Thomas Hirschhorn on Collage

.



To do collages is essential to me. I do two-dimensional Collages and three-dimensional Collages. Doing Collages means creating a New World with elements of the Existing World. Doing Collages is expressing the Agreement with the Existing World without approving it. This is Resistance.

Doing Collages is based on this Agreement and this Non-Approval. That is the reason why often Collages are not taken seriously. That is the Reason why making Collages is suspicious and why doing Collages is considered unprofessional. But those are precisely the arguments which demonstrate the Resistance of the medium Collages. Collages resist Facts, Collages resist information and Collages resist Documents. Collages create a Truth of their own.

Doing Collages still means working with explosive matter, doing Collages still has the ability to reach a Public – a Public which I call – the Non-Exclusive Audience and doing Collages still escapes control – escapes my own control first. Everybody has, once in his life, done a Collage. Everybody has, once in his life, the sensation that the world can be re-invented, that is so easy, that it really is possible – through a Collage. But then was told – immediately – it is too easy to do this, it is too simple and it is too evident.

This is exactly what I want to insist upon: I want to insist upon doing a simple, easy and evident work. I wanted to do a basic, rough, primitive work. I wanted to do crude Collages: Bring together what has nothing to do together; bring together – what only I think – can be brought together; bring together – what only I see – as together; bring together – what only I know – as together. I juxtapose them as a Headless Act. A Constitutive Act – done in Headlessness. I want to create the condition for an Understanding of the World – the World I am living in. I understand the World – as One World, as the One and Only World, as the One and Unique World – I am living in. I love to do Collages – and in doing it – I want to do a work which reaches Universality. Doing Collages is my tool.

- Thomas Hirschhorn, 2008



.