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Michael Dirisio. “Thomas Hirshhorn on hyperconsumption and resistance,” esse, spring-summer 2012, pp.48-55.
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Michael Dirisio. “Thomas Hirshhorn on hyperconsumption and resistance,” esse, spring-summer 2012, pp.48-55.
Gal
erie
Cha
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Cro
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Michael Dirisio. “Thomas Hirshhorn on hyperconsumption and resistance,” esse, spring-summer 2012, pp.48-55.
Gal
erie
Cha
ntal
Cro
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Michael Dirisio. “Thomas Hirshhorn on hyperconsumption and resistance,” esse, spring-summer 2012, pp.48-55.
Gal
erie
Cha
ntal
Cro
usel
Michael Dirisio. “Thomas Hirshhorn on hyperconsumption and resistance,” esse, spring-summer 2012, pp.48-55.
Gal
erie
Cha
ntal
Cro
usel
Michael Dirisio. “Thomas Hirshhorn on hyperconsumption and resistance,” esse, spring-summer 2012, pp.48-55.
Gal
erie
Cha
ntal
Cro
usel
Michael Dirisio. “Thomas Hirshhorn on hyperconsumption and resistance,” esse, spring-summer 2012, pp.48-55.
Gal
erie
Cha
ntal
Cro
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Michael Dirisio. “Thomas Hirshhorn on hyperconsumption and resistance,” esse, spring-summer 2012, pp.48-55.
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Schum, Matthew. “Thomas Hirschhorn. The Spectre of Evaluation.” Flash Art, May-June 2011.
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Schum, Matthew. “Thomas Hirschhorn. The Spectre of Evaluation.” Flash Art, May-June 2011.
Gal
erie
Cha
ntal
Cro
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Schum, Matthew. “Thomas Hirschhorn. The Spectre of Evaluation.” Flash Art, May-June 2011.
Gal
erie
Cha
ntal
Cro
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Schum, Matthew. “Thomas Hirschhorn. The Spectre of Evaluation.” Flash Art, May-June 2011.
Gal
erie
Cha
ntal
Cro
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Schum, Matthew. “Thomas Hirschhorn. The Spectre of Evaluation.” Flash Art, May-June 2011.
Gal
erie
Cha
ntal
Cro
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Schum, Matthew. “Thomas Hirschhorn. The Spectre of Evaluation.” Flash Art, May-June 2011.
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Philippe Dagen, “Tonalité sombre à la 54ème Biennale d’art de Venise”, Le Monde, 4 juin 2011.
24/04/09 14:58Shock of the news: recent exhibitions by the Swiss artist Thomas Hirsch…sm and violent world conflict | Art in America | Find Articles at BNET
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Shock of the news: recent exhibitions bythe Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhornprobed the nearly imperceptibleboundaries between Westernconsumerism and violent world conflict
Art in America , June-July, 2006 by Gregory Volk
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School is supposedly all about education, and Hirschhorn's "Anschool II" revealed his owninformal artistic education, but in a way that did not spell anything out and left room for theviewer to make multiple connections. Jeudi 17.1.1991-Jeudi 28.2.1991 (1992), a wonderfulsmall stack of drawings, paintings and mixed-medium collages on cardboard panels, relates toFlying Boxes (1993), an aerial display of cardboard packages, replete with abstract designs,photographs and mailing labels. Neighbors (2002), with a nasty assortment of burned wood, apartly burned toy car, and upended plastic chairs atop a rectangular pedestal, recalls the ethnicand religious strife that sometimes turns neighborhoods into battlegrounds. This work relatesto Hotel Democracy (2003), in which rows of miniature hotel rooms in a two-storyconstruction are furnished with plastic chairs, tables, cheesy wood paneling and beds wrappedup in tape. Walls in each room are entirely covered with disturbing photographic images--agrieving woman in a war zone, presumably in Iraq; marching Klansmen; people grasping foraid packages. Hotel decor is invaded by drastic visual news of the world, and Hirschhorn'smeticulous, yet rickety, structure seems poised to be busted into smithereens.
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Sometimes chance discoveries were especially illuminating. The Procession and The Four Books(both 2005) feature mannequin hands protruding from mounds of what look like hardened redor blue foam. In the first, the hands hoist a coffin-shaped cardboard box festooned withsnippets of dire headlines; in the second, the hands hoist extra-large and enchained versions of
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IN AN INTERVIEW published when his 2008 work Das Auge (The Eye) was installed at the Power
Plant in Toronto earlier this year, Thomas Hirschhorn declared: “I want to give a form which resists
facts, which resists opinion and which goes beyond actuality, which reaches beyond information—that
is why I invented the motif ‘eye and its capacity to see everything red. . . . The eye doesn’t need to
know—the eye just sees and that’s what counts.”¹ Coming from an artist famous for his impassioned
political engagement, this statement is surprising, if not shocking. Hasn’t a great deal of politically
inclined art, from the advent of Conceptualism to the heyday of institutional critique and right up to
contemporary docudramatists such as Walid Raad and Emily Jacir, flaunted its proximity to
information—taunting and titillating us with “facts” aimed at changing our minds (or merely confirming
our beliefs)? And contra Hirschhorn’s claim that “the eye doesn’t need to know,” hasn’t the value of
art, since Michel Foucault transformed cultural studies, been linked precisely to its status as
knowledge, as discourse? And hasn’t this discourse been recognized as the mold for something
promiscuously labeled a subject (an avatar put in place of the complexities of human experience that
is so straitened in its capacities, so caricatural in its motivations, that it strikes me as more like a
marketing profile than a breathing person)? Yet Hirschhorn still insists that he wants to resist facts, to
reach beyond information, and to maintain the centrality of the eye that “just sees.”
What is Thomas Hirschhorn trying to tell us? Does he really mean to say that Das Auge’s tableau of
bludgeoned toy seals, its world flags and protest placards in various patterns of red, the horrible
photographs of shattered bodies that paper so many of its surfaces, the chic dummies modeling
blood-splattered fur on a diagonal runway, and the giant childlike model of an eye presiding over it all
are not meant to tell us anything? The answer is YES! Hirschhorn understands that we are simply told
too much. Most information, in art as in the media, is prepackaged pabulum: As he declares in the
same interview, “There is more and more to analyze today, media, journalism, opinions, and
comments want to impose their ideology of information. I do not need to be informed—I need to be
confronted with the truth.”²
If there is a politics of art today, it has nothing to do with the bland consumption of information—
whether in newspapers, on iPads, or on museum walls. Neither can it be found in the inflated,
politically correct “deconstruction” of discourse or the exposure of cartoon subjectivities. Let’s face the
fact that most of what we call political art is no more than mildly polemical grist for the market:
radical-chic consumption analogous in its (largely unintended) affirmative function to the expensive
locavore markets and restaurants that are found in the same cities that serve as capitals of art
exhibition and consumption. A truly political art now—if it is possible—has little to do with Adornian
anti-art strategies of negation on the one hand or representing explicitly political themes on the other.
One may easily glide unperturbed by the yards and yards of unambitious displays—“professional but
flat,” a colleague quipped to me—of this year’s Venice Biennale, consuming the fully deracinated
“politics” of curator Bice Curiger’s “ILLUMInations” without its having the slightest effect except mild
dyspepsia (if, that is, one can stave off the more virulent affliction of boredom).
The specificity of our current moment lies in a degree of image saturation that was unimaginable
throughout most of the past century. As we are constantly told, we now consume images 24/7: on our
phones, in elevators, in taxis, etc. Under these conditions, modernist tactics of trauma or
defamiliarization are no longer effective. While ethical dilemmas regarding the challenges and
seductions of spectatorship were central to the entire history of twentieth-century art, it is a result of
critical laziness in recent years that Guy Debord’s concept of the spectacle—a surfeit of images,
SEPTEMBER 2011
Thomas Hirschhorn, Das
Auge (The Eye) (detail),
2008, mixed media.
Installation view, The Power
Plant, Toronto, 2011. Photo:
Steve Payne.
links
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accumulated like capital—is so often posited as a quasi-totalitarian condition of visual domination,
both in the art world and in consumer culture at large. Hirschhorn is among the few artists who have
succeeded in introducing sufficient complexity—and ambiguity—into the mechanisms of the spectacle
to push viewers beyond either blind affirmation or blanket condemnation. He has put in their place
new strategies of selection and affect: an epistemology of search. When he says, “I do not need to be
informed—I need to be confronted with the truth,” truth for him means making a decision about what
to see and how to look.
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The kind of confrontation Hirschhorn demands is a form of witnessing. You and I don’t need an artist
to tell us for the thousandth time that wearing fur is bad. We need to feel it incumbent on us to decide
for ourselves. Witnessing requires us to shift our spectatorial position: to enter the time of image
circulation and make a judgment about what we see there. The acts of being present and giving
testimony sound deceptively simple, since any visit to an exhibition, no matter how casual, requires
physical presence and the expenditure of some modicum of attention, a prerequisite for testimony. But
passing by a long sequence of works on, say, the walls of the Arsenale in Venice and ticking them off
with an art-historical sound bite (i.e., a “meaning”) does not cross the threshold of presence, let alone
witnessing. It merely constitutes consumption, which requires nothing from us (except, when
necessary, that we pay). To be present in a deeper sense requires what Boris Groys has identified as
a vivid realization of contemporaneity: the status of being “‘with time’ rather than ‘in time,’” or that of
being a “comrade of time.”³ Consumption implies closure: We consume what has assumed a form
(even if that thing and that form are “immaterial”). Being a comrade of time means that the work
unfolds simultaneously with our reception of it. While this is hardly a new idea (it has motivated a
great deal of art since Minimalism), it is one that has become harder and harder to realize as it has
become easier and easier to commodify or monetize anything from garbage to shares in mortgages
anywhere in the world.
