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A Digital Walk-Through: Thomas Hirschhorn’s Monuments Series and Alternate Reality Games

image of A Digital Walk-Through: Thomas Hirschhorn’s Monuments Series and Alternate Reality Games

This chapter proposes a new interpretative study of one of the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn’s most complex art projects, the “Monument” series, consisting of four public art displays that were organized and took place for nearly a decade in different cities around Europe and the US. While each of the four separate pieces that make up the series will be summarized, the core of the study will focus on the final one, Hirschhorn’s “Gramsci Monument” (2013), in relation first to its context, a historically significant housing project built by New York City in the Bronx at the end of the 1950s, before providing a second and perhaps more novel comparison to the structure and practice of Alternate Reality Games. Such games, as I argue, in which players essentially roleplay as players, informed primarily by a single plot-based objective over an extended period of time, are capable of producing immensely complex stories and narratives, along with substantial character development. A variety of media and game theory concepts (for example, ), as we will see, continue to complement what is one of most fascinating and diverse genres of gaming, with its eccentric use of public, usually outdoor, space and improvised character development in pursuit of an end that is often purposely left vague to most of the players. Hirschhorn’s equally eccentric and playful use of public space, 8000 square feet of the Forest Houses project, for one month seems importantly commensurate with key devices found in Alternate Reality Games. While art critics already provide significant readings of Hirschhorn’s works and methodologies, usually (and accurately) rooted in earlier experiments in performance art and relational aesthetics that emerged in the 1960s—see for example, , Benjamin Buchlow ( ), and —no current examination takes into account the use and experimental reuse of ludic artifacts found today in Alternate Reality Gaming along with several technical similarities to various VR/XR games.

Keywords: Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) ; intermedia ; landscape art ; public ; social sculpture

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References

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References

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  4. Bonami, Francesco (2005). “The Legacy of a Myth Maker: Joseph Beuys,” Tate, January 1. https://www.tate.org.uk/tate-etc/issue-3-spring-2005/legacy-myth-maker. Accessed August 13, 2023.
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  6. Chalmers, David (2022). Reality +: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy. New York: Norton.
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     [Google Scholar]
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  9. Estep, Jan (2004). “Reading Hirschhorn: A Problem of (His) Knowledge, or Weakness as a Virtue,” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry 9: 83–89.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Evans, Elizabeth A., Laura Christopherson, Brian Sturm, Emily King, and Chad Haefele (2010). “Alternate Reality Games: A Realistic Approach to Gaming on Campus?” SIGUCCS ’10, Norfolk, VN, October 24–27.
  11. Foster, Hal (1994). “What’s Neo about the Neo-Avant-Garde?” October 70: 5–32.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Foster, Hal (2004). “An Archival Impulse,” October 11: 3–22.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Gingeras, Alison M (1998). “Thomas Hirschhorn: Striving to be Stupid,” Axt Press 239: 20–21.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Gramsci, Antonio (1971). Selections from The Prison Notebooks. New York: International Publishers.
  15. Gramsci, Antonio (2000). The Gramsci Reader, ed. David Forgacs. New York: NYU Press.
  16. Hoban, Stephen, Yasmil Raymond, and Kelly Kivland (2015). “Dia: Thomas Hirschhorn Exhibition. Gramsci Monument July 1, 2013–September 15, 2013, Forest Houses.” https://diaart.org/exhibition/exhibitions-projects/thomas-hirschhorn-gramsci-monument-project. Accessed May 23, 2023.
  17. Jacobs, Jane ([1961] 1993). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House.
  18. Jordan, Cara (2013). “The Evolution of Social Sculpture in the United States: Joseph Beuys and the Work of Suzanne Lacy and Rick Lowe,” Public Art Dialogue 3.2: 144–67.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Kimball, Whitney (2013). “How Do People Feel About the Gramsci Monument?” http://artfcity.com/2013/08/16/how-do-people-feel-about-the-gramsci-monument. Accessed June 13, 2023.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Lacy, Suzanne (1995). “Debated Territory: Toward a Critical Language for Public Art”, in Mapping the New Terrain, ed. Suzanne Lacy. Seattle: Bay Press, 171–84.
     [Google Scholar]
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     [Google Scholar]
  22. Olbrys Gencarella, Stephen (2004). “Gramsci, Good Sense, and Critical Folklore Studies,” October 110: 3–22.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Olivier, Bert (2015). “Rancière and the Recuperation of Politics,” Phronimon 16.1: 1–55.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Roth, Moira (2001). “Making and Performing Code 33: A Public Art Project with Suzanne Lacy, Julio Morales, and Unique Holland,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 23.3: 47–62.
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  25. Schjeldahl, Peter (2013). “House Philosopher,” The New Yorker, July 29. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/29/house-philosopher. Accessed May 20, 2025.
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  26. Szulborski, Dave (2005). This Is Not a Game: A Guide to Reality Gaming. Durham, NC: New Fiction Publishing/Lulu.
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  28. Wack, Arianne (2013). “In their Own Words: Forest Houses Residents Consider the Gramsci Monument.” https://hyperallergic.com/87206/in-their-own-words-forest-houses-residents-consider-the-gramsci-monument/. Accessed June 13, 2013.

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