As a curator, talking about art mediation seems to mandatory nowadays. I won't object to this- mediation sounds down-to-earth and responsible at the same time. It's for the 'people'. What has to be mediated is probably highly complex and can't be superficial. Obviously this seems to be one main consensus about mediation: first comes art, and then art mediation. Art is what it is and we cannot do anything about it. So to make the best of it, we try to mediate it.

“Art mediation and education is in special focus on documenta 12. It has its own architecture. In contrast to the tendency to understand art mediation as service and marketing instrument it appears on this world art exhibition as an attorney of the arts and as counterpart to the public. Art mediation will dedicate itself to the task of argueing with the visitors about the things we do not understand.” (former web page documenta 12)

Thus, the art mediation is separated from art itself and has its own architecture. Might it somehow disturb the art or interfere with it? Shouldn't it be connected to art somehow? Furthermore, it is a "counterpart" to the visitors and will argue with them about things which “we” do not understand. That's the already mentioned sequence of first-art-then-mediation. And art is in need of an attorney, too. Does it feel guilty?

“The collective dispute needs time and space. Therefore the guidance tours on documenta 12 will last two hours. And therefore it will get its own architecture, which creates a space for this dispute: palm groves.”

Palm groves? We are obviously getting serious, now. In a press conference documenta officials almost apologized for the fact that there are no guided tours shorter than two hours. As if one could not mediate anything to the visitors in one hour - but in two. Or are two hours considered as unreasonably much to explain contemporary art? What, if it wasn't about art, but biochemistry or physics. We apologize, but it'll take two hours to explain?

So how does the mediation look like? If we follow the weblink, the actually interesting magazine project is not mentioned, instead, guidance tours for different groups, then guidance tours for pupils (a good idea, actually) and as cream of the crop: guided tours with an iPOD. At best, this is a metaphor of intensive fraternization of the institutions with the public. But the artists are not mentioned at all. But enough of documenta 12, it's just an example.

Art mediation and mediating art

One might come to the conclusion that the problem is not the mediation, but art itself. First, a disclaimer: I'm not saying that art must be self-explanatory. Nobody demands this from biochemistry, why should we demand it from art. Neither does it mean that art mediation is unnecessary or wrong. But nonetheless, it's somehow strange that the artists don't have anything to do with this question, apparently. We may imagine a curator standing in front of an artwork, thinking: Oh-oh, how shall I mediate this! Naturally, the whole topic would have to be discussed in individual cases. But let us look at a few very general examples instead.

First there is strongly subjective or 'neosubjective' art. It focuses on experiences, feelings and personal impressions of the artist. How can these be transmitted to the viewer? I do not know, but I would assume that the work would manage to do this right out of the box, because this is what it is all about, isn't it? However, if the author's intention is not really understandable, we may ask why the viewer should be interested in the artist's feelings at all. I really don't think this is an obvious question. In any case the artist should have thought about this in the first place.

Then there is art which is relatively complex: To understand it, much background knowledge is required, i.e. about some historical event, or the special political situation in the artists's country. In this case one could ask the artist, what he had in mind. If the historical event is not common to most of the recipients, why is the work relevant? If the country's politics is not common and the work does not communicate itself to a foreign public in a plausible way - what does this art want then, what are its intentions?

3^rd example. Art, which is interesting primarily for other artists (representing any other special interest groups), because it refers to 'context' stuff, or special topics. Is this so difficult to mediate? For peers, a note with a short explanation will do, and for the rest the work is not particularly interesting, let alone understandable.

Let's try to bring some structure into the whole concept. If art mediation is necessary, we may have one of the following cases:

1. the recipient is lacking some minimum of background knowledge concerning the artwork/artist

2. even if much is known/explained about the work, almost no recipient can draw anything from the work without mediation.

3. there is a general lack of knowledge 'skill' concerning art/culture.

Case 1 is something for the classical art mediation, with iPOD in the palm grove if you like. This, however, is no big thing and standard among large exhibitions. Case no. 2 is a problem intrinsic to the artwork. The artist should have thought about whom he wanted to address beforehand. But some artists seem to ignore this and to use the concept of the genius to shift the responsibility to the public and the institutions. If you do not understand me, then this is your problem.

The 3rd case is symptomatic. Imagine a politician states that we should take care that kids don't watch explicit videos depicting strong violence on their mobile phones. As a consequence, he demands a ban for mobile phones for kids. This, of course, leads nowhere, but will yield some headlines in the press. The substantially more meaningful question would be: what's wrong with a society in which kids want to watch such stuff at all? Did we fall short of educational objectives? Now, the same idea seems applicable to art. If we must state that today's art is irrelevant or simply appears to be perfectly worthless for most people – shouldn't this problem be a main topic for art? Don't we maybe need art that implicitly mediates itself instead of external mediation? For this, recipients, institutions and artists have to realize what they expect from art at all. I'm pretty sure about the recipients – they don't expect much. I wont speculate about the latter two groups.

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