In my last post, I explored the idea of artistic research as I reflected on my visit to this year’s documenta exhibition. Today I will follow up by reviewing a case in point, “The Afghan Seminars” of dOCUMENTA (13), and then add some concluding reflections.

dOCUMENTA (13) actively stimulated the development of new artistic encounters by commissioning new projects, organizing various proceedings and publications. The organizers invited various artists and scholars for a series of events before and after the opening, for example, in Kabul, Cairo and Banff. “The Afghan Seminars: A Position of Documenta (13)” is particularly interesting because it included artists such as Michael Rakowitz, Giuseppe Penone, Mario Garcia Torres, Francis Alys, and Adrian Villar Rojas, most of whom were commissioned to produce a new work related to their experience in the war-torn country. In addition, the exhibition in Goethe Institute, Kabul presented 27 artists from 13 countries as part of the dOCUMENTA (13).

Although artists had no prior personal knowledge about the context of Afghanistan, they came up with interesting plans. For instance, in his film, “Reel/Unreel” (click link to watch), Francis Alys follows children who are playing a game with a steel circle, as well as an actual film reel given to them by the artist himself. Children continuously navigate by rolling the reels, following different paths in Kabul streets. The camera constantly shows the rotating reels in a close shot, depicting an intimate engagement with the urban context, providing a unique perspective, and a ground-up view of the city. The film operates in many layers. As we follow the kids and the reels, the film reel unfolds and refolds back, both literally and metaphorically, depicting life in Kabul. The project relates to the Kabul’s recent troubled past where films were burned down by the Taliban. However, the children’s playfulness offers the possibility for a joyful future.

Michael Rakowitz’s “What Dust Will Rise?” (2012) (click link for image), a conceptually complex project deals with the books that were destroyed during the aerial bombing in Kassel in 1941. Rakowitz’s installation mimics an archaeological museum to present carved stone books. In order to produce the books, Rakowitz worked in Afghanistan to educate Afghani stone carvers to reenact the old tradition of stone carving (a trade that was abolished after the Taliban), and to produce copies of the books with the stones that were taken from the quarries of Buddhas of Bamiyan, which was destroyed by the Taliban with an international showdown in 2001. The projects seemingly connect two troubled pasts together, generating an uneasy bridge. The complexity of the conceptual approach, the stretching of the contexts, histories, labor practices and materials, mixing with a form of philanthropy, creates discomfort.

In contrast to Rakowitz’s intricate project, Kader Attia’s related project, “Repair of the Occident to Extra-Occidental Cultures” (2012), presents a streamlined approach to tackle with historical relationships. In a similarly museological installation, Attia juxtaposes many 19^th and 20^th century artifacts, images and sculpture. Similar to Rakowitz, Attia asks African sculptors to carve disfigured World War I veterans in African busts. These sculptures are presented alongside 19^th century anthropological survey photos of Africans and 19^th century medical images of disfigured people. Attia offers an emotionally loaded portrait of colonialist ideology in its totality, as it flawlessly discloses the very logic of medical, criminal and anthropological assumptions and categories and how the modernist norm established itself in a very violent manner, an ideology of total domination of the other’s body through normalization processes.

One of the achievements of dOCUMENTA (13) is that the organizers gave artists dedicated spaces and the freedom to tackle their own spatial, formal and conceptual matters independent from overall exhibition. This gave a relative autonomy to artists and transformed curators into diligent facilitators of individual projects. In contrast to recently organized biennials/triennials, which take political events as a starting point, dOCUMENTA (13) manages to present political projects in a very direct and undisturbed manner. dOCUMENTA (13)’s spatial nonconformity and spaciousness allowed visitors to fully investigate the given projects without being visually overloaded. In that regard, walking from one venue to another became an expedition. Projects are weaved within the environment and urban context, allowing spontaneous encounters and surprises, generating an intelligent liveliness within the show.

Thus, I believe, dOCUMENTA (13) is one of the most important contemporary art exhibitions in our decade. The diversity of practices that successfully scrutinize social, political, economic and historical events proves that social scientists and the broader public need to give proper attention to artistic research as a genuine way of producing critical knowledge.