The two most talked-about art events in New York of the past couple years—Marina Abramović’s The
Artist Is Present, 2010, in her retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, and Christian Marclay’s
The Clock, 2010, at Paula Cooper Gallery (and currently in Venice)—are both paradigms of works
that stage vivid situations of contemporaneity (not coincidentally, each was set up in a kind of theater
within a museum or gallery). It was extraordinary that so many visitors to MoMA waited in line for
hours to gain a place across a table from Abramović in order to meet her gaze as part of The Artist Is
Present. What I found more surprising was that crowds with no intention of seeking a seat at the
table spent significant lengths of time riveted by the sight of others having this experience. What did
they see? No more (and no less) than a naked version of the fundamental creaturely link: a mutual
gaze. At any moment this gaze could be broken or generate unpredictable effects (tears, yawns,
giggles). Although Abramović was criticized by many in the art world for self-promotion, I see her
work differently. It was an uncompromising and undoubtedly exhausting commitment to liveness—at
the very moment when liveness seems most under threat by our famously mediated forms of
socializing. The Clock, on the other hand, which marks time on a twenty-four-hour cycle through a
collage of film clips featuring clocks showing the actual time, creates an oxymoronic form of mediated
SEPTEMBER 2011
Thomas Hirschhorn,
Crystal of Resistance
(detail), 2011, mixed
media. Installation view,
Swiss pavilion, Venice.
From the 54th Venice
Biennale. Photo: Kate
Lacey.
links
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liveness. Viewers are simultaneously in the time of cinematic narrative (with its formulas of suspense,
horror, conflict, and romance) and still rooted in the time of their own unfolding day. I found myself
watching The Clock just before a lunch date, glad to be both immersed in the work of art and on time
for my appointment. The “escape” function of cinema was bent back into the everyday exigencies of
marking time.
Such kinds of contemporaneity fulfill one precondition of witnessing. Aside from presence, however, a
further requirement is the positive decision to testify, which is a decision not only about how and what
a spectator sees but also a weighing of its veracity, its authority, its ethical consequences, etc. This
necessity of taking a stand is what makes witnessing a political form of spectatorship. But I wish to be
explicit here: I am not arguing that the onus of creating the conditions for presence and testimony
falls entirely (or even preponderantly) on the spectator. The role of artists is not merely to provide
content for such experiences but to generate situations that enable witnessing. We are used to
consuming countless images in endless streams—it’s easy to become inured to even the most horrific
pictures that enter our field of vision. On the other hand, it is an affirmative, political act for an artist to
establish an occasion on which witnessing must occur—and this is extremely difficult to do.
Here is where Hirschhorn’s work has been so inventive. Crystal of Resistance, 2011, the artist’s
installation in the Swiss pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, offers the latest example of the
various types of pressure that he applies to visitors to lead them to confront their ethical position as
witnesses. First, all of his environments are purposely and extravagantly overproduced, so one
inevitably asks oneself on entering, “Where should I look first?” There is a kind of blindness involved
in the horror vacui of Hirschhorn’s works that makes one acutely aware of the difficulty of finding a
place for one’s gaze to rest. Consequently, the possibility of “comprehending” (or consuming) the
structure of one of his installations is correspondingly remote. In short, one must decide how to
navigate them. Second, with Hirschhorn’s recent use of extremely explicit images of war casualties,
typically drawn from the Internet, one must also ask oneself whether to look—on account of both
squeamishness (they are very painful to see) and delicacy (there is something obscene about peering
at these shattered and often partially naked bodies gruesomely turned inside out). Finally, there is the
fundamentally political question of one’s personal responsibility for looking. Hirschhorn can lead a
spectator to this point, but it is her own responsibility to act on it (or not).
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The dense environment of Crystal of Resistance features several sculptural effigies of mobile devices
such as smartphones and iPads, as well as a cyclonelike tower of monitors whose screens show
images of fingers scrolling through a seemingly endless digital-camera roll of photographic carnage
and occasionally zooming in, as if human digits were literally probing the gaping bodies made
accessible through technological reproduction. A visitor encountering this tower is pressed to ask
herself, What does it mean to “touch” these bodies? Is it OK to have the world on one’s smartphone
and adopt “scanning” (the same type of looking fundamental to window-shopping) as one’s principle
of global mobility? Is looking enough, or is looking too much? As the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk
recently declared, “The reality construction of subjective capitalism is in fact fully built on competitions
for visibility.”⁴ Hirschhorn stages such competitions as lures for the spectator.
The most profound species of question prompted by Hirschhorn’s work is how to give meaning to
looking. Networks are often imagined as sleek, smooth, and frictionless, while in reality they are full of
trash, redundancy, and jury-rigging—just like Hirschhorn’s extravagant environments. As its title
indicates, Crystal of Resistance makes use of crystalline principles of construction, characterized by a
process of repetition and reflection that is rhizomatic in its irregularity and thus distinct from the
geometrically ordered seriality of Minimalism or Conceptual art. As in nature, the crystalline in
Hirschhorn’s hands is organic, so pictures and objects combine into formations rather than conforming
SEPTEMBER 2011
Thomas Hirschhorn,
Crystal of Resistance
(detail), 2011, mixed
media. Installation view,
Swiss pavilion, Venice.
From the 54th Venice
Biennale. Photo: Romain
Lopez.
links
01/09/11 15:56truth or dare: the art of witnessing - artforum.com / in print
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to an “intelligible” discursive structure as would, say, a photo essay. Hirschhorn operates from the
conviction that images follow their own set of “natural” laws. The mechanism of celebrity offers a good
analogy. After a certain tipping point of dissemination, images begin to generate more and more
reiterations: They become newsworthy in and of themselves. In other words, pictures grow like
crystals, proliferating rapidly after their initial nucleation. Consequently, it is not the iconography of
crystals that matters in this work, but rather the behavior of crystals—as a model of the origin,
replication, and concentration of images. Hirschhorn’s environment, one might say, crystallizes out of
the spectacle: Its form is as indigenous to its ecological conditions as stalactites and stalagmites are
native to the environment of caves. The artist insists on this primacy of emergent form when he
writes, in his statement accompanying the piece, Art is the problem and art can give form to the
problem. There’s no solution to figure out—on the contrary—the problem must be confronted. And
this is only possible in a panic. Panic is what gives form and this form is art.”
In its initial equation of information with objects, and in its subsequent belief that promulgating
information can lead to “figuring out” a solution (even if through subversion or “deconstruction”),
Conceptual art has lost its relevance. It and its progeny have tumbled into the status of just another
“service product” sold in a knowledge economy. If, as Hirschhorn exhorts us, there is no right answer
(or, in other words, no art-historical sound bite with which to categorize an artwork), we must be more
alert in our looking and in our attesting to art. Hence the insistence that we must be present in order
to make a decision about a formation of images, and that we must then testify to its effects, both
personal and political. But first an artist has to lead us to the point of caring—perhaps even put us in
a panic. For if art is ever to become genuinely political again, it will have to do so through a politics of
witnessing. And this presumes the vivid, visceral assertion (at which Hirschhorn excels) that looking
itself is not innocent—it is a commitment, a contract, an embarrassment, an accusation, a turn-on,
and an assault, but never just a simple act of consumption.
David Joselit is Carnegie professor of the history of art at Yale University.
—-
NOTES
1. “Gregory Burke Speaks with Thomas Hirschhorn,” in Thomas Hirschhorn: Das Auge (The Eye)
(Toronto: Power Plant, 2011), unpaginated.
2. Ibid.
3. Boris Groys, “Comrades of Time,” in What Is Contemporary Art?, ed. Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan
Wood, and Anton Vidokle (New York: e-flux journal, 2010), 32.
4. Peter Sloterdijk, Rage and Time: A Psychopolitical Investigation, trans. Mario Wenning (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2010), 203.
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the Koran, the Torah and The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama (the Bible didn't make it intothis show). At the bottom of one stairwell, among numerous photographs, I discovered analarming image of a man, much of whose face was a freakish, bulbous mess intimating somekind of violent attack. The uncanny resemblance of this terrifying image to Hirschhorn'ssinister mounds and other swelling deformities protruding from both human figures and mapselsewhere suggested a possible connection.
Among the many texts in the show, one could find a polite letter, dated Apr. 12, 2000, tocurators Laurence Bosse and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, announcing Hirschhorn's withdrawal from anupcoming exhibition at ARC/Musee d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris, and explaining hisreasons for doing so. (2) He had already withdrawn one proposal for a project called Conduit,determining that it wasn't feasible. Instead, the curators suggested participating with anapproximately 9 3/4-by-13-foot poster. After careful consideration, Hirschhorn declined, andhis response is a wonderful statement of artistic integrity and tenacity. He simply wasn't willingto undertake a compromise project, however well intentioned. "The trouble," Hirschhorn wroteabout the poster idea, is that "it isn't my project! I mean I would only be participating, ratherthan confronting myself, positioning myself, developing my ideas, proposing a reflection,concretizing a project." He acknowledged that the alternative project "wouldn't take much timeor energy," but then declared that he is only interested in works involving "total, 100 percentenergy." That's precisely the kind of energy Hirschhorn gave to this exhibition, which turned aselection of past works into a teeming installation chock full of driving ideas and esthetic risks.
