Thomas Hirschhorn leads a class in which participants bring one work (a text, an original painting, a drawing, a song, a collage, a sculpture, a video or anything else) and discuss it with the class according to the criteria 'Energy Yes! Quality No!' The participant can choose to make a preliminary presentation of their work or not.
It is important that each work be discussed under the same overall conditions, therefore participants need to attend all presentations and discussions.
To Hirschhorn, 'judgement' is a positive term. 'Judging the work is never judging the person. Judging a work (my work or the work of others) is one of the keys to giving form, facing this judgement is one of the keys to asserting form - asserting form is the most important thing in Art.'
Timings for each day are 9.30 am - 1pm and then 2pm - 6pm
Thomas Hirschhorn (b. 1957, Bern, Switzerland)
Thomas Hirschhorn describes himself as 'an artist, a worker and a soldier', explaining that he fights 'hierarchy and demagogy.' His complex sculptural environments explore the human condition, combining philosophy with the debris of modern life and piling concepts and materials together in vast, rambling accretions. He regards these works, which address subjects as various as war, protest, pop culture, fanaticism and fundamentalism, as 'collages in the third dimension', defining this as 'putting things together that are not meant to be put together'.
They are constructed from commonplace materials, such as cardboard and packing tape, because these are things that 'everybody knows and uses in their everyday life, not for doing art'.
His installations, made both for galleries and for city streets, have taken the form of altars, kiosks, monuments and sorting stations. In using these forms, he aims to implicate the viewer in the work, placing them not just within a formal environment, but also in the issues and realities that the work confronts.