Without
form and framework : documenta 12
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That
the showrooms of these documenta are loosely distributed over the
Kassler center, which art works running around every now and then
freely in the city, as garden architecture or Cuisine struck
itself only loosely playing around with the category of exhibition
object, in addition the works of the really internationally
selected artists differ every now and then from the catalog
illustrations, this shows the difficult character of this strange
and in a way moving and exciting documenta.
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There
is actually no more art, what comes clear after some hours, because
what comes along as work, is mostly rather “created directly
from life", art-commercially made beautiful or in a relatively
typical way approximately monumental, like “lion into the
Bonsaiwald” of Cosima of Bonin, the Pappmaché wall of
Bill Kouélany or the exhibition container “Would you
like to participate into an artistic experience?” of Ricardo
Basbaum.
In
particular the Aue pavilion puts mostly enormous installations side
by side - one would have to say areas -, frequently relating on
rather simple crafts, in a more didactically oriented way or with a
contentwise goal to mediate. Some installation areas are less
politically but more subcultural oriented: Saadane Afifs gently
roaring and riffing guitar ensemble “Black Chords play Lyrics”
illustrates visually and acoustically that the generation born
between 1965 (?) and 1970 does not change from a certain age on into
another, civilian Habitus. A kilometers-long flower patch with plant
seeds by Ines Doujak, a picture of fetishistic sex is in the
catalogue - but in the exhibition, where?
Behind
the works of art, which not always arise as such but stressed
un-artsy, at best well sorted, is put usually more than can appear.
Rarely very subjective experiences, many more frequently the effort
to make attentive on political or generally social bad states. By the
strongly retrospective character, which presents numerous artists
with work from to seventies to the fifties, the documenta becomes
also a kind of critical background discourse over selective processes
in the avant-garde formation. However, Mary Kelly is the only artist,
who clarifies such orientations in her work explicitly anchored in
the tradition of feminist art. Otherwise rather the confirmation of a
prejudice adheres to the selection that the aesthetic orientation of
artists is connected in quite a way necessarily with the more or less
art-commercial weaving - from primitive to noble-decorative
materials. Hardly an installation on this documenta, in which a
loosely pending piece material not announces the triumph over the
patriachal panel picture.
The
“theoretical” guidance motives of this documenta “Is
the modern trend our antique one?”, “What is the bare
life?” and “What to do?” doesn't appear directly,
as the straight “ours” and the certain articles before
the "bare life" in view of the composition of the
surveying, only at the edge seeing, today's political ones,
regionalistic, individual ones, grouptheoretical from hundreds of
languages, countries and regions, as American fluxus questions of the
seventies appear remarkably inadaequat and completely unanswerable.
Perhaps
as signal for the something “more traditional”, or
formally character of works the documenta shows the profound
documentation “Enquête sur le/notre dehors” from
Alejandra Riera in the Fridericianum. Also here a complete area,
therein numerous small films with comments and photographies.
Regarding the aspect “interior” and “outside space”
and its metaphorical consequence through-crosses its own and on this
documenta everyday style of cinema verité with the romantic
topic of the inside and the outside. From this develope such amusing
moments as the question to a psychiatrist whether he would tell his
patient of its own life. Or a photography of a French bank, which
arouses the appearance, one would be not in Paris but in Guatemala or
West Africa. In the broader sense iconografic and action-theoretical
samples of the inside and outside form a constant motive and give the
entire, superficially arrangement a nearly strict character, at least
the area becomes thereby partiulary notable on this documenta.
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Also
with a purchase to inside and outside, but again concretely
politically related to the arrest of Che Guevara a year before and
to that extent also actually South American is the work of
Graciela Carnevale from 1968, which is documented photographically
in the Fridericianum.
“I
took a group of people as prisoners. With it the work begins, and
the people are their participants”. The artist closed the
well visited gallery “Ciclo de Arte Experimentale”
with a padlock from the outside. One hour long the locked up
remained irritated, but behaved friendly, only with gestures
asking for explanation or release. Only as someone from the
outside hit the wall's glass, also the gallery visitors came out
again.
