Big Think

Simon de Pury: What is interesting is whenever you have an economic activity that develops in a place, you have parallel to that a very strong creative art birth. For instance in the early ‘90s when the new technologies became very strong in Seattle and the areas, and you had the whole grunge music that happened in the same place . . . And that’s no coincidence. You had groups like Nirvana, Sound Garden, Pearl Jam, and all of that – that became big, and then it became a worldwide movement. Or if you have such a vibrant situation in China for instance, today, it is to do also with the strong economic development. So you can safely assume that those places that have the strongest economic development in the years to come will equally produce some of the most interesting art. So Brazil – Brazil is an extraordinary place, and some great, great art is being produced in Brazil today. So we see it in our web site. You see the global interests. You can actually calculate how many hits you get from each country. You see that interest coming out of places like Brazil for contemporary art is massive; or the interest that we get out of countries like Indonesia, huge; Turkey, massive. And so these are some of the places that are going to produce some of the best art. Recorded on: 2/7/08