+ All Categories
Home > Documents > Claes Oldenburg, Spitzhacke. 1982. Docurnente VII, … · eties" (Serge Gruzinski) born from the...

Claes Oldenburg, Spitzhacke. 1982. Docurnente VII, … · eties" (Serge Gruzinski) born from the...

Date post: 07-Oct-2018
Category:
Upload: hoanghuong
View: 223 times
Download: 0 times
Share this document with a friend
13
i Klppenbx9x, -Net Sculpture Transportable iyEntrance", 1997. erie. done trasportabile della j olitana, in ferro vermciato, -sta sulla riva del flume Fulda 'e subway station, made ted iron, situated on the bank river Fulda. Claes Oldenburg, Spitzhacke. 1982. Docurnente VII, Fulda.
Transcript

i Klppenbx9x,-Net Sculpture TransportableiyEntrance", 1997.

erie.

done trasportabile dellaj olitana, in ferro vermciato,

-sta sulla riva del flume Fulda'e subway station, made

ted iron, situated on the bankriver Fulda.

Claes Oldenburg, Spitzhacke. 1982.

Docurnente VII, Fulda.

Orangerie

Pavvel Althamer,Astronaut 2, 1997.

Orangerie.II progetto consiste ditre parti:la performance degli astronauti, on l

a telecamera, il velcolo situatonet ü dell'Orangerie e la guardia

the staziona all'interno del card/The project consists of three parts:

the performance by the astronautswith the telecamera, the vehiclesituated in the gardens of the Orangeneand the guard standing inside the car

f

Canten Holler & RoserMrie Trockel,Ein Haus fur Schweine

undMenschen, 1997.Orangerie.

La casa con giardino per uomni

The house with a gae ml A equamente divisa a rri i

and pigs is divided etra I suoi abnanh. I visitaton possono

between its nstraws, su un contend scivolo,

can lie on a comfort.situate, nella parte umana delta casa,

in the human part oe osservare gli animali.

and observe the sin,

Christine Mill,Vol ksboutique,7!!F!].S-Bahnhof UnterführungSpazio per la produziane e venditaCÎ oggeni d'acte nel sottopassaggiothe conduce alla stazione /Space far the production and saleof objets d'art in the subway leadingto the station.

Jeff Wall, Milk. 1997.S-BahnhofUnterfUhrung.

Immagine trasparente retrailluminateal neon, collocata i n una vetrinabel sattopassagglo / Transparent imagelit with neon from behind, locatedin a showcase in the subway

o g 5 n ~: v+-nC

3;~ g) - ? m ô

3 a~

G m > >iE Ç '

ç

a, G Â

~, o â r~ °- 0-a o

m ,+ô C `i

C O ~ ~ j s

n j a bLo ,O

Ô

Q ~. ~.C O

rm„

,.V

Nro ~ ~.

all of whom began their work around the

time that the first Documenta opened

( Gerhard Richter, Michelangelo Pistolet-

to, Richard Hamilton, Aldo Van Eyck).

For most of these figures, the critical di-

mension appears in a radical questioning

of the categories of the "fine arts" and of

the anthropological foundations of West-

ern culture, through a subversion of the

traditional hierarchies and divisions of

knowledge: a critique of the primacy of

the visual and a projection of language

and its games into three-dimensional

space with Broodthaers; an exposure of

the economic perversion of spatial opera-

tions with Matta-Clark; an inversion of

center and periphery though the emer-

gence of "marginal" values with Oiticica;

an extraordinarily playful dramatization

of political and economic power relations

with Fahlstrbm; a poetic transformation

of dogmatic, reductive modernism

through the critical reactivation of the

formal and spatial solutions of non-West-

ern architecture with Aldo Van Eyck.

At a time when advertising, television, the

news media, and the digital sophistication

of virtual worlds are "swallowing the real

in its spectacular representation"

( Gruzinski), it seems particularly appro-

priate to foreground the processes of

analysis and distancing at work in the

practices of drawing and of Documentary

photography since the 1960s and some-

ti mes even before (Maria Lassnig, Nancy

Spero, Walker Evans, Garry Winogrand,

Helen Levitt, Robert Adams, Ed Van der

Elsken). These practices find significant

(if indirect) developments in the works of

Martin Walde, William Kentridge, Jeff

Wall, Craigie Horsefield, James Coleman,

Johan Grimnoprez, and Anne-Marie

Schneider, who have been able to discov-

er contemporary forms of non-spectacu-

tar dramatization.

