[Okwui Enwezor, curator]
Documenta11_ Plattform5: Ausstellung - Katalog
Kassel, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2002
620 pp., 30.5 x 25.5 cm., hardcover
Edition size unknown
I attended Documenta11 in 2002 and was bitterly disappointed. Held every five years, Documenta is heralded as one of the greatest international art events, and that year expectations were particularly high.
But it all felt so earnest and austere, unable to get out from under the weight of 9/11, the year prior. I recall black and white photographs of fireman in the NYC rubble, for example.
With what felt like 30% of the works being long-form video, the exhibition was truly unwieldy, also. Writer and filmmaker Dan Fox asked "I wonder how many who attended Platfiorm 5 of Documenta 11 could look you in the eye and tell you that they have fully cogitated, pondered, digested, wrestled with and thoroughly mulled over the public debates, seminars and mighty tomes that comprised Documenta. [It] runs for 100 days and quite probably requires 100 days to digest properly.”
Reportedly, the curatorial team hadn’t watched all of the film works presented.
I enjoyed the Pierre Huyghe work (though it was more documentary than artist film, and the show was already dense with documentary) and the off-site Thomas Hirschhorn work was fun. I’ve subsequently come to dislike his work after seeing a smug talk he gave in Toronto, but I appreciated that the project he presented here came with a qualifier that it was not intended as a piece to designed to help an impoverished area. One could easily make the argument that it did (employing locals to serve as guides and drivers) but it was refreshing to see a work not grandstanding about its own ability to forge meaningful change.
Near the entrance were two trailers serving as a mobile bookstore (Konig? Stampa? I can’t recall) and I picked up some things I still treasure there. But mostly I bought Ben Vautier No More Art postcards.
I bought this exhibition catalogue, but didn’t keep it.
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