“The committee is not a tribunal,” said Katrin Budde (SPD), Chairwoman of the Committee for Culture and Media in the German Bundestag, ahead of the discussion about the Documenta. You are reacting to the media heated debate. This is not without reason: Despite accusations against the Documenta management and their Ruangrupa curatorial collective, which have been voiced for months, all those responsible in Kassel have failed in the task of not offering a stage for anti-Semitism at the art festival, which is regarded as important worldwide.
And the technical discussion in the culture committee also began with a scandal: not only did the chairman of the supervisory board of the Documenta and mayor of Kassel, Christian Geselle (SPD), apologize, Sabine Schormann, the general director of the Documenta, also stayed away from the meeting. One is in municipal budget talks, the other had not agreed for a long time and has now canceled due to a high fever. Honi soit qui mal y pense – be ashamed of those who think badly about it.
Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth, on the other hand, used the meeting for a strong performance, which she must follow up with action – and also wants to, she has already presented a five-point plan for a reform. Breach of word is her accusation against the Documenta management. “The fact that an anti-Semitic image was displayed at the Documenta shocked and horrified Jews in our country and around the world. Some even question whether we have learned from the past and whether we really have no room for anti-Semitism.”
The “failure in the planning and implementation of the Documenta” was clear. Personally, management and the supervisory board had assured her for months that there was no place for anti-Semitism in Kassel. Incidentally, Mayor Christian Geselle has known about the structural weaknesses of the Documenta since 2018.
Trusting in this, she defended the documenta against attacks and protected the free space of the exhibition. She will continue to defend the freedom of art, but: “It too has limits. These were exceeded, and that must have consequences.” Disappointed trust must be restored. “The Holocaust is a German invention. This creates a responsibility for our country and for all of us,” said the Green politician. “So if we are serious, then as Germans we must also fight the global reality of anti-Semitism in a global context.”
Prejudices against Jews existed worldwide, “also in discourses that we have perhaps seen too much through the lens of criticism of capitalism or anti-colonialism.” From this Claudia Roth concludes unequivocally: “The fight against anti-Semitism must be as global as anti-Semitism itself .”
Documenta: Advice was rejected
The curatorial work was not done conscientiously on site, Roth accused the Indonesian curatorial collective Ruangrupa, which was represented at the meeting of the culture committee by its spokesman Ade Darmawan. The fact that no conclusions were drawn from the weaknesses of the collective approach is due to “unclear structures, unclear responsibilities, a lack of international expertise and vague agreements” on the part of the Documenta management.
Roth also expressly criticized the selection committee, which was supposed to advise the supervisory board and management. “Apart from a few isolated exceptions, I haven’t seen anything like this before,” says Roth. You have the impression that this advisory function was not queried either. Even more: Roth’s suggestion to obtain process-accompanying expertise as soon as the first suspicions arose in January 2022 was rejected by Geselle. Roth also confirmed this when asked by MP Gitta Connemann (CDU).
Daniel Botmann was invited to the meeting on behalf of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, whose advice and expertise had also been rejected in advance. “Our concerns were appeased from the start, ironed out and sometimes even described as racist.” The fears expressed by the Central Council were not heard. Unfortunately, these were confirmed all the more seriously after the opening of the exhibition: “We could never have imagined that a picture like ‘People’s Justice’ by Taring Padi could be shown at the Documenta,” said Botmann. This makes “any discussion on the question of interpretation, artistic freedom or cultural context superfluous. This is Jew hatred in its purest form.”
Unfortunately, anti-Semitism is not an isolated case at the exhibition, as shown by pictures such as “Guernica Gaza”, accompanying lectures and terrorist propaganda films. For Botmann, lawyer and managing director of the Central Council, it is unacceptable that nobody wants to take responsibility for this: “It is unreasonable that Ms. Schormann is still in office,” said Botmann. “One seriously wonders how high the level of tolerance for anti-Semitism can actually be.”
The anti-Israeli BDS movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions) is also to blame for the documenta being an “anti-Semitic scandal”. “If BDS activists have influence in the cultural sector, then they act anti-Semitically there,” said Botmann, referring to those responsible from the cultural sector who courted the BDS – namely the director of the House of World Cultures, Bernd Scherer, and the artistic director of the Federal Cultural Foundation, Hortensia Völckers. So there is “a logical connection”. After the Documenta scandal, he hopes for a “self-purification process”.
Ade Darmawan, the only person directly responsible for the Documenta who had found his way to Berlin, renewed the apology of his Ruangrupa collective. He was otherwise relatively unimpressed by the pronunciation. He even defended Taring Padi. After centuries of colonial state violence and repression in Indonesia, it was important to them to show the group’s activism against the Suharto regime, which was “supported by Western intelligence services”. He regretted the anti-Semitic reading of the picture, but said that “Dutch colonial officers have already applied anti-Semitic clichés to the Chinese minority.” This “cycle of transmission” must be thought through further.
This can only be understood as a relativization – and as proof of the lack of that curatorial duty of care that Claudia Roth also lacks. Darmawan apparently sees anti-Semitism as a global reality differently. In Germany, anti-Semitism is associated with the “dark past”, but this is not the case in Indonesia, the curator replied when asked.
“Necessary internal clarification”
As the green Hessian arts minister, Angela Dorn is at least partly responsible for the decline of the Documenta in Kassel. “This should never have happened,” she said. But she had to rely on the months-long assurances from the general director and the chairman of the supervisory board that she had everything under control. Now she has initiated the “necessary internal clarification” and given Schormann and Geselle a catalog of questions, the answers are currently being evaluated. Dorn also asked the members of the selection committee, Ute Meta Bauer and Philippe Pirotte, to review their role in the consultation.
A major organizational and financial structural reform of the Documenta, which Claudia Roth is demanding and in which she is supported by Angela Dorn, seems even more urgent after this meeting in the culture committee. Unfortunately, it all depends on the chronically defaulting Christian Geselle. Because this necessary reform must be initiated by the shareholders, i.e. primarily by the state of Hesse and the city of Kassel.
Its mayor now has a double responsibility: he must be held accountable for the damage he has caused in the past – and enable a future for the documenta by paving the way for reforms.