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
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.
