Video occupies a particular place in the work of Thomas Hirschhorn, complementing his use of 'lay-outs', the term he employs to designate his installations and the representation systems he has created. His videos take on meaning in relation to his use of drawing or sculpture, as with 50/50 à Belleville (50/50 in Belleville, 1992), Les monsters (Monsters, 1993) or the 1995 series composed of Robert Walser Video, Antifaschistiche Aktion, I Will Win and Thank You . Hirschhorn chooses simple, often static framing within which an action may or may not occur. He frequently appears in his videos, posing mike a bigger-than-life hero, an archetypal figure of the artist rebelling against the system. He likes to work with refuse, waste matter and any material which the history of sculpture considers as not noble. He attempts to combat the idea of the quality of an artwork, not in relation to its meaning but concerning its realisation and the materials it includes. He thus makes his works with materials such as cardboard, aluminium foil, rags, wooden boards and so on. For the same reason, his videos are preferably presented in the simplest way, on monitors rather than as projections. With 50/50 en Belleville (50/50 in Belleville), Hirschhorn uses one of the modes invented at the beginning of his artistic work, 50/50, which is a system of filling in where half of a given surface is left empty and the other half filled with collages or drawings. The aim of the void is to stimulate the visitor's imaginations or simply leave it empty so that the purchaser can fill it in. In the video, he stands at the top of a métro escalator in Paris, probably at the Belleville station, and hands out 50/50s like leaflets. Hirschhorn, wearing a coat and dark pants, is filmed with a high-angle shot which does not show his face. The camera captures the reaction of the passers-by, who accept the 50/50s or not. To those who raise questions about the nature of the leaflet, Hirschhorn replies, 'It's art'. His goal is to reconcile art and the general public rather than confining his works to museums. For him, art should be democratic and above all, allow the public to think about serious questions related to social or political problems. The idea of taking to the street appears in his first pieces, not as a postulate but as a necessity, because this was the only place where he could show them. From then on, he regularly used public spaces to show his lay-outs. In 1991, Skulptur Sortier Station, a work bought by the Centre Pompidou in 1999, was installed for a month at the Stalingrad metro station in a supposedly rough area of Paris and in any case, one which was far away from the traditional museum and gallery district. This work features a collection of documents and videos in showcases, referring in particular to the fictitious Robert Walser prize (see Robert Walser Video). Hirschhorn feeds his work with tributes to the thinkers and artists who enrich his vision of our society. At the head of the list are Gilles Deleuze, Georges Bataille and Michel Foucault, to whom he had devoted monuments (monumental lay-outs) at international art fairs and other events.

Laetitia Rouiller

Translation Miriam Rosen