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Uploaded 19/11/02
Documenta 11
Australia is often out of synch with much of the
rest of the world. The progressive Whitlam Labour era of the 1970s
was described as 'half an hour ahead'; more recently the conservative
and xenophobic Howard government was accused as having, 'putting
the clock back to the 1950s'. Prosperity then was achieved under
the stewardship of Howard's mentor Robert Menzies, within the confines
of a 'white Australia policy', and the lack of citizenship or voting
rights for indigenous Australians, and the perpetration of the 'stolen
generation'.
Having been immersed in the 13th Biennale of Sydney, it was illuminating
to visit Documenta 11 in Kassel this year. The former began in 1955,
the latter in 1963, and each resolved to provide a platform for
their respective country's leading artists to enter a dialogue with
their international peers, the one driven by previous devastation,
the other by isolation.
Documenta was the curatorial offspring of Nigerian-born, New York
and Kassel-based Okwui Enwezor and a sextet of co-curators from
South and North America, South Africa, Europe and the United Kingdom.
It provided a very serious and committed exhibition, preceded by
four platforms on four continents. They explored social, political
and philosophical issues, each of relevance to the fifth platform,
Documenta II in Kassel. The last named confronted the traumas of
displacement, forced migration - both legal and illegal - of the
boat people and the refugee situation, of politicised global bullying,
harassment and coercion in its various forms. It also examined the
largely uncaring menace of increasingly globalised economies and
centralised production. It was an exhibition that, as you would
expect, had a considerable African presence. It also had a weighty
Palestinian focus, and one of its great strengths was the way in
which it presented such a wide range of alternative views that the
observer was constantly being asked to question a status quo. Although
there was only one representative from Australia, the indigenous
artist Destiny Deacon, it did mean that this country's politically
inhumane behaviour was not overlooked, and the exhibition made painfully
clear its inability and seeming unwillingness, at many levels, to
put the key issues up for objective and honest debate.
At the same time as this hard-hitting, but very open, Documenta
was making such a mark, both in public numbers and critical response
(and as always there were negative voices), in Sydney Richard Grayson's
(The World May Be Fantastic) was equally successful. Born
in England, Grayson had run the Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide
for many years, and became the first practising artist to curate
a Sydney Biennale, with assistance in the formative stages from
an advisory panel consisting of Ralph Rugoff based in California,
American-born, London-based Susan Hiller and Janos Sugar from Budapest.
The exhibition's title helps convey its premise: Fictions Fakes
Fabrications Models Miniatures Hypotheses Conspiracy theories.
It did not propose that people look seriously at what was happening
politically in this country, nor did it present the audience with
the views of those who had been ill-treated here. But this was never
its intention, and it was conceived well before the 'fictitious'
refugee children overboard saga that helped return the Howard government
to power, as well as September 11. What, however, the two quite
different projects reveal is two dissimilar zeitgeists; one
committed to analysing and questioning oppression and the oppressors,
one turning a blind eye to the problems and their ramifications.
A colleague, Anne Kirker, put it succinctly in writing on Documenta
for the Brisbane publication Eyeline: 'I was chastened into
thinking that here in Australia we are inured to pleasure. Seemingly
far removed from catastrophic world happenings and in denial of
fully appreciating the fall-out from major genocide, we may not
register the moral and ideological pressures on artists living elsewhere'.
One project encapsulated the fundamental nature of this Documenta.
A Journey Through a Solid Sea, 2002, the work of an Italian-based
collective Multiplicity, provided a harrowing examination of the
sinking in the Mediterranean in 1996 of a fishing boat, sailing
under the Maltese flag with 283 Pakistani, Indian and Sri Lankan
clandestine refugees on board. The largest Mediterranean cemetery
since World War II, it was long denied by local authorities. This
event, at the heart of so much current contestation, is movingly
examined from every relevant angle by the collective, including
interviews with the surviving sea captain; it so convincingly immerses
the viewer in the subject and opens awareness in the most powerful
and lasting manner.
There are too many other provocative and moving works to name them
all; but David Goldblatt, Santu Mofokeng, Julie Bargman/Stacy Levy,
Zarina Bhimji, Tania Bruguera, Meschac Gaba, Leon Golub, Mona Hatoum,
William Kentridge, Annette Messager, Ryuji Miyamoto, Yinka Shonibare,
Ouattara Watts, Eyal Sivan and Luc Tuymans helped make this an utterly
memorable Documenta II. And, as so often, a new space was stunningly
realised; this time it was the Brewery.
Nick Waterlow
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