Critical Laboratory OCTOBER Books George Baker, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Leah Dickerman, Devin Fore, Hal Foster, Denis Hollier, Rosalind Krauss, Annette Michelson, Mignon Nixon, and Malcolm Turvey, editors For a complete list of books in the series, please see the back of the book. Critical Laboratory The Writings of Thomas Hirschhorn Thomas Hirschhorn Edited by Lisa Lee and Hal Foster An OCTOBER Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2013 Thomas Hirschhorn All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please email [email protected] or write to Special Sales Department, The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142. This publication is made possible in part by the Fondation Jan Michalski pour l’Ecriture et la Littérature, Switzerland and the Gladstone Gallery, New York. This book was set in Bembo by the MIT Press. Printed and bound in Canada. All pictures courtesy Thomas Hirschhorn, unless otherwise mentioned. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hirschhorn, Thomas. [Works. Selections. English] Critical laboratory : the writings of Thomas Hirschhorn / Thomas Hirschhorn ; edited by Lisa Lee and Hal Foster. pages cm “An OCTOBER Book.” Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-01925-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Hirschhorn, Thomas—Themes, motives. I. Lee, Lisa, 1978– editor of compilation. II. Foster, Hal, editor of compilation. III. Hirschhorn, Thomas. Less is less, more is more. IV. Title. N7153.H57A35 2013 709.2—dc23 2012046927 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Acknowledgments ix Preface by Lisa Lee xi StatementS and LetterS 1 Less Is Less, More Is More (1995) 1 FIFty-FIFty (1993) 5 MoIns (1993) 7 Les pLaIntIFs, Les bêtes, Les poLItIques (1993) 9 Lay-out (1993) 11 My Videos (1993) 13 The New Videos (1994) 15 The Musée de l’art brut in Lausanne (1993) 18 Letter to Coraly (On Joseph Beuys and “Capital”) (1994) 20 Am I Casting Pearls Before Swine? And Why? (1994) 23 What I Want (1994) 27 Letter to Thierry (On Formalism) (1994) 29 Letter to Konstantin (On “Political Correctness”) (1995) 32 Me and the Military (1998) 34 Letter to Pascale (On Berlin) (1994) 36 “Direct Sculptures” (2000) 39 “Kiosks” (2000) 41 “Monuments” (2003) 45 “Altars” (2003/2006) 47 Contents Letter to Véronique (On Writing, Judging, Reading, Publishing) (2000) 50 Letter to Laurence and Hans-Ulrich (On Remaining Alert) (2000) 53 I Will No Longer Exhibit in Switzerland (2003) 56 Letter to Julia et al. (There Is No Ideal Place for Art) (2005) 58 Works on Paper (2006) 61 Artist Lectures (2007) 63 I Will Exhibit in My Homeland Again (2007) 65 Why “Where Do I Stand?” and Why “What Do I Want?” (2008) 67 Doing Art Politically: What Does This Mean? (2008) 72 “Spectrum of Evaluation” (2009) 79 “Force Majeure” (2009) 82 For the First Time (About Andy Warhol) (2010) 83 Double Happiness (On Intellectual Property) (2010) 85 Letter to Nancy and Richard (My Guggenheim Dilemma) (2011) 87 Letter to Elizabeth (Inventing My Own Terms) (2010) 89 Why Is It Important—Today—to Show and Look at Images of Destroyed Human Bodies? (2012) 99 Letter to the French Minister of Culture and Communication (2012) 105 33 Ausstellungen im öffentlichen RAum 1998–1989 107 Reproduction and Translation of 33 aussteLLungen IM öFFentLIchen rauM 1998–1989 107 ProjectS 159 About My Exhibition at Hôpital Ephémère (Why I Chose This Exhibition as My “First Exhibition”) (1992) 159 Regarding My Exhibition at Rueil-Malmaison (1992) 163 99 sacs pLastIques (Dépôt) (1994) 165 Regarding My Exhibition of WaLL-DIspLay, rosa toMboLa, saIsIe, Lay-out (1988–1994) at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume (1994) 169 vi Contents berLIner WasserFaLL MIt robert WaLser tränen (1995) 172 Letter to