Faith (2009)

«The Bijlmer Spinoza-Festival» is one of my most demanding, one of my most difficult, one of my most challenging but also – to me – one of my most beautiful works.

It is most demanding in regard to the amount of energy which was given to construct it, to organize and run it daily. It is most difficult in regard to the hyper-complexity and ambition of its structure – the multiple and interwoven beams. It is most challenging in regard to the very specific situation of the work, in this public space, the Bijlmer. And it is most beautiful – to me – in regard to the people of the Bijlmer that I met here. The people of the Bijlmer, in their involvement in my work, in their coexistence towards it, gave «The Bijlmer Spinoza-Festival» its soul, over and over every day again and again but every day differently.

This work fills me with happiness, beyond the fact that it is not yet a granted value for the Bijlmer inhabitants nor a granted value in the art field yet.

«The Bijlmer Spinoza-Festival» is a real experience, an experience which produced and achieved moments of precarious grace, it gives me the strenght, the pleasure and the will to continue my work. My faith – yes – my faith in Art and my faith in Philosophy as tools to cut holes into the everyday interests of reality, is reinforced.

Thomas Hirschhorn June 28. 2009