The fifth panel of the 15th Anniversary Edition of the Istanbul International Arts & Culture Festival — IST.FESTIVAL — featured Désiré Feuerle, Manuel Rabaté, and Tricia Tuttle in conversation with Daniele Maruca, titled Sacred Realities: Curating the Invisible. Their dialogue delved into the unseen frameworks that shape perception in museums and private collections, reflecting on curation as both an aesthetic and metaphysical practice. Together, they explored how exhibitions transform absence into presence and turn carefully constructed illusions into lived, felt experience.
“Emotions are real, and they are real for us. They are the one thing that makes all human beings sort of live in this world in similar ways, because we actually perceive also through emotions.”
Daniele Maruca Good evening. Hello, everyone. Hello. Hello. Welcome to everyone to this talk, and I’m very happy to see you here, Tricia, Manuel, Désiré. My name is Daniele Maruca. I’m, since over 10 years working with Desire Feuerle in Berlin, and actually, Desire, you, together with Demet and Alphan, had this idea of this talk. And to combine different worlds that are not so different and so far away from each other within the context of this incredible festival in this amazing city. And since the title of the very big question that we have all been asked; ‘‘What is really real?’’ is actually the golden thread through all the activities. One of my personal answers to moderate this talk is that emotions are real, and that they are real for us. They are the one thing that makes all human beings sort of live in this world in similar ways, because we actually perceive also through emotions. And to quote an incredible woman who just left us, Jane Goodall, actually emotions are also our connection to animals and to nature. And I think they are incredibly important in the context of the arts. And being within the context that has been founded on the basis of the vision of Desire around something that one cannot really compare to what the standards of museums linked to design, the design of exhibitions, would offer. I think it’s an incredible opportunity to have Tricia and Manuel to speak about how in these two incredible institutions that you are directing, some of the aspects that are solved in a different way in the Feuerle Collection, and then we will talk about it, are actually handled. So cinema, film are one of the most powerful languages in society nowadays. Creating emotion and also analyzing or presenting emotion. So the relationship between filmmakers and film directors, actors, and the public is so holy, but also so invisible and so strong that I think it’s great that you will help us to talk about this, Tricia. Thank you so much. And I mean, as an art historian, and I must say as a museum director, I admire your work immensely, Manuel, and I think what you achieved in over ten years, I think, now almost ten years of your presence there as the director of one of the, I would say, one of most significant new projects museographically and museologically of the whole world. The Louvre Abu Dhabi will be one of the big references also for the students in the future for many, many years to come. So this idea was to understand how… On the one hand, Tricia is directing the International Berlin Film Festival. You have been there since April 2024. You’ve been in London before, you will tell us something about it and how emotions play a role in your project, but also how Manuel and in this incredible project in Abu Dhabi that is a universal museum, but not only that, and as connecting so many worlds with each other is dealing with the challenges of every day for an international museum like yours, but also with emotions. So there’s something, those things that actually remain in everybody when they visit a museum, and then they go to their home. So their work, their lives, and everything that happens in their daily life. And Desire, you have created a total work of art. And calling it a museum is actually almost difficult because it’s so much more the result of your creativity and your vision for so many decades, because you actually put everything together in this space in Berlin that you have been studying and thinking and collecting for decades, but it’s not what the classic museum would be. It’s more of a work of art where light becomes your language. So I think… We can now start with a set of very simple questions, actually. But I would like to start. And then I think, let’s see where all this takes us. I think we will keep it very flexible tonight. Thank you for giving us this chance. Tricia. You have been the director of the Berlinale, as I said, since April 2024. You were in London before. I think in your work, you are bringing, and I just saw it for the very first time, that I had the chance to meet you together with Desire. You bring incredibly sharp intellectual analysis of what you do and consciousness, but also warmth, which is incredibly important. You have an almost holistic approach to the city as well. Can you tell us something about how you see the Berlinale now in Berlin? Thank you.