Parcours

Since 1955, Documenta has always un-

folded in a spatial relation to the city of

Kassel, contributing greatly to the spread

of the model of the exhibition-prome-

nade developed in the late sixties as an

acceptable compromise between tradi-

tional museum presentation and the ex-

tension to a mass public of the idea, the

practice, and the consumption of the

artistic vanguards. Today, while we wit-

ness the (final?) dissolution of the muse-

um and the public space into the "society

of the spectacle," the strategies that at-

tempt to contrast institutional space with

an "outside" appear naive or ridiculous,

as do "in situ" interventions which turn

their backs not only to the current trans-

formation of the Habermasian model of

public space, but also to the new modes

of imaginary and symbolic investment of

places by contemporary subjects.

To combat the promenade or "rummage

sale" effect, it seemed necessary to articu-

late the heterogeneous works and exhibi-

tion spaces-the old sites of the Frideri-

cianum and the Orangerie and the new

sites of the railway station, the Otteneum,

and the Documenta Halle-with the

"here and now" context of Kassel in

1997, by establishing a historical and ur-

ban parcours or itinerary, attentive to his-

tory as embedded in the city itself. From

the old railway station to the Orangerie

and the banks of the Fulda, this itinerary

lays the accent not only on the spectacu-

larly restored tokens of the baroque era

(the Friedrichsplatz and the Frideri-

cianum, the Orangerie and the Auepark),

but also on the recent past of post-war re-

construction: the old station, partially un-

used and currently being remodelled for

commercial and cultural purposes, the

underground passageways deserted by

the public and destined for closure in the

not-too-distant future, and the Treppen-

strasse or "stairway street," a model of

the pedestrian street conceived in the

fifties to conjugate promenade and con-

sumption (the first of its kind to be built

in Germany, and as such, an official

" monument"). In the era of globalization,

with all its local repercussion-including

the highly visible recession in the city of

Kassel-the marks of reconstruction and

the failure of the political, economic, so-

cial, and urban project that they reveal

can appear as "recent ruins." We have

not sought to make these artefacts into

museum pieces (not even for the time of

an exhibition) but rather to identify and

specify them through confrontations with

recent and somewhat less recent works

by artists such as Lois Weinberger, Jeff

Wall, Peter Friedl, Dan Graham, and

Suzanne Lafont. This parcours is also a

real and symbolic itinerary through Kas-

sel in relation to its possible "elsewhere,"

the cultural and urban realities of a

"Whole-World" (Edouard Glissant) that

Documenta cannot claim to convoke or

even to "represent" in Kassel. That said,

the city and urban space in general-its

circumstances, its failures, its architectur-

al, economic, political, and human pro-

jects, its conflicts, and the new cultural at-

titude and practices to which it gives rise

and which it spreads throughout the

world-now clearly appear as the privi-

leged site of contemporary experience. In

these respects, Kassel today, at its own

scale, in its singularity as well as its arche-

types, can be regarded as "exemplary."

Limits

The extreme heterogeneity of contempo-

rary aesthetic practices and mediums-

matched by the plurality of contemporary

exhibition spaces (the wall, the page, the

poster, the television screen, the Internet)

and the very different, even irreconcicil-

able experiences of space and time they

imply-necessarily oversteps the limits of

an exhibition held "entirely" in Kassel,

j ust as art now oversteps the spatial and

temporal but also ideological limits of the

"white cube" which consumed the sup-

Erik Steinbmher.Fampaftation, 1997.Hauptbahnhof.Sedia conelloni pubblicitad alladegli autobus, a fianco dal piazzdelta stazione / Sixteen adverbs;,posters at the bus stop, on oneof the station premises.

the exhibition sites,and views of Treppenstrasseand the station.

