It’s about me, about how I see, as an artist, I can work. To try again and again, to put everything into the work. So that’s why I like to be over-formed, to make too much, to put everything inside. I have, as an artist, to stand out this ridiculousness of this ambition and this pretension. And of course, that’s pretentious and it’s ambitious, but in another way, it’s stupid, also, to want to do this. It’s always about the entire possibility, the entire thing. As you say, the immersive manner: I feel as an artist I have to do too much. Hirschhorn: To me, it’s never about getting people to react. Is this your way of getting people to react, or is it your way of exploring ideas you care about. So you’re dealing with things that are emotionally pretty powerful, but also intellectually powerful: Noam Chomsky and Bataille and Foucault. It seems there’s extremeness in the emotional quality for example, the piece you did early in 2006 with the images of victims of war ( Superficial Engagement) or this one, it’s a bit claustrophobic, it’s lots of shiny things and bright things and bomb metaphors. Schmelzer: There’s often an immersive quality to your work. In this way, yes, I would like that it has a kind of radicality, but in the small questions of materials, of elements, of light, of space, every question embracing my tool as an artist to give form has to be radical, yes. That means to me, for example, working politically. Doing work politically means, yes, to question the material, to question the work that is done, to question every element: is every element I use, is it an offer, is it a key, is it a possibility to give the tool for the spectator to establish a dialogue or a confrontation with the work. I’m interested in working politically, not in doing political work. Are your politics radical in that traditional sense, or in that earlier sense, that sense that you’re going back to the roots of what’s fundamental about democracy, for example. And radical doesn’t mean “extreme,” it really means “to the roots,” if you break the word apart. Schmelzer: Your politics have been described as radical, but I like to go back to the etymology of words. The entrance to Cavemanman in the Walker galleries ![]() This is a collage, and here it is in the third dimension. What means doing a collage? It means to put things together who are not made to be put together. It’s a collage in the third dimension, not in the 2nd dimension. They are accessible, and they still exist, because in fact it’s about a collage. Hirschhorn: They are a tool to make a window to another reality, or our reality to another world. All the philosophical tracts are Xeroxes, which is a mass production technique, and there’s also stuff from mass media. Schmelzer: I also see there are a lot of mass communication, mass-culture items. ![]() The question is not what material is it from, the question is what’s it about? That’s why I use this material, because I believethey have a part of universality inside them. So tape, cardboard, paper, photocopies, mailing tubes, silver paper: it’s very important to me to have materials that are in everyday use. It’s very important to me that there is no question about from where the material is coming. Thomas Hirschhorn: I really try to use materials that everybody knows and uses in their everyday life, not for doing art. It’s not high-art material: tape, aluminum foil, Xerox copies… Could say more about that? Paul Schmelzer: Your material is really accessible. Interviewed in October 2006 in the installation Cavemanman, part of the Walker Art Center exhibition Heart of Darkness: Kai Althoff, Ellen Gallagher and Edgar Cleijne, Thomas Hirschhorn In this interview, he discusses how his work is a “collage in the third dimension,” the historical and contemporary influences behind the piece, and how a cave is a good metaphor for the mind. When Swiss-born artist Thomas Hirschhorn visited the Walker last month to install Cavemanman, he spent a few minutes with me discussing the piece, a massive network of tunnels and caves made from cardboard, mailing tape, aluminum foil, and other everyday materials.
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