Observations in space and time

by Jörg Zimmermann | 13 Июнь 2012 г.

Life: at Documenta 13 in Kassel it is the examination of life, the relationship between man and object, the relation of space and time and thereby the location itself that forms the focal point of the artistic reflections. It is therefore no small wonder that politics and social structures also come into play here, for the locations always likewise forge temporal links, which ultimately (and for the most part indirectly) reference political dimensions themselves. And on top of that, as called for by Documenta’s Creative Director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, it would be nice if we could also take the perspective of other creatures into consideration too, dogs, for example, or bees. The question as to whether the outcome is art or not loses its relevance here, if only because everything that is done “could at least be taken up by art”. So there you go. Even if all the works in Kassel are not of an equal standard, following an initial review the rumors of a supposed lack of concept that marked the run-up to the world’s largest art exhibition appear have quickly subsided. The sheer number of participating artists is overwhelming, the range of works unsettling and refreshing at the same time.

On Friedrichstrasse, for example. The old Huguenot house there has finally had some life injected into it thanks to a project by Chicago artist Theaster Gates. Workers from Kassel and Chicago came together to render the building, which has stood empty since the 1970s, useful again. A project that is both social and practical; restricted in place and time. Right next door, Tino Sehgal has plunged a hall in the Grand City Hotel Hessenland originally designed by Arnold Bode into complete darkness, filling the beholder with fear; a fear that only subsides when helpers who are unseen but clearly audible direct you along an uncertain path through the darkness. The beholder suffers the loss of an entire level of perception, which leads them directly to a kind of enlightenment as regard relations and interdependencies.

In conclusion, Documenta 13 isn’t so easy to digest. The tour through Fridericianum, Documenta-Halle, Kulturbahnhof and the other exhibition spaces reveals how Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and her team delved deep into the complexity of political, social, historical and scientific connections, which often draw a link to local happenings or places that are in turn – either directly or via the exhibited works – connected with other exhibition spaces across the globe in Kabul, Alexandria or Alberta in Canada. However it is the works in the Karlsaue that prove that a depth of content can – but does not have to – go hand in hand with lightweight production. In order to access the works in the rambling park, the visitor has to quite literally set out on a journey. Widely scattered across the space, at times hidden, the works are waiting to be discovered. And here too time and space interlace for the visitor creating a very practical dimension.

Documenta 13
From June 9 through September 16, 2012
Kassel
d13.documenta.de

Contemporary Art, Exhibitions

This is scientist Anton Zeilinger and his team’s attempt to make the world of quantum physics visible and comprehensible. Using technical experimental arrangements as well as the traditional whiteboard, they illustrate and clarify phenomena such as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle or the quantum limit according to Erwin Schrödinger. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

London-based artist Goshka Macuga has now developed her digital collage “Of what is, that it is; of what is not, that it is not” into a colossal tapestry, taking up the entire wall in the rotunda. The second part of the work is on show in Kabul. The presentation of corresponding works in separate locations constitutes a key part of the creative concept for Documenta 13. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Now resident in Mumbai, over the course of her artistic career Nalini Malani has developed a special format, namely the “video/shadow play”. The work “In Search of Vanished Blood” consists of five rotated Mylar cylinders, which have been painted on the reverse and superimposed with projections from six video sources. The visual presentation is augmented by an acoustic dimension. This creates a fascinating impression of the space, which seeks to examine social structures in India as well as the failure of interpersonal communication. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Enormous in its proportions, the photo montage “Flugzeug” by Thomas Bayrle dominates the lower section of the Documenta hall. The montage consists of detailed picture elements. To the side, there are seven exposed car engines running with visible precision. There are hardly any perceivable intrinsic sounds, being drowned out by a loop of prayer excerpts being played. In his works Bayrle repeatedly seeks to question concepts such as synchronicity and virtuosity. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

The multi-part installation is rather disturbing. “The Pixelated Revolution” by Rabih Mroué is located in the side wing of the railway station. Using their cell phones, victims filmed the shots that hit them. A black silhouette against a blood-red background, the victims break down in front of the cell-phone camera. The installation is rounded off with flipbooks and large-format images of the murderers’ pixilated faces. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Seth Price understands an item of clothing as a cover, an envelope. Parallel to the fashion collection, which he developed together with New York fashion designer Tim Hamilton in 2011 and will be selling at a Kassel department store next to the Fridericanium during the Documenta, he also made a group of objects that boast exaggerated dimensions. As with the fashion collection, the cover is made of white linen, its interior imprinted with the logos of several banks and other companies. The size ratio of the individual components has however been subjected to dramatic alterations. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

“The Refusal of Time” is the name William Kentridge has given the piece he created specifically for Documenta 13. Here the South African considers the standardization of time in the era of industrialization. It was this temporal correlation that enabled modern society to take shape in the 19th century. This elaborate presentation, comprising both projection and sound in combination with a machine stamping a rhythm, contains a number of motifs – coffee pots, cylinder megaphones, wheels and pneumatic clocks, for example – which also appear in Kentridge’s previous works. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