'Orangerie

Bri i derki rche

I ot,

()uc

c-hie

wol

per

roy

gray

rifle

I uzi,

ccnr

t u ri!

i nd>

non

vcrc

di fr

li, a

co. 1

hera

port

che,

prat

olgi

chin

nul

Post

tazt0

C'I hll1

nom

non

non_

I stitu

hxza

dell "

to de

lli di

"loci

nell'i

Hauptbahnhof

Treppenstra(3e

La costruzione di Treppenstrasse (1953).

The construction of Treppenstrasse (1953).

Fridericianum

Ottoneum

documenta Halle

alteope

Cla.cent

gina

dicapolitderv

pres;

poetper f

Oggi

mediunivc

cipit(

rappGruz:

giaredistan

segno

partin( Mari

Evans

Robertiche c

retti, rdi Mai

Wall,

Johander, d

conter

spetta(

PermDal P

sede ad iffom

nude s

santa

l a tnas

Pawel AProgetto

in cui dumentrePmject I ri n whichwhile a t

43 bomb-

Gation, in-iption by

ay explain

k and per-he history

edition in

hth at the

ccasion for

f the mod-A the van-

f azi regime

Berate Art"reconstmc-

ipping over

tat emerged

-centrate on

s of abstrac-

ir apogee inens of Doc-

-al showcase

country thatmterpiece of

tween north -

tates.

became theition of con-

tls of Venicedirected to-

iodern choic-

isformed theday event at-

ms" and "at-

c his strikingposals of the

ersing the di-

d taken. The

;led to conch-h the i mpera-

-y, and, soononomic and

,many and of

DaliZatiOD.sorder" cum-

the oil shock

,e geographern economy of

onetheless, it

Is the end ofning of a new

nter Grass's

phrase. The visible division of the world

i nto two blocs has been replaced by a

complex network of exchanges in whichAmerican hegemony is relativized by the

European Union and the rising power of

East Asia, while the future remains uncer-tain for the former USSR, China, and

most of the Arab, Muslim, and African

countries. In Europe, the globalization ofmarkets exacerbates the economic and

social dysfunctions brought on by the cri-

sis of what Etienne Balibar calls "the na-tional social state" that developed after

the war; the result is an upsurge of na-

tionalism and identity fixations.In this new context, the city of Kassel,

now located in the center of reunified

Germany and seriously affected by the

current recession, can appear as the "ex-emplary" site of an entire range of rifts

and displacements, and as the focus of apolitical and aesthetic inquiry that we

have attempted to inscribe in the very

structures of Documenta X.

Retroperspectives

While making no concessions to the com-memorative trend, the last Documenta of

this century can hardly evade the task of

elaborating a historical and critical gazeon its own history, on the recent past of

the post-war period, and on everything

from this now-vanished age that remainsin ferment within contemporary art and

culture: memory, historical reflection, de-

colonization and what Wolfgang Lepenies

calls the "de-European ization" of theworld, but also the complex processes of

postarchaic, post-traditional, postnationalidentification at work in the "fractal soci-

eties" (Serge Gruzinski) born from the

collapse of Communism and the brutali mposition of the laws of the market.

Facing these problems also means recon-

sidering, from a timely and even pro-

grammatic perspective, certain major pro-posals that appeared in the 1960s in the

work of artists who were born before,during, or immediately after the war,

some of whom died prematurely ( Marcel

Broodthaers, Oyvind Fahlstrdm, Gordon

Matta-Clark, Il elio Oiticica), and almost

Lois Weinberger,

Das fiber die pflanzen 11st eins mitlhnen, 1990-97.

Hau ptbah n h of.

Per circa tin chilometro, lungotinbinario,sono cultivate nuove piante the combattono

e distruggono l a flora indigena / For about

a kilometer, along one track, new plants

are grown that combat and destroy the

indigenous flora.