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Home > Art News > World > You can love both Nietzsche and Hello Kitty
You can love both Nietzsche and Hello Kitty
Artist interview: Thomas Hirschhorn
Switzerland/---2008/6/30
The Art Newspaper
Mark Clintberg | 27.6.08 |
Hotel Democracy
Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn's colossal, ramshackle installation Hotel Democracy, 2003, was shown at Art Basel's Art Unlimited earlier this month. The display marked the Swiss artist's return to his native country following a self-imposed exile in 2003. Hirschhorn had refused to exhibit his work in Switzerland in protest against the election to the governing federal council of Christoph Blocher, a millionaire industrialist who is vice-president of the right-wing Swiss People's Party. Mr Blocher resigned due to the loss of his seat at the Swiss National Assembly in December 2007, leading to Hirschhorn lifting his ban.
Hirschhorn
Hotel Democracy, one of nine works made by the artist since 1990 on the theme of freedom, is a 51-foot, two-storey sculpture made of found materials including plastic sheeting, packing tape and cardboard. Hirschhorn is known for his provisionally constructed altars, monuments, and kiosks dedicated to philosophers and cultural figures.
Over the last five years the artist has had solo shows at the Centro de Arte Contemporaneo de Malaga,
http://www3.icm.gov.mo/gate/gb/www.macauart.net/News/ContentE.asp?region=I&id=155714 (1 sur 3)07/01/09 15:10
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(2003), Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2004), Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, (2005), and exhibited at Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris and Stephen Friedman Gallery in London last year.
The Art Newspaper: Regarding the Nietzsche Car piece which was on display with Galerie Chantal Crousel at Art Basel; could you explain the connection between Hello Kitty [a toy cat] and Nietzsche?
Thomas Hirschhorn: Both have a moustache! More seriously Nietzsche Car is the customised car made with the language of a Nietzsche-fan, and Hello Kitty is a form for showing love, and in this work, love for this specific philosopher. It is also my attempt to connect the two because I want to express: Yes, you can love both Nietzsche and Hello Kitty. Yes, you can agree with philosophy and you can agree with a toy kitty-cat.
TAN: You have decided to lift your boycott on exhibiting in Switzerland. What specific political events sparked your decision to not exhibit in your native country? And what influenced your choice to lift the boycott now?
TH: At the end of 2003 the Swiss national assembly elected an extremist-populist as one of the federal councillors. I decided to protest and as a concrete act, to boycott my home country with exhibitions of my work as long as this politician's national responsibilities would be maintained. At the end of 2007 that same Swiss assembly did not re-elect the extremist-populist demagogue. Consequently I could lift my boycott [Christoph Blocher declined to comment].
TAN: Why did you choose to exhibit a work from 2003 for Art Basel rather than a new work?
TH: Hotel Democracy is more actual than ever. Why should I accept the dictatorship of the new? Why systematically show a new work? Hotel Democracy—our common house in which we are guests—is about the will to be a real and primary democrat and the refusal to be a domesticated, democratised subject. Democracy today has to improve its meaning. Democracy cannot be turned into a holy cow. Furthermore, democracy has to be—every day—newly discussed and debated upon. Democracy cannot be exported as a plus-value, democracy has to fight to be incisive and convincing. Democracy is strong when the people are real democrats and resist the protection of self-interests.
TAN: Recently, environmental activists have expressed concern about your use of cardboard and other materials, suggesting that there is a great deal of waste involved. How would you respond to these claims?
TH: It's stupid because art is exaggeration, art is the movement of expenditure and non-economisation and art is waste. Art is waste of love, waste of passion, waste of infinitude, waste of energy, waste of ecstasy, waste of aesthetics, waste of the real, waste of power, waste of strength, waste of chaos, waste of production, waste of engagement, waste of generosity, waste of dream, waste of action, waste of hope, waste of intensity, waste of faith, waste of grace, waste of beauty, waste of happiness, waste of courage, waste of resistance, waste of conflict and waste of life. Art has nothing—absolutely nothing—to do with "protection" or with "conservation".
TAN: It is generally understood that Austrian novelist and playwright Elfriede Jelinek takes issue with your particular views on Marxism. Are you aware of her reasons for this, and would you care to respond to her views?
TH: I'm learning this from you. I did not know about it and I cannot comment on it.
Supplied by The Art Newspaper
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29/03/11 16:21Catalogue Contemporary Art Magazine / Revue d'art contemporain -- Issue 6 / Numéro 6 > Guerrilla Mechanics / MÉCANIQUE SAUVAGE
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ISSUE 6 / NUMÉRO 6
ENGLISH
GUERRILLA MECHANICS
Thomas Hirschhorn's Studio
Florence Ostende
For his studio, Thomas Hirschhorn has chosen
Aubervilliers, a culturally diverse and working-
class suburb of Paris – once a communist
stronghold and the cradle of industrialisation in
Île-de-France. The artist, true to his reputation
as a workaholic, has invested body and soul in
this beehive-like superstructure where he is
currently preparing the Swiss pavilion for the
Venice Biennale.
A visit to Thomas Hirschhorn’s studio really starts
outside, in the backstreets surrounding it. Wholesalers
display their stocks of computers, bags, shoes,
jewellery and clothes; mannequins are lined up behind
the shop windows. I’m transported back to
Hirschhorn’s 2007 exhibition Concretion Re at Chantal
Crousel gallery, which featured bunches of sellotaped
dummies, their heads lined up on shelves. ‘Clearance’,
‘surplus’, ‘end of stock sale’, ‘liquidation’ – back in the
streets the ads seem to pulsate behind the window’s
glass, reminding me of the artist’s own motto: ‘energy:
yes, quality: no’, and of some of his exhibition titles
such as Too Too – Much Much for the 2010 show at
the Museum Dhondt Dhaenens in Deurle, Belgium. In
the lane leading to the studio, car wrecks, their
bonnets wide open, are quickly fixed up for the black
market. ‘That’s guerrilla mechanics’, says Hirschhorn,
who has also tried his hand at makeshift engineering
in Poor-Racer (2009), a pathetically modified car made
of cardboard and aluminium, standing like a
ridiculously competitive Christmas tree.
FRANÇAIS
MÉCANIQUE SAUVAGE
L'atelier de Thomas Hirschhorn
Florence Ostende
C’est en banlieue parisienne à Aubervilliers, ville
multiculturelle et ouvrière, ancien bastion
communiste et berceau de l’industrialisation en
Île-de-France, que Thomas Hirschhorn a
installé son atelier. Fidèle à son image de
travailleur acharné, l’artiste investit corps et
âme cette superstructure fourmilière où il
prépare actuellement le pavillon suisse de la
Biennale de Venise.
Une visite de l'atelier de Thomas Hirschhorn
commence sans doute déjà dehors, dans les rues
parallèles. Les magasins de grossistes y épuisent leurs
stocks d'ordinateurs, sacs, chaussures, bijoux et
vêtements, les mannequins défilent derrière les
vitrines. J'ai l'impression de revivre l'exposition
Concretion Re à la galerie Chantal Crousel en 2007 :
les rangées de corps inanimés scotchés les uns aux
autres, les têtes alignées sur les étagères.
"Liquidation", "surplus", "fin de série", "déstockage", les
formules publicitaires pullulent dans les vitrines et me
rappellent le célèbre slogan de l'artiste "Énergie oui,
qualité non" et certains de ses titres d'expositions
comme Too Too – Much Much en 2010 au Museum
Dhondt Dhaenens à Deurle en Belgique. Dans la rue
qui mène à l'atelier, capots ouverts, des épaves de
voitures sont bidouillées à la va-vite pour le marché
noir. "C'est de la mécanique sauvage !", commente
Hirschhorn qui pratique aussi le bricolage automobile
dans Poor-Racer (2009), une pauvre voiture de tuning
en carton et aluminium, misérable sapin de Noël de
compétition.
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ISSUE 6
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DAVID LAMELAS
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GUERRILLA MECHANICS
MÉCANIQUE SAUVAGE
Florence Ostende
SIMON STARLING
Melissa Gronlund
EXHIBITION MEMORY
L'EXPOSITION DIFFÉRÉE
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THE INSTITUTE OF
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Damien Airault
EVERY TOWN SHOULD
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CONTEMPORARY ART IN
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Bérénice Saliou
LE CONSORTIUM
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Simone Menegoi
MASTHEAD
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29/03/11 16:21Catalogue Contemporary Art Magazine / Revue d'art contemporain -- Issue 6 / Numéro 6 > Guerrilla Mechanics / MÉCANIQUE SAUVAGE
Page 2 sur 4http://www.cataloguemagazine.com/contemporary-art/magazine/article/thomas-hi
Hirschhorn’s day-to-day activity resembles the routine
of the manufacturers, suppliers, importers and
distributors settled in the area: like theirs, his work
involves production, transport, storage and the
managing of a team of assistants. The artist has
chosen to leave Paris to move into a former factory in
Aubervilliers, a North Eastern suburb of the capital. He
proudly shows me the garage door linking his storage
space to the street: ‘I need to feel that my work can
go out, that it’s connected with the outside world’, he
tells me. ‘Here trucks can come, load and unload. In
Paris, my studio was in a residential building, it felt
like going to a flat.’
