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5 — documenta

Catherine David gives a brief overview on documenta’s history in her introduction for the “Short guide, documenta X”—the shorter publication for her documenta X catalogue. David highlights documenta’s origin—started by local artist Arnold Bode—much in line with the Marshall Plan, exhibiting German’s lost modernity, but entering into a much more complex network of exchanges after 1989. In his seminal text “The Black Box,” the introduction  to Documenta11_Platform 5 by Okwui Enwezor, the poet and curator lays out his vision for Documenta11 as an ultimately unfinished project with its five platforms ending in Kassel. Enwezor complicates the history of the avant-garde—which shaped documenta since its founding in 1955—and suggests another reading using postcolonial thought, which is in opposition to postmodernism. The text also speaks about the ultimate breakdown of hegemonic Western ideology since September 11. Rime Fetnan analyzes the linguistic aspects of the curatorial discourse surrounding documenta X and d11 in her essay “Biennials and Cultural Difference: Between Critical Deconstruction and Essentialism,” implying that contemporary discourse, according to Fetnan, still retains Orientalist or primitive imaginaries. In “How photography (re-)entered documenta,” Mona Schubert follows new media’s—especially photography’s—entry into art history through the lens of documenta 5 and documenta 6. Sabeth Buchmann and Ilse Lafer examine Documenta 14 in Athens and its legacy and effects on the city.

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Issue 46 / June 2020

Contemporary Art Biennales – Our Hegemonic Machines in Times of Emergency

by Ronald Kolb, Shwetal A. Patel, Dorothee Richter

by Daniel Knorr

by Roma Jam Session art Kollektiv

by Delia Popa

by Diana Dulgheru

by Daniel Knorr

by Farid Rakun

by Raqs Media Collective

by Defne Ayas and Natasha Ginwala

by Ekaterina Degot

by Yung Ma

by Eva González-Sancho Bodero and Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbakk

by Raluca Voinea

by Răzvan Ion

by Daniel Knorr

by Lara van Meeteren and Bart Wissink

by Raqs Media Collective

by Robert E. D’Souza

By Manifesta 12 Creative Mediators: Bregtje van der Haak, Andrés Jaque, Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, Mirjam Varadinis

WHW in conversation with Omar Kholeif

by Henk Slager

by Vasyl Cherepanyn

by Ksenija Orelj

by Catherine David

by Okwui Enwezor

by Sabeth Buchmann and Ilse Lafer

by Julia Bethwaite and Anni Kangas

by Federica Martini

by Vittoria Martini