Tricia Tuttle Absolutely, and maybe a little context setting as well, too. I mean, you all might be familiar with the Berlin Film Festival, but we celebrated our 76th anniversary last year. So it’s one of the oldest film festivals in the world. Really, all the history, the legacy of the festival is immense with filmmakers who’ve won our main award, ranging from Mohammed Rasoulof to Paul Thomas Anderson to Lou’s godmother, the beautiful Agnes Varda. And really, it’s such an interesting space. We are both an industry festival. We run a huge marketplace of 20,000 international professionals who come together in February every year from over 160 countries. But we’re also really pretty uniquely bringing together an industry festival with a public, a very, very public audience festival. So last year, there were nearly 350,000 admissions. Which is huge, I mean, and the festival itself has been very shaped by a number of things. I mean one of them is that the festival was created as a post-war sort of reconstruction project that was about bringing together cultures to communicate through art and to understand each other through art, but also, and that very much is in the DNA of the festival that we run now, but also what I love about the festival and what I’ve really tried to understand coming to the festival is how much of the city is in the DNA and the personality of the Berlinale. So it’s a city that’s full of, even in the last 100 years, some terrible histories, and also some beautiful histories. You know, some of the artists who’ve emerged, we operate our market out of the Martin Gropius Bau and Bauhaus, the cinema of the Weimar Republic, also the fine art of the Weimar Republic is very much, I think, a part of the city. We are at an interesting crossroads as well, too. I mean, in a way, our market side of the festival and our public side of the festival have become like two sides of the brain that aren’t communicating as much as they should. And it really is important. And I think this mirrors what’s happening in the cinema industry more generally. I mean, cinema has always been a strange space to make art because on the one hand, it’s assumed to be and is. At the far extreme, a sort of commercial entertainment product, and at the other end, it is a work of pure fine art. And we operate in that space between. So I think one of the things that I really want to do is sort of own that, to bring those two sides of the brain back together more, be part of the city, reconnect with the city. And that’s where we are right now, I think.
Daniele Maruca I love that. You’re really working on this, and we heard it from you from the very first moment when you arrived, and you met Desire, and I was there. It was super nice for me. Now, the first question for you, Manuel. Actually, there are so many things one could say about the Louvre Abu Dhabi. I think it’s a project everybody is curious about. The ones who have not been there, like myself, and the ones who have been there were incredibly fascinated by it. Can you tell us something about it, about you, and how you landed this incredible project there?
Manuel Rabete Eight years. We’re celebrating our 10th anniversary. We opened in 2017. We are not far. You can easily jump on a plane after the festival and join us in Abu Dhabi. I think we have proposed a reinvention of the Universal Museum. One new chapter in the long book of what universal or encyclopedic museums can be. You have in mind, we have many people living in New York who came to the Met, the Louvre, of course, the British Museum, the Hermitage, these museums which are offering an encyclopédic classification of the history of art. In Abu Dhabi, when the Louvre, which is the museum of the museum, met the capital city of the UAE, we had the opportunity to insist on something which is important in the DNA of the Arab world, the narratives, and storytelling in a poetic way, not in a two-use sense. And we insisted on the flow, on the continuity of the creativity in humanity. So basically, it shows a chronological approach. Louvre Abu Dhabi is like a time machine. You start roughly at the Neolithic Revolution. And in every room, in every showcase, actually, you have artworks from different civilizations talking to each other in echo, in resonance, and so on. So, of course, you can deep dive, you can understand, you can learn a lot. But you are taken by beauty and by the… Let’s say the anthropological approach that we all have, what makes us human, and I think this thread of beauty allows you to understand how we are connected. So this is what we do, and we’re doing it with objects from the French Museum, we do it with a collection which has been developed in Abu Dhabi, we do it with what I call ambassador objects coming from key museums in the world. We have masterpieces from the Philippines. So this museum is a world museum where you go. It’s also, because I think the overarching question is what is the reality of the real and so on. We are, in a way, working in the footsteps of the imaginary museum, which is the matrix of all these museums, where you can invite artworks from all over the world. Malraux had one element, but he was using photography. He was using reproduction to summon all the cultures of the world. In our case, we’re more on the Walter Benjamin side of things, which is that we insist on the aura of the authentic, important, real objects. So, actually, this is not a replica museum of a replica. We have some images. We use technology to help you understand more. But we, thanks to the convening power of Abu Dhabi, thanks to friendship with all the French museums, and I mean, we are able to gather real masterpieces of humanity from all periods of time and all civilizations, all religions. So this is really what you see as important artifacts, and you can have this physical exchange as well. In a nutshell.