At
this time the police was already present; the gallery was closed,
among other things because of the date - the first anniversary of
Ché Guevaras capture.
While
in the Wilhelmshöhe works are presented, that are at the
latest provided in 19th. century, predominantly to art from the
16th. century, is in the Fridericianum also the somewhat older art
still clearly younger. In particular the late sixties and
seventies are taken seriously, and may live up on this documenta.
Trisha Brown, American dancer and Choreografin, which out-did, as
also various documentations of their work show approximately
around documenta, particularly with dance and Choreographie in the
public area, forms the absolute center in the first stick and
moves there for the visitors extremely near, surely not
coincidentally again with the involuntary symbol of the simple
Stoffbahnen or articles of clothing. A grid network from climbing
ropes fills the large entrance area to the Rundgang, surrounded by
dancers, who are located in the middle in the crowding of the
public. The dance movements are reduced and rather somewhat
amusing, pantomimische gestures like an opening of a bottle or the
like, in addition a relative rigid body attitude to be suppressed
as around individual styles.
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One
can imagine this dance very funny in an appropriate context, for
example. directed on a genuine climbing net sculpture for kids in a
public park, in which the parents watch their children in the net
while sitting around and being busy with such simple gestures, as the
pantomimes show, and with viewing the net and the children. The piece
develops towards improvisation, the dancers must improvise in the
climbing net, exchange dresses, confuse their identity. In particular
the lackadaisical clothes of the dancers, shrill-colored
jogging-trousers and scruffy T-Shirts, as well as the jersey
frazzles, which are waiting in the ropes for the dancers, blow
somewhat importunate in this piece the wind of the social-educational
seventies and the baby-conformal scuttle-box. But as said, it is
surely not in the choreographie but more in the necessities of the
work's context. In an area obviously too close for the enormous
climbing net and in the artificial situation of an exhibition's
interior this playing equipment is only a relict of the outdoor
dancing of Trisha Brown in the seventies, the choreographie more
requirement and reminiscence than a real conversion of an experience.
Otherwise the documenta arises in many places as actually very
crawling and child-friendly, it seems at least, but it deceives. This
aspect of the documenta is repressed by the specific interpretation
of the question about the “bare life”, which the
documenta's manager Robert Brueghel interprets as sadomasochistic
fixing of the boundaries: “What is the bare life? This
second question applies to the absolute in the long runs and
suspensionness of human life. It is directed toward the part of our
existence, which none will ever protect however safety precaution
constituted. But as in the sexual absolute in the long run
violability and infinite desire can live uncomfortably closely
together.“
The
penetration with art, which is occupied with sadomasochism, is
distributed over all exhibition areas of the documenta. It would be
surely surprising simply to segregate sexuality, with respect to the
general tendency to “every kind of thing art”. Then the
selection would have actually something of a search result found by
nursery-school teachers, with some weeks of art-history. Because the
documenta presents not only the stuffed giraffe “Brownie”,
which is issued by Peter Friedl, but also a spaceseizing figure
ensemble named “Relax it's only A ghost” from Cosima of
Bonin, whose is equipped a long side by meter-high soft toys. Still
far in the area a survive-large cuttlefish out of plush. Thus very
much inviting for two to five-year-olds to come the art once close
and between to crawl over and under the familiar plushstructures -
nevertheless unfortunately this documenta is also an example of
earlychild here-away plays. As inviting the soft toys look, they are
not to be scuttled on. Geometrically clear, white lines on the floor,
which have an abstract touch, are radiating the limits of distance
the art-objects need. They are clearly not an artwork to understand -
however also still by the artist Lotty Rosenfeld this is infiltrated,
when she through-crosses the pulled through or interrupted white
lines on public roads with right-angled lines running in addition.
The white lines in the documenta signal the areas unmistakably for
adults and children. That distance to the issued art objects is to be
protected. To the adherence to the distance innumerable,
predominantly juvenile supervision forces pay attention, a kind of
guerillia of law and order within a rather unclear art jungle.
