GRAMSCI MONUMENT

2012

HOME PROGRAM LOCATION THE PROJECT THE MAP ABOUT GRAMSCI CONSTRUCTION DISMANTLING PRESS-KIT
A WORK IN PUBLIC SPACE BY THOMAS HIRSCHHORN, PRODUCED BY DIA ART FOUNDATION NEW YORK
LOCATED AT FOREST HOUSES, THE BRONX - NEW YORK CITY, SUMMER 2013
"Every
human being
is an
Intellectual."
Antonio Gramsci


AMBASSADOR’S NOTE 21

Although it was written in haste on a scrap of paper, the note retained the desire for a practical outcome that is typical of a letter. “You must help me best friend because I don’t know English well,” read the opening sentence. “If I get a best friend everyday, he/she speak me everyday in English, we lecture together one day. I [will] understand English well. IR[S] tell me about it.” The author of the note is a recent immigrant to New York, a resident of Forest Houses and a regular visitor to the monument. The note came into being in the middle of a conversation in which he was trying to explain his situation, namely, his determination to learn English. It goes without saying, fully aware of the pitfalls of well-meaning platitudes, that it is from such a common aspiration that a reconceptualization of the "monument" starts. The condition of possibility of such a form, seems to me, arise from the activation of empathic action that designate new kinds of friendship in the conquest of indifference.



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