Is resistance possible? Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn still thinks so, according to the texts that permeated his giant cave of an installation at the 54th Venice Biennale. That Switzerland chose Hirschhorn as its official representative demonstrates a remarkable rapprochement, or at least détente, between an artist whose stated aim is to provoke and a government that cut funding to its own cultural agency in reprisal for permitting him to do so in Paris in 2004. Yet he created another provocative work at the Swiss National Pavilion, one intended to confront us with the cruel mess we have made of our world.
