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| How to rectify all mistakes at once Alise Tīfentāle, Art Historian dOCUMENTA (13) 09.06.–16. 09.2012. Kassel | |
| For many, the previous Documenta, in 2007, posed the rhetorical question: “what now?”,(1) whereas this year’s exhibition attempts to provide the answers. It is true, though, they haven’t been necessarily simple, understandable or acceptable to everyone, but uncertainty and doubt do indeed seem to have been left behind us. The Artistic Director of Documenta Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev has a vision and an opinion, and the artists and other participants she selected embody this in ways which not infrequently can be quite removed from art, as “the boundary between what is art and what is not becomes less important.”(2). Roberta Smith in a review in The New York Times indicated that, in her opinion, the curator “is more interested in creativity in general than in art in particular.”(3). It could be further elucidated that it’s not “creativity,” whatever that may be, but rather the general efforts of mankind to survive and to hold together the whole big deal. Documenta provides both idealistic and utopian, as well as quite practical ideas for the transformation and improvement of the world. Participants think about and comment on politics, science, history, ecology and economics, about suffering and mistakes and, inter alia, about art as well. The unifying motif is a surprising optimism, and hopes for at least a theoretical opportunity to rectify mistakes and live happily henceforth. The shadow theatre of history It has always been important for the Documenta project to maintain its legends and myths. To differ, at any cost, from the Venice biennale and others whose actual or theoretical origins can be found in the 19th century expositions of the world’s industrial achievements – bourgeois, commercially and colonially oriented entertainment, in which everything is instantly transformed into a consumer commodity that serves capital. Here the accepted pretence is that art in a capitalist world doesn’t, however, serve capital, and many are willingly trying to believe this. Christov-Bakargiev refers back numerous times to the first Documenta exhibition which took place in 1955, and in Kassel at least there’s no escape from the omnipresent Documenta myth. A reminder of this is the photograph in which Christov-Bakargiev poses together with her mythical ancestors – previous artistic directors of Documenta exhibitions, in this way reminding us about this project’s messianic nature, and the chosenness and importance of the artistic director. Among other things, the fact that there is only one other woman in this photograph – Catherine David, the curator of the Documenta 10 which opened in 1997 – may be of significance to many. This fact reminds us of the history of Documenta as a patriarchal structure, in which Christov-Bakargiev has attempted to introduce a number of radical changes. | |
 Kader Attia. The Repair from Occident to Extra-Occidental Cultures. View from the exhibition. 2012 Photo: Roman März Publicity photos | |
| One of them being that this year’s exhibition exposition can be viewed not only at countless venues in Kassel and its environs, but also in Kabul (Afghanistan), in Alexandria and Cairo (Egypt) and in Banff (Canada). Most likely, only the curator and some of the curatorial team have seen absolutely everything. But bearing in mind that the exhibition has been dedicated to artistic research, of equal importance to the physical exposition are the theoretical and investigative articles which have been collated in one of the exhibition catalogue’s three volumes – The Book of Books, almost 800 pages thick. Even though the use of the term “artistic research” promotes discussion and doubt in an academic environment, Christov-Bakargiev sees in this the possibility for development of contemporary art.(4) In a way, it is also a question about the autonomy of art – does it make sense to think about art as a strictly divided off field, with incontrovertible definitions, methods and tasks? Documenta concludes that it doesn’t. Christov-Bakargiev begins with a reminder that in previous eras, too, art was closely connected with social and political events. Consequently the examination of each historic art work is inescapably connected with a study of history. Correspondingly, new creative work can also be based on historical research, which an author carries out as both a historian and as an artist. In this aspect, the whole of the dOCUMENTA (13) structure is a model for artistic research: an integrated research masterpiece of general history, art history, philosophy and politics. In its way, this position is symbolized by Geoffrey Farmer’s (born 1967) installation Leaves of Grass (2012), which has been created from a carefully cut out forest of illustrations from Life magazine. Fashion, politics, culture, technology, advertising and famous people – everything that could be found in the magazine’s illustrations from 1935 to 1985, placed in chronological order, like the “puppets” in shadow theatre. We can only wish that our own past had been merely shadow theatre. A viewing of the exposition commenced with the “The Brain” section at the Fridericianum Museum. Behind a glass wall in the small hall there was a collection of art works and historic artefacts which the creators had encountered in their long and responsible journey to the Documenta. “The