Yes, Virginia, these are complicated times. And this year's Whitney Biennial exposes the perversity of it all. Confronting longstanding claims that the storied event has become a brackish affair, its current installment—called Day for Night, inspired by François Truffaut's 1973 film La nuit américaine—breaks all sorts of rules. This time, for starters, the biannual showcase of contemporary American art includes non-American artists, chosen by European-born curators: Chrissie Iles of the Whitney (who is English), and Philippe Vergne (who's French) of Minneapolis's Walker Center for Art. There's also work by a fictional entity called Reena Spaulings, a show-within-the-show by the Wrong Gallery (a gallery that's not really a gallery) and even a third exhibition curator, named Toni Burlap, who Iles and Vergne invented. On opening day, we met with them (Iles and Vergne, that is) in the Whitney's offices, where—having spent the past year scouring the country for rising talent—they explained why the fictions aren't fictional, how non-American is the new American and why they stopped in Tijuana, Mexico during their road trip through the U.S.

Which one of you is Toni Burlap?

Philippe Vergne: Her! [points to an empty corner].

Chrissie Iles: Over there! [points in a different direction].

Wherever Toni is, where did he/she/it come from?

Vergne: We thought about how the biennial was a collaboration and how the result would be something we couldn't have individually done the same way. So it was like identifying a third curator, a third entity born from our combined efforts, viewpoints and expertise.

This biennial seems full of art world inside jokes and other fictitious characters. Does that somehow reflect art, or the general mood, right now?

Vergne: I don't think there are any inside jokes. With collectives like Reena Spauling or the Wrong Gallery, I think they're just names, and those names represent people who are attempting to articulate the way they perceive certain phenomena in the world. I don't think it has anything to do with fiction, since we know who they really are; it's more about creating an alternative identity while also being playful.

Iles: Writers have been using alter egos for a long time and artists also began to do that in the twentieth century, with Duchamp being an obvious example. But this happened in the '80s, too, so it's hardly new. I think artists don't like to be pinned down or categorized. So this may also be a way of trying to carve out some kind of creative space where they feel they can move more freely.

There's a lot of politically-charged work in the show as well.

Iles: Many of the artists who are making that work are not political artists. But artists always articulate what's around them, so it would be a strange biennial if we were to ignore that.

Do you think there's anything to be read into the fact that you're both non-American-born curators who are including work by non-American artists in this American art biennial?

Iles: Most everyone in America comes from somewhere else. At what point [the Dutch-born, American abstract expressionist] Willem de Kooning stopped being Dutch and became American has been an interesting question. But I do think [our foreign backgrounds] give us an interesting take on the country we're living in and the culture we're part of and love, because we see things that perhaps some might take for granted.

Vergne: I don't think [national distinctions] really mean much any more. Chrissie has been in New York for roughly ten years. I've been in Minnesota for ten years.

Would you rather be in Minnesota or New York?

Vergne: I'm going to keep you guessing on that. But I think what's interesting is that if you live in London or Paris, you might find New York very familiar, while if you live in Kansas City or Minneapolis, New York might seem more exotic. So the differences are not only between America and Europe, but within America. In the show, I think you can see the cultural specificity of the work coming from New York or Los Angeles or Houston. The danger would be to see the Whitney Biennial as a New York phenomenon.

Is it getting harder to pull off an American biennial at a time when national boundaries aren't as meaningful and when there's a lot of competition from other biennials and art fairs?

Iles: Not really. The Whitney Biennial is unique in that it's based in a museum and gives a snapshot of what's going on in America right now. But it's not a Miss America contest with the hundred best artists. It's about different clusters of ideas. And because it's done so quickly, every two years, it's not thoroughly digested, but is instead very fresh and fast and I think the focus that creates will always remain relevant. And America is a huge, huge country with tensions and contradictions that make it a fulcrum of change. To see how the artists who live in this society are approaching that is very interesting and I think the biennial will always be important for that reason. As Philippe described, America is an idea, not just a country—though some, including us, have wondered if we're now in "post-America." It's a cliché, but we're not trying to provide answers but open up questions.

You must have seen a lot of the country while visiting artists. Where did you go?

Iles: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas, Milwaukee, Chicago, Boston, Tijuana, San Diego...

Wait. Tijuana?

Iles: There was a very interesting exhibition there that dealt with the border between America and Mexico.

Vergne: In each location, whether or not there was an artist we found [for the biennial], what was very instructive was just driving through America and seeing it from the road.

Did you fight over control of the radio?

Vergne: No, we didn't even listen to music because we were talking the entire time. That's why it was so fascinating, because we just talked about what we saw.

And, besides art, what did you see that was surprising?

Iles: Great poverty, discrimination, poor communities being black communities...