The Spectrum of Response: Postdemocratic Literacy at Thomas Hirschhorn's “Gramsci Monument” by Mack Sjogren B.A. Universit
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The Spectrum of Response: Postdemocratic Literacy at Thomas Hirschhorn’s “Gramsci Monument” By Mack Sjogren B.A. University of Colorado, 1976 and 1981 M.A., University of Colorado, 1995 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts Department of Art and Art History 2014 This thesis entitled: The Spectrum of Response: Postdemocratic Literacy at Thomas Hirschhorn’s “Gramsci Monument” Written by Mack Sjogren Has been approved for the Department of Art and Art History ______________________________ Kira van Lil ______________________________ Claire Farago ______________________________ Richard Saxton Date _________________ The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. Sjogren, Mack (M.A., Art History) The Spectrum of Response: Postdemocratic Literacy at Thomas Hirschhorn’s “Gramsci Monument” Thesis directed by Professor Kira van Lil Thomas Hirschhorn’s 2002 Bataille Monument came under some attack for improperly treating an ethnic neighborhood of Turkish-German people as an exotic other. Hirschhorn is said to have made the art world viewers from Documenta 11 feel like they were invading another’s space. I will argue here that the evaluation of works like this, including Hirschhorn’s recent Gramsci Monument (2013), needs to be informed by the artistic tradition of which the work is a part, and also by the cultural and social milieu in which the work takes place. Although the artistic tradition is so vast that any attempt to summarize or characterize it risks parody, it cannot be overlooked. Félix Guattari and Jacques Rancière are two who have theorized the contemporary cultural and social milieu in ways that bring out significant aspects of Hirschhorn’s work. Rancière’s concept of postdemocracy is particularly relevant for characterizing not only what Hirschhorn’s art is doing, and trying to do, but also for conceptualizing a field of art in which Hirschhorn is but one contributor, with limitations which need to be investigated to more fully understand how they might be overcome. Félix Guattari argues that contemporary culture is marked by a revalorisation of aesthetic experience, part of which is an emphasis on new subjectivity marked by nascent creativity. Postdemocracy, Rancière says, is marked by the collusion of governmental and economic forces to fully demarcate the people, so that there is no longer any place where they can make an appearance of their own. What is missing from the postdemocratic order is any sense of equality, so the demos as traditionally understood does not exist. This presents a dilemma for art that has aspirations to be politically relevant and effective. If the demos does not exist within postdemocratic order, then the demands of the people stand little chance of being accepted. Any changes to the constitution of the people, when not socially engineered, tend to be readily subsumed, and catered to, by opportunistic market forces. The strategy employed by the countermonument works of art examined here is to place the locus of art within the audience, to make the audience of the work of art the place where the demos can and does exist. The artistic language of the countermonument, which has its roots in Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International and the fusion of art and life, has been established in large measure by the Harburg Monument Against Fascism (1986-1993), of Jochen Gerz and Esther Shalev-Gerz. Through an emphasis on extended temporal process, a focus on the audience, and the use of a kind of transaction as the unit of art, it begins the development of a new kind of literacy. Here, and in Hirschhorn’s “Gramsci Monument,” the experience of equality becomes the foundation for a sustained collaboration in which this new stuttering literacy can be developed. This art is not political in the sense of being in a dialectic with the established order. Instead the new literacy effectively alters some of the methods by which an order gets established, by which it is maintained, and by which it may be called into question. I believe this new voice is just beginning to be heard. iii Acknowledgments I extend gratitude to my advisor Dr. Kira van Lil and committee members Dr. Claire Farago and Richard Saxton, MFA. Thank you to Kira van Lil for having the vision and endurance to see me through this process. Thank you to Claire Farago for having the patience to encourage me to pursue this degree. Thank you to Richard Saxton for having the flexibility of intellect to appreciate my effort to bring art and art history closer together. I would also like to thank Dr. Jae Emerling, Dr. Amy Hamlin and Kari Treadwell, MFA for their inspiration. Thanks also go out to Thomas Hirschhorn for his generosity and support at the Gramsci Monument, as well as to all of the artists who made the works included in this paper. Thanks to the city of Boulder, the city of Basel, Switzerland, and to New York City and the residents of Forest Houses in the South Bronx. Thank you to DJ Baby D for hosting the events at the Gramsci Monument and to all those I had the fortune of interacting with at that event. Family and friends have supported me in my scholarly endeavors. Without them, this project would not have been possible. iv Contents List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... vi Introduction ....................................................................................................................................1 1. From the ‘Empty Place’ of Democracy to the Streets of Lower Manhattan ........................3 I. The Rebuilding of Ground Zero ..............................................................................................9 II. Feminizing History and Inverting the Gaze: Allyson Vieira’s “The Plural Present” (2013/4) ....................................................................................................................................................16 2. The Fusion of Art and Life .....................................................................................................19 I. From the Side of Life: works by Vladimir Tatlin .................................................................22 II. From the Side of Art: works by Ilya Kabakov .....................................................................23 3. The Shift from Space to Time: change through public transactions in the work of Jochen Gerz and Esther Shalev-Gerz ....................................................................................................29 I. The Public Transaction: early work of Jochen Gerz ...............................................................31 II. The New Literacy: The Harburg Monument (1986-1993) of Jochen Gerz and Esther Shalev- Gerz ...........................................................................................................................................33 4. The Machinic Interface of Systems of Value: Thomas Hirschhorn’s “Diachronic Pool” (2013) .............................................................................................................................................38 5. Antagonism, Amelioration and Ethico-Aesthetics: Bishop, Kester and Guattari .............49 6. Equality, Postdemocracy and Ethico-Politics: works of Jeremy Deller and Thomas Hirschhorn ....................................................................................................................................54 I. Interfaces to the Intersubjective: Jeremy Deller’s “The Battle of Orgreave” (2001) .............58 II. The Call to Respond: Jeremy Deller’s “English Magic” (2013-4) ........................................62 III. Occupying and Evacuating the Public: Thomas Hirschhorn’s “Gramsci Monument” (2013) ....................................................................................................................................................64 IV. Radical Equality at the Gramsci Monument ........................................................................72 V. The Shift to Space in Time ....................................................................................................73 VI. The Artist and the Postdemocratic Audience .......................................................................76 VII. The Voice and the Non-Exclusive Audience ......................................................................79 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................84 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................85 Appendix .......................................................................................................................................93 Figures ...........................................................................................................................................97 v List of Figures Figure 1. Photographs clockwise from top left of installation views of the Allegory of Charity, the Marquis de Lafayette statue, the George Washington statue, and the Abraham Lincoln statue, the Homeless Projection, A Proposal for Union Square. Photos: 49th Parallel,