Learning from Athens

documenta14 has been open in Athens since April. Now, the wait is over for Kassel too, as the world’s biggest exhibition of contemporary art opened there on June 10. Have curator Adam Szymczyk and his team achieved the goal they pursued under the motto “Learning from Athens”? There are a number of big themes on the agenda, for example the fundamental questioning of documenta as an institution, democratization, decentralization or new political and economic forms of organization. One of the most powerful art institutions is making itself the object of its own criticism. But can that work? Really, it’s essential to form a picture of that for yourself, particularly since there are exciting works to be discovered. This (subjective) selection and a few tips and tricks should make it easier to navigate.

A central component of the curatorial concept of having documenta take place in Kassel and Athens is the interaction between documenta and the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, the EMST. For this reason, the historical primary location of documenta is to display works from the still relatively young collection (since 2000) of the EMST this year. In Athens, a monumental building, which currently hosts part of the documenta, has otherwise stood empty, since there is no money to open the museum definitively. 

A secretive main venue

The Neue Hauptpost or Neue Galerie is the secretive main venue of documenta14. You can see art on three floors at this place. The staircase is easily missed, and is located directly to the right of the entrance. A piece of graffiti by Gordon Hookey entitled “MURRILAND!” covers an entire wall directly opposite the entrance, raising the issue of the realities of life for aborigines since the colonization of Australia. It is an example of the cheerfully colorful aesthetic that is typical of the artist, yet is in stark contrast to the bitter facts he presents to us here. Somewhat hidden in the corner at the back left is a particular highlight, the video “77sqm_9.26min” from the Forensic Architecture research agency at Goldsmiths, University of London, which examines the murder of Halit Yozgat by the German right-wing extremist group NSU. Another highlight: “Staging”, a piece by Maria Hassabi that runs right the way through the building. Today, the highly-concentrated performers who moved during the first few days of the exhibition in slow-mo but with great precision at various different places within Neuer Hauptpost have disappeared, however, their presence can still be felt. In the spotlights on the ground floor and on the large magenta-colored carpets on the first story, it is now the visitors who take the limelight.

There are three interesting painting positions: First the works by Vivien Suter, which are presented unconventionally in one of the glass pavilions on Kurt Schumacher Strasse. Either before or after seeing them, it’s worth watching the 30-minute documentary about the artist, “Vivian's Garden”, which can be seen in the Natural History Museum in the Ottoneum and was shot by artist Rosalind Nashashibi, whose own works are in the Palais Bellevue. The documentary shows how Suter lives and works with her mother, the artist Elisabeth Wild, in the jungle in Guatemala. A true feast for the eyes are the large-format, bright color-field paintings by Stanley Whitney in the Documenta Hall. They radiate a poetic power, which appears to have been lost in many of the very conceptual works of this documenta. Also in the Documenta Hall, visitors can see the fascinating paintings by Miriam Cahn, which revolve around the themes of gender and sexuality, fear and existence, and in doing so maintain a kind of limbo between pictorial genius and naivety.

Incomprehensible language sequences

In an enormous exhibition such as the documenta, it is often hard to take the time to watch longer films. A full 85 minutes are needed to view the wonderful film “Such a Morning” by Amar Kanwar, which can be seen on the first floor of the Neue Galerie. Yet it’s worth gaining even a brief insight into this film’s calm and poetic pictorial world. Another cinematographic discovery of this documenta are the works by Naeem Mohaiemen. In Kassel, he is represented by the film “Two Meetings and a Funeral”, which constitutes a look back at the movement of non-aligned states. The film can be seen on the top floor of the Hessen State Museum. A third film is less pictorially and more vocally powerful: Susan Hiller’s “Lost and Found” at the Grimmwelt focuses on (virtually) extinct languages. The longer you linger and listen to recorded language sequences that are incomprehensible to us, the more the language becomes like music.