Work work work!
Visiting a studio, one often has the secret hope of
stumbling upon new artworks, unpublished sketches
or abandoned prototypes never shown before. But to
visit Hirschhorn’s studio is a whole different ball game
in that all it reveals is the work itself. In his practice,
there’s no separation between working process and
finished artwork. The studio’s inside and outside
literally replicate the artist’s production. Visiting the
artist’s studio echoes the experience of his exhibitions
so strikingly that the two seem to merge. The
suburban former factory feels like an organic
continuation of the work in every aspect, even the
most trivial ones – like the calendar of due dates,
which is hand-drawn with same intense and
determined style as the artist’s drawings. Hirschhorn’s
‘all-encompassing’ technique mirrors the formal
profusion of his urban surroundings and of his own
interior moods, which are as nervous and agitated as
his edgy neighbourhood.
Hirschhorn’s lifestyle reflects his super-productive
working method. He tells me that he thinks about his
studio very often, particularly when he’s travelling. ‘I
like to think about my studio, its shape, its space’, he
says. ‘It’s a very important place, people only think
about art but for me the work is everywhere and not
only here. I’m not afraid to say that I’m work-
obsessed. I’m in the studio every day. I also like to
come here at the weekend, when the assistants are off.
I even come sometimes not to do anything, just to
hang out and look at things.’ Has Hirschhorn ever
suffered from artist’s block? Felt discouraged or
uninspired? ‘Never’, he says. ‘I’ve got no time for that.
You have to carry on, to persevere, otherwise you
won’t do anything. I’m for perseverance. All the great
artists have persevered, take Warhol for example, or
Beuys, or Mondrian.’ And anyway, considering
Hirschhorn’s current schedule, he doesn’t really have
the luxury of slowing down. The studio is a beehive-
like superstructure. On the ground floor, things are
produced and stored; gigantic working surfaces occupy
the space and bits of installations are stacked up in
the corners, waiting to be transported somewhere else
or put away. The main space is pretty much taken up
by a huge wooden structure, and assistants are
building hundreds of cardboard logs for the
forthcoming exhibition It's Burning Everywhere at the
Kunsthalle Mannheim.
The first floor is dedicated to the administrative side of
the operation: there, assistants deal with
correspondence, look for new images on the web and
archive past exhibitions. A folder for each show allows
it to be precisely remade and re-installed without the
artist being present. Texts written by Hirschhorn are
stacked up in a corner – he is currently working on a
book. But the studio isn’t exactly conducive to reading.
‘I can’t read here’, says Hirschhorn. ‘My library is at
home. For me, the studio is first and foremost a space
of production. And I don’t read that much’, he adds.
‘I’m lucky enough to have philosopher friends who do
the thinking for me and send me short books.’
compétition.
De la production au transport, du stockage à la vente
en passant par la gestion d'une équipe d'assistants,
l'activité quotidienne d'Hirschhorn n'est pas si éloignée
de celle des fabricants, fournisseurs, importateurs et
distributeurs installés dans son quartier. L'artiste a
volontairement quitté son atelier parisien pour venir
s'installer dans une ancienne usine en banlieue nord-
est de la capitale, à Aubervilliers. Il montre fièrement
la grande porte de garage qui relie son espace de
stockage à la rue : "J'ai besoin de sentir que mon
travail peut sortir, qu'il est connecté à l'extérieur. Ici
les camions peuvent venir, charger, décharger. À Paris,
mon atelier se trouvait dans un immeuble, j'avais
l'impression d'entrer dans un appartement."
Work work work!
Les visites d'atelier nourrissent souvent l'espoir caché
de découvrir des pièces inconnues jamais exposées,
des travaux préparatoires inédits ou des prototypes
abandonnés. L'expérience de celui d'Hirschhorn est
une autre affaire, dans le sens où il ne donne rien
d'autre à voir que le travail lui-même. L'intérieur et
l'extérieur de l'atelier dupliquent son œuvre de façon
littérale. L'effet de miroir entre la visite d'atelier et
l'expérience de ses expositions est saisissant, elles
semblent fusionner. Cette ancienne usine de banlieue
est le prolongement organique de l'œuvre jusque dans
ses moindres détails, y compris dans sa fonctionnalité
la plus triviale – par exemple, un banal calendrier des
échéances fait main, dans le même style dense et
déterminé que ses dessins. La méthode "totalisante"
de l’artiste imite la profusion formelle de son
environnement urbain et les humeurs intérieures,
agitées et nerveuses, de son voisinage humain, lui
aussi dans l'urgence.
Le mode de vie d'Hirschhorn est à l'image de sa
production, inépuisable. Il avoue très souvent penser à
son atelier, en particulier lorsqu'il voyage : "J'aime
réfléchir à sa forme, à son espace. C'est un lieu
important car on ne pense qu'à l'art mais pour moi, le
travail est partout, pas seulement ici. Je suis un
travailleur et je le revendique. Je viens ici tous les
jours, j'aime m'y rendre le weekend quand les
assistants ne sont pas là. Je viens parfois même pour
ne rien faire, juste pour traîner et regarder."
Hirschhorn a-t-il déjà connu l'angoisse de la page
blanche ? Une petite déprime passagère ? Le manque
d'inspiration ? "Jamais", affirme-t-il, "on n'a pas le
temps de cultiver cela. Il faut insister et persévérer,
sinon on arrive à rien. Je suis pour la persévérance.
Tous les grands artistes ont persévéré, Warhol, Beuys,
Mondrian." Vu son emploi du temps actuel, il serait
malheureux que le corps ou l'esprit le lâche. L'atelier
d'Hirschhorn est une fourmilière. Au rez-de-chaussée,
on produit, on stocke : de gigantesques plans de
travail occupent l'espace et des fragments
d'installations s'entassent dans les coins, en attendant
un imminent transport ou un espace de stockage. Une
énorme structure en bois occupe tout l'espace central,
les assistants construisent des centaines de rondins
en carton pour l'exposition It's Burning Everywhere à la
Kunsthalle Mannheim.
À l'étage, on gère la correspondance, recherche de
nouvelles images sur l’Internet, archive les expositions
passées. Chaque dossier permet de pouvoir refaire
l'exposition et de piloter à distance son accrochage.
Dans un coin, les textes écrits par l'artiste sont
empilés, un livre est en préparation. En revanche,
l'atelier n'est pas propice au temps de lecture : "Je
n'arrive pas à lire ici, ma bibliothèque est à la maison,
l'atelier est surtout un espace de production pour moi.
Et puis je ne lis pas tant que ça ! J'ai la chance d'avoir
des amis philosophes qui réfléchissent pour moi et
m'envoient de petits livres !".
29/03/11 16:21Catalogue Contemporary Art Magazine / Revue d'art contemporain -- Issue 6 / Numéro 6 > Guerrilla Mechanics / MÉCANIQUE SAUVAGE
Page 3 sur 4http://www.cataloguemagazine.com/contemporary-art/magazine/article/thomas-hi
Department Stores
Hirschhorn’s favourite place is on the ground floor,
behind a big raised desk that allows him to see
everything at once, like a conductor on his podium.
His exhibitions function according to the same logic of
the whole: the eye sweeps over a total installation
without being able to make out individual works. The
assistants, scissors in hand, sift through news
magazines (Time, Newsweek, The Economist, Nouvel
Observateur...). Hundreds of torn-out pages carpet the
floor. The cut-out images are kept in cardboard
boxes, lined up against the wall as if in a shop. Each
one is labelled with a theme written in capital letters
with a black felt-tip pen: MONUMENTS, ALTARS,
TERRORISTS, PRISONERS, WOOD, GYM, WORK, TATOOS,
SADDAM HUSSEIN, NATURAL FIRE, DESTRUCTIVE FIRE,
COUNTRYSIDE FIRE ... The rows of stacked up boxes
have something of the stalls, booths and vitrines
reoccurring in the artist’s works, as, for example, in
his 24 heures Foucault shown at the Palais de Tokyo in
2004. From his very first collages on notebooks to his
more recent 3D installations, Hirschhorn has always
insisted on the importance of the terms ‘layout’ and
‘display’ to describe his work – a work whose
overarching logic is to link disparate elements and to
create a continuous motif in space.
At the back of the studio, a large instruction panel
details the various steps of an exhibition hang. Dozens
of small images are sellotaped on it, showing the
installation in minute detail, and captions written in
black felt-tip pen and ballpoint pen identify each
fragment of the display. Large sketches of this kind, to
be found everywhere in the studio, very much
resemble Hirschhorn’s wall pieces such as Wall
Documentation (1995), which documents his practice
up to 1995. In light of the artist’s entire production,
the instruction panel mentioned above thus becomes
an artwork, reminiscent of the draft-like aesthetic of
Hirschhorn’s early pieces: the hand-written titles and
captions, the quick corrections, capital letters,
underlined words, arrows, black felt-tip, ball-point
pen, sellotape. Upstairs, another hand-drawn big panel
(bearing the categories ‘what to do’, ‘what to buy’)
organises the steps to be taken for the current project:
the Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
Crystal Museum
The Venice show is articulated around the motif of
crystal, and a gigantic sketch entitled Crystal of
Resistance details the preparatory iconographic
research. ‘It’s the very first time I’ve worked with this
material’, says Hirschhorn. ‘I find it very interesting
because it’s both very mundane but has countless
uses. There are crystals inside the ear, in mobile
phones, on jewellery, in glass. I also like its esoteric
and philosophical connotations. Paul Klee used to think
that crystals represented perfection in art.’ Hirschhorn
has gathered a hundred images and text snippets
which help him remember the exhibition’s various
shapes: they picture a crystal meth laboratory,
stalactites, a gym, or else a man eating alone in his
living room. ‘I’m fascinated by this image’, says the
artist. ‘This man eats alone in front of a head lying on
the table, next to a pile of medicines. His fireplace, full
to the brim with domestic objects, has something of a
domestic altar. I’m interested in this organised chaos
as an ensemble.’ Among the books on rocks and
minerals lying on the studio table, Hirschhorn is
particularly taken by the catalogue of a crystal
museum from his native Switzerland and he has
analysed its display techniques with great attention.