This years’ documenta—dOCUMENTA (13) titled with a small d as a subtle typographic gesture to create a distinctive branding —is sited around the city of Kassel with over 180 art projects, mostly new commissions. With a budget of thirty five million euros, it is the most expensive contemporary art exhibition in the world.

I visited dOCUMENTA (13)  during the opening dates of the exhibition. Everyone spoke of the curator’s peculiar approach, choices, and her eccentric personality. The idea of the star curator is relentlessly promoted in the growing numbers of biennials and triennials all over the world, without bearing on the quality or content of the exhibitions. But nevertheless, the organizers use the lure of the curator-figure as a cheap marketing strategy. In fact three months before the opening, a press kit landed on blogs, featuring curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev in various glamor shots with different outfits. With almost no mention of the participating artists, the emphasis was on the curator as the sole mastermind. 

These days, biennial openings are eerily like business events. Museum directors, gallery owners, collectors and schmoozing artists form a toxic bubble, diluting art’s effectiveness for a salient alternative future, transforming it into any other commercial activity. But one has to ignore all this to see the content and the hard work put into the exhibition by thousands of cultural producers. A biennial is best navigated by creatively selecting the sources to read, the people to speak with, the restaurants to eat at, and the events to participate in. Even so, it is exhausting to spend three days to see all the work. I have to admit that I could not watch all the films or visit all the sites.

Nevertheless, compared to many other contemporary art biennials, with its scope and careful execution, documenta is still a very exceptional experience. Since the organizers have an extensive time period to put the exhibition together, from its research to its commissioned projects, it provides a vigorous snapshot of the current state of contemporary art. Because of its scholarly yet experimental approach and keen emphasis on new works, it has become the most anticipated art event in the world. This years iteration, dOCUMENTA (13), proves to be worth the anticipation. In addition to the exhibition, an intense schedule of public programs, including lectures, film screenings, and performances are spread over its 100 days duration leading to rich encounters no matter when you visit the city of Kassel.

Christov-Bakargiev points out that the exhibition’s main focus is “artistic research and forms of imagination” that problematizes the idea of logo centric progress by actively bringing “sensual and energetic” artworks, which operate with a strong theoretical focus. In general, dOCUMENTA (13) does not have a definitive theme. Instead, it has a scope that reflects a complex set of intellectual propositions and different artistic approaches. The exhibition successfully weaves various politically acute art practices together as a grand poetic narrative. Many of these art projects explicitly tackle global and historical events, namely the Arab Spring, war in Afghanistan, European colonialist histories, and of course, the Occupy Movement. It would not be fair to make easy generalizations for such a big exhibition, but for the most part, as highlighted by the curatorial statement, one can identify the crystallization of a trend, which was apparent in the last couple of decades: research-based art practices.

But, how is so-called artistic research different than an ethnographic account by an anthropologist who employs visual research tools? Can art practice address urgent socio-political topics successfully? In that regard, before looking into some of the interesting projects within the show, I would like to highlight the importance of artistic research and raise some questions regarding its possibilities.

A reference to research usually implies a specific social [or natural] scientific methodology or combination of tools and techniques that are employed to identify certain patterns in natural or social worlds. When we use the terms research and artistic in conjunction, it immediately creates a difficulty as it refers to a systematic and somewhat verifiable approach mixed with personal expression.

In contrast to any scientific model that aims to either explain, or interpret social or natural phenomena, the outcome of artistic research can be best measured by its ability to engage with seemingly unrelated matters, things and concepts, and in return with its ability to generate some forms of intelligible affects. When an artist enters into a social realm to conduct research, intuition allows her/him to generate in-situ knowledge, therefore a particularly practical intellectual opening. In this regard, in artistic research, more so than any other scientific exploration, intuition is utilized as a method to identify a wide range of modalities. As explained by Henri Bergson (later critically expanded by Gilles Deleuze), intuition differs from knowledge (something known), but it is never the transcended (pure idea).

