Craig Garrett: Several of the historical artists whose work you included in the Musee Precaire Albinet did not anticipate the effects that time and entropy would have on their works - the cracks in the surface of Mondrian's paintings, the stains of the facades of Le Corbusier's buildings. But failure is an element designed in to your work. What do you think is the main difference between your outlook and theirs?
Thomas Hischhorn: I am not interested in failure. I do not want to fail, but I do not exclude that I can fail, that my work can fail. But it is not an obsession for me. I am interested in energy, not quality. This is why my work looks as it looks! Energy yes! Quality no! I do not want to intimidate nor to exclude by working with precious, selected, valued, specific art materials. I want to include the public with and through my work, and the materials I am working with are tools to include and not to exclude. This is what makes me choose the type of materials I use. It is a political choice. I want to work for a non-exclusive audience because art can only, as art, be open to non-art. Art can only, as art, have a real importance and political meaning.
[originally published in Flash Art no. 238 (Oct 2004)]