Daniele Maruca That’s very interesting. I mean, we will get a bit deeper into this when we talk about your relationship, also to the public and emotions. And now, to let’s say, complete the introduction, I would like to ask Desire about his projects. But before, I’d like to quote something that Tricia has said in the past days that I like very much and that I think can show us a little bit the connection between these two worlds. That, Desire’s project, you said, Tricia, correct me if I’m quoting it in the wrong way, has something that actually reminds of film in the way it is curated. Desire is the founder of the Feuerle Collection. He co-founded the institution with his wife, but the project is his for many decades, and he curated the whole project. Using light as a language, space as a language, his feelings, and he created a space in which a system of juxtapositions that would be invisible maybe otherwise, are suddenly accessible. Desire, can you tell us something about your project in Berlin, your Gesamtkunstwerk, your total work of art?
Désiré Feuerle Yes, first of all, I think I want to say I’m a really passionate collector. I really love art and I love to select art. It’s not only that I like, I like to select things which are meaningful to me. And so I was collecting many, many things. I started really as a child, already with keys when I was eight years old. And then later, my interest shifted to silver. Silver tea and coffee pots, drinking vessels from Bauhaus, Tiffany, to Roman silver, I would say. So it’s a very wide spectrum that I have always been interested in. And then very early as a child, I really found my love in Asia, because it was adding something to my world, which I did know from Europe. Something that I really thought was important for me. It was step-by-step, so I went in, my love really developed in many fields and also contemporary. So, for me, it was very important to collect these things, to use them one day for something. So like, I sometimes tell people, you know, like a cook, a chef has many ingredients in the kitchen, you don’t always use them. Or a painter has many colors, but you don’t always use them colors. But you should have them when you want to create something. So this is what I did. And then, of course, after many years, you think about what you do. You give something to a museum, or a loan, or even, you know, you could give many things, and maybe you are even creative. You can install the piece when you give many, and it’s named after you, whatever. But I was not interested in that at all. I thought the beautiful thing is to create something very different to create an experience. So I looked for the right building. It could have been many buildings, but by chance, I have to say, really by chance, it was a bunker. It was a telecommunication bunker. And what I liked about it is the roughness. It’s a very rough building, but it’s a beautiful building in a way. And with the decadence, I really think it is very beautiful. I see real beauty in the cracks of the ceilings, in the cracked floors, and in the massive way this brutalist building is. And this attracted me to show very fragile, very fine, very sensitive pieces, because I love sensitive things. But the contrast is very attractive to me. So when I was thinking about it all, when I saw it, I thought this is an incredible building. It’s just important to turn the energy around, you know, because a lot of people say, ”Oh a bunker, why do you do something in a bunker?” I told them, ”Look what I did, don’t think it’s a bunker. Look first, and you’ll later tell me how you feel.” So it was a big thing for me also to change this energy, this, you know, something in the bunker is directly, you think a bit negative, you know, it’s not the normal thing to put art inside, I would say. Especially not sensitive art, and especially not very meditative, sensual art. So it was, from that moment on, I was thinking. So I created something starting through, you have to go down, it’s also psychological, it is something when you go down it’s very good to start. And through a small room, I changed the entrance to a small room, where you hear music by John Cage. And through this music already in a dark room, in these few minutes, very few minutes, very minimal tones, you are, without realizing, changed and prepared really to go and see what you see. So then, when the art mediator is with the people, gives a sign, and they go out of the room, and they have the first view. So that’s super important. What you see first, the first view, is key to me. And you can influence people with that. You can grab them, you have them in your mindset, and then everybody finds their own way, but this was very important for me. So, and then, you know, the people walk, and then another thing I tried was what was for me, very important, water. We have a lake room, an artificial lake. It’s 2,500 square meters, a flooded space. And you do not really realize in the first moment, and you’re tricked, you think that it’s very deep. It is deep, but it is not as deep as you think, and you can look down. It’s the reflection, it’s the mirrored ceiling. So it’s something you are a bit confused about. Your eyes do not really get it. It’s really difficult to get. Even for me, and I know it now, it’s difficult. And that’s the beauty of floats. This is another thing. I try to float a bit in life. This is my life philosophy. I like to be taken away from something. So an art piece also has to take me away. If it does not take me away, it can also shock me. That’s also good. So I tried really hard in this place to make something with no labels. That’s also very important because when you read. People always read, they read, and I think you know there is no more than the read at the end. It blocks them from feeling it’s much better you feel and then you look