Intuition, anchored in material reality, is somewhere between the action to be taken and knowledge that was inherited. For instance, a painter, poet or carpenter knows what to do next without actually knowing what is to be experienced; their whole body operates as a whole. Intuition serves as an activator for the possibility of changing the ways in which the normal intellect operates. Intuition allows a creative opening, a unique moment where new types of knowledge can emerge. For that matter, one can argue that artistic research aims to create a type of knowledge, which is ultimately a synthesis of the new experience of the artists and intellectual operations they engage. We need to think of artistic research as a different, but totally legitimate, way of understanding social phenomenon. I will illuminate how this works in my next post focused on “The Afghan Seminars” at documenta.

This is the first of three posts on this year’s Documenta art exhibition. -Jeff

Documenta opened its doors to the public on June 6^th. Documenta —one of the largest contemporary art exhibitions in the world—takes place in Kassel, Germany every five years. This high point of the international art world calendar was initiated in 1955 to heal the scars of the Second World War, largely as a response to the “Degenerate Art” exhibition by NAZI regime. But it also intended to show the open mindedness of western societies and freedom of expression to the rest of the world, specifically the Eastern Bloc. Obviously the world’s political conjuncture has dramatically changed, since then, as has the exhibition.

One of the most interesting aspects of this year’s exhibition was its multifaceted relationship with the idea of nature and the paranormal. Some of the projects sited in Kassel’s Orangerie, Karlsaue Park and the Ottoneum (the natural history museum) offered a distinct approach to engage with matter and living things as an artistic category.

Eighteenth century parks in the English tradition are spread around Europe as idealized slices of nature in urban settings, with Arcadian forests, bridges, small houses and creeks. The bourgeoisie depicted the countryside in a sentimental way, as a response to rapid urbanization. Nature became something to be looked at and leisurely experienced. Parks are highly crafted artificial sites and reflect this modernist ideology. A small army of maintenance workers maintains the ecosystem and botanists carefully manage the flowers and plants. Even wildness is manufactured.

Pierre Huyghe’s “Untitled (2011-12),” one of the most intriguing projects of the exhibition, negotiates with the park itself. When one arrives to the composting area of the park to see Huyghe’s work, they encounter scattered aggregate, asphalt, sand, soil and construction materials. The location registers as peculiar and haphazard. One inevitably wonders if they arrived to the right site, or just a staging areas for park services. But there is no randomness like this in German parks, known for their preciseness. So this oddity resolves itself as you navigate by jumping over the mud and through the little mounts, finally confronting a classic female nude sculpture made of reinforced concrete next to a newly planted tree.

Every sculpture, even the most fragile ones invoke the sense of touch. The possibility of feeling the material, imagining the coldness of stone or the softness of resin, is part of sculptural work. As one approaches Huyghe’s sculpture, they immediately realize that the head is covered with an oval-shaped beehive. The sculpture is alive and elicits horror and excitement as well as disturbed harmony. The uncertainty of the site disappears. A delicate attractiveness in the intricate relationship with the organism and the roughly made concrete structure emerges. It critically invokes the delicate relationship between the artificial and natural.

In order to survive, mankind has to have a mediated relationship with nature. This relationship needs to be maintained synthetically via protective clothing, shelter, tools, refined materials or processed food. Without this, a human simply could not survive. This separates humans from so-called wild animals. In order to survive, the artificial has to encapsulate what is called natural. In fact, any unmediated engagement with pure nature could lead to ecstatic terror. In other words, an artificial barrier is necessary to distance oneself from the horror of nature, and ultimately death.

Everywhere we look in our natural environment, there is a constant reminder of decay, the accumulation of dying organisms and cycles of consumption and reproduction. Unless the so-called natural is subsumed under the artificial, one cannot experience nature as it is. However, this is an impossible, as soon as you capture, modify and preserve nature, the natural disappears under the umbrella of artificial. Perhaps this impossibility appears as a constant reminder of the difficulty of capturing nature with any representational visual regime. That is why Huyghe’s work was so successful as it captures this horror, without being grotesque or falling into any bourgeois phantasmagoria about the natural world. In this work, he allows living organisms to take charge, evolve and grow, and have their own life, but also allows an audience to challenge their assumption about the work of art as distinct from nature, or living/dying things.