The structural integrity of a beaten egg

I recently heard someone suggest that the best way to experience the work of Tino Sehgal is to stumble upon it completely by accident, unsuspecting and with no prior knowledge or chance to brace yourself. In that regard, I could hardly have been better prepared for This Situation at the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum in 2015. I was studying in the Netherlands at the time, and had a friend visiting for a few days. We had just wandered through the museum’s permanent design history collection and were walking through some empty rooms trying to find our way to the museum café. It was a trap.

I can’t recall the precise wording of the opening line – perhaps it was something like, “What do you think is the meaning of work?” The purpose of the question was simply to start a conversation. We realised we were the only ones in the room together with a young woman who had approached us out of nowhere. There was no way out. She didn’t even look like a performer – there was no way for us to have been prepared. She invited us to follow her through the large, empty room as we talked. My friend had completely clammed up, and I felt a responsibility to take the word.

The conversation quickly slid into absurdity as I struggled to come up with intelligent responses to the performer’s questions. She had an incredible ability to turn each of my answers into even harder questions. As we reached the end of the room I saw another woman waiting for us in the doorway. Behind her I spotted another empty room. Was she also in on this? I started sweating. As the first woman handed us over to the other, she passed along a brief summary of our conversation. “These two guys have various interesting ideas about a lot of things,” she said. “I think you’ll have to ask them about it.”

I realised that this moment of the performance was intended as a gentle moment of transition, treating our conversation as a valuable treasure to be carefully passed from one host to the other. The next host was meant to pick up the conversation where the first host had left off. Sadly, our conversation had taken on the structural integrity of a beaten egg. There was nothing of substance to hand over. I felt guilty for making their job so hard. I wanted to suggest that we could just start over, or even better, that they could start over with someone else. We started walking through the next room, and it dawned on me that there was no way of telling how long this would last. As we were passed from host to host I relived every anxious phone conversation I’d ever had. I kept blanking on words, stumbling over sentences and mixing my thoughts. In a final and merciful act of self preservation I silently conceded defeat and walked through the remaining rooms saying as little as possible. The last room spit us out right next to the museum café.

A while later I learned that Tino Sehgal forbids any kind of photographic documentation of his work. He won’t even let it exist as a written set of instructions, and as a result he has to instruct all of his performers in person. This was a satisfying bit of context to my experience at the Stedelijk Museum. Whenever I retell this story to others I make sure to also describe the complicated process behind acquiring one of his works – a procedure in which Sehgal personally describes the work to the museum director or gallery owner with a lawyer present in the room. Sehgal is obsessed with authentic human interaction. His materials are the air in the room, the stumbling conversation, the nervous sweat on your back. I remember leaving the performance worried that I had messed up the whole piece. However in Sehgal’s view it probably couldn’t have turned out better.