nel sovvertimento delle gerarchie e dellatradizionale ripartizione dei saperi: critica

del primato del visuale e proiezione dellinguaggio e delle sue manipolazioni nellospazio tridimensionale per Broodthaers,

alterazione delle operazioni spaziali adopera del fattore economico per Matta-

Clark, sconvolgimento dei rapporti tracentro e periferia attraverso i valori " mar-

ginali" per Oiticica, drammatizzazione lu-dica dei rapporti di forza, economics epolitics per Fahlstrom, rilettura di on mo-dernismo dogmatico e riduttivo nella ri-presa critica di soluzioni formali e spazialipoetiche dell'architettura non occidentale

per Aldo Van Eyck.Oggi the la pubblicita, la televisione, imedia e la sofisticazione numerica degli

universi virtuali rendono sempre pin pre-cipitoso 1"'inabissarsi del reale nella searappresentazione spettacolare" (SergeGruzinski), ci e parso opportuno privile-giare le procedure di analisi e di press didistanza ri scontrabili nelle pratiche del di-segno e della fotografia documentale a

partire dagli anni Sessanta, o anche prima

( Maria Lassnig, Nancy Spero, WalkerEvans, Garry Winogrand, Helen Levitt,

Robert Adams, Ed Van der Elsken). Pra-

tiche the trovano oggi sviluppi forse indi-retti, ma tuttavia significativi, nelle operedi Martin Walde, William Kentridge, JeffWall, Craigie Horsfield, James Coleman,

Johan Grimonprez, Anne-Marie Schnei-

der, the hanno saputo proporre formecontemporance di dram matizzazione nonspettacolari.

Percorso

Dal 1955, Documents ha sempre avutosede a Kassel, contribuendo non poco a

diffondere il modello della mostra-prome-nade sviluppato alla fine degli anni Ses-santa quale accettabile compromesso conla massificazione dell'idea, della pratica

Pawel Althamer, Astronaut 2, 1997.Progetto in ire azioni: nella foto l a prima,i n cm due astronauts oasseaaiano con la videncamPra

(e del consumo) delle avanguardie. At-tualmente, di fronte alla dissoluzione (fi-nale?) del museo e dello spazio pubbliconella "societa dello spettacolo ", ogni stra-tegic volta a contrapporre un qualsivoglia"fuori" al "dentro" dello spazio istituzio-nale risulterebbe per forza di cose pateti-

ca o risibile, non diversamente da inter-venti in situ the si proponessero di igno-

rare le presents trasformazioni del model-lo dello spazio pubblico habermassiano,

nonche dell'occupazione simbolica e i m-maginaria dei luoghi da parte dei soggetti

contemporanei. Al fine di limitare ed

eventualmente contrastare gli effete della"promenade" e della "kermesse", si e re-putato necessario articolare l'eterogeneita

degli spazi espositivi - sic vecchi, Frideri-cianum e Orangerie, the nuovi, come lavecchia stazione,l'Ottoneum e Documen-ts Halle - e delle opere con l'hic et nunc,

il "contesto" della Kassel 1997, in un per-corso storico e urbano, rispettoso cioe

della storia scritta nella citta.

Dalla vecchia stazione all'Orangerie e allerive del fiume Fulda, il percorso privilegiail passato recente della ricostruzione (dal-

la vecchia stazione semidismessa e in cor-so di recupero per attivita commerciali eculturali, ai sottopassaggi disertati daglimenti e destinati a imminente chiusura; ealla Treppenstrasse, oggi monumento sto-rico in qualita di modello e di primoesempio in Germania di strada pedonale

progettata negli anni Cinquanta per co-niugare le esigenze della deambulazione ei riti consumistici), nonche i "ricordi ", mi-

rabilmente restaurati, del periodo baroc-co (Friedrichsplatz e Fridericianum,Orangerie e Auepark). In piena fase di

mondializzazione, con il suo corredo diripercussioni locals - a Kassel, gli indizi

della recessione sono visibili ovunque -, isegni della ricostruzione e il fallimentodel progetto politico, economico, sociale

Adam Page, Executive Box, 1997.Fried richsplatz.I In rnntainnr o !ins cin a.! ro ril Io...... f...........

64

Aldo Van Eyck, Fridericianum.Una piccola mostra personale, con progettie studi antropologici, collocata nello spaziocentrale dei Fridericianum/A small one-manshow, with designs and anthropologicalstudies, located in the central space of theFridericianum.

Michelangelo Pistoletto,Oggetti in meno,1965-66.Hauptbahnhof.Sottrazione di 28 oggetti,riparati all'interno dei localidella vecchia stazioneferroviaria / Removal of 28objects, stored on thepremises of the old railroadstation.

