Jun 08 2017

Documenta 14, Kassel (Part 1)

by HG Masters

MARTA MINUJÍN’s The Parthenon of Books has been underway since October 2016 on Friedrichsplatz, Kassel. Originally created in Buenos Aires in 1983 with 25,000 books locked up during a military dictatorship, it consists of a 1:1 scale model of the Parthenon, whose columns and edifice are still being wrapped in copies of banned books from around the world. All photos by HG Masters for ArtAsiaPacific.

Endurance. That seems to be the requisite criteria for visitors and the creators of Documenta 14. The first act has already opened in Athens, beginning in early April, at 40-plus venues with artworks by more than 160 artists; the second half, with just as many artists, is debuting in Documenta’s native city, Kassel, this weekend, for its traditional 100-day run. The question of why Athens and Kassel are both staging grounds for the art festival gets at the essential, didactic (and essentially didactic) issues in this edition of the quinquennial. The curatorial team offered up various interpretations for this alternative choice of destinations and geographic displacement, saying Documenta was “in transition” or in the processes of “dis-othering.” Yet the fraught, quasi-colonial relationship between north and south, across the globe and within Europe, went largely unspoken here in Germany. The southeastern European capital, known for its ancient civilization central to Europe’s conceptions of itself, is now infamous for a recent scourge of economic and social struggles, and has become the site where Europe finds itself in its greatest uncertainty, growing even more radically fascist as the EU’s neoliberal system breaks down under the strains of oligarchy, corruption and migration stemming from conflicts on its borders. The title given to Documenta 14 for its first act in Greece, “Learning from Athens,” was pilloried by critics for its perceived colonialist attitude toward Greece and its overtones of crisis tourism (though that didn’t dissuade public programs curator Paul B. Preciado from announcing that the curators were all Athenians now after working in the city for two years), and was barely mentioned in Kassel during the course of a tedious, nearly three-hour press conference that was more of a sermon-seminar than information session. With each venue engaged in a different approach, the initial impression is one of many parts that don’t really coallesce. The effects of organizing what amount to two editions of Documenta at once, within three months, clearly have taken its toll on curators and many artists too, who made new works for both locations. Nonetheless, there is a massive amount of art and venues to see in Kassel, so here’s a first look at the Fridericianum and the Neue Neue Galerie, as well as sites in between.

On the neoclassical frieze of the Fridericianum, BANU CENNETOĞLU used letters from the museum’s name, and cast others, for the phrase “Being safe is scary.” It is based on graffiti seen near the National Technical University of Athens as of April 6, 2017, and was one of many works engaged in facile sloganeering.

The interior of Fridericianum contains works from the collection of Greece’s National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), one of the main sites of Documenta 14 in Athens. In this room was an untitled work by JANNIS KOUNELLIS from 1993 and Bottari (2005) sculptures on the floor by KIMSOOJA.

Though potentially interesting, many rooms in the Fridericianum devoted to works by post-1960s Greek and Mediterranean artists, though many were lacking in even basic information about the artists (sometimes even their names), not to mention the socio-political background—information one would expect from a museum-like presentation of 50 years of art. In its near absence of contextual information, the dislocation of Greek art into a German institution seemed like a grandiose curatorial gesture rather than one of careful consideration, to the detriment to the artworks many of which seemed arbitrarily chosen or isolated from a larger conversation.

While Greek artists dominated the selection from EMST’s collection, this display featured EMILY JACIR’s tent called Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages Which Were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948 (2001) with another of KIMSOOJA ’s Bottari (2005) sculptures.

Also a work about forced displacement, GÜLSÜN KARAMUSTAFA traces the history of her apartment building in Istanbul from its original owner to their family and descendents in Greece, in The Apartment Building (2012).

Resembling those found on the interior of many public libraries in the United States, HANS HAACKE’s multi-lingual welcoming posters were seen throughout Kassel, and were another example of the tedious moralizing present throughout Documenta 14.

An obelisk in Königsplatz, by OLU OGUIBE, is billed as “critical humanitarism.” Das Fremdlinge und Flüchtlinge Monument (“Monument for Strangers and Refugees,” 2017) has a verse from the Book of Matthew that reads, “I was a stranger and you took me in,” inscribed in German, Turkish, Arabic, and English.

At the coyly christened venue, the “Neue Neue Galerie (Neue Hauptpost),” the works seemed to deal primarily with the clash and internalization of postcolonial discourse by European subjectivities. Here, THEO ESHETU’s Atlas Fractured (2017) featured projected faces onto an older banner of the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, in a dated-looking mash-up of colonial tropes of human representation.

ARIN RUNGJANG’s video 246247596248914102516… And then there were none (2017), about a Thai diplomat who experiences World War II in Berlin, is based around the Democracy Monument in Bangkok, recreated here, that celebrates the 1932 revolution against absolute monarchy.

RASHEED ARAEEN’s display features the artist’s paintings, modular furniture-sculptures, and a complete set of Third Text, a journal of non-Western art that Araeen founded, for visitors to browse.

One of the more interesting parts of Documenta 14 so far has been the co-opting of a local social justice movement called “Society of Friends of Halit” that was formed after the 2006 execution of 21-year-old Halit Yozgat in an internet café in Kassel, in what was later learned to be a string of murders by the neo-Nazi group, the National Socialist Underground. A German secret-service agent Andreas Temme was in the internet café at the time of Halit’s murder and left one minute later, but claimed he didn’t see or hear the murder. In this work, researchers for the Forensic Architecture program at Goldsmiths, University of London, recreate the scene of the crime to dispute Temme’s testimony, raising new questions about, in the curators’ words, “neo-Nazi terror and ever-increasing cycles of institutional and structural racism that run through contemporary German society.”

GORDON HOOKEY’s spectacular wall mural Murriland! fills an enormous wall in the Neue Neue Galerie—and features kangaroos in sunglasses with missiles, as well as the phrase, “Murriality Victorious, Aboriginal Eyes Ation Triumphant!”

MARIA HASSABI’s performers were located on the floors of different levels at the Neue Neue Galerie. They remain in static poses for several minutes before slowing transitioning to other contorted postures, putting viewers in an awkward proximity.

Documenta 14’s program in Kassel runs from June 10 to September 17, 2017.

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