Conference

Thomas Hirschhorn:
"Doing art politically: What does this mean?"

05 Sept. 2010, 5pm

Galería Metropolitana
Félix Mendelssohn 2941
Pedro Aguirre Cerda
Santiago, Chile

hirschhorn

Doing Art politically: What does this mean?

Today, the concepts, 'political art', 'committed art', 'political artist' and 'committed artist' are used very often. These simplifications and abbreviations have long since been superseded. They are cheap and cognitively lazy classifications. Not for a second do I think that I am more 'committed' than any other artist. As an artist, one must be totally committed to one's art. There is no other possibility if one wants to achieve something with one's art than to commit oneself totally. That holds for any art. Today there is great confusion about the question concerning what 'Political' and 'political' are. I am only interested in what is really political, the 'Political' with a capital P, the political that implicates: Where do I stand? Where does the other stand? What do I want? What does the other want? The 'political' with a small p, the opinions and forging of majorities, does not interest, and has never interested me. For I am concerned with making my art politically. I am not concerned with, and have never been concerned with making political art.
The statement, 'making art politically — not making political art' I learned from Jean-Luc Godard. He said, "It is a matter of making films politically; it is not a matter of making political films". But what does it mean to make art politically?

Doing Art politically: This means deciding in favour of something

I have decided to situate my work in the fields of form and force called love, politics, philosophy and aesthetics. I want my work to always touch all of these fields. All four fields are equally important to me. However, my work does not have to fill out all these fields evenly, although I always want all four fields to be touched. One, but only one, of the four fields of form and force is politics. The choice of the force‑ and form-field, politics, means that in my work I always want to pose the question: What do you want? Where do you stand? It also means that I always want to pose the question for myself: What do I want? Where do I stand? The force- and form-field, politics, just as the field, aesthetics, can also be interpreted negatively. I am aware of that. But it is never a matter of excluding or pushing away the negative; it is a matter of confronting also the negative; it is a matter of working also within the negative, involving oneself with it; and it is always a matter of not being negative oneself. Through my work, I want to create a new truth beyond negativity, beyond the current state of affairs, beyond the commentaries, beyond the opinions and beyond the weighing of considerations.

Doing Art politically: This means creating something

I can only create something if I behave positively toward reality, even toward the hard core of reality. But it is a matter of never allowing the pleasure, the choice, the fun of work, the positive in creation, the fair, to be asphyxiated by critique. It is a matter of not reacting; it is a matter of always being proactive. Art is always action; art is never reaction. Art is never merely a reaction or critique. It is not a matter of being uncritical or of not exercising any critique; it is a matter of being positive despite the sharpest of critique, despite uncompromising rejection and despite unconditional resistance. It is a matter of not allowing the passion, the hope and the dream to be denied to oneself. To create something means to risk oneself. I can only do that if I make a work without at the same time analyzing what I am making. To take the risk, to have joy in working, to be positive is a precondition for making art, for only in being positive can I create something from out of myself. I want to be positive, even in the midst of the negative. And because I want to be positive, I must gather the courage to touch also the negative. That is where I see the political in making art. It is a matter of creating an action, of risking an assertion, of making a postulation, a positing which goes beyond mere criticism. I want to be critical, but I do not want to allow myself to be neutralized by being critical. I want to try to proceed also beyond the critique I express, and I do not want to make it easy for myself through (narcissistic) self-critique. I never want to lament about myself as an artist, for there is no reason to do so — I can do my work; I can create something.

Doing Art politically: This means loving the material with which one is working

To love does not mean to be in love with one's material or to lose oneself in it. Rather, loving one's material means placing it above everything else, working with it with awareness, and it means insisting through it.
I love the material because I have decided in favour of it, and therefore I do not want to replace it. For, because I have decided in favour of it and love it, I cannot and do not want to change it. The decision in favour of the material is a prodigiously important one; that is the political. And because I have made this decision, I cannot give way to the wishes or demands for 'something else' and 'something new'.

