An evening with Hirschhorn
With this, one of the worst photos I have ever taken on my mobile phone, I am announcing the end of my residency at Fabrica engaging with the work of Thomas Hirschhorn, specifically with 'The Incommensurable Banner'.
The picture, though you wouldn't know it, is of Hirschhorn himself, or Thomas as we like to call him.
On the evening of 13 November, last Thursday, he gave a talk at Fabrica about his practice.
I was over the moon to see that he called his presentation, which was accompanied by a powerpoint slideshow, 'Doing Art Politically'. I called this blog 'Making Art Politically' which I took from an interview I read with Hirschhorn where he is asked if he makes political art. His reply is that he does not make political art but that he makes art politically, a phrase that he borrowed from Jean-Luc Godard who talked about making films politically. I was pleased that I had picked out of all the articles I read about Hirschhorn, this one phrase to sum up my approach to the blog and my residency and that Hirschhorn too had felt this phrase to be significant enough to make it the title of his presentation.
I enjoyed musing over the differences between 'making' and 'doing'. In German 'machen' means both to make and to do. In a sense I suppose 'doing' is broader than 'making' in that it might encompass many aspects of the processes of doing art: thinking, editing, collating, talking, collaborating etc. etc. as well as making.
Hirschhorn outlined his 'doing' of art politically under a number of key words which were:
Form
Creation
Decisions
Tool
Platform
Material
Guidelines
The Other
Warrior
Collage
and Market
He spoke passionately and with great conviction. His enthusiasm was infectious and his way of elucidating his ideas was concrete and graphic. For example: "I want to work for the Other, the Other in myself, that I don't know that I don't control, to include it in the work."
He also made one or two nice mistranslations from the French or the German, such as speaking about blesséd bodies on the banner, which I guessed came from the french blessé meaning 'wounded' but the notion of them being blessed was just as apt.
He concentrated in his talk mainly on the work he made for the Viennese Secession called 'The Eye' and showed many images of it. About the eye and about the colour red it is a room-sized sculptural collage of mannequins, soft toys, text and chairs with imagery and ideas taken straight from street protesters and their homemade props.
There is a lot more I could say about this. If you have any questions post them here and I'll answer.
