by Jean Marie Carey | 24 Aug 2017 | Art History, LÖL, Re-Enactments© and MashUps
Arin Rungjang, 246247596248914102516 … And then there were none (2017). Video still.
The German friend I went with said aloud what I was thinking: “Whoever at Documenta decided to call this the ‘Neue Neue Galerie’…just…shouldn’t…ever…” accompanied by a grim sächsische head-shake. Restyling the already-interesting and well-known Brutalist Neue Post building in this way is so typical of Documenta 14: It’s that Mentos-commercial “humor” that isn’t funny and also isn’t nostalgic, ironic, kitschy, or whatever else might have settled the account with the “marketing team.” Nonetheless despite being afflicted by branding and the continuing curatorial confusion that has muddled much of Documenta 14, some of the art inside the former mail-sorting center ascends on its own merits.
The most interesting, and centrally important to Kassel, entries in all of Documenta is the project by the Society of Friends of Halit, a group of artists and researchers who apply pressure to the investigation into the 2006 murder of 21-year-old Halit Yozgat. Yozgat was shot to death in the Internet café his family ran on Höllandischestraße, just around the corner from the Neue Post, the ninth in a string of Neo-Nazi hate crimes. Hessian undercover detective Andreas Temme was in the café yet claims to have seen and heard nothing. With 77sqm_9:26min (2017), the Society reveals their findings – reconstructed through forensic architectural, olfactory projection (!), and sound renderings; interviews with passersby, and film clips of testimony and evidence. Finally an example of the ability of art to change and influence events in the world, and even render justice.
Arin Rungjang (geb. 1974, Bangkok) 246247596248914102516 … And then there were none (2017) Digitalvideo, Farbe, Ton; Holz- und Blechplastik; 2 Malereien und 2 Arbeiten auf Papier Video: 30 min
Perhaps the lone Documenta installation aspiring to Gesamtkunstwerk is Arin Rungjang’s 246247596248914102516… And then there were none (Democracy Monument) (2017). The installation is composed of a wood and brass panel-frieze, sculpture, photographic portraits, video installation, paintings, drawings, and books. The video itself includes an original modern dance performance about World War II historic sites in Berlin and Munich, the manufacture of the frieze, and an attendant controversy in Thailand, and – rare for Documenta Kassel – an acknowledgment of the fair’s earlier iteration in Athens. 246247596248914102516 is a reach that might not have worked, but Rungjang’s combination of precision and sincerity is peerless.
(more…)
by Jean Marie Carey | 19 Jun 2017 | Art History, Re-Enactments© and MashUps
One of the paradoxes that has emerged from documenta 14 is that many of its spectacular installations make very simple statements about global consumerism using enormous material expenditures. In fact it can be difficult to see past the pyramids, windmills, and tents erected to comment on issues such as migration and the market-possessed-body – elaborate efforts to illustrate political generalities – to documenta’s truer theme, an attempt by curator Adam Szymczyk to assail, or at least supplement, canonical art history with work by indigenous and overlooked artists.
iQhiya, Monday, 2017, Performance und Installation, Ehemaliger unterirdischer Bahnhof (KulturBahnhof), Kassel, documenta 14, Foto: Fred Dott
But the contemporary art fair world floats above scholarship on a bubble of self-satisfaction. The documenta participants who are the big draws – Mona Hatoum and Pierre Huyghe for example – aren’t worried about posterity. So what was meant to be exposure becomes competition for a footnote. Some of this lesser-known work also really struggles when removed from its local context. Poor facture and inappropriate plinths meant as faux–naïf comes across as a weird form of doubled sociological good intentions gone awry, and, amid Kassel’s half-hearted Brutalist buildings, calls to mind Bernd and Hilla Becher’s photographs of Bavarians dressed as Native Americans. In this respect, perhaps it was afterall an important achievement, and more consistent with Szymczyk’s goal, to move the most of documenta to Athens.
One excellent work, shown above, is iQhiya’s Monday (2017), which unfortunately was performed only once on 13 June. Staged in Kassel’s “little” Bahnhof, the spoken, moved, video, books, saws, pens, needles cloth, and film endurance piece used an eight-hour projection loop of Sarafina! (1992) to examine the “hidden curriculum” experience of black, South African women college students. Mimicking the rhythm of a real school day, naturally people wandered in and out. The coming and goings of the Eurobahn and Regio trains moving through the station plinked the hour glass and also made a rumbling vibration that was unsettling and comforting at the same time. I’m not sure if the reference to Pascale Marthine Tayou’s Human Being @Work (2009) was intentional or ephemeral coincidence, but the eleven-member iQhiya troupe made use of sound and light in a similar way as Tayou’s (also very successful) occupation of the Biennale di Venezia’s Arsenale – only with real trains.