Lygia Clark, Ottoneum.Costumi per performance, indumenti,maschere e oggetti degli anni 1966-67 /Costumes for performance, garments,masks and objects from the years 1966-67.

You can oraer ana eardelicious poh-plah"amongst other things, 1997.Hauptbahnhof.I nstallazione e performance /I nstallation-performance

dossal(non, d

Wall, FLafont,

itinerarattravet

ve ", aftdi un „i

the Do

convoc,Kassel. .

zio urbali menti,

economi

ti, e i ntculturah

dono a sme luogc

temporar

attuale, Bnella sua

poteva ap

Limid

L'estremafiche e de

dei relativ

na, manifethe essi it

zio e dei tliabili fra

no i hiniti

ramente"litniti (spa

l ogici) di ,

co o aspinte, e perfi

r nenta cor

modello. P

vo) per y L

zione, nor

the estetidiversita,

una modesenza "esttradiziona

buona pac

he vi si esprimono diventano

"rovine recenti" the sarebbeluseificare, sia pure per la bre-li una mostra, ma the occorre

itificare in e attraverso it para-

ifronto con i lavori, recenti ei artisti (Lois Weinberger, Jeff

Friedl, Dan Graham, Suzanne

a questo percorso e anche un-ale, non meno the simbolico,

tassel e i suoi possibili "altro-

Tso le realty urbane e culturali

ii- Monde," (Edouard Glissant)

yenta non pue, pretendere di

e neppure "rappresentare" astesso modo, la citta, to spa-

- con le sue circostanze e i fal-

)oste in gioco (arch itettoniche,

°, politiche e ulnane), i conflit-atteggiamenti e le pratiche

e ne derivano e the si diffon-

a mondiale - si configura co-rivilegiato dell'esperienza con-

. E in tat senso e al momento

; el, ally scaly the le e propria,i golarita e nei suoi archetipi,

rite "esemplare".

rogeneita Belle pratiche este-i ezzi contemporanei, noncheazi di iscrizione ( muro, pagi-

monitor, Intemet), e it fatto

ichino esperienze dello spa-)o differenti se non inconci-

„ necessariamente travalica-

ina mostra da tenersi "inte-assel. E travalicano anche i

temporali, ma anche ideo-

" white cube" universalisti-tale di cui, volente o nolen-

versione "aperta ", Docu-

r comunque a riprodurre il1 lo oggi limitato (e limitati-

concernela (rap)presenta-

delle forme e Belle prati-ontemporanee nella loro

riche degli esiti locali di

complessa e " mondiale",a" di sorta (l'autentico, it

..

il......

......1........) .

......

migliore dei casi, e neocoloniali net peg-giore. L'oggetto, infatti, spesso non e altro

the uno dei tanti aspetti o momenti, otutt'al pin it supporto, o it veicolo, di atti-vita artistiche assai varie. Parallelamente-

ma gli effetti sono sincroni senza avere try

loro alcun rapporto causgle -, nelle areeculturali non occidentali it

cosiddetto og-getto "d'arte contemporanea" si riduce

spesso a un semplice fenomeno recente oepifenomeno (collegato, nella mighore

delle ipotesi, all'accelerazione dei processi

di acculturazione e di sincretismo cultura-le nelle nuove concentrazioni urbane e,nella peggiore, alle esigenze di rapido rin-

novamento del mercato occidentale). Pet

motivi attinenti in parte all'interruzione oally distruzione brutale delle tradizioni,

ally diversity delle formazioni culturali na-te dally colonizzazione e dally decoloniz-

zazione, e in parte all'accesso indiretto e

diseguale consentito alle forme delta mo-

dernita occidentale, le espressioni con-ternporanee non occidentali sembrano

aver trovato garanzie di pertinenza, di ec-

cellenza e di radicalita in veicoli quali lamusica, la lingua orale e sctitta (letteratu-

ra, teatro) e it cinema, forme tradizional-

mente connesse con le strategic di eman-cipazione. Questo bilancio, pragmatico e

non programmatico, non vuole porre al-

cuna ipoteca sull'avvenire e sulle possibilievoluzioni riscontrabili fin d'ora nelle po-

