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Text by Thomas Hirschhorn |
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Altars Altar to Raymond Carver in Fribourg
An altar is a personal, artistic statement. I want to fix my heroes. The altars attempt to memorialize a person who is dead and who was loved by someone else. It is important to testify to one’s love, one’s attachment. Heroes can’t change, but the altar’s location can change. The altars could have been made in other cities, countries. They could be in different locations—on a street, a side passage, in a corner. These local sites of memory become universal sites, by virtue of their location. That is what interests me. I choose locations that are not in the center or a strategic point of a city, just any place, for people may die anywhere. Most people don’t die in the middle of a square or on a beautiful boulevard; their death rarely happens in a noteworthy location. Even famous people don’t die in “the center.” There is no hierarchy of location between anonymous and famous people, there are unexpected locations. The location is important not in relation to the layout of the city but to the people who died. This helps me to plan the location of the altars. These altars question the status of a monument today by their form, their location, their duration. Thus, the choice of location determines my statement on work in public space and my critique of monuments. The form of these four altars comes from spontaneous altars, which one may see here or there, made by people who wish to give momentary homage to someone who died on the spot, by accident, suicide, murder, or heart attack (Gianni Versace, John F. Kennedy, Jr., Olaf Palme). The forms of these homages are alike, whether they are made for the celebrated or the less known: candles; flowers, often wrapped in transparent paper; teddy bears and stuffed animals; written messages on scraps of paper with hearts and other symbols of love. In this wild mixture, the love for and attachment to the deceased is expressed without any aesthetic preoccupation. It is this personal commitment that interests me. It comes from the heart. It is pure energy. One is not preoccupied with the form or quality of the elements, only with the message to be conveyed. I have chosen artists that I love—for their work and for their lives; they are not cynical, they are committed. The forms of these altars, which are profane and not religious, convey a visual form based on weakness. The forms and locations of the altars show the temporal aspect of the work. Necessity and urgency place them there. The cruelty and absence of spectacle in these monuments makes them untouchable by people walking by, proprietors, street cleaners, dog walkers, policemen. Everyone can be concerned. Everyone is concerned. These altars eventually will disappear. The average duration is two weeks. The disappearance of the altar is as important as its presence. The memory of what is important doesn’t need a monument. I have made four altars for four artists and writers: Piet Mondrian, Otto Freundlich, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Raymond Carver. The Piet Mondrian altar was shown, in Geneva, in 1997; the Otto Freundlich altar was shown, in 1998, in Basel and Berlin; the Ingeborg Bachmann altar was shown, in 1998, in Zürich and, in 1999, in Hall in Tyrol; and the Raymond Carver altar was shown, in 1998, in Fribourg, and in 2000, in Philadelphia. —Text: Thomas Hirschhorn, February 2000 Altar to Raymond Carver in Fribourg I love Raymond Carver and his writing. I want to make a “monument” to him in Fribourg. A makeshift monument, in a place where he did not live, where he did not die, but where he could have lived and died. It’s a precarious altar. It’s an installation quickly made, spontaneous, without design. It’s “cheap,” it’s temporary. The Altar to Raymond Carver could be everywhere, and, for that reason, it’s here, in Fribourg, that I’m making it in the end. I selected the site to the proximity of water under a bridge, next to a road that leads the walker nowhere. In any case, the only walkers are dog owners, who take their animals outside to piss or shit. The site seemed appropriate for this writer, who wrote about the shattered American dream. Raymond Carver lived to the limit, sad, at a dead end, and yet full of life. He attested to human vitality despite everything, was witness to every conceivable degeneration, to the point of being almost too banal. His writing overflows with a vitality without morals. He agrees to be part of the human race. It’s cruel, and beautiful; it’s nonspectacular and stripped bare. I want to pay homage to him! The altar form that I have chosen is familiar from the deaths of celebrities (Lady Di, Versace, Olaf Palme, Mitterand), but also of the unknown, such as young people who have committed suicide, car-accident fatalities, or victims of crime; we pay homage in this form. Candles, stuffed animals, photocopies, photographs, images from illustrated magazines, and other materials close at hand will be assembled to proclaim a personal commitment or statement. Often with flowers, lots of flowers. This form is temporary; for that reason, one can hardly be concerned with its “beauty.” It is important to bear witness! Bear witness to one’s love, one’s affection. Because of their precariousness, these profane altars have a great formal strength and emit a great deal of visual energy. They are generic, but apply weakness implacably as a strategy. They are untouchable, since they are respected by the police, by landowners, by passersby who know that we are dealing here with the life or death of another human being. The necessity, and the urgency, cannot be ignored, and the burning question raised by an altar is so much more powerful than it is precarious.
—Text: Thomas Hirschhorn, June 27, 1998
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