Worldly wise: Brian Wallis on documenta11. (World Report Preview).ANYONE WHO KNOWS ANYTHING about Documenta11 knows that the theme of this year's rendition of the quinquennial quin·quen·ni·al adj. 1. Happening once every five years. 2. Lasting for five years. n. 1. A fifth anniversary. 2. A period of five years. blockbuster is globalism glob·al·ism n. A national geopolitical policy in which the entire world is regarded as the appropriate sphere for a state's influence. glob . But these days globalism can mean a lot of things, most of which have to do with economic multinationalism and reactionary geopolitical ge·o·pol·i·tics n. (used with a sing. verb) 1. The study of the relationship among politics and geography, demography, and economics, especially with respect to the foreign policy of a nation. 2. a. alliances. So what does the term mean to artistic director Okwui Enwezor Okwui Enwezor is an American educator, writer, and curator specializing in Art history. He lives in New York and San Francisco. Educator Okwui Enwezor is currently Dean of Academic Affairs and Senior Vice President at San Francisco Art Institute. , and how has he made it the basis for this sprawling, much-hyped, and notoriously Eurocentric art event? The just-released roster of artists in this year's exhibition, which opens in Kassel, Germany, on June 8, provides the beginnings of an answer: In previous Documentas, 80 to 90 percent of the artists were natives of NATO NATO: see North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO in full North Atlantic Treaty Organization International military alliance created to defend western Europe against a possible Soviet invasion. countries; this time the percentage is about half that. As the first non-European director of Documenta, Nigeria-born Enwezor (who also organized the 1997 Johannesburg Biennale The name Biennale is Italian and means "every other year", describing an event that happens every 2 years. One of the most important Biennales is an art exhibition that takes place for three months in Venice — the Venice Biennale — but there are numerous others: Process by which the experience of everyday life, marked by the diffusion of commodities and ideas, is becoming standardized around the world. Factors that have contributed to globalization include increasingly sophisticated communications and transportation can best be understood through cultural forms--the written, filmed, visualized, and performed expressions that shape identity in the diaspora. If this sounds ambitious, so is everything about Documenta11, which began back in March 2001 with the first of five "platforms": four symposia plus the exhibition itself, taking place in locales as far-flung as New Delhi New Delhi (dĕl`ē), city (1991 pop. 294,149), capital of India and of Delhi state, N central India, on the right bank of the Yamuna River. , Johannesburg, and the island of St. Lucia. Add to this more publications and commissions than ever before. To help pull off this vast undertaking, Enwezor enlisted an international all-star team of cocurators--Ute Meta Bauer, Carlos Basualdo, Susanne Ghez, Sarat Maharaj, Mark Nash Mark Nash is the drummer for Christian rock band PFR, and husband to Leigh Bingham Nash of Sixpence None the Richer. Nash also served as A&R for Squint Entertainment. External link
Enwezor claims that this Documenta is "more methodologically adventurous than the standard exhibition of contemporary art." The platform structure, perhaps the boldest innovation the curatorial team has come up with, supports his claim. Unlike "100 Days--100 Guests," organized by Documenta X curator Catherine David, the platforms are not individual lectures but symposia, "discursive sites for the elaboration and enunciation enunciation (inun´sēā´sh  n),n an auxiliary function of teeth, particularly those in the anterior sector of the dental arch; the formation of sounds of thematic issues." Moreover, they broaden the interdisciplinary reach of the exhibition by engaging respected intellectuals (Homi Bhabha, Ernesto Laclau, Wole Soyinka, Nawal al-Saadawi, Slavoj Zizek Chantal Mouffe, Immanuel Wallerstein, Stuart Hall, and many others) in a critical discussion that goes well beyond pondering aesthetics to "reinventing and reinterpreting the place of culture within a global society." Each conference has focused on a key issue: urban policy in Africa, creolization as a model for cultural formation, the implications of post-apartheid truth and reconciliation commissions, and the future of democracy. One overarching philosophical goal is to question various precepts of modernity to see how they hold up under the new conditions of globalization. For example, the first platform, "Democracy Unrealized," asked, Can democracy, a fundamentall y Western concept, serve as a valid standard for the constitution of civil society in all post-cold war nations? (Videotaped proceedings of the platforms are available at www.documenta.de.) Certainly, by design and location, the platforms aim to challenge the notion of the monolithic global exhibition with its pretense of universality and authority. But, more particularly, as public events they are conceived to "engage with the issues of citizenship and access that [Documenta] takes as its foremost conceptual and structural challenge." While the exhibition itself will be the only platform that many attend or take interest in, for Enwezor it is part of a wider intellectual project. The artists are meant to be considered alongside the symposium speakers; each may use a different language, but the conversation surrounds shared issues. Many artists chosen for this year's Documenta hail from outside the conventional Euro-American gallery nexus. Enwezor says the curators aimed to sidestep side·step v. side·stepped, side·step·ping, side·steps v.intr. 1. To step aside: sidestepped to make way for the runner. 