Documenta: ein echo. (Project).

This project is built, around Hansjurgen Hafner's essay on Documenta XI. The original German text is presented here alongside a Babelfish translation by Paul de Guzman. (Babelfish is a software program available on the Internet that translates on a word-for-word basis, giving a disjointed and mostly inaccessible result). A professional English translation of Hafner's text is printed on page 47.

Hafner's response to Documenta is reflexive; his text is dense and heady on thelevel of interior dialogue. De Guzman's Babelfish is all but impenetrable, and even the professional English translation leaves much unsaid. As a whole, the project literalizes the problems of rendering a text into the idiom of another language, highlighting the fact that every language/culture is based in a unique system of thought. It points to the tentative nature of global communication, particularly as it shows up around large international art shows like Documenta XI, where a lofty curatorial thesis doesn't necessarily translate. We are reminded of the discrete worlds we live in and the often baffling problem of establishing connectedness.

DOCUMENTA: AN ECHO

BY HANS-JORGEN HAFNER

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY ELIZABETH SCHWAIGER

Once again he felt a measure of uncertainty. He did seem to have lost his ability to distinguish between the categories or between friend and foe during this long absence, entangled in the levelling, naive frenzy of all this American pragmatism. The only sense of safety lay in the sound of one word -- "multitude." For this idea of a crowd, or rather of multiplicity, reminded him of the possibility that there might exist a key that would unlock the last remaining safe zones. At any rate, this is what Leo Davidovich Trotsky had whispered to his doubtful visitor, despite the discrepancies of art and its relationship to direct political action, the quasi-paradigmatic misunderstanding on the subject of Zola and de Sade, despite the conversations on Patzcuaro, which finally failed in early July 1938. At the very least, however, it recalled the powerful impact of Andre Breton confiding the vague premonition of such a key to the gifted black poet, 28-year-old Aime Cesaire (1) during a brief stay on the island of Mart inique in May of 1941 en route to exile in New York....

How impertinent these young people are! Breton -- who, after all, already sensed his impending death -- on the list of future authors, with a contribution for Tel quel. A devious trick on the part of the young ones, or was he still being pursued by the "unknown higher authorities?" Barthes, Derrida and Sollers -- what is their role in this game?

Kassel, June 8, 2002, morning

Today the Fifth Platform begins, the completion -- though there can be no true completion -- of the sweeping process of "thinking & doing Documenta XI" in the vast exhibition sites scattered throughout the city.

Yesterday, ceaseless rain had created a moist grey backdrop, an impediment above all at the Karlsaue location, the park next to the orangery chosen for John Bock's grotesque, carnivalesque theatre spectacle, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's garden exoticism, Ken Lum's possibly significant labyrinthine cabinet of mirrors, as well as Renee Green's eight octagonal-esoteric arbours. (3) Not an appropriate climate for clever as well as shallow amusement. It doesn't matter.

Simon Louis du Rys' unadorned classicist Museum Fridericianum is the traditional centre of the fair (ever since Arnold Bode's demonstrative occupation on behalf of western art of the 20th century in the inaugural year of the Documenta, 1955). (2)

For Documenta XI which rejected the logo as corporate design before its doors even opened, (4) is even more driven by the imperative of "discourse" than its much-maligned predecessor, which announced itself with a red cross above the lower case "d" as if it were a deleted documenta. Platform 5 has the role of representing the collective of world art -- or as MC Okwui Enwezor put it: "[the] summary of a plurality of voices ... as a material reflection on a series of disparate yet interconnected actions and processes." After Vienna/Berlin, New Delhi, St Lucia and Lagos, the last shuttle ("One of Five") to the mothership DXI has finally touched down in Kassel. Will the key finally be found again here?

