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Studio Practice Axioms from Thomas Hirschhorn

PostPosted: Fri Oct 26, 2012 12:04 pm
by CAP
Following on from John Cage’s tips for the art student, I found this list of what I suppose we could call studio practice points by installation artist Thomas Hirschhorn in the September issue of Art Forum (2012 Vol. 51, No 1 p250).

I pretty much agree with most of them. 8-)

I LOVE TO PRODUCE MY WORK!

• To not produce or to refuse to do something, or to not participate, can be as important as doing something. As an artist I have to confront this question every day. It is necessary to know what to produce and to decide to produce or not. It is not necessary to publicise not producing – to do so is defensive or selfish, and for sure, narcissistic. Because to produce – to produce a work – requires commitment.

• To produce a work means giving form – and giving form is the essential in Art.

• To produce means establishing one’s own vocabulary, creating a new language in Art.

• To produce means to establish a critical corpus.

• To produce – to produce in headlessness – makes it possible to face and withstand the sense of ridiculousness that is inevitable when making a new form.

• To produce means to resist – through production – the dictatorship of comments, facts and opinions.

• To produce - to produce relentlessly - means resisitng cynicism and defeatism, to be free from focussing on the reception of the work, to not communicate 'about' the work nor to disseminate information around it.

• To produce means building a resistance to capitalization, correctness, manipulation, and calculation – which is what consumption is based upon.

• To produce means to create the conditions for implying a non-exclusive audience. It’s only by accepting that a work is produced with lack and errors that one has the power to include ‘the other’.

• To produce means to understand Art as an assertion, as a statement, as an act of emancipation, and as something that I authorise myself to do.

• To produce a work gives a chance to touch Truth.