instead of reading. And a lot of people, I see them reading, reading, reading, and seeing hundreds of works, and for example, in the Louvre, I went with friends there, everybody’s running then, they want to see the Mona Lisa. But they miss maybe a beautiful painting by Leonardo da Vinci just on the way, and everybody walks by and does not see that. So I really think it’s very important to give. Also, a hint to make, I did that with light. So I also created the light; it was a long process. I developed this together with a very good German lighting company. To have a very, I would say it’s maybe the best light system I have ever seen. It’s very complicated for that; they didn’t make it a second time. Because it is very complicated, you need a person who has a good eye, you have one with a mediocre eye, everything is mediocre. Um, so the important thing is, and I think for that reason, we also have very young people. We have a very young audience, 25 years is maybe average. Maybe the other day, I was very impressed with myself. And you know why? Because I think a lot of young people today want to, they like it. They like it that you do not want to teach them something, you know, that it’s not a museum, you have to do this and this, and what they tell me. So you go inside. And you go like to a park, in a pack also, it’s nice, there are no labels on the trees. So I think it’s another experience, and it’s beautiful, and as I heard from many young people, they said it’s a cool place here. They do not even know maybe, but the third time they come, maybe they ask what is this, what is that, and it is a beautiful process, I think, to get connected with art, you know, and through that you maybe like something which a person has not thought about before.
Daniele Maruca Yeah, thank you. I mean, it’s to the point, the experience is very important, and emotions. And actually, now going back to Tricia, what role does emotion play when you curate a program?
“Great cinema has a holy trinity of the heart, the head, and the soul. And the greatest filmmakers really do hold all of those things in tension.”
“I think really, really great filmmakers have a way of making what is invisible visible to us in a way that actually changes the way that I see the world after I’ve seen that film.”
Tricia Tuttle It’s the starting point, I think, for me. It’s not the endpoint. I think great cinema has a holy trinity of the heart, the head, and the soul. And the greatest filmmakers really do hold all of those things in tension. And I think some curators possibly start from the head. But I think heart because we, partly because I’ve always worked for public festivals, and it’s about bringing people into the cinema. In a way, I mean, while curating for a film festival is also curating and it has a relationship to the work that Manuel and Desire do, it’s different also because we are responding to the new films that are made and we view the films as individual pieces and respond to them and invite them, not because they have a relationship, always, sometimes. But not necessarily because they have a relationship to the other works that we’ve invited. And it’s only later in the process, when you get two-thirds of the way through curation, that you start to really see the shapes and maybe also respond to the shapes even more. But I think we always start with emotion because that is, a lot of people go to the cinema, and I’m drawn to the cinema and always have been drawn to cinema because it makes me understand the world that I live in, and it opens up. You asked as well about the invisible when we were talking about the session, and I think really, really great filmmakers have a way of making what is invisible visible to us in a way that actually changes the way that I see the world after I’ve seen that film. And we’re always thinking about this, but that’s a very emotional, I think, response to cinema.
Daniele Maruca I mean, it’s a very complex environment. I must say, just for all of us, I mean, we are trying to create something in 40 minutes that would require a much longer time, but it’s a very complex environment, the one in which you work. There are so many layers in the audience, in the juries, in the film teams, and all viewpoints are important. And I have the feeling that, to you, they are all important, and this is really what you work around. Can you maybe explain what you are doing, putting everything together?
Tricia Tuttle Yeah, you’re right. I mean, I’ll do it very briefly, but it is very complex because, as I mentioned before, we have an industry function. And I take that really seriously. I don’t really care about the end of the industry, that, you know, as Martin Scorsese said, the sort of theme park. And I might like to go as a spectator, but that’s not where I work. But I care about the industry because it means artists are able to sustain themselves and to continue to make the work. So, really thinking about that and how we serve. You know, the industry that makes cinema that matters. And we’re thinking about public audiences, and we’re also thinking about over 200 films about individual points of connection with the program. So I know you might respond to a piece of cinema completely differently than I do. And I think that’s fascinating. And we are always thinking about different ways in for people who come to cinema for different reasons or to maybe come because they want to recognize something about their own lives, so there’s a lot of tension that you have to hold to put together a good program, but I do think that is really, that’s one of the things maybe that I’m most interested about, you know, that bringing that tension back into balance with the festival. It’s a little bit vague, but I think, you know, anyone who works in curation knows that you sort of feel when that’s working and when it’s off as well.