Brain” reminds us that it’s not possible to talk about art and history as two separate fields. In this perspective, art is only one of the elements that creates history – the same as military commanders and politicians, natural catastrophes and the development of science. This section of the exposition channels the viewer’s perception in this direction – exhibiting bottles that had been painted by Giorgio Morandi during the Second World War together with Bactrian Princesses – fragile and elegant miniature female figurines created in Central Asia in the 3rd –2nd millennium BC. Or, for example, Vu Giang Huoung’s (1930–2011) unpretentious drawings with motifs from the everyday life of a Vietnamese fighter during the Vietnam War, and a porcelain nude – Rudolph Kaesbach’s (1873–1950) little sculpture, in the neo-classicist style favoured by the National Socialists, which used to be in Adolf Hitler’s Munich apartment. Critic Ana Teixera Pinto concludes that “In a sense, we are all living amidst the ruins of Empire, in a world we neither own nor disown”(5). A conscious reflection about historical traumas is one of the ways of coming to terms with them – this could be one of the cornerstones of the dOCUMENTA (13). | |
 Kader Attia. The Repair from Occident to Extra-Occidental Cultures. View from the exhibition. 2012 Photo: Alise Tīfentāle | |
| One of the more optimistic results of artistic research is the work Knights (and other dreams) (2010–2012) by Nedko Solakov (born 1957). In a consummately symbolic place – at the Brothers Grimm Museum – the artist puts to use two individual obsessions from his childhood years: his interest in knights and in rock music. Solakov has researched in depth the history of chivalric orders, and found out about their rudimentary existence nowadays. He came to know enthusiasts who still today put on armour and imitate tournaments, and has found motifs of knighthood culture in computer games etc. In one of the videos the artist himself, wearing shining armour, rides off on a white horse just like a real storybook hero. His working methods have been borrowed from historians, with the end result being not a book or a scientific article, but a captivating multimedia private show, in which documentary material meets fantasy, and the subjective – with the factual. A review of historical canons also takes place in Kader Attia’s (born 1970) impressive work Repair From Occident to ExtraOccidental Cultures – in a tiny museum, traditional sculptures from a number of African nations, the works of Italian artists in Carrara marble, the so-called “trench art” created by soldiers in the First World War, as well as thematic books, newspaper and magazine articles are exhibited together. The human face is used here as a most powerful symbol: historic photographs depict typical First World War injuries – the terribly disfigured faces of soldiers, in “before” and “after” sequence showing the success of plastic surgery in the correction, or at least reduction, of the traces of these injuries. Thus the soldiers’ faces get “repaired”, and here, in turn, the author has noticed similarities with the way sculptors in Senegal and the Congo have used various objects of Western culture, or fragments of these objects, in the repair or improvement of their ritual sculptures. As noted in the introduction to this work by historian Serge Gruzinski, “Kader Attia turns into a historian, an archaeologist, an anthropologist, and ethnologist in search of objects that can show us how societies rebuild themselves, face one another, intertwine and respond to one another. The effects of European modern war par excellence, the Great War, medicine “restorative” advances and its laboratories are faced with colonization destructive assaults (..).”(6) | |
 The Brain. View of part of the exhibition dOCUMENTA (13) Photo: Roman März Publicity photos | |
| Documenta also draws attention to the various methods of non-violent resistance, internal emigration and protest against the ruling regime, and the survival or destruction of art and artists. Thus, for example, the exhibition brings to our attention the “apple priest” – a clergyman from a Bavarian village, Korbinian Aigner, (1885–1966), who in the 1930s openly criticized National Socialism and was imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp. Having been assigned to do gardening work, Aigner developed a number of apple cultivars under concentration camp conditions. In addition Aigner was also an artist, and from the age of ten until the end of his life he created about 900 small coloured drawings which portray apples, and only apples – one or two in each drawing. Some of his lifetime’s work is exhibited in Documenta, and a plant from one of the cultivars of apple bred by Aigner was planted in Karlsaue Park. Will communism have to be constructed again? The commonly-held view is that in Kassel, as opposed to other major exhibitions, everything is serious.(7) As related by eyewitnesses, at some point when the atmosphere became a little high-spirited during the press conference prior to the opening of the exhibition, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev rebuked those present: “No. This is serious, you know. This is Documenta.”