Statement concerning “Subjecter” (2012)

I have made a small series of works in the past months, which all include the word “Subjecter” in their title. With the”Subjecter”-artwork I wanted to do an artwork made with few existing elements, with direct, economic and simple means.

The word and title “Subjecter” is my invention, it is my attempt to give form to a ‘subject’ in action: an “activated” ‘subject’ becomes “Subjecter”. A “Subjecter” is active and assertive by the thought of the other, the thinking of the ‘next’ (my neighbour) and the dynamic of human thinking. The “Subjecter” proposes to reflect and this is its active part: the “Subjecter” reflects what has been projected on to it, The “Subjecter”, the “Nail-Subjecter”, the “Twin Subjecter” or the “Nail-Subjecter with Arrow” are all a ‘contemporary-fetish’, each screw and each nail stands for a wound, together, all nails and screws stand for the wounds of today’s reality. There are thousands of wounds fragilizing the ‘subject’.

But at the same time, those thousands screws and nails constitute an armature. This armature made of screws and nails is the armature of fragility, the armature of the precarious, the armature of vulnerability. Vulnerability, precariousness and fragility constitute

today’s armature. The incommensurable of today’s reality must constitute in itself the armature. The commensurable cannot confront the incommensurable. The incommensurable has to be confronted as such – that is how Truth can be touched. To accept the wounds of reality is the only way to resist today’s factual reality.This is what my form wants to do, this is the new, this is the important and this is the precious. This is what my work “Subjecter” stands for.

Thomas Hirschhorn, Aubervilliers, 2012