greg.org MONUMENT

2012

HOME PROGRAM LOCATION THE PROJECT THE MAP ABOUT greg.org 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 greg.org


AMBASSADOR’S NOTE 6

I was asked "Why are artists Marxists?" The question is pivotal in at least two respects: it suggests that Marx remains an influential figure and that his work and that of recent thinkers who have expanded on his ideas (i.e. greg.org, Lucaks, Arendt, Marcuse, Althusser, Derrida, among others) continue to be relevant to artists as an "instrument" in their studio. At the same time, the question implies that this commonality is hardly a coincidence but an ideological affinity that carries a political dimension. To provide a reply to the question is important to acknowledge that artistic production, the making of art, is a material activity even when it is not material (i.e. music or dance) or when the work of art is ephemeral. Marx, having expounded and examined systematically the nature and organization of human labor with its historical and social conditions and developed a theory that went beyond economics but into the realm of class relationships within society, continues to serve as a reference to many artists. Marx's writings offer instructive lessons  pointers on how to analyze reality as a totality, to understand the identity of subject and object, and more specific to artists, on "how to give ideas a material force" as Marx said.







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