My last day in Venice was considerably better than Monday. I left early to relook at the Arsenale and the Italian Pavillion everything seemed much clearer, not surprising. In the Arsenale El Anatsui’s work glows and hangs beautifully in the space , the viewers are dwarfed.



I also enjoyed the stage like quality of the large Christine Hill piece with flat colour and spot lighting on the elements. There is so much work to discuss, but I have been taking notes so will relay a meatier description when I am not in transit or rushing.



Check List Luanda Pop is better the second time ,maybe because I am looking more carefully. I don’t sense a strong theme that draws the works together but the work is all ‘super cool’. As you walk in you are faced with sound and moving images so one is easily seduced. The individual works are strong so the selection makes for an interesting experience, I didn’t leave feeling very thoughtful though. I don’t know if too hip is a bad thing. I liked the Olu Oguibe piece very much, the text spoke straight to me in that moment ‘Keep it Real’.

My train to the airport was leaving at three so I had to get going, I had no time to see the Hiroshi Sugimoto show, it’s a bit far.Everywhere you go in Venice takes an hour. I am disappointed but not so much.

I decide to post some catalogues home since I can’t carry them all , my bag is getting fuller by the day and I haven’t even started shopping yet. I also consider posting my Felix Gonzales Torres prints ,but after a long discussion and measuring the post lady declares that the prints are too long to post, I am annoyed and leave with the prints and dump them in the bin outside the post office.

I am on my way to fetch my bag and head for the train when I catch sight of a poster for a Hirst show that is on, and is right near to my Hostel, I have to pop in before I leave town. I ask for directions to the Palazzo Pesaro Papafava and head off to see the show. I find it I am so excited there is a beautiful poster outside reminds me of the little Lenten envelopes. It is a very strange building in a residential area and I have to ring the bell to get in, very strange. I am buzzed in but there is no one there, so I walked upstairs and it was closed! Siesta! The man that lives upstairs comes down to tell me that the show reopens at four, but I am catching my train to Frankfurt at three. It is time to leave Venice.




I caught a train early from Frankfurt to get to Kassel in time for press conference on Tuesday. I arrive well on time. Everything is much slower here, I am glad, I need to pace myself a little.



I arrive at the press conference in the very impressive Stadhalle it is busy and apparently there are around 2700 journalists here, it is pretty intimidating. There is a formal address by Roger Buergel and Ruth Noack as well as some German politicians and statements by some of the artists on the show; Mary Kelly, Juan Davilla, Alejandra Riera ,Romuald Hazoumé and Ahlam Shibli.
Buergel and Noack ave been planning the show for five years so there needs to be some contextualization and discussion about the three leitmotifs, Is modernity our antiquity? What is bare life? and What is to be done?
I will need to see the whole exhibition to see whether these questions have been answered by the show.

The most of the address is in German but everything is translated not like the poor people at Venice who didn’t speak any Italian. It is kept brief and it followed by some questions.
Everyone is asking and talking about Ferran Adrià, Spanish Chef of elBulli fame. Buergel makes a sharp comment in response to a question related to the location of Adrià’s work, basically answering by stating that if you were in the know you wouldn’t be asking. That summed up very nicely the way the workings of the art world appear to be.
However everyone had been quite vague about the whereabouts of Adrià’s work until an email was circulated later that day. It announced that Adrià ‘s componetnt of the show would in fact take place in Spain. The elBulli comprises of a whole team to create the much sought after experience and therefore it would not be practical to bring this to Documenta . Instead visitors to Documenta, chosen at random, will be flown to Spain to dine at elBulli skipping the two-year waiting list at the restaurant. This all sounds very similar to finding the golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Following Buergel’s response to the journalist’s question, I am beginning to wonder what chosen ‘randomly’ really means.



At the end of the press conference we left the Stadhalle to find a protest taking place. The Kassel locals, especially the youth, are not convinced by Documenta’s intention to bring cultural tourism to their town for 100 days. They are trying to communicate to us how culturally dead Kassel is at out of ‘season’. They have cleverly appropriated the Documenta 12 logo (lines crossed out to make 12) to count down the hundred days till they can have their town back.

The Museum Fridericianum (I am working on this pronunciation daily) is my first stop; this too is a classical structure one of the few pieces of pre war architecture that still remains in Kassel.
I am immediately struck by the way the works are displayed; they’ve have used a museum style of showing the works. Many of the spaces have dark walls and the lights are often lowly lit with directional lighting on individual pieces. This emphasises the museum display quality as well as the use of vitrines to display certain parts of the show.
I am still trying to understand the overarching curatorial premise, but in the Fridericianum there is definitely an emphasis on form and materiality. This show is very tightly curated with form in mind it seems, and I really enjoy the subtle formal connections that link the works.
I begin to make these connections even more since most of the artists and the work is unknown to me so my experience of Documenta so far seems purely about the work and not the artist’s ‘brand’.
Some of the works made impressions on me, but strangely not necessarily because I liked them but because they remained with me after I had left the show.
The works of Imogen Stidworthy, Trisha Brown and Tanaka Atsuko were some of the works that had this effect on me.



Stidworthy’s piece I Hate (2007) used elements of sound, video and text which filled an entire room of the Fridericianum. It had a very immersive quality with the dimmed lights and the use of sound. The video masked as you first walk in shows a man undergoing speech therapy and the sound piece is the man’s voice repeating phrases over and over. The sound comes through different audio channels that can be heard as you move through the arc structure wherein the speakers are installed.
Trisha Brown’s Floor of the Forest (2007) sat in the middle of the exhibition. Brown’s installation/performance was interesting to me because she had used performers in the space but had managed to avoid the uncomfortable feeling of having a human being performing in an exhibition space. Many of us shudder when we think of this, as we often make links to Contemporary dance which often doesn’t sit too well if you are not ‘read’ in it. This work rendered the human bodies formal elements in an animated installation removing the awkward audience/performer relationship. The shadows formed beautiful forms that had a filmic quality.



Although I only mentioned contemporary examples on this show they were works that ranged from 1956 (Tanaka Atsuko’s Electric Dress from the Gutai movement) till the present on that show. It highlights an interesting point that Noack made in the press conference, that is works don’t necessarily need to be made now in order for them to be Contemporary. The work is recontextualised in this Contemporary show.
I can already feel that the atmosphere is very ‘serious’ as compared to Venice, even the opening reception felt that way. No raucous partying yet.
Everything is super clear and easy to navigate; transport arranged for free and schedules that are kept to, blissful. Not nearly as overwhelming as my Venice experience.
So German efficiency is not a myth.