Daniele Maruca I mean, on the one hand, numbers and statistics help; on the other hand, feeling is very important, the way you would go because you feel that’s right. With all your knowledge, obviously, and the sharpness of your thought, but then also with the feeling.
Tricia Tuttle Absolutely. And I was just going to add that I think, like most sorts of museums or gallery spaces, it’s like I don’t curate everything myself. I watch many, many, many films, but I also have a team of probably nearly a hundred people who contribute because we watch 8,000 films to get to the final festival, and I love that. The prism that’s created when we all bring different perspectives on the work, I think, that’s one of the real privileges of curating for a film festival as well.
Daniele Maruca I mean, there’s a very high degree of identification of your team with your institutions, as I can tell you, as somebody who lives in Berlin has observed this, and knows your team. That’s very well done. And Manuel, I had the chance in the past years to be once in a panel with Jules Saint-Gerre, I think. And then one of the discussions actually leads to our next question. And it’s also very linked to what has been said before, and especially what Tricia said. It was about how to win new audiences. I mean, Desiré is welcoming people, especially the young people, as you also said, into his world, and they discover, maybe also themselves, but secret things about you, just by watching how you curated it. Juliette said back then, it’s actually a very complex work you’re doing in the Louvre with the audiences, and how to secure future audiences as well. Now I turn it into a question. What role does feeling play for you when you organize this at the Louvre Abu Dhabi?
“We truly believe that there can be a multiplicity of readings and experience,
what we would offer to everyone, I think, is driven by beauty, by this universal perception, understanding of beauty, even when it is the otherness, we can recognize.”
Manuel Rabete I think there is a huge range of feelings, with an “s”, when you enter such a place. We receive 1.4 million visitors per year. We’re in the top 50 of the world’s museums. So of course, we’re not trying to push one reading or one type of feeling that you have to experience. We truly believe that there can be a multiplicity of readings and experience, what we would offer to everyone, I think, is driven by beauty, by this universal perception, understanding of beauty, even when it is the otherness, we can recognize, and all these objects have been selected, they survive through time, because they have been loved, because they’ve been cared about. So, these objects from the oldest of time up to now have this resonance. So I think this is part of the feeling that anyone would experience in our galleries. There is also something very strong in this globalized world, in a very cosmopolitan city like Abu Dhabi, which is due to the feeling about identity. We are in a world where identities are, let’s say, struggling or trying to reposition themselves in this overly connected world, and so in our galleries, you will see objects talking to almost all the identities of the world. As Turks, you would find many things from the Ottoman, but also one of our star paintings by Osman Hamdi Bey is something you would certainly find between you on this piece, but you would see it’s Hamdi Bey talking to Monet and close to tribal arts that are coming from the eastern island. And you won’t understand what we share, what was the eco. So your identity would be in dialogue with the other identity of the world. And this would be positive globalization, if I could frame it in this way. So we have that. We have a room where you have the Torah, the Bible, the Quran. On some sacred texts in Sanskrit. So people enter this room. The light is very dimmed to protect the artworks and also a little bit of scenography. But there is an emotion. There is something moving to see this in full respect without saying one religion is better than the other, but that we share this aspiration to spirituality and that it has driven some of the most important forms of beauty as well. So I think this is where feelings are everywhere in our museum, and we use them to connect us. I was, Stefan, you give me the desire to share anecdotes because that could be my closure on this. We receive groups all the time, of course. And one day, I’m receiving a group of, we say, people of determination. They were blind or having difficulty seeing. And I’m trying to explain Louvre Abu Dhabi to someone who cannot see, an old Emirati. He wanted me to introduce a French lady to get married. But we were jokingly talking. And I was trying to explain the universal message. I was to explain this incredible architecture designed by Jean Nouvel, which is a huge dome of 1800 diameter, filtering the light. So it’s like a Medina city, like a museum which is made of little houses. The rooms are houses, connected, and we’re on the sea on all sides. You have Moucharabie. You’re really in a contextualized architecture of something which is totally in its territory, totally modern, totally. But at the same time, a place of pleasure. And I was trying to explain the rain of light. So I’m trying to imagine how to explain the sun, which is going through eight layers of metal to get this physical feeling. I was talking, talking, he was joking, and at one point, the sun touched his skin and he moved, and then he understood. I was almost crying, literally. Because I was trying to explain the sensorial approach that is in all museum directors’ minds, happening with someone who couldn’t see and he was understanding how the full structure of the Louvre Abu Dhabi was working to welcome you and to treat you, to prepare you for this emotion of beauty.
