Thomas Hirschhorn interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Thomas Boutoux ed., Hans Ulrich Obrist: Interviews volume 1, Milan: Charta, 2003, pp.393-400.
Scientic method, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 21st September 2009. 22nd September 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/Scientific_method
Hans Ulrich Obrist’s interview with Thomas Hirschhorn presents an artist confident with his artistic strategy and the function of his art. Art is utilitarian. I’m interested in the value of this approach considering the confusing nature of the purpose of art.
Hirschhorn states the function of art for himself directly: “art is a tool to learn about the world, a tool to engage with reality, and a tool to experience the time I live in” (Boutoux ed., 397). With the keyword being tool, art could be seen as a means to an end, something to be used to gain knowledge. I wonder is art loses its autonomy under this approach? The tool is not the result at the end of a process but what is used to reach that result. The catalogue as a tool for the “distribution of ideas, positions and manifestos, not [for] the form and design” (396) performs part of this function for Hirschhorn.
The concept of art as a tool shares similarities to the scientific method which is “a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge” (en.wikipedia.org). This is interesting considering the proposed site of Hirschhorn’s “Kiosk” project. In some ways he is aligning art as a research field with science: “I wanted to confront the researchers and scientists at the Institute with artistic and literary concerns” (Boutoux ed., 397).
My initial response is to question the validity of “artistic and literary concerns” in comparison to the field of scientific research. How effective are they as tools to learn about the world and what type of knowledge do they grant us? Postmodern contributions to philosophy have sought to align all fields of human knowledge on equal terms after western history has traditionally privileged scientific knowledge gained through empirical methods. Perhaps it is useful to reconsider my initial response. Hirschhorn has designed a “confrontation” to no doubt incite these questions. Like his view on the art catalogue, “It should provide space to raise questions, not try to convince me of the work’s validity” (396).
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The question about the validity of artistic or literary concerns vs. science is picked up in Darian Leader's book The New Black, where he examines psychoanalytical theories around mourning, depression, etc. He takes the stance that it is in art, not in science, that we see the effect of these things on us as human beings. The arts are tools that have been used for millenia to give voice to human experience in ways that science can or will not.
ReplyDelete-Nathaniel
I agree that you cannot learn about the world if you just focus on art and literature and that the new approach to philosophy that includes all fields makes much more sense. You can see this in art making or in our crits, most things can be connected to other things, so that everything connects to everything else.
ReplyDeleteI would tend to agree with Nathaniel that Art provides us new ways to discuss human experience which we cannot use science to counter. Art gives us facts of a different sort to science but they are just as valid, perhaps it just takes awhile to recognise because not all are attuned to art in the way that a practitioner is. Creative, imaginative thinking as artists leads to answers not necessarily found through logical, scientific thought making it full of value, how we make this recognised to the world is probably unnecessary.
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