Incommensurable Banner
Thomas Hirschhorn
The Incommensurable Banner, in common with many of his recent works, drew on photographs of contemporary warfare, in particular those that have been circulated online and in magazines.
The Incommensurable Banner stood at four metres high and eighteen metres long. It read as an endless parade of utter destruction, depicting bodies blown apart by modern weapons, weapons designed not just to kill but to obliterate.
Created with reference to a tradition of protest, Hirschhorn’s confrontational and controversial work was intended to fully implicate the viewer in the realities of war waged on our behalf. In doing so he invited visitors to consider, and above all not to avoid, the much larger questions at the heart of humanity.
Warning: The images presented in this exhibition were graphic in their representation of violence and war. They may be considered unsuitable for children, and may be disturbing to viewers of any age.
About The Artist
Thomas Hirschhorn is one of the foremost artists of his generation. His work is characterised by makeshift constructions, built from cheap and readily available materials including cardboard and masking tape, and a willingness to set up the spaces and facilities in which such constructions can be debated, along with the courage to make work about deeply contentious political issues.
In recent years, Hirschhorn has engaged with the ‘war on terror’ head on, making many works that draw on the photography of the conflict, and in particular the terrible pictures that circulate online and are printed in magazines devoted to bizarre and disgusting spectacles, of bodies torn apart by modern munitions. For the Biennial, he showed an 18-metre long banner, The Incommensurable Banner, of the worst of these photographs. Hirschhorn shows us what is excluded from the mainstream mass media, and asks us to reflect on the politics of that exclusion. His images confront, not merely killing, but the extreme mutilation of bodies by cluster bombs, 20mm canon shells, hollow-point ammunition, and indeed the entire, lengthy evolution of the means to tear flesh apart most efficiently. The bodies depicted, sometimes reduced to no more than an abstract smear, are traces of what were once people with histories, memories, families and friends. Their reduction to mere pulp is the most extreme exercise of political power, and one wielded daily by our governments in the occupied nations.
Naomi Klein, in her recent book, The Shock Doctrine, writes that the torture centres of the Latin American dictatorships were often situated in city centres where people could hear the cries of the imprisoned. Far from being secret, they were placed to terrify the rest of the populace, through the whispered transmission of fears that could never be broadcast or published. These images also circulate underground, and daily we hear their insistent whispering. To blot it out would be inhuman, and to broadcast it the only, if brutal, alternative.
Julian Stallabrass
Curator – Brighton Photo Biennial 2008
