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 26

If there is a question that raises the issue of what constitute the experience of art is when visitors ask: “What is the response from the residents to the monument?” The question puts forth a number of assumptions starting with the visitor's immediate differentiation with the local visitors. It is as if the person asking the question has already excluded himself or herself from the situation, opting to stand aside and relinquish autonomy to a fiction of consensus. One of the limitations of this question is the over-reliance on approval, on an idea of an imaginary “collective” that grants permission to raise a thumb. In many respects the question also stands out as an attempt to deflate responsibility, avoid making a judgment and assume a position. It is as if the children making art in the Workshop or playing in the Internet Corner, the team preparing the daily newspaper or the DJs at the radio station are invisible. In other words, is their engagement and labor not a response? Is their presence not an affirmation? Secondly, the question points to a simple refusal to engage on intensive observation and close analysis of a work of art. Then, of course, it also revelatory to point that this question is typically posed by visitors involved in cultural institutions, mainly curators and museum administrators, and the occasional art historian. Before trying to analyze the historical motives that compel people to seek approval as a precondition to their own experiences, I am reminded of Walter De Maria’s telephone piece. Here was an artist whom gave currency to the direct experience and made it a central issue of his work. Presence is the only response that counts.



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