Daniele Maruca It’s beautiful. Thank you very much. I mean, we are all, actually, in an environment that is very young, actually. If you think museums are coming from the 19th century in this form, as a house, open to the public and not only to private collectors, cinema, I mean, it’s very young. Desire, actually, your project, I would say, is the youngest in some ways, because you open this gate between cultures and you give this chance to pass through this gate, through times and cultures, and geographic regions. And actually, you told me something when you visited, after you visited the Louvre, that you liked a lot seeing Leonardo da Vinci in the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Why? I just have to add. We don’t have any time. I don’t know if these last minutes are for the questions. So I’m very sorry that we cannot put all these incredible things together so quickly. Maybe you can give a quick answer, but thank you so much for this.
“Art is for everybody. It’s not really ‘It should be here for these people because it is born here’, it’s universal art.”
Désiré Feuerle When I was in the Louvre Abu Dhabi, seeing Leonardo da Vinci. I really think it is something; it feels so different to see a painting taken out of the context. It is so attractive, and it’s exactly, now it’s this big discussion in the world, can be a Bickmann painting, leave Germany, whatever, or it has to be all shown, the country, I completely disagree. I completely disagree. Art is for everybody. It’s not really “It should be here for these people because it is born here”; it’s universal art. Second, then the artists would still be alive, many of them would love to bring something to a completely different country with a completely different background. And I think that’s very attractive. This is the future; also, go over borders. This is what the world should really be, not narrowing. That, for that reason, in the Louvre Abu Dhabi, I think it’s very cool to see. When I saw it there, it was such a different feeling than you would see in Italy.
Daniele Maruca I mean, one of the core things was actually to connect also your experiences as an expert and scholar, and author, and concentrating on film, Tricia, with the museum, asking you if you had in your life a strong experience in a museum. And actually, my next question would have been to Manuel, what role does film play in your museum? And then I would have asked Desire what film is for you because you dedicate so much to film, lately, in your interdisciplinary project? Do you think we will make it to give a short answer to this question really super quick? Because I see that, and actually, I would love to have questions from the public. I think this is a discussion that should go on forever, for like hours. I don’t know, I know it’s not possible, but yeah, maybe, can you try it?
Manuel Rabete Godard wanted to run through the Louvre. We’re doing the opposite. We want to take the time. We show cinema in the evolution of the history of representation and the history of art. So you have acceleration, print, coins, and multiplication of images. Photography is definitely a rupture. And cinema is another of these ruptures, in which everything is changing. The people at the time don’t see, but they understand something is happening. All the questions that we have about AI, I think, are the same. The next room that we need to build for Louvre Abu Dhabi will be. What is the impact of this? So this is how we put cinema as a multiplication of images on access to images.
Tricia Tuttle And I will speak true to form as somebody who loves cinema. And I think an exhibition that really made a huge impact on me was Ólafur Elíasson’s Turbine Hall at the Tate, The Weather Project, because it was incredibly cinematic. It was a collective experience that I was having with everyone in the room, children rolling around on the ground, seeing themselves in the light, and really magical, really spiritual experience that made me feel like I do when I see those moments where a filmmaker opens up the curtains to show you something that you haven’t seen before.
Daniele Maruca So great to see through your eyes.
Désiré Feuerle Yes, I mean for me also film is very important for that. We’re adding it more and more. I try to add more in the museum to look at it also more as an art piece, you know, because it’s not considered art, but it can be an art piece, and many, many beautiful movies are art pieces. So I really think it’s very important, and also the language. An art piece, you look at, and you can think whatever you want. About a film, I would say the person who makes this film has a very clear vision. You can go into it, but it’s also very interesting. I like that very much; this is a different thing.