‘The show in Venice is a mix between the décor of an
alpine crystal museum, a country disco, a third rate
sci-fi film and a clandestine crystal meth laboratory’,
Grands magasins
Son espace préféré est au rez-de-chaussée, derrière
un très grand bureau en hauteur placé de telle façon
qu' Hirschhorn peut garder, tel un chef d'orchestre,
une vision d'ensemble. Ses expositions obéissent
d'ailleurs à cette même logique de l'ensemble : le
regard balaye une totalité sans pouvoir identifier
d'œuvres individuelles. Ciseaux à la main, les
assistants épluchent tous les magazines d'actualités
(Times, Newsweek, The Economist, Nouvel
Observateur...). Des centaines de pages déchirées
tapissent le sol. Les images découpées sont
conservées dans des boîtes en carton, alignées contre
le mur comme dans un magasin. Chaque boîte est
marquée d'un thème écrit en majuscules au gros
feutre noir épais : monuments, autels, terrorists,
prisonniers, bois, gym, travail, tatoos, sadam hussein,
feu naturel, feu destruction, feu de campagne... Les
rangées de boîtes évoquent les stands, étals et vitrines
récurrents dans le travail de l'artiste, on pense aux
boîtes superposées dans les salles de 24 heures
Foucault au Palais de Tokyo en 2004. Des premiers
collages sur cahiers aux œuvres tridimensionnelles,
Hirschhorn insiste depuis toujours sur l'importance
des termes "layout" (mise en page) et "display" (mise
en espace) pour décrire son travail dont la logique est
de relier différents éléments entre eux et d'assurer la
continuité d'un motif dans l'espace.
Au fond, un grand panneau d'instructions documente
minutieusement les étapes d'un montage d'exposition
afin que les assistants puissent reconstituer son
assemblage complexe. Des dizaines de petites images
fixées au scotch permettent de visualiser le moindre
détail de l'ensemble ; les légendes écrites au
marqueur noir ou au stylo à bille d'identifier chaque
fragment de l'installation. Ces nombreux schémas
présents dans l'atelier ressemblent à s'y méprendre à
certains panneaux muraux comme Wall documentation
(1995) qui retrace toute la documentation de son
travail jusqu'en 1995. Ainsi, ce banal panneau fait
œuvre à la lumière de l'ensemble de sa production
artistique et rappelle l'esthétique brouillonne de ses
premiers collages : titres et légendes manuscrites,
style d'écriture nerveux, sommaire et expéditif,
retouches grossières, lettres majuscules, mots
soulignés, flèches, marqueur épais noir, stylos à bille,
scotch, etc... À l'étage, un autre grand tableau tracé à
la main (avec les catégories "quoi faire", "quoi
acheter") organise les étapes logistiques du grand
chantier actuel : le pavillon suisse de la Biennale de
Venise.
Musée du cristal
Le gigantesque schéma intitulé Crystal of Resistance
détaille les recherches iconographiques de l'exposition
vénitienne placée sous le motif du cristal. "C'est la
première fois que je travaille sur ce matériau. Il
m'intéresse car il est très banal et à la fois très riche
dans son utilisation. Il y a des cristaux dans l'oreille,
les téléphones portables, les bijoux, le verre... J'aime
aussi ses résonnances ésotériques et philosophiques,
Paul Klee pensait que les cristaux représentaient la
perfection de l'art." Hirschhorn a assemblé une
centaine d'images et de fragments de textes qui
l'aident à mémoriser les différentes formes de
l'exposition : un laboratoire de crystal meth, des
stalactites, un club de fitness ou encore la
photographie d'un homme seul en train de manger
dans son salon. "Cette photographie me fascine. Cet
homme seul mange seul devant une tête posée sur la
table, à côté d'une pyramide de médicaments. Sa
cheminée bourrée d'objets ressemble à un autel
domestique. Ce chaos organisé m'intéresse comme un
ensemble". Parmi les livres sur les roches et les
29/03/11 16:21Catalogue Contemporary Art Magazine / Revue d'art contemporain -- Issue 6 / Numéro 6 > Guerrilla Mechanics / MÉCANIQUE SAUVAGE
Page 4 sur 4http://www.cataloguemagazine.com/contemporary-art/magazine/article/thomas-hi
he explains. ‘But crystal is only a motif, the theme is
resistance. I want to show that resistance is interesting
in itself. It is often discussed as being "against"
something, but one forgets that resistance can also be
"for" something. It’s a positive and intense movement –
of belief, of birth, of production and of creation.’
Hirschhorn’s project, which, like crystal, is a precise
accumulation of hundreds of elements, will continue to
grow for the next few months. Bit by bit, crystal in all
its different shapes invades the studio like the
concretions and outgrowths in the artist’s work (even
though he insists on their difference: crystal is
mineral, concretion organic). Rhizome, confusion,
contamination, information, accumulation, the artist
deploys the same strategy in his work and in his
studio. The outside is mirrored inside, the container
reflects the content and everything is work. Visiting
Hirschhorn’s studio, one cannot escape a feeling of
déjà-vu, the feeling to be experiencing not only the
working process but also the artwork itself. The energy
invested in the production of the works is so optimised
that everything is used up. ‘If when you die when you
haven’t given it all, it’s a bit of a waste. It’s just like
with athletes. That’s why I really admire Paul McCarthy,
not only his work but also his whole character. He’s
65 and he lives 100%, he really goes for it!’
Florence Ostende is Catalogue’s co-editor.
IMAGE CREDITS
Photographies prises dans l'atelier de Thomas Hirschhorn, 2011
Photographe : Florence Ostende
SHARE / PRINT
minéraux étalés sur la table, Hirschhorn porte une
attention particulière au catalogue d'un musée du
cristal en Suisse. Il analyse rigoureusement ses
techniques muséographiques : "L’exposition de la
Biennale de Venise est un mélange entre le décor d’un
musée du cristal de montagne, une discothèque de
campagne, un mauvais film de science fiction et un
atelier clandestin de crystal meth. Mais le cristal n'est
qu'un motif, le thème, c'est la résistance. Je veux
montrer que la résistance est intéressante en tant que
telle. On parle souvent de résistance 'contre' quelque
chose mais on oublie que la résistance est aussi 'pour'.
C'est un mouvement positif, de croyance, de
naissance, de production, de création et d'intensité."
La structure du cristal, formée d'un empilement
ordonné d'un grand nombre d'atomes, continuera de
croître pour quelques mois encore. Par petites
touches, le cristal sous toutes ses formes envahit
l’arrangement spatial de l’atelier, semblable aux
concrétions et excroissances qu’Hirschhorn a
fréquemment utilisé (même s’il insiste sur leur
différence : le cristal est minéral, la concrétion est
organique). Rhizome, confusion, contamination,
information, accumulation, les stratégies à l'œuvre
dans sa production sont identiques à celles de son lieu
d'activité. Le dehors contamine le dedans, le contenant
reflète le contenu, tout devient travail. La visite de la
"manufacture Hirschhorn" révèle une sensation de
déjà-vu, l'impression de ne pas seulement traverser le
processus de production de son œuvre mais l'œuvre
elle-même. L’énergie investie dans la fabrication des
pièces est optimisée jusqu’à ce qu’il ne reste plus
rien : "Si tu meurs et que tu n'as pas tout donné, c'est
raté, c'est un peu bête et j'aime ça, comme chez les
sportifs. C'est pour ça que j'admire Paul McCarthy, son
travail mais aussi le personnage, il a 65 ans et il vit à
fond la caisse, il y va !"
Florence Ostende est corédactrice de Catalogue.
IMAGE CREDITS
Photographies prises dans l'atelier de Thomas Hirschhorn, 2011
Photographe : Florence Ostende
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PR ESS R ELE A SE
Opening on Friday, April 27, 2007, 6-10 pm as part of the Third Berlin Gallery Weekend
Arndt & Partner is pleased to present its fourth solo show of the Swiss artist Thomas H irschhorn, to mark the opening of the Third Berlin Gallery Weekend.
Thomas H irschhorn’s sculptural constructions and environments are famous for transporting knowledge and information by alienating the usual means of presentation and skewing our perspective on things. To achieve this, H irschhorn frequently favours elaborate, expansive installations, seemingly chaotic structures that use everyday materials that are nonetheless symbolically charged. H irschhorn’s spatial assemblages are skilful stagings of the imperfect, wild associative landscapes whose energies are intended to inspire thought, as H irschhorn himself stresses: “I don’t want to make interactive art, I want to make active art, work that activates the brain.” The result are installations where the beholder has to engage with signs, symbols, and memories, and which change our perspective on the possibilities of art and life.
