KASSEL 2012_dOCUMENTA(13)

* keep an eye on the "occupy" tents - i bet this will turn out the same way as "uni brennt!" in vienna (i do not know which way these people wear their blinkers but how can they tolerate being tolerated?!? i can almost hear the bobo crowd saying: "oh my, how cute! see, our daily dosage of non-conformism!")

* international university students, young, sweet folks, the hope of our societies: no idea about "landgrabbing", never heard of a west sahara conflict. WHY are these works chosen?

--> once you throw out (semi)information, you are also responsible for it. Susan Sontag (1965) quoting Harold Rosenberg: contemporary art is as much an act of criticism as it is an act of creation. freedom of creation is fine with me but in my opinion once you are into critique freedom comes with responsibility. i cannot see that with some of the works, maybe that's the problem i have with them.

working from the artist list of the official guidebook, women do not even make up a third of the artists' body at this year's documenta. please disprove this statement by more proficiently matching names to gender or letting me know about an official source for this data.

if you are not too worried about gender, you might fret about age: well, this time 19 individuals only made it posthumously and the 8 participating octogenerians are sure happy to have made it here alive and kicking. there are just as many participants younger than 43,5 years (median age) as there are older.

the last day i thought that if there was a power outing at the Kulturbahnhof, there would be maybe 5 out of the 26 exhibits still "working":

North Wing:
0) Epaminonda and Cramer - not much of a show
1) Michael Portnoy - too dark to see :)
2) Istvan Csakany - sufficient light from windows
3) Clemens von Wedemeyer - sorry, no show
4) Haegue Yang - show? or no show?
5) William Kentrigde - sorry, no show
6) Lara Favaretto - truly independent: the show is on!
7) Critical Art Ensemble - show!
8) Fabio Mauri - no show any more
9) Javier Tellez - no show!

Train Station:
10) Otolith group - sorry, no show
11) Albert Serra - sorry, no show
12) Cardiff and Miller - finally, this pulls the plug on the iphone cult
13) Susan Hiller - sorry, no music
14) Susan Philipsz - sorry, nothing to hear

South Wing:
15) Florian Hecker - need to chimerize yourself
16) Symrin Gill - hopefully enough light to see
17) Rabih Mroue - light out
18) Tejal Shah - sorry, no show
19) Jessica Warboys - was there something there?
20) Bani Abidi - sorry, not much left
21) Seth Price - darkness
22) Chiurai Kudzanai - enough light to see something

at the rear end:
23) Willie Doherty - sorry, no show
24) Christodoulos Panayotou - enough light

25) And And And - electricity is terribly capitalistic anyway

***
among the artists are 8 women, ie. 28%. i am not counting females in groups of which there are 3.

mr Kudzanai is the youngest with 31 years and mr Mauri the by far oldest with 86 years. everybody's average age is 43 years.

i do not know who feeds a claim like "most important international exhibition of contemporary art" into the pipeline and why so many seem to thankfully parrot it. while i do not feel myself to be in a position to question the "most important" part, i did look at the "international" part and found a nicely prepared statistic in the "Die Zeit" magazine, dated 06.06.2012. yes, indeed documenta has over time become more international if you look at the nationalities of the artists:

1992
60 North America (31%)
6 South America (3%)
116 Europe (59%)
1 Afrika (1%)
9 Asia (5%)
3 Oceania (2%)
(total 195)

2002
33 North America (29%)
6 South America (5%)
56 Europe (50%)
9 Afrika (8%)
8 Asia (7%)
1 Oceania (1%)
(total 113)

2007
16 North America (15%)
9 South America (8%)
47 Europe (44%)
10 Afrika (9%)
24 Asia (22%)
2 Oceania (2%)
(total 108)

i do not have data for 2012. if i take birth places instead (as given in the biographical data), the Kulturbahnhof at least confirms a continuing and very clear european dominance, 16 artists, followed by 5 from asia, 2 from africa and 1 from south america (not counting individuals when running as a group).

measuring "internationality" through citizenship, however, is biased as those who are invited almost inevitably have "western" education of some sort. i am pretty sure that today's art curators (when and why was this job title introduced?!) are entirely unaware of artists who are not orbiting the standard, "western" dominated, "international" art industry and that is why we see the kind of "internationality" we see.

anyway, the "we"s (=visitors) are predominantly german citizens:
1992 - 81,3%
2002 - 69,4%
2007 - 72%
(source: Gerd Michael Hellstern, in Ariane Vahle, 2009)

with kasseler "we"s accounting for 9,5% (1992) and 14% (2007). [whether this is out of total visitor numbers or out of german visitors the study does not say, so please read as approximation and tendency]