sizioni e nei lavori di una nuova genera-

zione, ma ptivilegia cette alterita ford del-la cultura contemporanea (mondo arabo

e musulmano, mondi africani) ampiamen-

te rappresentare nei "100 giorni ".Nella consapevolezza di tali limiti spaziali

e congiunturali, abbiamo infatti voluto

the espressioni culturali differenti e frui-

tori con aspettative e competenze assai di-verse trovassero, a Kassel e oltte, il pin

ampio spazio (e it maggior numero di spa-

zi) di diffusione (e di discussione) possibi-le: la mostra in citta, un libro in cui le

produzioni artistiche dal 1945 a oggi ven-gono ricollocate nei rispettivi contesti di

apparizione (politici, economici e cultura-

li) ally lute dei molteplici spostamenti e

E infine, i "100 giomi ", the aceolgono a

Kassel artisti e ptotagonisti delta culturada tutto it mondo (architetti, urbanisti,

economisti, filosofi, scienziati, scrittori, ci-

neasti, registi, musicisti) venuti a presen-tare e a discutere, nell'ambito Belle rispet-

tive competenze e priority, le questioni

etiche ed estetiche fondamentali di questofine secolo: la citta, l'urbano, it territorio,l'identita, le nuove forme di cittadinanza,

lo stato nazionale sociale e le sue differen-ze, stato e razzismo, it metcato "globale"

e la politica nazionale, universalisme, e

culturalismo, poetica e politica. Questi

quotidiani interventi si tengono nella salagrande delta Documenta Halle, apposita-

mente trasformata in spazio pet Finfor-

mazione e it dibattito, e vengono registratie diffusi in simultanea via Internet e, in

differita, su cassette messe a disposizionedel pubblico da Bundmedia. Una versio-ne ridotta in videoclip viene trasmessa

quotidianamente dal canale Arte, in colla-

borazione con Hr, Wdr, Swf e it GoetheInstitut. 1 " 100 giorni" comprendono

inoltre la ptoiezione dei sei film prodotti

da Documenta, da Sony e do varie televi-sioni europee, e una maratona teatrale di

tre serate, con la rappresentazione dei

"bozzetti" in cui dieci registi esplorano iluoghi e le condizioni minimali di una si-tuazione drammatica contemporanea.

Kassel e dintorni sono anche una galassiadi altri progetti di artisti, dalle i mmaginiesposte negli spazi pubblicitari delta

Deutsche-Stadte-Reklame, ai radiodram-mi prodotti e ttasmessi dall'Hessischer

Rundfunk. In coproduzione con la Bien-

nale di Berlino, Documenta ha i noltrerealizzato uno spazio di lavoro e di infor-mazione, "The Hybrid Work Space".

• What can be the meaning and purposeof a Documenta today, at the close of this

century, when biennials and other large-

scale exhibitions have been called intoquestion-and often for very good rea-

sons? It may seem paradoxical or deliber-

ately outrageous to envision a critical con-frontation with the present in the frame-

Lois Weinberger, Ze/O/6,1994-95.Hauptbahnhof."Celia" dell'artista /The artist's

cell."

Danielle Vallet Kleiner,

Inspection Istanbul-Helsinki, 1997.Hauptbahnhof.

Fotogramma di on video di 43'

the racconta un viaggio attraverso

l 'Europa orientale, II monitor ® I nstallato

nel terminal degli arrivi / Still from

a video of 43' telling the story of a journey

through Eastern Europe, the video

is shown in the arrivals terminal.

tourism and cultural consumption. Yet

the pressing issues of today make it equal-

ly presumptuous to abandon all ethicaland political demands.

In the age of globalization and of thesometimes violent social, economic, and

cultural transformations it entails, con-

temporary artistic practices, condemnedfor their supposed meaninglessness or

"nullity" by the likes of Jean Baudrillard,

are in fact a vital source of imaginary and

symbolic representations whose diversityis irreducible to the near total economic

domination of the real. The stakes hereare no less political than aesthetic-at

least if one can avoid reinforcing the

mounting spectacularization and instru-mentalization of "contemporary art" by

the culture industry, where art is used for

social regulation or indeed control,

through the aestheticization of informa-tion or through forms of debate that par-

alyze any act of judgment in the immedia-cy of raw seduction or emotion (what

might be called "the Benetton effect").

