Documenta has always appeared to be a highly political arts event and we were never sure if that was due to it being labelled as such or because all the work on show was overtly political. After actually being fortunate enough to visit this year we can confirm that it’s most certainly both; the overtly political works then give the other, perhaps at the point of inception, more apolitical ones a backdrop which cannot be ignored. As we were wading through more and more of this fairly heavy and at points depressing content it felt as if we were having the worst parts of our history thrown back in our faces, from wars to discriminatory acts to general insufferable behaviour. This idea was solidified by a line from Naeem Mohaiemen’s film ‘Two Meetings and a Funeral’; “a war against forgetting”. This film itself is excellent; a didactic, more-or-less chronological account of the ill-fated Non-Aligned Movement and a critical assessment of its failure is prescient in its analysis of how international relations fall apart.
Another thoughtful yet very slight work was Nasan Tur’s sound piece titled ‘Speech’. Once the headphones were on all you were exposed to was the gaps between the words in many speeches. Here we see one of the most powerful political vehicles, the speech, being reduced to its negative space. Perhaps the comment here is, what aren’t saying? What’s behind closed doors is mostly far more ominous than what’s on the surface.
Then we had Hans Eijkelboom’s notorious ‘Photo Notes’ series that’s been going for over 2 decades. The images on show are collated into groups of 12 or so and each image is a different person but is wearing almost identical clothing, whether it’s a rolling stones t-shirt or denim shorts and roller blades, he’s got them. His immense archive photographically records the dizzying clothing diversity that is such a defining hallmark of global capitalism, inevitably results in a document of arresting sameness.
An indirect, spatial intervention was constructed by Annie Vigier & Franck Apertet under the name ‘Scene a l’Italienne’. It was an artificial wooden incline which spanned nearly the entire room. Even though it could have gone unnoticed as an architectural feature of the building, it was in fact a re-creation of an Italian-style stage. Italian-style stage exploits the worldly idea of the exhibition site (gallery, exhibition space) as an artistic scene, a place where one shows oneself, a place where one is seen. Italian stage is not a performance or a scenography, it is an experience of the stage that properly puts space into play and provides a physical experience to the people who enter it, exhibits its content and its activity.
Thanassis Totsikas’s film ‘27th February’ was short by powerful in its imagery. We see an elderly man being transported on the back of a young man through a forest and along a mountainous border. Borders and intergenerational solidarity.
‘Crossroad, The crossroad where Oedipus killed Laius.A description and history of the journey from Thebes to Corinth, Delphi and the return to Thebes’ is the title of George Hadjimichalis work involving a series of photos of some sort of waste land and then that same environment revealed to be of Warhammer proportions. Some of the photographs are truly stunning and genuinely could be a bit of road bombed to pieces.
Another superb film to add to this list was ‘Walking Building’ by Andreas Angelidakis. Its subject is this hybrid hyperbuilding conceptually derived from an existing 1950s factory about to be converted into the National Museum of Contemporary Art. The factory communicates ideas about contemporary art that are rooted in the 1970s, while the city around it communicates with mobile phones.
More films – Roee Rosen’s work ‘Dust Channel’ is almost an opera (don’t quote us on that since we’re not opera experts) set in the domestic environment of an Israeli family, whose fear of dirt, dust, or any alien presence in their home takes the shape of a perverted devotion to home-cleaning appliances. A comparison is then drawn between dust and political refugees, like the dust, out of sight = out of mind.
As per we’re a sucker for work which blends into the gallery environment which is exactly what Postcommodity have done with ‘Blind / Curtain’ which they describe as a gift and blessing to the visitors of documenta14. The installation acts as a threshold for audiences to “cleanse themselves of the outside world, and prepare their hearts, minds and spirits for engaging the transformative experience of documenta14”. In this regard, ‘Blind / Curtain’ is a physical and conceptual threshold for demarcating outside and inside, and acknowledging and reifying the spaces and artworks of documenta14, as well as the spaces and contexts between. However, there’s another conceptual level to this because ‘Blind / Curtain’ is aware of itself as a node of power – it is a determiner of space – a border.
We’re only going to give Maria Eichhorn’s ‘Rose Valland Institute’ a brief intro since it’s probably better for you just to read about it >>>here<<<. But we will say if you’re interested in archive work around the appropriation and repatriation of books from individual and national libraries then give it a go, it’s amazing!
‘Whispering Campaign’ by Pope.L is another excellent yet less visible work in the form of a sound installation of whispers emitted through speaker systems, installed both in public spaces and on mobile maintenance trucks, disseminating their content throughout the streets and in restaurants, bars, shopping centres, public transit, and other spaces. Pope.L interviewed migrants in both Kassel and Athens and has weaved their stories together with local mythology, poetry, and rhythmic, non-narrative elements.
We’ve never Bill Viola’s ‘The Raft’ IRL so it was amazing to get to see it in such a great setting; big screen, comfy carpeted floor. The film shows a group of men and women from various ethnic and economic backgrounds waiting in line, but for what we do not know. Suddenly they are struck by a massive onslaught of water that knocks over some, as others brace themselves and fight for survival. Water flies everywhere, clothing and bodies are pummelled, faces and limbs contort in stress and agony against the cold, hard force. Then the water stops, leaving behind a band of suffering, bewildered, and battered individuals. It’s striking to say the least, especially due to the super slow-motion. This is because it reveals subtle nuances of the light and colour in the explosive impact of the water and the individual expressions and gestures of the figures in the face of an overwhelming assault. Another image of destruction to add to this list…
Finally we saw a film by the group Forensic Architects, ‘77sqm_9:26min’. It was re-investigating into the 2006 murder of Halit Yozgat by a member of a neo-nazi organisation. In particular, the work focuses on the presence of undercover secret service agent Andreas Temme at the crime scene (an internet café in Kassel) when the murder happened, as well as his contradictory testimony. The collective had the different scenarios re-enacted and examines the narrow timeline in which Yozgat was fatally shot. Aesthetically reducing to the clearest possible codes, ‘77sqm_9:26min’ may possibly be the most complex, accessible and ultimately most urgent work in the whole exhibition.
Well, 5 years later…