Documenta stuff(ed)
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I have only seen two of the exhibition spaces of Documenta 12. Many wrote how bad the show is and of course i am doing my best to disagree and find some beauty here. There is some. Well, there's the ueber sexy Harvey Keitel asking 'Why are we here?" in a video artwork by James Coleman. But apart from that, so far, so not exciting. The exhibition at the Documenta Hall is quite fun, in a kindergarten way. There are stuffed animals everywhere you look (i also witnessed an amazing amount of stuffed baby Knut all over the city btw.)
Real one first, a taxidermized giraffe which artist Peter Friedl brought back all the way from Qalquilyah, host of the only zoo in Palestine. In spring 2003, the city was attacked and fired on by the Israeli army during the second Intifada. As a result, many animals were killed, including the above mentioned giraffe. During a shelling Brownie (that's the name of the animal) panicked, hit its head on a pole, fell and died. The veterinarian became a taxidermist, who stuffed Brownie among others in an amateur manner. The conserved animals were displayed in a “museum� next to the zoo.
The stuffed giraffe, The Zoo Story (2007), is there to break through the uniformity of the media images and call the attention of the public. The artist sees the giraffe object as an emotional representation of the political conflict in the West bank – a pars pro toto. Even if you have no clue about what the giraffe stands for you cannot help but feel sad while watching it: the animal is quite tiny and patches of its fur are missing.
Bit more cheerful is the installation of Cosima von Bonin, Relax - It's only a Ghost (more images). I first thought it was a series of works by different artists but it turned out to be just one work you can walk in. There are oversized stuffed dogs and an octopus, sewn paintings, two pairs of jeans comically "sitting" on some kind of pedestal and two colourful sheet-metal sales carts.
The whole scene is supposed to represent a pirate island in the |
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peter friedl is an upper austrian from Oberneukirchen
I can't get my head around why I paid for this Documenta. But as you said, better look for the few works that were worth it. I found Saadaane Afif's self-playing guitars and song-lyrics strangely compelling. Very romantic indeed. And then there was the triple-screen video "Code Red" (or something similar) employing these 3 really expensive apple Cinema HD displays to show only 15 minutes of red. Awesome!
But again, seeing how big the Documenta is, I expected a LOT better. I got a headache out of all that bad art.
"The whole scene is supposed to represent a pirate island in the
Caribbean."
You're kidding right? Here I thought they were going for the "we have no clue about curating"-look!
Perhaps one should not expect their money's worth on the show, but on the document.
I felt just the same: a huge disappointment, sometimes sheer disbelieve ("are they really serious about this?) My favourite was the huge Persian carpet sooo beautiful - and it didn't pretend to be anything other than a wonderful carpet...
I loved Trisha Brown’s Floor of the forest, with her silent (?) waving performance , and I
really appreciated the embroidery by Hu Xiaoyuan and the orange installation The Radio by Manglano-Ovalle.
The Aue Pavillion was horrible. In toto.
The curator Noack and the artistic director Buerghel declare in the preface of the catalogue that “the big exhibition has no form�. Uomo avvisato, mezzo salvato. (Forewarned is forearmed
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