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computers and space for working. Making sculpture. doing research. having
experiences that you don't usualiy have. Learning another language, for
example. I repeat: the Foucault-Studio, the Foucault-Shop, the Auditorium, the
book-, sound- and media-library, the Foucault Exhibition, the contributors (every
other day), the Foucault-Map, the Foucault Archives. These eight elements will be
put alongside each other as in the human brain: they disrupt each other, they
complete each other, they compete against each other. But they never contradict
each other - they demonstrate the complexity and the infinity of thought. There
will be chairs, lots of chairs, armchairs, lots of armchairs for sitting down and
reflecting, reading and exchanging. There will be lots of light. Foucault Art Work
will be very lit. In the Foucault Art Work there will be lots of computers,
photocopiers, audio-recorders, video and DVD recorders, TV screens, but all these
objects wtll be integrated, mastered; tools, arms, but never aesthetic effects with
which to intimidate the public, or to show them new technology. The
technologies serve art, they serve philosophy. They will be tools, but not
necessities. To kill them, it's not necessary to have a gun. To construct a house, it's
not necessary to have a hammer. You must always work firstly with your brain.
Foucault Art Work will not be a Thomas Hirschhorn exhibition. I will have
contributed to this project with others, I hope lots of others. Marcus Steinweg,
Manueljoseph, Christophe Fiat, Peter Gente, not to mention those to whom I've
already spoken of the project. This project will be made together, multiply, with
multiple singularities, active, turned towards affirmation, the other. Turned to
the other with friendship, but without compromise. Neither visual, nor of
meaning, nor of space, nor of content.
Foucault Art Work is an ambitious project. It is itself an affirmation as much
as a work of art.
Thomas Hirschhorn, artist's proposal,24h FoucaultjournaJ (Paris: Palais de Tokyo, 2-3 October 2004).
Translated by Claire Bishop, 2006.
Hirschhornl124h Foucault; /157