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Uploaded 18/9/02
Kassel Documenta
By Andrey Kovalev
Kassel Documenta is commonly compared to the
Olympic games, but, being an inhabitant of former Eastern Empire,
I remember great all-Union exhibitions held in the USSR, where regional
unions of artists struggled fiercely for the right to ‘represent’.
The rhetorical scheme designed to justify these pragmatic actions
(‘National diversity of Socialistic realism’) bore a somewhat
suspicious resemblance to today’s postcolonial terminology.
Despite Documenta’s curator Okwui Enwezor announcing the end
of Eurocentrist era to be his primary goal, one must as well draw
attention to the fact that he is not only the first non-European
curator of Documenta, but also a New York intellectual with a rapper’s
attitude. Therefore, it would be more appropriate to declare not
the end of globalisation era, but changing of vector and transition
from a Roman type empire with a Senate, CNN, gladiator arenas, McDonalds
and aqueducts to a Byzantine model, where only basic religious concepts
are unified, while local cultures develop in their own ways.
It is notable that they blame Enwezor for swindling, as many artists
whom he thinks to be representing the ‘Second world’,
are already living in metropolises and have become members of the
international elite. It is quite understandable, since contemporary
art is product of gladiators, lance-knights, legionaries, mercenaries,
soldiers of fortune, pilgrims, conquistadors, double agents. For
me the best example of that are Svetlana and Igor Kopystiansky,
who were brought up in complicated traditions of Moscow conceptualism
and are now ‘playing’ for German and American clubs. Their
work titled ‘The Flow’ is represented by several TV screens
showing various leftovers of civilization, such as rubber gloves,
plastic cans etc., floating in muddy flows of water. A radical answer
to the demand for self-identification is performing some non-committal
meditation.
Art critics have already noted that perhaps the only place where
the ‘9/11 trauma’ is interpreted is a huge catalogue preceded
by a series of ‘hot shots’ — homeless in the streets
of New York, Milosevic under trial etc. The funniest thing about
this scientific volume is futurology, which, as it is well known,
has already become an exclusive prerogative of Big Hollywood. For
example, Boris Groys, honored by sceptical Russian intellectuals,
argues that art is a form of life, while a work of art is a mere
documentation of this form of life. In this case it is natural that
most installations selected by Enwezor looked like scenery for just
another Hollywood blockbuster.
But curator’s work was indeed delicate, because that somewhat
cinematographic attitude was counterbalanced by many works which
resembled illustrations for UNESCO famine fighting reports. Real
horrors still happen out there, on the farthermost border of Oykumena
(but the best compliment one can pay to Enwezor is not even his
politicized New York intellectual’s attitude, but instead delicate
and productive curator’s work).
Documenta, having survived both Jan Hoet’s hysterical
fits and Catherine David’s iron will, suddenly became perfectly
logical American style show). In the very heart of Fridericianum
museum, near Documenta’s front entrance, installations of two
minimalist classics are located. On Kawara arranged a lengthy action
titled ‘One million years’ by publishing a series of thick
volumes containing lists of all dates for a million years. Hanne
Darboven (Life, living) following the same cold style, covered museum’s
walls with papers sheets with some texts that turned out to be meaningless
combinations of numbers. Back there in the 60s minimalists proved
the fact that no sign meant anything. Perhaps minimalism and conceptualism
gain subversive meaning when reduced to some baroque verve, and
communication becomes an attraction that boasts its meaninglessness.
For example, a discotheque ball in Cerith Wyn Evans’s installation
‘Cleave 02’ transmits into the world quotes from William
Blake in Morse code, and ‘Illustrated manuscript’ by an
American artist David Small prevents the spectator from reading
electronic books.
Contemporary art becomes an enormous attraction, a horror room.
But every museum or gallery is supposed to be a place for taking
delight in the Beautiful, so that high pathos turns into its opposite.
Perhaps the point is in the spirit of location — on every corner
of Kassel, the Grimm brothers’ home town, slow-witted travellers
encounter dangers that are destinied to have a happy end. When you
get inside Cuban artist’s Tania Bruguera installation, it looks
like Orwell’s Ministry of love — floodlights into your
eyes, clicking of a gun breech, someone’s steps behind your
back. Escape and you can go on — for example, to a London Lebanese
artist Mona Hatoum’s installation (Wheelchair II): interior
— a kitchen table and bed — is tied around and fenced
with wire that produces a typical high-voltage line sound. Being
an adherent of realism in art, I touched the wire.
Nothing happened. Art is still an illusion, even when it boasts
its ‘vitality’, like Artur Barrio’s project titled
‘Idea-situation’ — a big dirty room with fine ground
coffee spilled onto the floor. Spectators walk on this precious
dirt and hardly ever think that the artist in fact intended to emphasise
the problem of neocolonialism and exploitation of natural resources
in his motherland of Brazil. But sometimes this political attraction
style mutates into a real horror room, like in the work of a Canadian
Chinese artist Ken Lum. A small pavillion located in the park is
filled with mirrors, and you can see yourself in a moving away perspective
and stumble into these awful and dangerous mirrors with various
sentences inscribed on them, things that nervous ladies usually
say to psychoanalysts.
However, the actual state of international contemporary art is
not that pitiable. Yinka Shonibare (Gallantry and Criminal Conversation),
a British artist, exhibited a work that inspired some optimism —
headless dummies in 18th century costumes making love in every imaginable
position. What is really required of modern art is a good sight
and positive emotions.
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