Better too much than too little. (Alfred Hilsberg)

They're all here: artists and agents, habitues and curiosity seekers, the paying public. The plurality of voices steps onto the stage as a polyphonic (5) choir of art as an encyclopedic mirror of the world: symbolists and metaphorists, faithful illustrators and optimistic iconoclasts, accompanied by a line-up of numerologists, typo-sophists and illluminators. The motif of their art is to document surfaces: image or text. Accumulation of social knowledge, staged assembly as the principle of appropriation: of the world, that is, doubly so in the form of rows and blocks, series as stacks, on table or shelf. The user interface of this project called Platform 5 is configured as the sum of all documents within the cover of the Documenta. As an archive, the Platform seeks to find the key in sheer volume, in quantification. (6) It quickly deteriorates into a cabalistic game, multitude as point of departure and distant destination, while simultaneously reinterpreting the heap -- quantity -- as the last stand against t he empire, Hardt/Negri's post-imperialist, de-ideologized and now global nightmare. But does the new avant-garde, understood as an addition of statements on subjective postcolonial-global beliefs, carry us across all media beyond a revised edition of the principle of enlightenment?

Yet isn't the nostalgic claim to the completeness of every archive, every library and all encyclopedias a mere thin veil against the imponderability, the fear of the arcane? Could this be deliberate?

In this discursive accumulation of art, the handbook of useless knowledge is transformed into a lexicon subscription. Thus Ledoux's monumental sacred lantern of the enlightenment is posthumously hoisted onto the roof of the Fridericianum. Once again, the innovative gesture of presenting a contemporary discourse on world art is probably no more than instrumentalism. Including its unpremeditated consequence for those who are ready to act, a paralysis brought on by information: as a centre of global documentation, the Documenta becomes a strategy for disarmament.

This time there is no retrospective to serve as a tool or conceptual basis: the Platform is sufficient unto itself as a public interface. Indeed, one might ask whether this Documenta even exists as a fair, an exhibition or in the guise of putting-on-a-show. To be sure, there is no dearth of images. But in the protestant climate of the presentation sites they seem to crumble off their stretcher frames. "In the beginning there was the word!" Thus Ecke Bonk in his no-doubt normatively intentioned wall-mounted text for his accidentally permanent Lemmata projection that takes us on a journey through the dictionary of the Brothers Grimm. The typosoph speaks with the voice of John the Baptist, condensing a breath of air into a rapid reflection of light, which will, however, never be refracted on the fissures and recesses of demiurge Gabriel Orozco's raw tonal keys, and which could thus lead to the necessary collision, the per force erroneous consummation of creation....

"I am a philosopher. I think very deeply," Enwezor repeats notoriously. But the teacher has long since left the oral history a la KRS-One behind: for only those with alphanumeric knowledge will make sense from knocking at the gates of the Fridericianum. Bienvenue, erudite reader, between the pair of elegant genie-torches in the noncommittal, discursive web of restorative-elitist deceptive packaging, which has been declared to be "for the people": at least it's all staged in a europid, museological pose.

Political Rococo (Fabian Marcaccio, Platform-5 participant)

Heliocentric World

The mothership casts shadows. In the era of political rococo, we encounter the court Documenta XI on an educational journey as a centre of incitement. Against a shifting global backdrop the brothers of the lodge reveal the events of world art in a visible and yet somehow removed manner; they pass unnoticed in the diplomatic whirl of dancing congresses and secret councils. Enlightenment and arcanum are inextricably linked: in a constant urge, a mania even, to complete, sceptical only in the face of scepticism (for surely the sceptic Diderot wouldn't stand a chance in this team of encyclopedians). The cosmos almost implodes in the terrifying crush, 7 the announcement of a tightly knit web of symbols, the hypothesis of the referential web, dissolving the edge of the world.

Tidings spread, echo in the "frightening proximity of the distance" (Enwezor). Still: the "unknown higher authorities" remain hidden. Who knows them? Who owns the key, who knows the code, who has the right of access?

Ruins of academe: in an earlier epoch theoretician Reinhart Koselleck sketched the iridescent link between enlightenment and arcanum within an overtly complex coded 18th-century social system:

The ideas and hopes that gave content to the secret of the various systems ranged from rational plans for social coexistence to ****ing (unclear: probably "romanticizing") and mystical fantasies. There were countless blends and shades; indeed, it is downright characteristic of the **** (unclear) that the least complementary elements invariably formed an indissoluble bond.