Now, about Olu Oguibe…
(more…)
by Jean Marie Carey | 8 Jun 2017 | Art History
For the first installment of documenta diaries…here is George Baker’s “The Globalization of the False: A Response to Okwui Enwezor” (2004). Much of the work seen thus far at the German quinquennial, having liberated itself from theory and history, is therefore very literal, in a Thelma-Golden’s-1993-Whitney-Biennal way. There is more going on at documenta, of course, than granular personal narrative…but the emphasis is definitely on identity and by extension individuality. (more…)
by Jean Marie Carey | 25 Apr 2017 | Re-Enactments© and MashUps
Kaffeebohne
Over the Easter weekend I went on several hikes with my friends Wiebke and Luisa, which during the winter involved getting lost and crossing the partially iced-over Fulda. These walks were not as perilous though there was some Osternausflippen on the tiny Cantus train over the frequently-contentious issue of bike transport, which I mostly attribute to the seeming interminability of the religious holiday to the non-religious Hessians.
On Sunday we traveled to the Universität Kassel’s Witzenhausen campus to visit the Gewächshaus für tropische Nutzpflanzen, a huge greenhouse complex of tropical plants like coffee and giant grapefruit. Stadt Witzenhausen, “die Kirschenstadt,” itself is the “legendary” home to many cherry trees, though I have never seen many Kirschblüte in the two springs I have been here – maybe that’s the Witz.
Farther down the River Werra, where the river turns back into the Fulda, is the Botanischer Garten Kassel, where we saw a moth and butterfly incubation house, with thousands of Tagpfauenauge (a true Schmetterlinge species, not a moth as they appear), just coming out of their cocoons. Also a special humidity controlled greenhouse just for cacti.
by Jean Marie Carey | 8 Oct 2012 | Art History, Franz Marc, German Expressionism / Modernism
After being “back” for only a week I find I am already struggling a bit to remain in the cocoon of wellbeing spun by having been “home” the week previous…so I decided to quickly tell a couple highlights of my adventure in the interest of hanging on, at least in words.
The citizens of Würzburg, in the center Bayern Inferioara not Hessen, determinedly identify with their neighbors on the Main in Frankfurt as opposed to affiliating with the residents of the Kingdom with whom they actually share statehood. One citizen explained to me that Oktoberfest was not celebrated in Würzburg, “only in Bavaria.” (Just to clarify, Würzburg is in Bavaria.) I cannot be exactly sure why this is, since, while it is certainly not as wacky and zany as any place in UB, it is very agreeably weird in its own way. I will investigate further in the future.
In any case, a number of amazing things happened while I was there. The first one was that suddenly, I could speak German. After the fiasco of this past summer, I had really only been studying haphazardly, by which I mean listening to the “party music” programming on Radio Bayern 2, reading just a couple pretty easy books, and practicing with my friend the idiosyncratic new language based on 30 percent German and 70 percent JDilla.
However it became obvious even in the short distance between the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof and the Würzburg hauptBahnhof that an increased level of proficiency was going to be necessary and that filling in the unknown vocabulary with French, Italian, Dutch or Lupe Fiasco would be both impossible and sociologically ill-advised. For some reason I was not very worried, probably because when you are fortunate to be on a train in Germany in Bavaria and it is cold enough to wear a hat, scarf, and gloves, there is not really anything to worry about. When I got to the hotel, the lobby of which doubles as a Mexican restaurant (see I told you this place is afterall in Bayern), for some reason without really thinking anything about it I just asked (bitte) for die Schlüssel zum Zimmer zweihunderteins? A few minutes later, looking out the window of said room, I realized something must have gone horribly wrong since in the past I rarely get articles and never numbers right on the first try in conversation.
Yet this was not an accident or aberration ( at least for the week or maybe the whole thing was). After that, I just could speak German. I know it sounds like some sort of miracle but actually I should be able to speak German, I just hadn’t been able to until this very moment. After I tested out this new ability over the next few hours – getting directions, getting a magazine at a newstand, chatting with some people who were also standing by the Main admiring the swooping bats and rain on the river – I was convinced of its existence.
At that point I was suddenly overcome with one of the greatest senses of ecstasy I have ever known. (more…)