(8) The exhibition’s historical baggage and worry about its five year messianic task requires a certain seriousness, as Documenta should not be an entertainment, but rather intellectual effort and stress. Moreover, in this case oriented towards theoretical and factual material which has been used as a crucial argument in the consideration of prospects for the future. One could even surmise that this year’s convincing and sentiment-filled exhibition may be best understood by those who at university studied historical and dialectical materialism, and Marxist political economics. In any case – nothing will come of it without Marx. A knowledge of capitalistic critique etches in the reference points for an understanding of the exhibition – for example, “The Brain” as the historic section, the exposition at the Fridericianum, Documenta-Halle and Neue Galerie as the dialectic section, whereas the exhibition at the Ottoneum Natural History Museum – an insight into the science of political economics. “When you step inside you see it is filled with seeds” – that’s what the political economics section of the exhibition is called. | |
 Lori Waxman. 60 wrd/min art critic. Installation, performance, publication, dimensions and duration variable Photo: Nils Klinger Publicity photos Courtesy of the artist | |
| In it, a message about righting the wrongs of the past is conveyed, for example, by Maria Thereza Alves’ (born 1961) political battle to achieve a second life for Mexico’s historic Lake Chalco. Drainage of the lake in the 19th century was carried out by a Spanish coloniser and entrepreneur Iñigo Noriega Laso, who burned down the villages of the local inhabitants and sold the people themselves into slavery. Today the lake has been partly restored, but the destiny of the people living along its shores is once again under threat. Meanwhile the Mexico Museum director who, as it happens, is a descendant of Laso, is preparing to stage an exhibition about the history of the city’s water supply, in which Laso obviously will be reflected in a positive light. The artist, in collaboration with the local people, is working on the development of artificial islands which could help the local farmers to survive, and reminds the whole world about the ongoing presence of the consequences of colonization, even today. As another vision of the future there is the compost dollar as an alternative to the oil dollar, in the work Soil-erg by American artist Claire Pentecost (born 1956). Criticism of capitalism from within is not always consistent. More often it is paradoxical, as it is specifically due to Western capitalism that the economic conditions have been created for the education and careers of many artists, curators and critics, and in which the majority of the philosophical works which everyone enthusiastically quotes have been written. The institutional foundation of contemporary art was established and is maintained by it. New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz was appalled about a number of expressions of excessive idealism, especially about the fact that the Critical Art Ensemble artist group project A Public Misery Message: A Temporary Monument to Global Economic Inequality, which was theoretically planned as a criticism of capitalism, ended up costing more than the annual budget of the average museum.(9) Meanwhile, in another article, Saltz has pointedly indicated that the theoretically anti-capitalist position of Documenta and similar projects is incompatible with reality. Similarly to the Occupy Wall Street movement, artists and curators love to talk about the existing economic injustice and the more preferable equality. At the same time, it’s hard not to agree with Saltz that in the context of art, comprehensive and well-financed projects with an anti-capitalist message are actually “art only for the 01 percent” and that “selling to an insular, hyper-rich clique is as commercial as it gets”.(10) But even Documenta will be unable to answer the question – do we have an alternative? Will there really be another revolution of the workers, followed by the dividing up of resources? Is liberté, égalité, fraternité possible? Or, for example, the new ideal for today may be the Neolithic era community Çatal Höyük (7500–5700 BC) of Anatolia, in which a classless society, equality, solidarity and a kind of communism had apparently existed? The previously mentioned Occupy Wall Street movement with its slogan “the only solution is World Revolution” fights for the rights of workers.(11) One has to ask whether an alternative solution exists – for example, to turn away from this unjust system, to decline all the good things of New York as a metropolis including such nuances as art museums (which in the USA are mostly created and maintained thanks to the initiative of private capital) and air conditioning in public libraries, and to start up a new, happy life (of equality) on a self-sufficient homestead without electricity, relying only on the work you can do with your hands and being completely free of those horrible exploiters? | |
 Korbinian Aigner. Apples. Gouache, pencil, watercolor, colored pencil on cardboard. 1912–60s Photo: Roman März Publicity photos Courtesy of Historisches Archiv der Technischen Universität München | |
