On Tuesday 23 September I ran a workshop at Fabrica for volunteers and staff. After looking at some documentation of the Hirschhorn work that will be showing during the Photobiennial I asked people to write down their responses to the work. Each response was then sealed in an envelope, thrown into the middle of the room and then each person picked an envelope. In small groups of four we read out and discussed these reactions to the work.
These responses now follow, unedited, in the following four postings:
Hirschhorn has said that anybody should see this piece. Why should I choose to see dead bodies in blood? I wonder if I unroll the rest of the banner, would I see anything happier? I want to. I desperately want to. For me, I think it’s easy to find material to protest against all the unhappy, full of misery events that happens every day and have happened in this world. But isn’t it a bigger challenge to do art for something that really makes our heart happy and our lips smile? This is the challenge that I am given by Hirschhorn’s Incommensurable Banner.
Waste human life
Brutality
Inhumane
Unrecognisable as human.
Nazi Germany ideology that soldiers were told Jews were animals/monsters so they were ok to be killed.
Faceless victims
No consequence of the connection to others, family
Rage
Violence
All male?
Decapitation
Sickness
Evil
Non-sensical
(animalistic) I feel I have to switch off and having to write about the work is too hard as I look at gnarled bodies. I fell [sic] empty.
I feel sad and angry. I also feel very relieved to see these images. I kind of feel elated. Joyous. I don’t know that I would admit that to anyone. It reminds me of when my Dad died and I went to see his body in the morgue. I came out feeling really high and I rang my friend and told her: “They should take you to a morgue when you’re still at school so that you get to know death early on in life.”
Of course, some people, a lot of people, are forced to know death far too soon.
It seems to be images that I’ve seen a hundred times on the news that don’t have any meaning anymore.
There is only horror and nothing else.
I don’t agree with the fact that it always relates to the same people.
Messy
Bloody
Dismembered
Unrecognisable/Recognisable
Random
Caught off guard
Snapshot
Abstract/Abstracted
Exposed
Exposé
Insides-out
The ordinariness of killing somewhere else to where I live
A disconnected connectedness
I've been thinking about the variable meaning of the word 'political' so that 'making art politically' could mean something very different to you from what it means to me. This situation is of course desirable and it is in the nature of language that it should be so indeterminate. I took the phrase from an interview I read by Hirschhorn where he is asked if his art is political and he replies that he makes art politically but that he doesn't make political art. In so doing he refers to Jean-Luc Godard who he attributes as having made this distinction:
"I think that the problem, the difficult question, the goal is to do the artwork politically, this is the whole, entire and enormous difference. J.-L. Godard said : “to make film politically and not make political films”. “Working politically” means working without cynicism, without negativity and without self-satisfying criticism. "Working politically" means first working, just working, doing the work, doing it ! Because I believe that Art – as Art – can attain a real importance. I want to work it out. I want to do an artwork which resists the moralist or nihilistic tradition.
I love the work of Goya and I love the work of Duchamp. Why should I choose between these two artists to answer the question “is Art political” if I think that both Goya and Duchamp are exemplary of how to do Art politically ? Goya and Duchamp made artwork with the confidence of the absolute autonomy of Art. So I want to try to replace the word “political” with “autonomous”. I want to insist on the importance of the autonomy of Art. The term "autonomy” is a positive term to me, because "autonomy" can be a tool to work out contemporary problematics involving economic, religious, cultural and social issues. But I also know that “autonomy in Art/ autonomy of esthetics” can also be interpreted in a negative way, and I do not understand nor do I accept this. It is a reductive interpretation of the term “autonomy” and – I think – it is a politician (not a political), academic, polemic and only critic understanding. To consider “autonomy of Art” as only a self-sufficiency, as “l’art pour l’art” is partial and dogmatic.
The “autonomy of Art” which interests me is the autonomy of courage, the autonomy of assertion, the autonomy to authorize myself, the autonomy to do something on my own – without argumentation, without explanation, without communication and without justification. I authorize myself to believe in the autonomy of Art. The autonomy of Art does not come from self-sufficiency but from self-authorization. This is why autonomy is never passive, autonomy is active, it’s the activity of hope."
I like the distinction he makes between the self-sufficiency of art and its self-authorization.
That's an incredibly powerful statement which I will go to bed thinking about: "I authorize myself to believe in the autonomy of Art."
Seen today: a banner put up outside a house round the corner from where I live. Not a protest banner but a welcome home banner.
Anti War – Aunty Stick
Hmm…
I keep coming back to the blog to see if anything has 'happened' with it. I don't know what I am hoping for or expecting to happen. This hope has made me think about others and about reciprocation.
Hirschhorn: "To me, The Other is my next, my neighbour. The Other is what is unfamiliar to me, what is strange to me, what I cannot understand and what I am afraid of. The Other is also what is remote and close at the same time. The Other is the absolute neighbour. The Other is the unexpected but it is not part of me, it's not not myself, that is the difficulty – particularism is the less difficult, the expected, the determined, the conformed, and it is me also, as well. In experiences of Artwork in public space "The Other" means the absolute will to include, to work for – and not to exclude – what I call a 'non-exclusive' audience. "The Other" is also my audience and "The Other" is the assertion of this possible audience. With my work I try to confront Artlovers, Artconnaisseurs, other Artists, Artcritics, Arthistorians but I also want to confront my work to The Other. I think that Art – because it is Art – can create the conditions for confrontation or direct dialogue with The Other, from one to one. In this sense Art has a political meaning. Art escapes the control, the control of myself – the artist – and in doing this, Art has the capacity to reach The Other. This is the miracle of Art. I learnt from projects such as the "Musée Précaire Albinet", the "Bataille Monument" or trhe Deleuze Monument" that "The Other" is with The Other because I chose him and his neighbourhood, and made my artwork with him in his space. Agreeing with "The Other" means "working politically", with confidence in the tool "Art" – which has its own logic and its own strength. "Working politically" means working without cynicism, without negativity and without self-satisfying criticism."
I scanned a paperweight on my desk so as to have a photo. I have learnt that putting a new image on your blog takes you to the top of the list. So any image will do. The weight of paper.
This residency is making me think about images, specifically photographic images. Of course, I think about images a lot, but not necessarily about photos. Soon, I'm going to try to read with you what Rancière has to say about incommensurability. Before that though, I wanted to show you this image. I found it amongst some family documents. I don't know where it was taken and I've only got a slightly out of focus digital photo of the photo itself. It looks to be an office and the date on the wall tells us it was taken on the 6th of the month (if that is a calendar). Two of the men in the scene are looking towards the camera, the other is busy with his work. I feel they must be accountants but of course their work might be anything. There appear to be murals painted on the wall of trees and a landscape with a horizon. It's a very beautiful room with high arched ceiling and a stone floor. I suppose the man on the left who is looking straight at us might be my Grandfather as a young man but I don't know because I only know my Grandfather from photos of him as a much older man.
The story goes that he, his sister and his mother turned up in Syria with only a suitcase and without his father. They were probably Armenians and fled the Turkish genocide at the beginning of the last century. I don't know for sure, so much is hazy with uncertainty.
I'm bringing these old photos into this blog almost despite myself. I keep wondering what on earth they have to do with anything. But of course there is a link with the residency: photos as witnesses, calling us to account.
