Documenta 11: Personal experience report

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8 June – 15 September 2002 in Kassel, head curator Okwui Enwezor

The Documenta seems to be considered as one of the most important art exhibitions in Germany, maybe even Europe. Documenta 11 was the first Documenta I’ve even seen.

I’m writing about my personal impressions from the Documenta 11. If you want to know more about the featured artists, the artworks or the concept go to the official Documenta 11 site. You can also have a look at some photos from the Documenta 11 at the end of the post.

First I hesitated wheter to buy a 2 day ticket or just a one day ticket. It didn’t seem so big on the first sight. But in the end I think even the two days weren’t enough.

After seeing the artworks for the first time, I sometimes felt the need to come back again and to examine them more precisely. If I wanted to understand every artwork thoroughly I’d need much more time.

The Documenta 11 was too big. On the first day I went to Museum Fridericanum. By the time I was leaving I didn’t remember the artworks I saw in the morning.
On day 2, I took the map of the Binding brewery, where another part of the exhibition was located, and made a short note to every artist/room I saw so that I would remember more than the day before… My map to be seen here (1.1 MB).

There were also lot of quite long videos to see, some of them even 1 hour or longer; mostly about 20 – 30 minutes. If someone wanted to watch all of them he would need one week. And then there was the Bali-cinema in the Kulturbahnhof which was showing even more videos/movies in the evening.

I think there shouln’t be so much long videos on the Documenta. I go to the cinema to see movies (It’s much more comfortable there.), but if I go to an art exhibition I expect the videos to be short, if there are any. And no 70 min. ones. But that’s just my personal opinion.

You could see artworks dealing with / inspired by conflicts in Asia. I remember seeing one really interesting video about (non)violence (India-Pakistan and China-Tibet conflicts). But – sorry – I don’t remember the author. There were quite a lot of works from Asian and African artists I would say. But that’s the general trend of globalisation and mixing-up of the world population.

I thought all the artworks exhibited on the documenta would be shown for the first time – but that was not the case. As one example I can mantion “Homebound” by Mona Hatoum which I’ve already seen in the Tate Gallery in London in 2000. I understand it would be quite difficult to expect from all the artists to make some exclusive artwork for the Documenta show.

The “Iluminated manuscript” by David Small (I hope) was also very interesting. But you have to see it to understand.

Multiplicity were also featured at the Documenta 11 with their project “Solid Sea” about the transport and cargo infrastructure of the Mediterranean sea.

I had the impression that there were a lot of people visiting the documenta just because it is quite famous and not because their interest in contemporary art. I saw many types of people I would never expect to be in an art gallery (and neither they did, I think…).

It was the biggest contemporary art event I’ve seen in my life. And it was worth a visit. But the huge size of the exhibition can be quite exhausting. Sometimes I felt like being in a supermarket and not in an art show.

Art needs time to unfold and has to be percieved without any haste. That was sometimes quite difficult on the Documenta 11. There were so much exhibits which I haven’t looked at properly. It was impossible to see (and remember) everything.