Doing Art politically: This means working for the other

To work for the other means at first to work for the other in myself, and it also means working for a non-exclusive public. The other can be my neighbour, it can be a stranger, someone who scares me, whom I do not know and also do not understand. The other is someone about whom I have not thought and whom I have not expected. The non-exclusive public is not simply everybody or the mass or the majority; the non-exclusive public consists of the others, the sometimes more and sometimes less numerous others. Through and in my work I want to work for a non-exclusive public. I want to bank everything on never excluding the other from my work; I always want, unconditionally, to include the other. I want to include the other through the form of my work. The other is also the reason why I do not make any distinction between works in public space, in a commercial gallery, at an art fair, in the museum, in the Kunsthalle, in the alternative art space. That is the political. To work for the other gives me the possibility of positioning myself as an artist outside the spectrum of weighing considerations.

Doing Art politically: This means giving a form

Not making a form, but giving a form, a form which comes from me, which comes only from me, and which can only come from me because I see the form in this way, because I understand the form in this way and because I know the form only in this way. In contrast to making a form, giving form means to be one with it. I must be able to stand being alone with this form. It is a matter of holding up the form, of asserting the form and defending it — against everything and everyone. It is a matter of positing the question of form for oneself and of trying, by giving form, to give an answer. I want to try to confront myself with the great artistic challenge: How can I give a form which takes a position? And how can I give a form that resists the facts? I want to understand the question of form as the most important question for the artist.

Doing Art politically: This means constructing a stage or platform with the work

The platform created in this way enables others to come into contact with the work. I want to understand all my works as a surface or a field. This field or surface is the surface that enables access to or contact with the art. On this surface the impact or friction takes place, and through the contact the other can be implicated. This surface — my work — must be a locus for dialogue or for confrontation. I think that art has the power and capability, because it is art, to create the conditions for a dialogue or a confrontation, directly, one-to-one, without communication, without mediation, without smoothing things over. As an artist I want to see my work as a platform, a platform which is an unambiguous opening to the other. I always want to ask myself, Does my work possess the dynamic for a breakthrough? And I ask myself, is there an opening in my work? Does my work resist the tendency toward the hermetic? My work must create an opening; it must be a door, a window or even only a hole, a hole beaten into today's reality. I want to make my art with the will to create a breakthrough.

Doing Art politically: This does not mean working either for or against the market

Rather it is a matter of understanding the market as a part of the artist's reality and of working in this reality. Not wanting to work either for or against the market is not merely a declaration; it is the awareness that only through autonomy and independence can art manage to put itself beyond the laws of the market. Only the direct and affirmed confrontation with the reality of the market, despite errors and defects and despite injuries, makes it possible to resist the pressure of the market and to go beyond it. As an artist I must not become dependent. Always, and especially in the initial years, the artist needs support and assistance. I know that this support and assistance are important, but I must never make myself or my work dependent upon them.

Doing Art politically: This means giving oneself the means to do so

It is a matter of inventing one's means for working oneself, or of appropriating them. My means are headlessness; energy = yes quality = no; weakening oneself but wanting to make a strong work; not being economical with oneself; expending oneself; panic is the solution!; being precise and simultaneously exaggerating; undermining oneself; being cruel vis-à-vis one's own work, being tenacious, less is less! more is more!; it is never won, but it is also never totally lost!; to have the ambition to coin a new concept with my work; to assume responsibility for everything concerning my work; to bear looking stupid in view of my own work; better is always less good!; refusing all hierarchies; believing in the friendship between art and philosophy; being prepared to pay the price for my work as the first to do so.

Doing Art politically: This means using art as a tool or weapon

I understand art as a tool to get to know the world. I understand art as a tool to confront myself with reality. And I understand art as a tool to live in the times in which I am. I always ask myself, Does my work have the ability to generate an event? Can I encounter someone with my work? And with my work, do I manage to get to know something? Or, through my work, can someone get to know something?
To make art politically means to understand the work which I am making today, in my milieu, in my history, as a work which wants to go beyond this, my milieu, beyond this, my history. I want to achieve in and through my life that I confront myself with universal problems. Therefore I must work with what surrounds me, with what I know and with what affects me, not in such a way as to succumb to the temptation of the particular, but rather, on the contrary, to touch universality. The particular, which always excludes, must be resisted. For me this means that I want to make my work which I make here and today a universal work. That is the political.

Doing Art politically: This means being a warrior

Thomas Hirschhorn, Aubervilliers, summer 2008 - (Translated from the German by Dr Michael Eldred, Cologne)