Documenta Fifteen: “Soon you will be invited to a party”
Emilie Flower responds to criticisms that Documenta Fifteen focussed too heavily on ‘NGO art’, arguing that this dismissive accusation merits further enquiry, to understand how Indonesian curators ruangrupa embrace collectivity in their work.
Work by the consciousness raising art centre, 'Centre de'art WAZA', Lubumbashi, Congo. Artistic direction: ruangrupa. Photograph by Emilie Flower.
Documenta Fifteen
It’s the summer, things slow down as they speed up. We begin a new research project with the working title, ‘Can the Arts Save Human Rights?’. Conventional human rights approaches are in trouble, while protest for social justice and rights grows. One of our main interests is around how artist collectives are contributing to the possible future form of human rights advocacy; how are contemporary arts collectives framing human rights and social justice issues, and what can human rights advocacy learn from them?
With this in mind, in July a few of the team visited documenta fifteen, the ever controversial and scene-defining contemporary arts event in Kassel, Germany. This is the perfect starting point for our research. In a radical break from the tradition of celebrity curators, Documenta Fifteen was run by a well-established Indonesian collective, ruangrupa, who in turn, populated the programme with collectives from around the world. They themed the exhibits around alternative methods of sustainable resource sharing, or ‘lumbung’; an Indonesian term for a community barn that stores rice centrally for future use.
The latest rendition of Documenta has been accused of foregrounding ‘NGO art’ - a critique that might go deeper in terms of damaging ruangrupa’s project amongst artists than the more widely publicised debates around anti–Semitism that have surrounded this edition of Documenta. The contemporary arts world courts controversy, but turns away in the face of corporate co-option. This is a dismissive accusation that merits further enquiry.
A workshop run by 4:* foundation Class* collective. Artistic direction: ruangrupa. Photograph by Emilie Flower.
Territorial overlap: can ruangrupa escape the dismissal of development capture?
The thematic focus on sustainability, resource sharing and participation of this year’s Documenta do overlap with many non-governmental organisations, but ruangrupa are expanding this familiar territory.
Many Indonesian activists and artists have long since shunned ‘development’ models, actively resisting being subsumed by predatory goal-orientated non-governmental organisations or radical political movements to form their own distinct approaches to politically motivated, collective art making. This is what we see on display at Documenta Fifteen. If we want to label it, we might say that this is more of a rerun of the idealisms of the hippy movement than the corralling of participatory methods or the nihilism of punk. The art is information heavy, keen to educate, earnest in its messaging, infused with an idealistic spirit of playfulness - “soon you will be invited to a party”.
Data, of all kinds, is what the collectives of artists chose to put on show. This is an exhibition that celebrates facts not fictions, documentary over fabrication, details over concepts. Many of the works are closer to Apollonian statics than Dionysian questioning – these are guided, well evidenced discussions (see Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot’s prison letters to Slovoj Zizek). This process differs from fact finding in the traditional sense as it brings in a broader set of data, employing collectives of researchers from different disciplines to layer up a case through maps, data points, historical archive and ephemera, testimonies, sounds, images, photos, and films (see forensic architecture as an example) – and editing these back to present a case.
The politics are presented through familiar, associated artistic forms; workers rights through social realist woodcut posters and protest placards; conservation ideas through Indigenous case study; hidden histories through archive ephemera and testimonial interview. The difference is the presentation. Informative film materials are made easier to watch through shortcut edits and comfortable or sculptural seating arrangements. Immersive dark seated shelves to curl into, cosy corners, reclined seating, to concentrate or relax into the content. This is an art exhibit that champions factual accounts of familiar sustainable development challenges. The exhibition is designed for sofa sitters, for fact finders, enlightenment thinkers. It is familiar, digestible, and fresh. Here is the evidence, edited by artists, researchers, activists and anthropologists, to allow you to understand, to connect, to find your way into these other, more threatened realities. It takes the tools of change that have been peddled to the rest of the world and turns them on the perpetrators. Let us explain it back to you, as you have explained it to us. The issues are not new. What is new is showing the work of these collective arts-based messages in this rarefied context.