In H irschhorn’s new work Stand-alone, which will extend over all four rooms of our Gallery 1st F loor, the beholder also is confronted with the richness of visual materials that is so typical for the artist, materials that make connections between apparently unconnected things. Kicked-in doors, sofas and armchairs wrapped in tape, are made equal by their wrapping and placed next to each other. Cardboard fireplaces, old electronic devices, wood, clocks, books, and other documents form a spatial collage, the purpose of which is “to create a new world from elements of the old one.” Without pretension and exceedingly cleverly, H irschhorn succeeds in creating a sense of profusion, chaos, and the potential of conflict that goes hand in hand with the experience of current life worlds.
In his latest exhibition, Thomas H irschhorn is showing a three-dimensional realisation of his plan “Where do I stand? What do I want?” (which is available for visitors of the gallery) that thematizes the question of the artist’s own position, possibilities of giving form , and independence in terms of content. “ How can I make a work that doesn’t in any way subject itself to historical facts? And how can I make a work that touches the beyond of history (which I live
in)? How can I make in the current – my historical filed – make a super-historical work?”
Faithful to his unique way of giving form , the confusing architecture of his latest installation follows its own artistic logic. And if apparently excessive demands are raised to a principle of form giving, this is informed in H irschhorn by a concept, because “chaos is the world in which I live, and chaos is the time in which I live,” as he explains. Art, on the other hand, for him is a tool “to get to know the world, to confront it, to experience the age in which I live.”
The choice of materials is also a conscious political decision. The cheap product packaging materials of the consumer goods industry for H irschhorn are an appropriate, stringently used means of expression for his socially critical art. In them , his resistance against cultural grievances is articulated, as is a revolt against capitalisms desires, which H irschhorn translated into a state of permanent creative anarchy. Available in every household, because of their everyday familiarity they avoid any appearance of exclusiveness, and thus underline the inclusion of the beholder which is so important to Thomas H irschhorn: „Stand-alone is, as always, made for a non-exclusive audience, and as always, I want to include without neutralising, I don’t want to exclude anybody.“
With Stand-alone, Thomas H irschhorn once again reveals his ability to translate, through his aggressive visual worlds, political ideas and philosophical language into an accessible understandable language, to create reference and literally create new spaces for ideas and engagements. The result are art productions that make no aesthetic claims, but instead call for confrontation and dialogue about existing conditions, and which the N ew York Times considers “some oft the best being made today.”
Thomas H irschhorn was born in 1957 in Berne; from 1978 to 1983 he was a student at the Schule für Gestaltung in Zurich. Since the mid-1990s, he has gained international acclaim for his installations, and today he is considered one of the most important artists of his generation. H e has been living and working in Paris since 1984. H is works have been shown in countless solo and group exhibitions. H e conceived and realised more than 50 works for public spaces.
Thomas H irschhorn’s work can currently be seen in the group exhibition Swiss Made 1: Präzision und Wahnsinn: Positionen der Schweizer Kunst von Hodler bis H irschhorn at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, March 3 to June 24, 2007. A lso, some works will be
exhibited in the shows Into Me / Out of Me (MACRO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma, April 21 – September 30 , 2007) and Airs de Paris“ (Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris, April 15 – August 15, 2007).
A t 8 p.m ., 26 .04.07, Thomas H irschhorn will give a lecture with the title “Arbeit, 1990–2007” at Berlin’s H umboldt University. The venue is lecture room 3075 in the Main Building at Unter den Linden 6 . Arndt &
Partner are hosting a further lecture by the artist at 2 p.m ., 28.04.07, in Gallery 1st F loor in Berlin.
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05.05.2011
Conversation withThomas Hirschhorn, inVittoria Martini,Federica Martini, JustAnother Exhibition,Postmediabooks, Milan2011.
Conversation with Thomas
Hirschhorn, in Vittoria Martini,
Federica Martini, Just Another
Exhibition. Representing Nations
in Contemporary Exhibition
Practice, Postmediabooks, Milan
2011.
A Conversation with Thomas
Hirschhorn:
In your reply to our invitation to
discuss biennials and international
exhibition practices, you wrote, “I
doubt I have anything to say
because I am not interested in the
subject and especially in ‘Biennials
and International Art Practices’. I
– THE ARTIST – am only
interested in my work, I – THE
ARTIST – occupy myself
exclusively with doing my work,
and I – THE ARTIST- am
Search...
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interested in exhibiting my work”.
How do you see your participation
in the Venice Biennale, in the
Swiss pavilion, located in an
exhibition space that is not
neutral, but rather linked to
international cultural policies and
diplomatic relations?
Your questions have given me the
chance to clarify certain things,
things that have been clear to me
for a while and constitute the basis
of my work. I have never produced
an artwork especially for a context.
I am not interested in contexts,
since I believe in the autonomy of
Art. Art is autonomous and such
autonomy is what gives it beauty
and makes it absolute. I believe in
Art. I believe that Art – because it
is Art – can create the conditions
for engagement that transcends
everything, going beyond the
issues of countries, nations, or
states. The cultural policies of this
or that nation do not interest me,
nor do the diplomatic relations
among states. For me – as an artist
– it is normal, and also necessary,
to be interested first and foremost
in my own work, to be interested
in producing my own artwork, and
to be interested simply in Art; art,
which is beauty and absolute. In
any case, what interests me is Art
and its power of transformation –
because it is Art. Yes, I believe that
art can transform a human being,
any human being.
This is my challenge in Venice, like
elsewhere: to produce work that
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has the power to transform.
Participating in an event like the
Venice Biennale is a wonderful
chance to show your work; show it
to the general public for a long
time, six months. It is an
opportunity to produce a new
coherent piece and to try to answer
– through that artwork –
questions like, where do I place
myself? What do I want?
Moreover, how do I take a stand?
How do I give a form to such a
position – the essential problem in
art – and how can this form create
a truth that transcends cultural,
aesthetical, and political practices?
How can it create a universal
truth? Other words can replace
universality: justice, equality,
others, and a one and only world. I
cannot create universal truth
through critical discourse; I must
give it a form. I want to give it a
form – one that must be precise
and exaggerated at the same time
– in order to establish a contact
with a “non-exclusive audience”.
The “non-exclusive audience” are
the viewers for my work in Venice,
like elsewhere. All this is offered to
me with the possibility of
exhibiting my work at the Venice
Biennale, which increasingly
entails having a space to conquer
through my notion of Art, and a
space to conceive in order to
establish a Critical Body.
Do you believe that the Venice
Biennale can be a productive
location for artists and for building
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critical discourse about a system
based on national representations?
As I have already tried to answer
above, I do not see why or how
critical discourse on the system of
national representations should
interest me. Having discussions, in
general, does not interest me.
What I want to do with my work is
to define a limit – a new limit for
Art. This is my artistic ambition.
This is my mission! I wouldn’t be
tempted with sterile, and especially
narcissistic “critical discourse”,
under any circumstances. This is
why I do not want to feed any
narcissistic illusions nor dreams,
just like I do not want to fall into
distant and pragmatic cynicism.
What I want to do is to establish a
Critical Body and not engage in
“critical discourse”. What I want is
to believe in art and prove it.
Believe that Art – because it is Art
– can create conditions of
involvement, dialogue, and one-to-
one confrontation. I refuse to hold
a complacent discussion when
faced with a complex and chaotic
world in conflict. This does not
interest me, nor has it ever
interested me. This famous critical
discourse is fed to the artist just
like a bone – often already chewed
– is given to a dog. I will not bite
it, although the participants of the
universe of facts, opinions, and
comments dislike my conduct. I
am not interested, nor have I ever
been interested in these particular
problems. The only thing that I am
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overwhelmed with is the universal,
which seems acceptable not only
for an artist, but for any human
being. It is an extraordinary
challenge to figure out how to
produce work that looks beyond
the historical facts, how to produce
work that clashes with the history
in which I live, and how to produce
work, today, that will become an
ahistorical piece. I do not know of
any artist who can seriously
imagine basing his or her work on
this type of problem in particular.
Art is universal – simply because it
is Art.
Having produced Swiss-Swiss
Democracy in 2004, how do you
view your participation as an artist
who will represent Switzerland in
the 2011 Venice Biennale in the
national pavilion?
There is no artistic or “political”
contradiction in the work I
produce. There aren’t even any
contradictions in the way I fight to
keep my position and my art form.
There is, on the contrary,
coherence and a will that I want to
affirm, increase and enlarge every
day, for the sake of my work. I am
forced to say this in such a direct
way because I am under the
impression that I am being
understood increasingly less. I
ought to say, on this occasion, that
what I did with Swiss-Swiss
Democracy is of evident clarity and
transparency. I kept up my boycott
not to exhibit in Switzerland
during the period in which an
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extreme right wing Federal
Councillor was in office. I totally
kept it going. I maintained it
because I had stated precisely that
I would not exhibit in Switzerland
– in fact, Swiss-Swiss Democracy
was produced in Paris, France. If
you boycott something, you need
to find ways to maintain it – and
that is what I did. You need to
keep your word – and I did. I
never claimed that I would give up
being Swiss or that I would never
work with the Swiss – I said I
would no longer exhibit in
Switzerland. In any case, as an
artist, exhibiting is the thing I pay
more dearly for. Declaring a
boycott must primarily cost you
something. Otherwise, it is not a
boycott. None of my galleries
exhibited my work for four years;
therefore, none of my work sold –
except for one piece at Art Basel,
in Switzerland. I ask you to take
my word for it, nothing more,
nothing less. I’d like to be taken at
my word. I was successful because
my boycott was a successful one –
just like all boycotts that are
maintained. After four years, the
extreme right-wing Swiss federal
Councillor was never re-elected.
