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Interview with artist Thomas Hirschhorn

Interview with artist Thomas Hirschhorn

Listening to Thomas Hirschhorn talk about art, it’s hard to resist the sensation that all the other artists have got it wrong. Not that he’s critical of their work — in fact, I’ve never heard him mention another living artist by name. It’s more a matter of getting caught up in his enthusiasm. Thomas Hirschhorn is a fanatic. His ardor for the thinkers after whom he names many of his works — Ingeborg Bachmann Kiosk, Deleuze Monument, Bataille Monument, and most recently, 24h Foucault — is evident not only in these works’ devotion to their subjects’ writings, but also in the sheer volume of material deployed toward this end.

Viewers must be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed by the amount of verbiage in Hirschhorn’s displays. How can they be expected to absorb all of it? How can they be expected to absorb ANY of it?

The answer is that they’re not. Whenever he’s given the chance, Hirschhorn reiterates that his works are not about education or the betterment of the viewer (“I am not a social worker”). Nonetheless, specialists in the fields of philosophy and museum education are, not surpsingly, unimpressed by what they see as his forays into their departments. By their standards, his artworks are failed attempts at didacticism. And what’s more, they don’t show their lofty subjects the respect they are due.

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