产力的环境。