He was never re-elected, much to
everyone’s surprise, and I can say
that it is thanks to my boycott!
This boycott was successful. Since
then, I have been able to exhibit in
Switzerland once more, and this
makes me happy! Regarding my
famous contradictions, they are
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part of human nature: I am in
favour of peace among people. I
really would like everyone to lend
each other a hand, though when I
say this I imagine the artist as a
warrior. We all must be passionate
warriors! When I say this, I mean
that I am in favour of the weak and
of helping the weak, of working
with and for the weak – although
weakness, as such, is one of the
things I hate the most! I admire
those artists that do “nothing”.
And although I love my work, I
have never done enough. Yet I
actually am a true workaholic.
SWITZERLAND
Crystal of Resistance
Thomas Hirschhorn
Commissioner: Urs Staub. Venue:
Pavilion at Giardini
Chewing the Scenery
Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz,
Maria Iorio/Raphaël Cuomo, Uriel
Orlow, Eran Schaerf, Tim
Zulauf/KMUProduktionen and
others.
Commissioner: Andreas Münch.
Curator: Andrea Thal. Venue:
Teatro Fondamenta Nuove (until
October 2nd, 2011)
www.crystalofresistance.com
© 2011 Biennial Foundation - disclaimer
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Along with Andrea Thal, Thomas Hirschhorn will represent Switzerland in this summer’s Venice
Biennale. To complement Crystal of Resistance, his new work for the Swiss pavilion, he has made a
website, which he discusses here. A monograph titled Establishing a Critical Corpus will be published
on the occasion of Hirschhorn’s work in Venice.
I DECIDED TO MAKE A WEBSITE to inform people about my work Crystal of Resistance. I want to
offer material about this new work and I want to propose an inside view––from myself––about my work
for the Venice Biennale. My website is not an artwork of mine but stands alongside the artwork Crystal
of Resistance. I want to show how I proceed in working. I want to explain where my inspiration, my
references, my influence, and my input––for this biennale work––are coming from. Beyond this, my
website wants to assert my artistic project in general, my work position and my ambition as an artist.
Furthermore, I want to assert my belief in art and why I believe in art. I made this website to express:
Where do I stand? What do I want? And also to say that I am the art worker, that I am the art soldier,
that I am the one who is doing the artwork! I want to speak in my own words––beyond journalism––
about my convictions, about my will to give form through my work and only through my work, and I
want to insist on my own terms of art. I do not have an artist homepage or a blog; I do not use
Facebook or Twitter. This is my second website: In 2009 I made a time-limited website for my work
The Bijlmer Spinoza Festival in Amsterdam.
My work Crystal of Resistance will resist––as all artworks do. My website is not the artwork and my
website is not part of my artwork. The site is an assertion; it is pure assertion coming from myself––
directly––without mediation or commentaries. No press releases are needed. My site is meant as a
toolbox, a free and open toolbox, and I hope it will work as a toolbox. My website is also an information
source for someone who cannot travel to Venice and cannot see my work there. My website functions
as a complementary fixing point during the exhibition, beside the catalogue Establishing a Critical
Corpus which concerns previous works and specific aspects of my work in general and that will come
out for the Biennale. I hope this website can create the conditions for a confrontation or a dialogue by
establishing a critical corpus of my work and by including the nonexclusive audience.
The site is a time-limited website, as announced: I will end it two months after the closing of the
Biennale. It will be online for ten months altogether. It is good to renew and make space for new works.
— As told to Lauren O’Neill-Butler
Thomas Hirschhorn04.24.11
Left: Thomas Hirschhorn's schema for Crystal of Resistance. Right: Thomas Hirschhorn, Crystal of Resistance (work
in progress), 2011, mixed media, dimensions variable.
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08/06/11 16:58Venice: Thomas Hirschhorn at the Swiss Pavilion (Contemporary Art Daily)
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Venice: Thomas Hirschhorn at the Swiss
PavilionJune 1st, 2011 in Events, Exhibitions
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Artist: Thomas Hirschhorn
Venue: The Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Biennale
Exhibition Title: Crystal of Resistance
Date: June 4 – November 27, 2011
Click here to view slideshow
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Courtesy of www.crystalofresistance.com
Courtesy of www.crystalofresistance.com Courtesy of www.crystalofresistance.com Courtesy of www.crystalofresistance.com
Courtesy of www.crystalofresistance.com Courtesy of www.crystalofresistance.com Courtesy of www.crystalofresistance.com
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Courtesy of www.crystalofresistance.com
Photos by Contemporary Art Daily
Statement:
CRYSTAL OF RESISTANCE
Crystal of Resistance is the title of my work for the Swiss Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennial.
Through my work Crystal of Resistance I want to question. First: Can my work create a new term of
art? Second: Can my work develop a ‘Critical corpus’? Third: Can my work engage – beyond the art
audience – a ‘Non-exclusive Public’? I want to answer each of these questions, these goals and these
self-demanding ambitions – with my work and in my work.
I believe that art is universal, I believe that art is autonomous, I believe that art can provoke a
dialogue or a confrontation – one-to-one – and I believe that art can include every human being.
When I write ‘believe’, I’m doing it not because I think or know it, not because I can prove it – but
because – in art – it’s a matter of believing.
With Crystal of Resistance I want to produce a work that is irresistible. This can only happen if I
succeed in creating a work out of my innermost self, without confusing – as it is usually done – the
inner self and ‘the personal’. I can only reach the universal if I risk conflict with my inner self. ‘The
personal’ doesn’t interest me because it’s not resistant in itself, it is always an explanation – if not an
excuse. My work can only have effect if it has the capacity of transgressing the boundaries of the
‘personal’, of the academic, of the imaginary, of the circumstantial, of the context and of the
contemplation. With Crystal of Resistance I want to cut a window, a door, an opening or simply a
hole, into reality. That is the breakthrough that leads and carries everything along.
CHILDREN AT THE RHONE GLACIER
What prompted me to work with crystals was an experience I had 15 years ago. It was on the
Furkapass-Road car park, below the Rhone glacier, I saw some children who had spread out some
crystals on a piece of cardboard – most likely crystals they found themselves – and were selling them.
It was a simple, wonderful and universal picture, which impressed me. The same thing could have
been done by children in China, Russia, Mexico or anywhere in the world. Since then I’ve wanted to
do something with crystals some day.
CRYSTAL AS A MOTIF
With my work Crystal of Resistance I want to give a form that creates the conditions for thinking
something new. It must be a form that enables ‘thinking’. That’s how I see the mission of art: To give
a form that can create the conditions for thinking something that has not yet existed. With this form I
want to create a truth, a truth that resists facts, opinions and commentaries. It is not about ‘my truth’,
but about truth in itself. In order to make contact with truth, to confront truth and to be in conflict
with it – conflict in art means: Creating something – I need a motif. That motif is ‘crystal’ in Crystal
of Resistance.
Crystal is the motif – but the motif ‘only’ – of the form of Crystal of Resistance. Crystal is not the
theme, nor the concept nor the idea of Crystal of Resistance. The motif is an assertion, a ‘setting’ and
the motif is love. As a motif, ‘crystal’ is the dynamic which links and which puts light – a new light
– on everything. It sheds light on its own meaning, its own time and its own raison d’être. The
‘crystal’ motif helps me point out one or several facets, because it’s only as facets – as a partial vision
– that truth can be touched. ‘Crystal’ is the motif I decided upon, out of love for its beauty, for its
rigor, for its power and for its openness. I, myself – must be open to its grace and its universality. I
will consolidate and fix my form with the ‘crystal’ motif, I will strengthen and determine my form
with the ‘crystal’ motif.
RESISTANCE
Art resists political, cultural, aesthetical habits. Art resists morality and topicality. Art – because it is
art – is resistance. But art is not resistance to something, art is resistance as such. Art is resistant
because it resists everything that has already existed and been known. Art, as a resistance, is assertion,
movement, belief, intensity, art is ‘positive’. Art resists tradition, morality and the factual world. Art
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resists every argumentation, every explanation and every discussion.
I am not afraid of resistance, conflict, contradiction or complexity. Resistance is always connected
with friction, confrontation, even destruction – but also, always with creativity. Resistance is conflict
between creativity and destruction. I want to confront this conflict in Crystal of Resistance. I am
myself, the ‘conflict’, and I want my work to stand in the conflict zone, I want my work to stand erect
in the conflict and be resistant within it.
THE FOUR PARTS OF THE FORM AND FORCE FIELD: LOVE, PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS,
AESTHETICS
I decided – from the very beginning – to put my work in the form and force field consisting of the
four parts: LOVE, PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS, AESTHETICS. I decided that my work doesn’t have to
cover equally all four parts, but every part – LOVE, PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS, AESTHETICS – will
always be covered to some extent. LOVE, PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS, AESTHETICS are the parts of
the field in which my work asserts itself and is moving.