Wasn't it a matter of honour, once upon a time, to avoid just that: playing their game? Is the Principle of Hope already forgotten?

Wilhelmsbad: A European Convent

"The illuminated manuscript" is housed in the medieval Zwehren Tower, 8 a which was already attached to the Fridericianum under du Ry, surrounded by an impressive halo. David Small is the author of the interactive book project, which offers a digital display of text on 26(!) pages, beneath the seeking finger of the user. Nominalism revisited: Gutenberg disempowered. Is the symbol itself no more than a fluctuating illusion despite quantity? But here's the clinch: the Embassy of the United States of America also contributed to the realization of this work.

A buzz of activity in the small spa near Hanau, envoys from every corner of Europe arrive in Hessian territory. The summer of the year 1782, between July 16th and September 1st, saw another failure at reaching an understanding: the attempt at finding a platform to reach a consensus on the "whence" and more importantly, the "whereto." Landgrave Carl von Hesse (his name in the order: a Leone Resurgente) attracts hopeful but also many irritated glances with a grand announcement of finally giving "uplifting, excellent insights" into the still "unknown higher authorities." Illumination artist Franz von Ditfurth intervenes. Mystics and radical proponents of enlightenment stand shoulder to shoulder; there is uncertainty about the game that is being played out. The hoped-for information, seven years before the revolution, is never revealed....

In the meantime, conspiratorial words have leaked from the octagons scattered across the Karlsaue: lexicon entries, fixated in abecedarian brackets. The discourse: a record. Communication: a series. Politics: a breath of air. Multitude: an echo. Documenta XI: a transfer machinery for masses, from the living world in symbols as delusion. The key? The rose of yesteryear.

NOTES

(1.) He writes: The fact that I am who I am today is. I believe, in large part thanks to my encounter with Andre Breton."

(2.) du Ry defeated Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, the visionary architect of the revolution era, in the competition for this building and defended his discrete, functional architecture against the monumentalization of the idea of the "enlightenment" in the shape of a triumphant cupola with a circle of columns. The museum, incidentally the first public building of its kind on the European continent, came at a high price: the bounty for several thousand Hessian mercenaries, whom the catholic Landgrave Frederic II (1720-85) sold to North America to support the British colonial power.

(3.) Let's speak more of gardens: aren't sparks flying in the thicket of meanings between exoticism and esoterico? Isn't the massive statue of Hercules also raised on an octagon in the vastly abundant complex of gardens at castle Wilhelmshone -- with all its grottoes and Chinoiserie-embellished ruins? And has this park, the old castle Weissenstein, not justly been seen as a centre of initiation of the Rosicrucian Order? For who could still ignore the powerful hemetic tradition at the Kassel court since Moritz the scholar? No secret, this: after all "Cassel" has been clearly documented as the site of the "Fama Fraternitatis" (1614) and the "Confessio" (1615).

(4.) The catalogue design is the domain(!) of Pentagram. London. The founder of the Typosophic Society (since 2001: Typosophes sans Frontieres), Eche Book, is the author of the non-logo.

(5.) A purified polyphony, of course, one that does not interfere with the comprehension of the test. See also: Giovanni Pierluigi di Palestrina (1524-94) "Miss Papae Marcelli," whose composition for six voices successfully stood its ground in front of the inquisition of the Tridentine council.

(6.) The "New Babylon" by ex-situationist Constant A. Nieuwenhuys acts as an architectural design for this platform. But the key has been lost. Borges, the keeper, has long since fallen into silance.

(7.) Warburg is no more than 20 kilometers from Kassel....

(8.) In its role as observatory and site for the astronomic collection, the tower completed the universal museological concept of the building.

As a professional exhibition tourist Hans-Jurgen Hafner writes mostly on art.

Paul de Guzman is an artist-who "cuts up books" and-lives in Vancouver. His show "Invisible Cities" premiers there at Atelier Gallery in October 2002.