| Of course, criticism of the hand that feeds you is one of the features which differentiates a human from, say, a dog. A certain spirit of protest directed against the existing system, no matter what it may be like, has been a characteristic of the artist and philosopher at all times. There will always be countless versions also of how to act – to organize a state coup, to take part in a public movement, to avoid any contact with public life and to hide in one’s own personal world. And Documenta reminds us about all of these. Saltz’s critical remark could be refuted by the fact that everything, however, is not quite that simple. Many Documenta participants don’t live in the epicentres of capitalism, quite the opposite. Their viewpoint, even though it may be influenced by Western culture which is tended towards the global dominant, is still based on a different historical and daily experience. It’s not always “art only for the.01 percent” – for example, the AndAndAnd group of artists in the little garden next to the Ottoneum Museum invites people to take up an anti-capitalist lifestyle, (which, I assume, is not that different from self-sufficiency), and anyone can do this. Art critic Lori Waxman (born 1976) offered to write a two hundred word review within a half an hour about any work of art shown to her – thus every artist had the opportunity of being professionally reviewed, as opposed to real life in which critics write and publications publish articles only about the few successful ones. The thing – the measure of all things Another crucial element of dOCUMENTA (13) is the message to focus on the world of things as a sort of challenge to our anthropocentric world view. Christov-Bakargiev calls this a non-logocentric approach. Such an attitude allows the rejection of verbalisation as one of the fundamental functions of human thought and instead gives a “voice” to things and objects. Not only humans have rights and responsibilities, but, as it turns out, things have them too – one can speak of the character, interaction and functions of objects, animals, plants and minerals. In this perspective, humans are not always the drivers of physical, mental, political and economic processes, because even so-called “inanimate” objects have some say in the world. | |
 AndAndAnd. Commoning in Kassel and other proposals towards cultures of commons, revocation, and non-capitalist life. 2010–2012 Photo: Alise Tīfentāle | |
| This approach might be compatible with modern philosophical “speculative realism” or the “speculative turn” of continental materialism and realism.(12) The questions examined in this trend by Slavoj Žižek, Manuel DeLanda, Bruno Latour, Alberto Toscano, Quentin Meillassoux and others are connected with so-called “thing theory”. In thing theory, a form of “agency” is granted to things in an attempt to overturn, or at least shake up, the conception that “man is the measure of all things”, that “it all happens inside our heads” and only the human imagination, choice and action can grant natural or supernatural abilities to things. One of the pioneers of this theory, Bill Brown(13), has pointed out that things tend to have “thingness”, and this quality can be independent and have agency, without necessarily requiring human determination (as in cases where a human body does not have agency and is only a thing trapped within its substance or materiality). Brown states that because of this quality we may observe things but not always understand them, and often they remain “beyond the grid of intelligibility”.(14) In addition Brown reminds us that “Constructivist materialism sought to recognize objects as participants in the reshaping of the world: “Our things in our hands,” Aleksandr Rodchenko claimed, “must be equals, comrades.””(15) The idea of things as participants in the transformation of the world chimes with Christov-Bakargiev’s theoretical premise. Jerry Saltz has said that “to Joseph Beuys’ famous dictum “Everyone is an artist,” Christov-Bakargiev adds, “So is any thing.”(16). In her programmatic introduction, the artistic director opines that alignment is possible between the intelligence, affects and views of humans and other life forms. Such an alignment would be connected with the ability to reclaim “..ancient knowledge of directly caring for their own sustenance and food (and severing it from the corporate production of food, which can dramatically disempower humans in ways not seen in the past ten thousand years) ..”(17). On the one hand, we can refer to the Marxist thesis on the complete alienation of the proletariat from work, tools and the results of work, and also the ideas held by ourselves and our fellow humans on how to overcome this alienation. On the other hand, ChristovBakargiev’s emphasis on the thingness of things ties in with the efforts of thing theory to return to objects the voice that humans supposedly took away. Thus in the mid-1980s anthropologist and socio-logist Arjun Appadurai and colleagues founded a field of research in which things and objects rather than human social life are at the centre.(18) One of the central figures in the philosophy of focussing on things is Bruno Latour and his chief exegesist Graham Harman.(19) In the light of this theory, historians of art and culture are paying increasing attention not to the possible symbolic or metaphorical meaning of things and materials, but rather, for example, to the fattiness of the fat used by Jospeh Beuys or the colour and pigmentation of the paints used by Anish Kapoor. Or the stoniness of Romanesque cathedral stone sculptures, as in the case of Peter Low, or the materiality of the gifts given and received in the Valois dynasty court, as per Brigitte Buettner, or all that is profane, substantial and physiological in Medieval European art, which is at the centre of Carolin Bynum’s research.