Matthias (Regarding VIrus-aussteLLung) (1996) 176 The Bilbao Failure (1996) 180 Lascaux III (1997) 183 skuLptur-sortIer-statIon (1997) 187 Letter to Alison (Regarding skuLptur-sortIer-statIon) (2000) 193 spInoza MonuMent (1999) 195 crItIcaL Laboratory, Project for “Mirror’s Edge” (1999) 199 WorLD aIrport (1999) 201 JuMbo spoons (1999) 207 The Matter of Location (Regarding the DeLeuze MonuMent) (2000) 209 Letter to Hervé Laurent and Nathalie Wetzel (Regarding the DeLeuze MonuMent) (2000) 213 Regarding the End of the DeLeuze MonuMent (2000) 217 Letter to Bice (Regarding WIrtschaFtsLanDschaFt DaVos) (2001) 221 Letter to the Residents of the Friedrich Wöhler Housing Complex (Regarding the bataILLe MonuMent) (2002) 225 Letter to Lothar Kannenberg (Regarding the bataILLe MonuMent) (2002) 229 Letter to Iris (Reflections on the bataILLe MonuMent) (2002) 231 DoppeLgarage (2002) 241 chaLet Lost hIstory (2003) 243 Letter to Clare (Regarding chaLet Lost hIstory) (2005) 247 Regarding hoteL DeMocracy and u-Lounge (2003) 251 sWIss-sWIss DeMocracy (2004) 255 The Musée précaIre aLbInet (2004) 259 utopIa, utopIa = one WorLD, one War, one arMy, one Dress (2005) 263 “Anschool” (2005) 269 superFIcIaL engageMent (2005) 271 Letter to Sabine (Regarding superFIcIaL engageMent) (2006) 275 Letter to Frédéric (Regarding “Concretion”) (2006) 279 the processIon (2006) 283 concept car (2007) 287 vii Contents poWer tooLs (2007) 291 ur-coLLage (2008) 295 the bIJLMer spInoza-FestIVaL (2009) 299 “Precarious Theater” (2009) 303 théâtre précaIre for “Ce qui vient” (2009) 307 Regarding théâtre précaIre and théâtre précaIre 2 (2010) 312 untere kontroLLe (2011) 315 crystaL oF resIstance (2011) 319 IntervIewS 327 Benjamin H. D. Buchloh: An Interview with Thomas Hirschhorn (2003, published 2005) 327 Mission: “Tenir le siège”: Interview with Thomas Hirschhorn by Jade Lindgaard and Jean-Max Colard (2004) 355 Becoming One’s Own Museum: Conversation between Thomas Hirschhorn and François Piron (2006, edited and published 2009) 359 Conversation: Presupposition of the Equality of Intelligences and Love of the Infinitude of Thought: An Electronic Conversation between Thomas Hirschhorn and Jacques Rancière (2009–2010) 371 François Piron: Interview with Thomas Hirschhorn (2010) 381 Notes 387 Bibliography 397 Index 403 viii Acknowledgments I am really happy that this book could be done. Many people have contributed to it, and I am grateful to all of them. I especially want to thank the following people. First of all, I would like to thank Hal Foster for his invitation to do the book and to include it in the OCTOBER Books series. His fingerprints are to be found everywhere in this project. I would like to thank Lisa Lee for her extensive work of reading, structuring, and editing, and for her hard-core con- tribution at all stages in the process. I would like to thank Mara Goldberg, Emmanuelle Giora, and Romain Lopez, who helped to collect texts, images, and information, who caught many errors, and who contributed mightily to the book. I would like to thank the various people who allowed me to write them in letters, to address them in statements, and to talk with them in interviews; their open eyes, their open ears, their open spirits, and their open hearts permit- ted me to write, knowing there would be an addressee. I would like to thank Michel Blancsubé and the Fundación Jumex, Mexico, for allowing a picture of the work Critical Laboratory, which belongs to their collection, to be used for the cover. I would like to thank Roger Conover, chief editor at the MIT Press, who guided the book during its conception and its fabrication; I would also like to thank Justin Kehoe of the MIT Press and Adam Lehner of OCTOBER magazine for their assistance. I would like to thank all the translators, who made