DOKU.ARTS
Zeughauskino Berlin
09.09.–27.09.2015

Thomas Hirschhorn – Gramsci Monument

In 2013, Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn was invited by the DIA Arts Foundation in New York to realise a monument in honour of Antonio Gramsci. After a year's fieldwork, Hirschhorn decided to set the project up in Forest Houses, a social housing project in the South Bronx, which is known for its high levels of unemployment, poverty, and violence. With the participation of local residents, the artist planned a community centre that would serve for several months as a stage, bar, library, and radio station, with spaces for graffiti artists and a computer room.

Hirschhorn is an artist as passionate as he is uncompromising. “I am a soldier fighting for the arts”, he says. He reprimands his colleagues and the camera crew alike. In his view, he does not want to help people, but rather they should help him in his artistic work.

Angelo Lüdin's film focuses not only on the artist and his vehement convictions, but it also allows his staff, local residents and visitors to have their say. There is the old lady who fears for her flower bed; there are local residents, who are totally unfazed by the intellectual lectures. There are the visitors who are upset about the scrum of vehicles gathered around; the workers who are excited about and inspired by their new task. And, not least, there is the question of whether hegemony can really be understood, if every person is an intellectual.