When I decided about the two ‘light-parts’ – LOVE and PHILOSOPHY, I also decided to always
include in my work the two ‘shadow-parts’ – POLITICS and AESTHETICS. I took this simultaneous
decision for ‘light-parts’ and ‘shadow-parts’ because I live in a world that I understand as ‘One’, as
an undivided and unique world, as a world with light and with shadow, with the negative and the
positive but also with the ‘not-only-positive’ and the ‘not-only-negative’. That’s why there are ‘light-
parts’ and ‘shadow-parts’ and why I set my work in the form and force field of LOVE,
PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS, AESTHETICS.
LOVE
In the work Crystal of Resistance, the crystal is the LOVE part of my form and force field. The
crystal stands for the universal, the ultimate and for the absolute. The crystal stands for beauty itself. I
am thinking of someone. I am thinking of a child, a girl who finds her ‘own crystal’ – perhaps her
first – she finds it herself or receives it as a gift, and – for this girl – it’s the most beautiful crystal,
and to her, it will always remain the ‘most beautiful’! That’s why each crystal is for me the ‘most
beautiful’. This is the LOVE part in my form and force field. I know that there are different qualities
and that these quality differences can be explained. I am interested in the ‘beauty’, not in the ‘quality’
of the crystal. ‘Quality’ has never interested me and to me it’s an exclusive and empty word and I
decided years ago to always follow the ‘guideline’ in my work: “Quality = No! Energy = Yes!”.
Because clearly, beauty is not subjective – beauty is absolute and universal.
PHILOSOPHY
The part PHILOSOPHY in Crystal of Resistance stands for the conviction that art is resistance,
resistance as such. Other concepts for resistance are: Headlessness, Hope, Will, Madness, Courage,
Risk, Fight. These terms belong to the PHILOSOPHY part of my form and force field and are what I
want to give form to. A form that only I can give, a form that only I see in that way and that only I
understand, a form that only I know, and a form that only I can defend. Crystal of Resistance wants to
be a form that – in itself – is resistance.
The most important thing in art is the question of form. To recognize this, is the PHILOSOPHY part
of my form and force field. Therefore, in Crystal of Resistance the question of form is the central
concern. Form is the essence and the ‘setting’ of this work. Crystal of Resistance will – in itself – be
form in itself, the truth in itself, the real. I want Crystal of Resistance to be ‘the new’ – something
which has created its own body.
I ask myself: How can I give a form that resists historical facts? How can I give a form that goes
beyond the here and the now? And how can I make a trans-historical work, in my time, in my
history, today? My problem – as an artist – is: How can I take up a position and give that position a
form? How can that form – beyond conventions – create a truth? How can that form, my form, create
a universal truth?
POLITICS
In Crystal of Resistance the part POLITICS questions: How to act? How to work? With and under
what conditions? I want to work in necessity, in urgency and in a panic. This should be understood
as: Panic is the solution! That’s the POLITICAL. Art reaches beyond solutions,
art can confront problems, art is the problem and art can give form to the problem. There’s no
solution to figure out – on the contrary – the problem must be confronted. And this is only possible in
a panic. Panic is what gives form and this form is art. Therefore panic is a necessity in art.
I want to work in over-haste, I want to work in headlessness and I want to work in panic.
I want to work with the precarious and in the precarious. This is to be understood as the POLITICAL.
The POLITICAL is, to understand the precarious not as a concept, but to understand it as a condition.
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A condition that is a matter of accepting – frenetically and in awareness.
The precarious must be affirmed and it is necessary to enter the camp of the precarious. The change,
the new and the revolutionary lie in this affirmation – this is the POLITICAL. The precarious is the
dynamic, the path, the possibility and the movement that is offered to human beings. The future
consists in the affirmation of this precarious. This precarious which is also the non-assured, the non-
guaranteed, the non-stabilized and the non-established. It will be the future because the precarious is
always creative, because the precarious is always inventive, because the precarious is in motion,
because the precarious leads to new forms, because the precarious shapes a new geography, because
the precarious starts with a new exchange between human beings and because the precarious creates
new values.
Wouldn’t it be possible, that instead of wanting to shield ourselves from the precarious, instead of
wanting to deny the precarious and instead of wanting to turn away from the precarious, the opposite
– its affirmation – be the universal? Wouldn’t it be possible that justice, equality and the truth be
constitutive of the precarious – shared by so many today?
AESTHETICS
The AESTHETICS part consists of the questions: How does the work look? What visual appearance
does it have? What materials and what colors come out? I want my work Crystal of Resistance to be
an indestructible and earthly dwelling of the gods - as the cave of the giant crystals of the Naica Mine
in Mexico. I want to create a place that is so strange, so entirely from myself – only from myself –
and so distinct that it becomes universal. I want to make a large, dense, highly charged, luminous and
meaningful work. There will be many elements to see, there will be ‘too much’. It has to be ‘too
much’, not because it is important to get to see everything or spend a lot of time looking, but ‘too
much’ so that the things do not lie. I want to give form to the thought, that truth can be shaped out of
facets and that truth can be touched only in a non-unified scale.
With the AESTHETICS part of my form and force field I can create a frontal and bi-dimensional
work in the available space. A work that doesn’t allow to ‘step back’. With my AESTHETICS
decision there is no possible overview, no distance and no illusion of detachment. This is what
AESTHETICS can do. This is what I – in full blindness and full speed – want to assert and ‘hold
high’. It’s with this AETHETICS that I want to insist.
I want to produce a work that is reminiscent of the AESTHETICS of a ‘science-fiction’ B-movie film
set, that derives from the AESTHETICS of a self-made rock-crystal museum, of the AESTHETICS of
a ‘crystal-meth’ laboratory or that resembles the AESTHETICS of a cheaply decorated provincial
disco.
SWISS PAVILION
I want the work Crystal of Resistance to be experienced as something autonomous. It therefore has to
be inside a recipient or an envelope in order to make clear: This is a time-limited work. I’m thinking
of a skin, a shell or a geode. I’m not thinking about altering the given exhibition space and I’m not
interested in working ‘against’ or ‘for’ the existing architecture of the Swiss Pavilion. I work with the
space that exists. It’s not about ‘negating’ an exhibition space – it’s always about how the work
asserts itself in the space as something autonomous. What is important to me is to use the available
exhibition space as a container for my work, I want to create the conditions, which make it clearly
understandable, that the space is the shell which contains my work.
I want it to be explicit that the work Crystal of Resistance can also be shown at a different location, in
a different city, in a different country or on a different continent. I am for universality and for
autonomy – I am never concerned with context. The envelope or container that I will make is the
assertion of my work’s autonomy. I believe that art is autonomous and I love art for its autonomy –
the autonomy which gives the work its beauty and the autonomy which gives the work its absolute.
REFERENCE BOOKS
My reference books are the books and texts that I have read while working on Crystal of Resistance.
They are my references and constitute a reference-booklist. These books aren’t the inspiration or the
explanation for Crystal of Resistance and have no hierarchal order, all books and texts are equally
important for me. All these books and texts can be significant to me, no book and no text is
unimportant.
Reading these books was a pleasure. But it’s not by reading them that my work can be understood,
because I read these books by luck and grace – I can even say: By chance. These books and texts
accompanied me as I worked. I bought some books myself, others were given to me or brought to me
by friends who knew that I wanted to do the work Crystal of Resistance. These books and texts are
my companions.
These books or texts are: Fernando Pessoa: “Message”; Edouard Glissant: “Poétique de la Relation”
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and “Le discours antillais”; Celia M. Britton: “Edouard Glissant and Postcolonial Theory”; Michel
Foucault: “Leçons sur la Volonté de Savoir”; James Graham Ballard: “The Crystal World”; George
Sand: “Laura. Voyage dans le Cristal”; Elias Canetti: “Masse et puissance”; Gaston Bachelard: “Le
droit de rêver”; Marcus Steinweg: “Aporien der Liebe”; Manuel Joseph: “La Restitution” and “La
Sécurité des personnes et des biens”; Giorgio Agamben: “Profanations”, “Moyens sans fins” and “La
Puissance de la pensée”; Louis Ucciani: “Distance Irréparable”; Alain Badiou: “La relation
énigmatique entre philosophie et politique”, “Rhapsodie pour le Théâtre”, and “De l”idéologie” (with
François Balmès); Comité invisible: “L’insurrection qui vient”; Tiqqun: “Théorie du Bloom”; Adalbert
Stifter: “Bunte Steine” and “Bergkristall”; Stendhal: “De l’amour”; Stéphane Crussol: “Les Pouvoirs
Magiques des Crânes de Cristal”; Philip Permutt: “Ces Pierres qui guérissent, Guide pratique de
Lithothérapie”; Editions La Boétie: “Le Livre des Minéraux” and “Le guide familier des Roches et
Minéraux”; Gründ: “Encyclopédie des minéraux”; Nature et Vie: “Les minéraux, une géométrie en
couleurs”; “Les Minéraux, où les trouver, comment les collectionner”; Rüdiger Borchardt / Siegfried
Turowski: “Kristallmodelle”; Clémence Lefèvre: “Guide d’utilisation des lampes en cristal de sel”;
Judy Hall: “Nouveaux cristaux et pierres thérapeutiques”.
Thomas Hirschhorn, Aubervilliers, 2011 (translated from German)
www.crystalofresistance.com
Link: Venice: Thomas Hirschhorn at the Swiss Pavilion
Tags: Europe, Italy, Thomas Hirschhorn, Venice, Venice Biennale, Venice Biennale 2011
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