The exhibit designs advocate activities that bring people together - together we may find the answers that are missing apart. Circles, seating, music, screenings, workshops, invitations to talk… ritual readings, group making and collage, tours and meals…the approach is interactive and inclusive. None of the messaging intentionally offends; it invites, it explains, it directs action - it steers the course for mutual understanding, calls out culprits and voices victims. Censored films are aired, Indigenous land battles are described in stories beside the campfire and in participant-led films, community arts projects and alternative archives are celebrated. Persistence is rewarded. Collectivity. Ecological awareness. Feminist ideals. Non-consumerism. Work that demonstrates long-term political commitment and an ethical stance dominates- and even where the artists chosen are not known for this kind of work their work is curated into a presentation of collective solidarity.
Ritual reading of testimonies from the Columbian Truth Commission from Columbian collective Mas Arte Mas Accion. Artistic direction: ruangrupa. Photograph by Emilie Flower.
Audience reception: it’s a tough crowd for a party
Whether the audience can cope with this level of inclusion - direct off the back of the isolation and fear of the Covid epidemic - is quite a different question. Visiting the exhibitions for a few days makes for a dislocated experience. Kassel, a medium sized industrial town in the middle of western Germany, is a quiet place. Occasional scrawls on the pavements and walls of blue spray painted trails and colourful hand motifs signify the presence of Documenta Fifteen, otherwise it is the clean and ordered streets, occasional takeaways and home appliance shops of normality. The audience are mainly older, fresh pressed visitors, many of whom join tours. They stand in quiet semi circles of concentration, listening intently to the young tour guides. Sometimes this results in odd juxtapositions. A group of silver-haired white retirees stand politely around a group of young artists and activists from South Africa fleshing out their views on corporate responsibility and deforestation, gesturing to a cascade of protest banners that hangs above their heads. In the next room they line up on benches watching films showing interviews about anti-colonial protest with young Algerian women, and montages of archive footage, documenting western perspectives of Black lives. When this film comes to an end they shuffle off to peruse the racisms of European children’s stories.
Re-surfacing sleeping dreams
It’s useful and important stuff, but it could be accused of resembling a museum archive exhibit. And perhaps this is exactly the intention. Multiculturalism, internationalism, utopianism, dreams of a better world through collective action, …love, peace and friendship… universal human rights...perhaps we don’t need to reinvent anything, but just to repurpose some of our tools and resurface some sleeping dreams and ideals. These research art pieces may not last on the walls of art exhibitions – they are dense expressions even after a heavy dose of editing and curatorial aids – but they do present an alternative to the standard practises of human rights advocacy.
This is not about campaign politics, or abrasive challenge, it is about living your politics – arranging objects as well as communities of people in ways that counter ‘the capitalist machine’. Documenta Fifteen IS different from a standard art exhibition, where the emphasis is on the objects presented, not the organising principles of the collectors and collectives they signify. Here a way of living and making is an art form, embracing the spontaneous lived political manifestos of previous arts movements, but losing the abrasive technique and anti-capitalist condition. Sentimentality, eco-consumerism, non-specific trans-local comparison, standardised generic slogans – it is all welcome so long as it is presented in a spirit of sharing. The Documenta ‘aura, ‘spirit’ or ‘vibe’ returns to the 1960’s hippy movement of peace and love over punk rock.
Artists, unlike journalists, cannot be cynics. In the end, they are defined by the fact that they do not just talk about ideas but make work and show work, these are their contemporary commitments. When groups of artists present work together they are unlikely to produce one clean conceptual piece. What we have here is a cacophony of voices, perspectives, pieces and processes. This is what distinguishes them from the journalists, economists, scientists and development workers that propose change. Artists and activists do not talk about, direct or wait for the people, but recognise that ‘we’ are the people who must make the change we dare to dream. For the time being the audience may stand beside, but the invitation is at least there, and the opportunity to step into another world is presented with enthusiasm and authentic, transparent resolve.
As we leave the exhibit I walk behind a tall young man with a black bob of slightly unkempt hair, walking calmly and purposefully up the road. He is wearing a t-shirt that says ‘I am a good human’, and this humanist intention, I think, is the take home message for our project, an art form worth remembering and an excellent place to start.
