EA poster was emblazoned last Wednesday in black letters on a red background high up on the facade of the Fridericianum in Kassel, the historical center of the Documenta. It read: “Free Osman Kavala”. The entrepreneur and cultural patron has been in prison in Turkey since 2017. But after a few hours, this urgent message, this appeal to European democracies, had disappeared from the cityscape of Kassel, hastily replaced by plain black squares.
We will not find out why the poster disappeared, who recognized that it clearly leaves the field of art behind, but this action will accompany the documenta like a ghost on the Internet. Because it symbolizes an important question: Is the Documenta still an art exhibition or already a political rally? How does your message change if it is not created by individual artists but by socially committed groups? What can and should art achieve, what role does it play in the global debate on totalitarianism, criticism of capitalism, racism, anti-Semitism, poverty and climate change? Even the German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier asked himself exactly these questions in his opening speech: When will political activism finally leave the art stage? Where are the limits of art?
Is this art or a demonstration? “Free Osman Kavala” at the Fridericianum in Kassel
Source: Swantje Karich
This debate is very old, because the documenta has always been the home of political art – Joseph Beuys is considered a symbol of this avant-garde abolition of the boundary between art and life. The only thing that is new is that most of the art has come to Kassel from the Global South. To clarify: The prototypical documenta art “Aboriginal Embassy” in the middle of Friedrichsplatz has of course remained. The artist Richard Bell has been touring Australia with it since 1972 and is now also loudly demanding in Kassel: “We want land no handouts” (We want land, no alms). In the Fridericianum itself, too, we encounter his colorful paintings of demonstrators carrying slogans again and again. But by no means all the positions at this documenta can be so clearly located in the artistic realm. But let’s look around.
The Indonesian artists’ collective Ruangrupa invited 14 collectives, which in turn invited other activists, artists, social workers and again entire collectives, around 50 in total. There is therefore no responsible curator, no one who would know at all times what is happening where in detail. They only agree that they want to generate solidarity with marginalized groups and dream of an alternative economy, which Ruangrupa calls a new “Ekosistem”.
Paintings by Aboriginal artist Richard Bell at the Fridericianum
Source: Swantje Karich
This brings about one or the other weird flowering, as you can experience in the Documenta station “Hafenstraße 76”: There the *foundationClass*collective from the Kunsthochschule Weißensee draws up a points plan, how to best position yourself as a marginalized activist in the supposedly mendacious German subsidy company enriches and fixes. On posters we read about the “take the money and run” strategy: “The area of project funding for art and culture is not a comfortable place for (power) critical minds,” it says. This work reflects the unconditional skepticism towards institutions, towards all established democratically elected structures. But the power, one would like to call out to the Berliners, lies with you, you are now in Kassel, you were selected, you have a federal cultural foundation at your side, which promotes and demands exactly this form of documenta with millions.
A total of around 1,500 people are getting involved artistically and as activists, and are now shaping the coming months with program items such as “How we can finally get rid of the car” together with Fridays for Future. In Kassel’s Auestadion, people celebrated themselves like a new global reform movement; Sabine Schormann, the general director, cheered on the community, dressed in a cloak in Documenta colors.
Anyone who wants to embark on the journey into Ruangrupa’s fully packed pantry, her “lumbung” for rice barn, should bring time, no expectations and good nerves for the 32 stations. Hailed as a revolutionary meeting place, Ruangrupa’s RuruHaus has so far been more like a wood-paneled canteen for people who prefer to type on their smartphones in solitude. Communication: total failure. In general, it is a formative image: people with mobile phones on circles of chairs that wind around trees or rise up like small amphitheaters.
Beautiful to look at: a circle of chairs in the Karlsauen
Source: Swantje Karich
However, what is almost completely missing at the Documenta is the discussion of the pressing challenges of the digital age: with powerful algorithms or merciless facial recognition. At least the Nigerian artist collective Nest reminds us that we dump our e-waste on them. In addition, however, one is ordered to half-baked discussions under bast huts or led through the imitation of a Nigerian corrugated iron hut with original sound system.
Symbiosis of activism and art
There are few exceptions, such as the Cuban artist Tania Bruguera and her Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt. Every ten days she shows a new exhibition together with Raychel Carrion and Hamlet Lavastida, the perfect symbiosis of political activism and art. Hamlet was a scholarship holder in Berlin some time ago and was arrested after his return to Cuba – his art deals with the experiences. Raychel Carrion’s harrowing drawings tell of the everyday oppression of artists in the country itself.
Installation behind the Sandershaus in the east of Kassel
Source: Swantje Karich
But let us drift down to the Fulda and to the east of the city, to Bettenhausen, in a part of the city that is announced as a great discovery. At the boat rental Ahoi, you walk over a tinkered wooden bridge that leads over the building like a footbridge into another world, painted by after-school children from the city, who you can see how lucky they are as artists while they swing their bright yellow brushes, at the Sanderhaus there is Concerts and a few flags waving in the wind. An employee of the cultural hostel far away from the main roads is completely over the moon: Although there is hardly any art to see, there will be something going on here almost every evening. One thing is certain: Kassel will be flooded by Lumbung. A hand-painted map shows where to find the “kios”, the collective’s sales rooms, in the city. Local initiatives can also be found everywhere: a woman sells second-hand clothes in the anteroom of the Hübner area, another has moved his record shop here.
In the Fridericianum, too, you can paint with children in a prominent place – there is even a kind of day-care center, with ideologically appropriate entertainment. For adults, however, the key word is: read mind maps. The artful scribblings are spread all over the high white walls and suggest that a lot of thought and work went into this place.
Not all artists speak English
What remains is the slogan solidarity. Solidarity with the people suffering from the consequences of colonialism and capitalism worldwide. But after the tenth film with people trudging through rice fields or clay, worried about the loss of their singing culture and condemning ore mining, the content blurs with the Arte documentaries that you last saw and you start looking for real utopias and to crave visions. They were promised by Ruangrupa: in the form of talks. But the exchange with the artists, at least in the first few days, is only possible with hands and feet. We can’t manage to learn a new language together, as Ruangrupa announced – and we say goodbye with embarrassment.
Monumental painting by Taring Padi from Indonesia in the East indoor pool
Source: Swantje Karich
But what happened to the fears that the documenta would leave the art stage? Concerns about too much aggressive politics have more or less fizzled out; anarchic chaos, floating gardens and handwritten manifestos to save energy dominate. One has to argue about the quality of all this. The aesthetics of a wildly cobbled together documenta takes away the strict sense of the “political”. And so Lumbung, the Documenta, looks like an esoteric community of destiny, which Kassel will stir up in a good mood in the coming weeks, in the spirit of: Don’t stay alone, organize yourselves in small groups, be united in the fight against postcolonial capitalism, celebrate well, love each other.
No one can know how the Documenta will develop over the next 100 days, what visitors will see in three weeks or two months. What you have been able to experience so far sounds like a lot of agitprop, music sessions, sit-ins and discussion groups from the seventies. Is that revolutionary, is that new? no But this documenta broke a taboo after all. What the gallery owners have always done discreetly, the artists are living out openly this year, without any intermediaries: they are happily selling their prints and works in the exhibition rooms.