Participate And Confront

Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn rose to fame in the late 1980 s and early 90 s.Over the past thirty years,his practice has used cheap,everyday materials such as wooden boards,cardboard,tape,aluminum foil,and plastic,and employed such methods as bundling,simulation,montage and collage to create massive temporary installation projects in which he invites members of the public from different social classes—migrants,laborers and low-income groups often excluded in intangible ways from the art world and system in this era of capitalist globalization—to take part in the processes of creation and exhibition.Whether in museums or white cube spaces,Hirschhorn has consistently used these methods in his exhibition projects as a form of resistance against the official exhibition narrative: destroying and reshaping the white cube space,waiving entry fees,and breaking down the stratification of the art system.Hirschhorn creates unstable juxtapositions of objects bearing all manner of different meanings within the same time and space,constantly propagating their mass to form a space of contention between multiple tensions and discourses,guiding the participants from diverse backgrounds to converse,discuss,drink coffee,gather and perform in an expression of resistance to and criticism of the top-down ideology of capitalist consumer society against the backdrop of globalization.Hirschhorn views public space as a battlefield where highly charged political,economic,and social issues of imperialism,war,globalization,urbanization,and economic marginalization clash head-on.He understands the public realm as a site for criticism,debate,and dissent,a place for realizing the artistic mission of the new production of “knowledge” and discourse,and creating de-stratifying,liberated “communities.” This essay approaches the public and participatory nature of Hirschhorn's artistic projects,incorporating political aesthetic research rooted in the ideas of Jacques Rancière and thinking on equality,alongside such aesthetic theories as communities of sense and the reconstruction of tangible experience,in an analysis of Hirschhorn's critical stance toward existing ideology,class,systems and power,and the ideas and appeals to equality expressed through his public art.