Overcoming the obstacle means seekingout the current manifestations and under-

lying conditions of a critical art which

does not fall into a precut academic mold

or let itself be summed up in a facile la-bel. Such a project cannot ignore the up-

heavals that have occurred both in Docu-menta's institutional and geopolitical situ-

ation since the inaugural exhibition in

1955 and in the recent developments ofaesthetic forms and practices. Nor can it

shirk the necessary ruptures and changes

in the structure of the event itself.

Given...

In many respects, the history and the po-litical and cultural project of Documenta

belong to the now-vanished era of post-

war Europe, shaped by the cold war andthe world's division into two power blocs,

and brought to a close by the fall of the

Berlin wall and German reunification.The specific project of Documenta also

resulted from the progressive ideas of a

l ocal artist, Arnold Bode, and from the"exemplary" situation of Kassel, a city

close to the eastern border, and almost en-

tirely reconstructed after the 1943 bomb-

ing. 1955 was a time for reconciliation, in-deed for expiation and redemption by

means of modern art, which may explain

the close association of the work and per-sonality of Joseph Beuys with the history

of the exhibition, from the third edition in

1963 all the way to Beuy's death at thetime of Documenta 8 in 1987.

Documenta also provided an occasion for

the necessary reconstruction of the mod-ern tradition and the history of the van-

guards, condemned by the Nazi regimewith the exhibition of "Degenerate Art"

in Munich in 1937. But this reconstruc-

tion remained incomplete, skipping over

Dada and the radical forms that emergedin the Weimar period to concentrate on

the most recent developments of abstrac-tion, which had reached their apogee inAmerica. Thus the early versions of Doc-

umenta appeared as a cultural showcase

for the Marshall Plan in the country thathad become the privileged centerpiece of

the newly forged alliance between north-

ern Europe and the United States.In the 1960s Documenta became the

largest international exhibition of con-

tempoary art (The Biennials of Venice

and Sao Paolo in fact were directed to-ward more historicist and modern choic-es). Harald Szeemann transformed theexhibition into a hundred-day event at-

tending to the aesthetic "forms" and "at-

titudes" of the period; but his strikingsynthesis of the major proposals of the

1970s did not succeed in reversing the di-

rections that Documenta had taken. Theversions that followed struggled to concil-

iate an aesthetic demand with the impera-tives of the culture industry, and, soon

enough, with the new economic and

geopolitical situation of Germany and of

Europe in the context of globalization.In reality, the "new world disorder" com-

menced in the 1970s with the oil shock

and the transition to what the geographerDavid Harvey describes as an economy of

"flexible accumulation." Nonetheless, itis 1989 that symbolically marks the end of

the Cold War and the beginning of a new

era of "hot wars," in Gunter Grass's

phrase. The visili nto two blocs

complex networAmerican hegen

European Union

East Asia, while

tain for the formost of the Ara

countries. In Eui

markets exacerlsocial dysfunctio

sis of what Ewertional social star

the war; the res

tionalism and idc

In this new connow located in

Germany and s,

current recessioremplary" site of

and displacemenpolitical and ac

have attempted

structures of Do(

Retroperspective

While making nc

memorative tren,this century can

elaborating a hif

on its own histothe post-war pe

from this now-v,.

in ferment withiculture: memory,

colonization and

calls the "de-Eiworld, but also t

postarchaic, post

identification ateties" (Serge Gt

collapse of Com

i mposition of theFacing these pro.

sidering, from

grammatic perspcposals that appe<

work of artistsduring, or i mmsome of whom d

Broodthacrs, Oy'Matta-Clark, Hel

binario,

ombattono-or aboutI plants

oythe

Tunga, Inside out upside down

(Ponta Cabe-a), 1994-97.Hauptbahnhof.

I nstallazione e performance sui binaridella stazione / Installation

and performance on the platforms

of the station.

Slaven Toll, Untitled, 1997.Hauptbahnhof.

Duelampade provenienti da una chiesadi Dubrovnik sono Installate nella sala

viaggiatori / Two lamps from a church

in Dubrovnik are installed in the waiting

room

6%


Recommended