The project “Sanatorium” by Pedro Reyes offers treatments for conditions often experienced by city dwellers. Stress, loneliness and anxiety – after a personal (self) referral, sufferers are offered 16 different types of therapy. Reyes’ project builds upon the concept of “sociatry” conceived by Jacob Levy in the 1930s. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Anri Sala has a particular interest in the relationship between regular and irregular time, between “time” and “tempo”. The piece, a clock with a perspectively distorted face entitled “Clocked Perspective”, stands at the bottom of the Hirschgraben and thanks to an elliptical transmission displays the correct time. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

With her work “As Sagas Sa”, Thea Djordjadze becomes completely involved in site-specific relationships. In a greenhouse in the Karlsaue, the Berlin-based artist spent several weeks creating a large-scale installation, an arrangement of found and sculpturally reworked objects characterized by a minimalist aesthetic. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Doug Ashford’s small-scale works are to be seen in one of the sheds in the Karlsaue. Ashford combines these abstract paintings (tempera on wooden panels) with images of people in moments of helplessness or great need. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Slightly off the beaten Documenta track, one finds the Huguenot House, which had stood empty since the 1970s. Now, having joined forces with participants in employment incentive schemes from Chicago and Kassel, Theaster Gates has rendered the building useful once again. In so doing the team made use of materials taken from condemned houses in both cities. The final result is a kind of inhabitable laboratory in which the boundaries between work and production are explored and shifted. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Directly next door to the Huguenot House, Francis Alÿs exhibits studies on paper and canvas in postcard format. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Before his death in 2000, Mark Lombardi translated the information he had gathered from the worlds of finance and politics into “narrative structures”. In his last major work “BCCI, ICIC & FAB, 1972-91 (4th Version)” he once again charted the details and connections within this often hidden realm of social reality. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

For Documenta 13, New York artist Ida Applebroog has made her private documents, untouched for 30 years, public. Visitors can take excerpts home in the form of offset prints, while bold, provocative formulations will be carried by advertising media during the opening week of the exhibition. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

The project “The Repair from Occident to Extra-Occidental Cultures” by French artist Kader Attia questions the notions of “repair” and perfection. Objects from Africa, which have clearly been repaired in some way, are juxtaposed with contemporary sculptures that do not seek to hide the mutations and scars they suffered during their “sculptural” operations. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Born in 1934, Llyn Foulkes is represented in Kassel as both painter and musician, even though he himself says “material is my torment, music my joy.” “The Machine”, built with his own hands, offers live musical performances, while his series of works “The Lost Frontier” appears very much three-dimensional. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

A cabinet filled with toy donkeys bearing the names of people who took a stand against oppression and discrimination, particularly in Nazi Germany. A partial view of the installation “The Disobedient (The Revolutionaries)” by Sanja Ivekovic in the Neue Galerie. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

With “Leaves of Grass”, Geoffrey Farmer uses images to make wonderful theater. The Canadian’s work is compiled of hundreds of shadow puppets, lined up to create a seemingly infinite band running through the Neue Galerie. The shapes and figures have been cut from the last 50 volumes of the US magazine “Life” and mounted on thin wooden sticks. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

The project “Death at a 30 Degree Angle” by Bani Abidi looks like it has been planted right in the middle of a construction site. The multi-part project on simple planks leaned against a wall reflects upon the concepts of megalomania and monumentality. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

With the “Sewing Room”, Romanian artist István Csákány addresses notions such as work, production and absence. Large sewing machines, ironing machines and other appliances are positioned in two rows, crude, but nonetheless carefully carved from wood with great attention to detail. The installation is flanked by a group of well-dressed figures, mannequins, whose clothing references the products that would once have been produced in the sewing room depicted. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

With her installation made of black aluminum Venetian blinds, Haegue Yang makes reference to the Kassel central railway station and the arrival and departure of the trains. The blinds are driven by motors making for a phantasmal and obscure choreographic display, which, positioned on a disused track, points to the alternating, mechanical movements of the trains. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

From the front, Rosemarie Trockel’s “Tea Party Pavillon” appears dark and closed in. But from the sides, the wooden hut opens up a view to “Ten Attempts for One Sculpture”, photographs and picture montages austerely hung in glass frames. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Boats and fishing nets are tangled up in an oak tree, in front of it stands a red camping trailer, covered in a mass of notes and doodles. Directly next to it there is a multicolored shed filled with all kinds of objects and materials, collected by Shinro Ohtake from a range of countries. The work is entitled “MON CHERI: A Self-Portrait as a Scrapped Shed” and elaborates on the human condition in the 21st century, on the ceaseless uncertainties and the constant negotiating between hope and reality. An optimistic eye-catcher: white smoke rises from the hut’s little chimney from time to time. Photo © Jörg Zimmermann, Stylepark

Breathing a sigh of relief – behind the blinds

+++ NEWSTICKER #239 | 2012 +++