2. the saturated international art market, what he calls "the mad alliance between the art producers and the speculative logic of Wall Street." Seasoned art-world globe-trotters will find many unfamiliar names, though blue-chip heavy hitters such as Louise Bourgeois and William Eggleston and well-known Enwezor favorites Glenn Ligon, Isaac Julien, and Lorna Simpson will be here, too. Visitors will also find, Enwezor says, small-scale solo exhibitions that reveal the overall logic of a single project: Allan Sekula's series "Fish Story," 1990-95, will be presented in its entirety; Dieter Roth will be given a mini-retrospective; and various works by Thomas Hirschhorn, including his latest public-art installation, Bataille Monument (commissioned for the occasion), will be shown. Enwezor has also chosen activist artists and collectives, such as Igloolik Isuma Productions, an Inuit film company; the Atlas Group, a fictitious foundation that collects documents on the history of Lebanon The history of Lebanon is almost as old as the earliest evidence of humankind. Its geographic position as a crossroads linking the Mediterranean Basin with the great Asian hinterland has conferred on it a cosmopolitan character and a multicultural legacy. ; and Park Fiction, a Hamburg collective of residents, architects, and social scientists who are recasting public-use land in the German port city. Film, particularly documentary film (which featured prominently in several of the platforms), will be included to an extent and purpose unprecedented in Documenta's history. Films by Trinh T. Minh-ha, Johan van der Keuken, and Ulrike Ottinger will be shown, along with Western Deep, a newly commissioned work by Steve McQueen and cinematographer Sean Bobbit that follows an "infernal journey" into a South African gold mine. These projects and films foretell fore·tell tr.v. fore·told , fore·tell·ing, fore·tells To tell of or indicate beforehand; predict. fore·tell a chattering of varied voices speaking across cultural differences, leaving no doubt this will be a Documenta engaged less with the contemplation of beauty than with the politics of ideas. If the metaphor for Enwezor's 1997 Johannesburg Biennale was trade, an economic trope trope n. 1. A figure of speech using words in nonliteral ways, such as a metaphor. 2. A word or phrase interpolated as an embellishment in the sung parts of certain medieval liturgies. , here it seems to be translation, a linguistic device. The metaphor encapsulates not only the literal translation necessary to communicate across national borders but also the adaptive lingua francas that form in response to dynamic political conditions. The exhibition itself can be viewed as a discursive proposition, an engaging conversation between intellectuals and artists, as well as an argument for the prospect of artists' voices being taken seriously in political debate, not as supplements but as an equal but different kind of knowledge. RELATED ARTICLE: Documenta11 Artists (to date): Georges Adeagbo Ravi Agarwal Eija-Liisa Ahtila Chantal Akerman Gaston A. Ancelovici (Colectivo Cine Ojo) Fareed Armaly Michael Ashkin Asymptote asymptote In mathematics, a line or curve that acts as the limit of another line or curve. For example, a descending curve that approaches but does not reach the horizontal axis is said to be asymptotic to that axis, which is the asymptote of the curve. Kutlug Ataman at·a·man n. pl. at·a·mans A Cossack chief. Also called hetman. [Russian, from South Turkic, leader of an armed band : ata, father + -man, The Atlas Group Julie Bargmann (D.I.R.T. Studio)/Stacy Levy Artur Barrio Bernd and Hilla Becher Bernd and Hilla Becher were a German photographer team and a married couple, best- known for their collection of industrial building images examining the similarities and differences in structure and appearance. Bernd (1931 – 2007) and Hilla (b. Zarina Bhimji Black Audio Film Collective John Bock Ecke Bonk Frederic Bruly Bourabre Louise Bourgeois Pavel Braila Stanley Brouwn Tania
Luis Camnitzer James Coleman Constant Hanne Darboven Destiny Deacon Stan Douglas Cecilia Edefalk William Eggleston Maria Eichhorn Touhami Ennadre Cerith Wyn Evans Feng Mengbo Chohreh Feyzdjou Yona Friedman Meschac Gaba Giuseppe Gabellone Carlos Garaicoa Kendell Geers Isa Genzken Jef Geys David Goldblatt Leon Golub Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster Renee Green Victor Grippo Le Groupe Amos Jens Haaning Mona Hatoum Thomas Hirschhorn Candida Hofer Craigie Horsfield Huit Facettes Pierre Huyghe Igloolik Isuma Productions Sanja Ivekovic Alfredo Jaar Joan Jonas Isaac Julien Amar Kanwar On Kawara William Kentridge Johan van der Keuken Bodys Isek Kingelez Ben Kinmont Svetlana and Igor Kopystiansky Ivan Kozaric Andreja Kuluncic Glenn Ligon Ken Lum Mark Manders Fabian Marcaccio Steve McQueen Cildo Meireles Jonas Mekas Annette Messager Ryuji Miyamoto Santu Mofokeng Multiplicity Juan Munoz Shirin Neshat Gabriel Orozco Olumuyiwa Olamide Osifuye Ulrike Ottinger Quattara Watts Park Fiction Manfred Pernice Raymond Pettibon Adrian Piper Lisl Ponger Pere père n. 1. Used after a man's surname to distinguish a father from a son: Dumas père primarily wrote novels, while dramas occupied Dumas fils. 2. Portabella por·ta·bel·la n. Variant of portobello. Raqs Media Collective Raqs Media Collective is a group of three media practitioners - Jeebesh Bagchi (New Delhi, 1965), Monica Narula (New Delhi, 1969) and Shuddhabrata Sengupta (New Delhi, 1968) - based in New Delhi. Alejandra Riera with Doina Petrescu Dieter Roth Doris Salcedo Seifollah Samadian Gille Saussier Allan Sekula Yinka Shonibare Andreas Siekmann Simparch Lorna Simpson Eyal Sivan David Small Fiona Tan Pascale Marthine Tayou Jean-Marie Teno Trinh T. Minh-ha Tsunamii.net Joelle Tuerlinckx Luc Tuymans Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas Jeff Wall Nari Ward Yang FuDong Brian Wallis is director of exhibitions and chief curator of the International Center of Photography, New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of . |
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