I am in touch with someone from The Forum, which describes itself as "an innovative weblog featuring reviews, previews, opinion pieces and interviews from independent arts writers." She has sent me four questions which have actually been very timely in prompting me to write about aspects of my own responses to Hirschhorn's Incommensurable Banner. I have decided to post these (rather lengthy) entries in this and the following posts.
1. What kind of responses have you had to the work and how have your reactions changed during this time, if they have? If so, in what ways?
I have been thinking about ‘The Incommensurable Banner’ by Hirschhorn since April of this year. This was on the basis of my already existing strong interest in Hirschhorn’s practice, specifically how he works with other people, sometimes with communities of people, whilst still maintaining a strong sense of the identity of his own practice as an artist. When I was first offered the chance to be artist animateur at Fabrica, in residence alongside the banner, I was extremely pleased because I was invited to do so on the basis of what Liz and Matthew, the two directors of Fabrica, knew about my practice, without either of them knowing that I had this strong interest in Hirschhorn. So, it seemed to me, and this is still the case, that there it is a very good match for me to be engaging with Hirschhorn’s work in this way. The very first response to the work that I noted, upon being told what the work consisted of, was a sense of relief. I heard myself say inside my head: “At last we are going to be shown the images that demonstrate what war is actually about” and this reaction came about against a background of recognition that the wars we are involved in as aggressors are highly sanitised in their representation by the media. I was also excited by the idea of making some kind of comparison in intent and effect of Hirschhorn’s Incommensurable Banner with my own attempt to make an anti-war banner. In 2003 I made a peace banner to take with me to the demonstrations in London against the war on Iraq. At the time I remember being utterly lost when trying to picture what sort of imagery I might put on my banner. In the end I opted for what I considered, at the time, to be ‘positive’ imagery, though when I look back at this now I can see that the imagery, of verdant countryside, flowers and rainbows, is extremely clichéd and really rather ‘cheesy’. So, this residency has been a good opportunity to get this banner of mine out of storage, have another look at it and reconsider the relationship of art to politics at this stage, five years after the worldwide opposition on the streets to the war against Iraq.
