Hans Obrist Interviews Julian Assange

What’s the Latest Development?

Though not yet charged with a crime, Julian Assange remains under house arrest in rural England where he is fighting to avoid being extradited to Sweden. It is a change of pace, to say the least, for the 40 year-old man who has been on the move since his twenties. Though Assange is laid up, his revolutionary media organization WikiLeaks continues to release primary government documents to the public. Most recently, State Department cables originally withheld from the huge cache released in 2010 have been made public. 

What’s the Big Idea?

Swiss art curator Hans Obrist has done a two-part interview of Assange for e-flux, a New York-based arts magazine. In the first part, Obrist examines Assange’s early life and the winds that carried him to create WikiLeaks. In the second, Obrist takes questions from popular contemporary artists. Recently held under odd circumstances by his government, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei asks: “How can individuals use their power to question state power?” Assange responds: “I think a certain philosophical attitude is needed. And it is this attitude that then pulls together the practical considerations that must be part of a realization of that attitude…”