Documenta: the first and last exhibition of place

Documenta t h e fi r st an d Jan-Erik Lundstrom With Documenta extended both in time and in space through four platforms, interdisciplinary thematic seminars organized in Vienna, New Delhi, St. Lucia and Lagos, the fifth platform being the Documenta exhibition in Kassel, Documenta 11 established not only a different research and planning structure, but also a method for conceiving of a mega-event in the world of visual arts, an event such as Documenta itself, as a broad cultural and globally engaging experience where art is a manifestly social and political concern, and thus not an exclusive property of the art institutional community. With thematic focuses ranging from democracy in the era of globalisation, issues of justice and truth, creolite and processes and aspects of urbanization in four African cities (Freetown, Johannesburg, Kinshasa and Lagos), the platforms were ways of, for the curatorial team and the invited speakers and discussants, working through the mentioned topics; thus kind of clearing the ground for a more open and oblique entry into curating and organizing the concluding exhiAm ar Kanwar, A Season Outside (Video Still),1997, Courtesy the artist bition, Platform_5. A privileged, consuming but inventive, rewarding and productive way of interweaving theory and practice in the curatorial process, where theory was, simply, allowed to construct and find its own paths and territories. Given this unorthodox research format, it was perhaps a surprise for many visitors to arrive to Kassel and find a much more orthodox or classical exhibition; structured and organized in a rhythmic white cube-museum format, including major and minor contributions of some 100+ artists/artist groups/artist collectives , with immense care and attention afforded each individual art work. If the exhibition format, however, was not a break with the past, the art works were and the immediate experience in attending the exhibition was the overwhelming encounter with such an unbroken series of powerful and challenging individual works of art. Moving slowly, from room to room, there were a large number of works of art that left deep and indelible marks in one's consciousness. With this I do not only mean 5 6 . N k a J o u r n a l o f C o n t e m p o r a r y A f r i c a n A r t last exh i b i t i on o f place intense emotional kicks, although there were many of those as well, but mind shifters in the sense that new ways of knowing the world were induced, new inroads to social and political conditions of mankind, on micro and macro levels, were cleared and inaugurated. In a way, I could stop here. From Documenta 11 one walked away not so concerned whether the exhibition was "good" or "not so good", but, in the stead of such standard art criticism reflexes, found oneself engaged in carrying a new set of tools, methods, questions, inquiries, parameters with which to continue living. Continuing a process initiated by Documenta X with artistic director Catherine David, Documenta 11 directed by Okwui Enwezor completed a shift towards establishing Documenta as an event which thinks of and works with the visual arts as always taking place within - and always being agents of - a larger social and political context. This is an irreversible shift and it is a crucial development in that it does nothing less than liberate the work of art, liberate it from intra-art world obsessions and allowing to function openly in the world at large, celebrating the political animals we all are. Art as immanent and contingent to a chaotic world, rather than anorectic autonomy from worldly affairs. It is in the light of this that Documenta 11 pays a lot of attention to works of a documentary character, often however works that transcend straight journalism and traditional documentary , reinventing the genre through for example multiple points of view, the interweaving of fact and fiction, and documentary as a path towards new imaginaries of many sorts. Ulrike Ottinger's remarkable South East Passage finds surreal and empathic detail in a kind of cinema verite travelogue, uncovering lost and forgotten subcultures on the edges...