A WORK IN PUBLIC SPACE BY THOMAS HIRSCHHORN, PRODUCED BY DIA ART FOUNDATION NEW YORK
LOCATED AT FOREST HOUSES, THE BRONX - NEW YORK CITY, SUMMER 2013
In Turin, the Italian city where Gramsci studied and lived for most of his adult
life there are bars and restaurants, a street and a library named after him but there
is not a monument. A visitor from Sardinia pointed this fact to me the other day
with an air of disappointment but then mentioned that in Ales, the town of Gramsci’s
birth in Sardinia, there is a piazza dedicated to him. Indeed, the artist Giò Pomodoro
designed a square entitled Piano d’uso collettivo (Plan for Collective Use) in 1977.
It seems that commemoration and remembrance operate in different time registers and
intensity. The absence of a "physical" monument of Gramsci in major cities in Italy,
or for that matter, in cities around the world, is inconsequential when contrasted
with the intellectual monuments that are being cultivated on daily basis at the universities
and publishing houses in cities as far New Delhi, Mexico City, and Tokyo.
(to be continued in Note 18)
