Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Resistance is the Condition of Art


Critical Laboratory from MIT Press collects writings of Thomas Hirschhorn  "a Swiss artist known for large sculptures and ambitious projects, often constructed of everyday, makeshift materials."

Crystal of Resistance, 2011

Crystal of Resistance, 2011

Crystal of Resistance, 2011

Eye to Eye Subjecter, 2010

Preparatory drawing, Gramsci Monument, 2013

Gramsci Monument, 2013

Thomas Hirschhorn (b. 1957) at the temporary Gramsci Monument he created last summer in partnership with residents of a large public housing project in the Bronx. The work was commissioned by Dia Art Foundation.

From Critical Laboratory 

To look at images of destroyed human bodies is important because it can contribute to an understanding that the incommensurable act is not the looking; what is incommensurable is that destruction has happened in the first placethat a human, a human body, was destroyed; indeed, that an incommensurable amount of human beings were destroyed. It is importantbefore and beyond anything elseto understand this. It's only by being capable of touching this incommensurable act that I can resist the suggestive question: Is this a victim or not? And whose victim? Or is it perhaps a killer, a torturer? Is it perhaps not about the victim? Perhaps this destroyed human body shouldn't be considered and counted as a victim? To classify destroyed human bodies as victim and not-victim is an attempt to make them commensurable. The victim syndrome is the syndrome that wants me to give a response, an explanation, a reason to the incommensurable and finally to declare who is "the innocent."