Documenta 15 - stimulate or stultify?

 

Documenta 15 is underpinned by the term ‘lumbung’ that is a concept of collective sharing. The term in Bahasa Indonesia refers to ‘a rice barn where a village community stores their harvests together, to be managed collectively, as a way to face an unpredictable future’. ruangrupa an art collective established in Jakarta, Indonesia in 2000 e were invited to make a proposal for the fifteenth edition of documenta’ and instead of integrating ourselves into the long established documenta system we decided to stay on our path…asking documenta to be part of our journey’. 

The impact is obvious; a focus on the global south, on a mapping and exhaustive explanatory process, on works that stimulate and some that stupefy, on trial and error, on a reliance on a handbook for insights and understanding (sold out of the english edition), on a non static exhibition, and on text reliant works. 

Documenta has had many guises over many years from Joseph Beuys at documenta 7 and his refusal to be exhibited in the Fridericianum and instead planted 7000 oak trees in the streets of Kassel that still stand today, to the opium poppy field outside the Fridericianum at documenta 12 by Sanjay Ivekovic that failed to bloom due to the weather, to Marta Minujin’s Parthenon of Books built to scale and consisting of 67,000 books that had ben banned at some time in history, to Ai Wei Wei’s sculpture made out of century old doors and windows of demolished Chinese houses, which when it collapsed in a storm noted that it looked a lot better, and an unauthorised ‘exhibition‘ outside the Fredericianum by artists a opposed to the role of curators! 

Documenta is not for the feint hearted or the art conosieur.  It’s for those who want to see or grapple with what the future holds for art and society and reflect on the failure of society to recognise its failings, inequalities and dysfunction and an art scene captured by the global north that benefits the few.

It was worth the train ride and outside the documenta forums, venues and workshops we met many documenta wanderers from many parts of Europe as confused, frustrated and talkative as us. It is a confluence of art tragics and those who are there for the ride. It turns a small city with its

day to day challenges into an art space covering a myriad of venues some of which seem overwhelmed by the invited artists. 

The Friedrickplatz becomes a hub with out door food stalls and overflowing cafes, restaurants and buskers fill the streets with chit chat and debate. It happens every five years so the locals can get some normality into their lives and ponder a future that seems bleak and overcome by war, climate change and the pandemic. 

Art is not an antidote but at least it provides an expansive canvas to question and debate our lives.  And we were able to bask with the locals in Germany’s win in the EUFA Women’s EURO semifinal to revitalise our efforts on the day 3.