(20) In his Documenta exposition, Llyn Foulkes (1934) plays a set of drums he crafted from found objects, and his paintings integrate things such as an old microwave oven. Amy Balkin (1967) invites us to view the Earth’s atmosphere as a concrete thing that should be included in the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List, while artists Guillermo Faivovich (1977) and Nicolás Goldberg (1978) remind us of human powerlessness before things and the obvious agency of such things. Their video work recording some slightly humorous pottering about with a giant rock is one of the documented testimonials of the failure of their project: Faivovich and Goldberg had hoped to bring the giant meteorite El Chaco to Kassel from Argentina. One of the main reasons why this proved impossible was not that transporting the 37 ton object would be too expensive, but rather the conviction of the local people that El Chaco didn’t want to be shifted anywhere. Another aspect of the agency of things is revealed in the project News from Nowhere by Kyung-won Moon (1969) and Joon-ho Jeon (1969). One of these elements is the film ‘El fin del mundo’. In one episode of it a woman in a post-apocalyptic bunker is studying the scant remains of our civilisation. The object that she is staring at with total incomprehension is a Christmas tree decoration – a string of lights. On the way to the exhibition, in a discussion with a companion about the believability of what modern scientists put forward about the functions of art and architecture from the past, we proposed a hypothesis about what would remain of modern civilisation in the territory of Latvia if the world came to an end. Archeologists from some mysterious future species would uncover the ruins of strange, enormous buildings, and if they were able to decipher the alphabet they might conclude that here stood a temple to the god Iki, and over there was a shrine to the goddess Maxima.(21) They would assume that these gods played an important role in our society, as the temples were gigantic and they stored impressive quantities of offerings as food stocks for the priestly class, who apparently lived vastly better than everyone else, since in the residential dwellings excavated there were no significant amounts of food to be found. It is clear that Documenta has inspired many to think about both gods and endangered species, and to reach divergent hypotheses. For example, Roberta Smith has concluded that the exhibition’s “incomprehensible, viewer-defying vastness perpetuates an old model, the curator as all-seeing-god, on a disheartening scale. In this way, it seems as much a dying breed as a new start.”(22) From one angle, you could agree with this. From another, you could also imagine that we have reached a place where without an omniscient god we won’t get too far. And it’s probably not the worst if this god turns out to be not Iki, but rather an inspired, idealistic artistic director. Translator into English: Filips Birzulis (1) With this rhetorical question Solvita Krese conluded her summary of impression of the Documenta 2007. See: Krese, Solvita. Documenta vājums vai spēks? Studija, 2007, No. 4 (55), p. 65. (2) Christov-Bakargiev, Carolyn. “The dance was very frenetic, lively, rattling, clanging, rolling, contorted, and lasted for a long time”. In: dOCUMENTA (13). The book of books: Catalog 1/3. Ed. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Bettina Funcke, and Katrin Sauerländer. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2012, p. 31. (3) Smith, Roberta. Art Show as Unruly Organism. The New York Times, 14 June 2012. (4) As part of Documenta, on 8 and 9 September there will be a conference for the discussion of the meaning and contents of artistic research. (5) Teixera Pinto, Ana. Documenta 13. Art Agenda, 10 June 2012. (6) Gruzinski, Serge. From Holy Land to Open Your Eyes. Kader Attia. The Repair from Occident to Extra-Occidental Cultures. dOCUMENTA (13). (7) See, e.g.: Smith, Roberta. Art Show as Unruly Organism. (8) Saltz, Jerry. A Glimpse of Art’s Future at Documenta. New York Magazine, 16 June 2012. (9) Ibid. (10) Saltz, Jerry. Eleven Things That Struck, Irked, or Awed Me at Documenta 13. New York Magazine, 15 June 2012. (11) See their website: http://occupywallst.org/ (12) See the collected works: The Speculative Turn. Continental Materialism and Realism Ed. Levi R. Bryant, Nick Srnicek, and Graham Harman. Melbourne: Re.press, 2011. (13) See, e.g.: Brown, Bill. Thing Theory. Critical Inquiry, 2001, Vol. 28, No. 1. (14) Ibid, p. 5 (15) Ibid, p. 10 (16) Saltz, Jerry. A Glimpse of Art’s Future at Documenta. (17) Christov-Bakargiev, Caroline. “The dance was very frenetic, lively, rattling, clanging, rolling, contorted, and lasted for a long time”, p. 34. (18) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Ed. Arjun Appadurai. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. (19) See, e.g.: Harman, Graham. Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics. Prahran, Vic.: Re.press, 2009. (20) See: Low, Peter. “As a stone into a building”: metaphor and materiality in the main portal at Vézelay. Word & Image, 2006, Vol. 22, No. 3; Buettner, Brigitte. Past Presents: New Year’s gifts at the Valois Courts, ca. 1400. Art Bulletin, 2001, Vol. 83, No. 4; Walker Bynum, Caroline. Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe. New York; Cambridge, Mass.: Zone Books; MIT Press, 2011. (21) Iki and Maxima are the names of supermarkets commonly found all over in Latvia today. (22) Smith, Roberta. Art Show as Unruly Organism. | |
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