The
documenta's child friendliness is thus a genuine mystery. By the
autobiographic film of Hito Steyerl “Lovely Andrea” over
the Japanese pornographic technique of “Bondage”, which
is to be seen in the middle floor in the passage and is accompanied
by loud music, which shouts in a way instructively the phrase
“Masters and Servants” through the area, parents of young
children could be worried. The film is aspect-rich and in its
impartiality also quite nice, but particularly supported by the same
problemdissoluting “just tell”, which dominates a great
many works of this documenta. Those nevertheless leaves little doubt
to that she processes a traumatizing experience of high
unpleasurability with her work, thus again the theses of the bare
life are contradicted clearly.
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It
becomes again child friendly in the decorative water colors of
Atul Dodiya. Poems and illustrations in large formats equip the
walls of the area, and beside some animal shapes with negative
touch (like a dying camel), the pictures's habitus falls suddenly
out of from the framework in one of the works: Instead of the
naturalistic animals a combat mice and other comic-figures look at
the spectator from the circles in the picture. The impression is
confirmed with a view at the picture legend. This picture is
provided by the artist “at the age of seven years”.
Then the development to the decorative sentimentality of the adult
is not necessarily an advantage.
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Also
in the documenta hall astonishes the composition of the mentioned
plush toys of Bonin et al., the at least suggested suitability for
foot traffic of the monumental installations, their formal simpleness
and the historical or projectable theoretical background (in
particular e.g. concerning the giraffe). The entire “text”
of the exhibition is coded as only for adults suitable by a large
sized picture, which pleasures itself with sexscenes in an ornamental
figurative style, of course both immanently and explicitly
polit-critically.
Is
the key to this documenta perhaps exactly this attitude of the works,
which sometimes - with the exception of the extremely decorative
space sculpture of Iole de Freitas - come along simple and tinkered -
that they counterbalance the well-known Menard-Cervantes problem of
the American philosopher Nelson Goodman? One thus simply should know,
why, by whom and in which context a work developed.
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The
documenta catalog for 25 euro with descriptions of works and lifes
of all artists, clearly more affordable in the comparison with
earlier variants, shows that the art begins this time not in the
showrooms but usually with its context and background. The
difference between the mad Menard and the calculating Cervantes
does not show up itself necesarily in the work.
What
the showrooms offer, are actually primary and above all objects
for whose aesthetic experience even from the present art no
particularly safe criteria are recrutable.
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This
strengthens thereby that the artists near-go frequently consciously
with shifted and hidden languages to their works, in order to make
their meaning partially restrainable or to mask it - this in
particular with the works, which concern themselves with the life in
dictatorships (like e.g. “Top Secret” of Nedko Solakov),
whereby the need to obtain a problematic biography is broken by the
consideration for possibly problematic consequences of such
revealing.
In
addition visual and verbal contexts play a role, which are or were
important for the everyday life and the specific national history of
the artists in each case, as with the gallery action of Graciela
Carnevale or Friedls giraffe. Likewise Gerhard Richter's theoretical
superelevated portrait of his daughter Betty at 1977 in the age of
eleven, which should function as a multiple metaphor for Gudrun
Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof and so on. The reason for this strongly
projecting background is probably that the very young daughter is
shown lying on the back with red, erotically opened mouth and white
ebony skin. Without political background might this portrait by the
father, who anticipates disinhibited joys of later potential
sons-in-law proudly, be astonishing because of the daughter's age.
But however, with political and historical background it's perhaps
worse, because Richter identifies his daughter (she is sometimes said
to be the founder of the picture's idea and this identification) as
eros with the quite deathseeking terrorists, thus presents her over
her head away - it can be exluded that she was conscious about that -
as unconsciously moved by strong drives, a femme fatale - what is
obviously a strong male projection caused by strong drives.
report
and photos: Dr. Ulrike Ritter
documenta
Kassel (Germany)
06/16
- 09/23/2007
1-day
ticket 18,- / 12,- €
2-day
ticket 27,- / 18,- €
evening
ticket (gültig ab 17.00 Uhr) 8,- / 5,- €
permanent
ticket 90,- / Read this article in german on
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