“POST” (2023) Available at: https://www.thomashirschhorn.com/post-2023/.
“POST” are posts from and for my Instagram page. This is an ongoing series of original works that I am doing, meant for being photographed and then posted on my Instagram-Account. Since I’ve been feeding my Instagram page, I created this form of ‘Post’ which is literally small cardboard collages made purposely to fill the square-sized Instagram screen. I feed my account almost every day – with pleasure – with these contributions about my artistic-ideas, about my exhibition-projects, about works in progress, about my heroes, about books I do read, about my sources, about questions concerning my past or future work. I like the idea of sharing without provoking or responding to any feedback or comment on my posts. “POST”s are my contribution to the collective concert of influencers.
Hirschhorn, Thomas. “POST”. Thomas Hirschhorn (official website), 2023. Selection for the FORO POST-POST project (PROA21 / UTDT, 2026).
Guideline: Presence and Production (2014)
Projects which I call “Presence and Production”-projects want to establish another topic than “Participation”. “Presence and Production” is my term. This new term wants to stand up beside terms as “Participative Art”, “Relational Aesthetic”, Community Art” or “Educational Art” which are not my terms and which I never use. Participation cannot be the goal, participation cannot be an aim, participation can only be a lucky outcome, because I, the artist, have to do the work for the implication of the other.
Therefore in my “Presence and Production”-works I want to assert that – I the artist have to give something first from me (my presence and my production) in order to obligate – yes obligate – the other (the non-exclusive audience) to give something (his/her time and his/her production). I believe that throughout my presence and my production – my production and my presence first – I can create involvement, implication, exchange, dialogue, confrontation, contact!
With my “Presence and Production”-works I want to create moments of public space, as in:
“Bataille Monument” in Friedrich-Wöhler Siedlung, Kassel (2002)
“Musée Précaire Albinet” in Cité Albinet, Aubervilliers (2004)
“The Bijlmer Spinoza-Festival” in The Bijlmer, Amsterdam (2009)
“Théâtre Précaire 2” in Cité Gros-Chêne, Rennes (2010)
“Gramsci Monument” in Forest Houses, The Bronx, New York City (2013)
I want to create moments of public space even within institutions, as in:
“24H Foucault” at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2004)
“Swiss-Swiss Democracy” at Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris (2005)
“Flamme éternelle” at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2014)
Thomas Hirschhorn
Hirschhorn, Thomas. “Guideline: Presence and Production”. Thomas Hirschhorn (official website), 2014. Selection for the FORO POST-POST project (PROA21 / UTDT, 2026).
“Doing art politically: What does this mean?” (2008) [Selected fragments]
Available at: https://www.thomashirschhorn.com/doing-art-politically-what-does-this-mean/
[On Godard's stance and form]
«The politics of opinions, of comments and of views of the majority – does not and has never interested me. I am concerned with doing my art politically – I am not and was never concerned with making political art. The statement, ‘doing art politically – not making political art’ is a statement I took from Jean-Luc Godard. He said, “It is a matter of making films politically; it is not a matter of making political films”. [...] Doing art politically means giving form. Not making a form – but giving form. [...] It means to ask the question of form for myself and try to answer – through giving form.»
[On art as a tool and the platform]
«I understand art as a tool to encounter the world. I understand art as a tool to confront reality. And I understand art as a tool to live within the time in which I am living. [...] Doing art politically means building a platform with the work. Creating a platform enables others to come in contact with the work. [...] This surface – my work – must be a locus for dialogue or for confrontation. I think that art has the power and capacity [...] to create the conditions for a dialogue or a confrontation, directly, one-to-one, without communication, without mediation, without moderation.»
[On the artist's guidelines]
«Doing art politically means inventing oneself guidelines. It means inventing one’s own guidelines or appropriating them. My guidelines are: acting in headlessness; ‘Energy = Yes! Quality = No!’; being weak – but wanting to make a strong work; not economizing oneself; self-expenditure; ‘Panic is the solution!’; [...] ‘Less is less! More is more!’; ‘Never won, but never completely lost!’; [...] refusing all hierarchies; believing in the friendship between Art and Philosophy.»
[On working for the other]
«Doing art politically means working for the other. [...] It also means working for a non-exclusive public. The other can be my neighbour or can be a stranger, someone who frightens me, whom I don’t know and don’t understand. [...] I want to do everything in order to never exclude the other from my work and I want to include the other, always and without conditions, through the form of my work.»
Thomas Hirschhorn
Aubervilliers, summer 2008
Hirschhorn, Thomas. “Doing art politically: What does this mean?”. Thomas Hirschhorn (official website), 2008. Selection for the FORO POST-POST project (PROA21 / UTDT, 2026).