Documenta tips: you shouldn't miss this in Kassel

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A skater in the Documenta hall, the halfpipe was installed at the request of the Baan Noorg Collaborative Arts and Culture collective, the mural is by the Britto Arts Trust.

Photo: INA FASSBENDER / AFP

Are you planning a visit to Kassel?

One thing straight away, you can't see the most important work of the documenta, according to the organizers you have to experience it and contribute to it yourself: group feeling.

A lot of art is also shown at 32 locations, in many areas it is even a downright classic documenta with paintings, videos, installations, lots of paper in showcases, plants, and of course there will be performances, lectures and other events.

No one can manage the entire Documenta, the curators reassure.

So feel free to leave something out – just not the following places and posts.

Landing of the »Citizenship«

The vehicle takes some getting used to, but it is TÜV-tested: Berlin art activists removed the gabled roof of their Berlin residence and converted it into a ship in a shipyard.

Since June 2, the work »Citizenship« by the

has been sailing to Kassel via the Havel, Weser and Fulda.

Energy should be generated collectively: The crew of about ten drives the screw with muscle power on bicycles on deck or lets supporters pull them from the bank.

Food and overnight stays are to be donated to the changing team, because the boat only has a tarpaulin for protection.

The location can be tracked online, the target is a landing on July 22nd on the

.

Colorful pictures, combative mood

The

is considered by many to be the headquarters of every Documenta; it is, so to speak, the first statement of every show, always understanding the content as a total work of art.

Many predicted that traditional media would be virtually non-existent in this exhibition, but right in the entrance hall and upstairs in the rotunda, almost sacred to documenta fans, are paintings by Australian

.

It is his colorful and yet serious protest against the treatment of Aborigines.

'Destroy Arnhem Land.

We are destroying Australia,” reads a sign carried by a man in one of the paintings.

Downstairs, in the basement and near the toilets, Bell left a mocking homage to typical Western art: a urinal like Marcel Duchamp once exhibited.

Otherwise, the following applies here: many archives with a lot of archive material, many films, including one about the Sada artist group from Baghdad, which has actually already been dissolved.

At the top of the tower, a filmed performance by the Bosnian artist Selma Selman, who demolishes and cuts up car bodies.

In the rotunda, inscribed colored fabrics dangle from the ceiling.

One saying goes like this: »We don't follow German 'integration' policies like one should behave in a white institution.« In short, the appearance is cheerful in places, the messages are not.

Hanging out for the right to asylum

At first glance,

's appearance at the Documenta seems cozy: in the

in the Bettenhausen district, there are sofas in a circle, in front of them colorful carpets, potted plants, televisions, it's an invitation to linger.

But what is running on the monitors takes visitors out of their comfort zone.

The Danish organization campaigns for the rights of asylum seekers, and children talk about the difficult processes in documentaries.

Quotations from asylum procedures are emblazoned on the walls of the hall, for example: »You are not entitled to public healthcare.« At Trampoline House, people hang out together to make politics instead of works of art – a typical contribution to the Documenta 15th

Fake bananas, real vegetables, big show

Further down the Documenta Hall—past collectives like Nairobi's Wajukuu Art Project and Cuba's Instar, and Thailand's Baan Noorg Collaborative Arts and Culture—Bangladesh's Britto Arts Trust has been allowed to expand, and its artists have created profound eye-catchers.

The group of works includes: A gigantic mural with scenes from Bengali films on the subjects of food, hunger and war, as well as a supermarket with groceries, all of which are inedible.

Neither the Chiquita bananas nor the contents of Nutella jars or the Campbell's cans made famous by Andy Warhol.

Products that are shipped to the western world.

They are sculptures, some made of ceramic or metal, others even crocheted.

outside, by the hall,

the Britto members, on the other hand, grow real vegetables.

Cooking every day.

From the horror with halal chicken

»We hid six snacks – can you find them?« From the work of

Kassel visitors could go on a scavenger hunt.

Ahsan has been distributing advertisements for fictional competing chicken joints around town.

A running neon sign »Halal Fried Chicken« does not point the way to the next refreshment, but is a satirical reference to increasing Islamophobia and religious discrimination.

Halal chicken stalls abound in Muslim-majority countries, but foreign eating habits are often viewed with suspicion in western European cities.

In London, the rumor even circulated for a while that a jihadist network was being recruited through the snack bars, the documenta writes about the project.

We won't tell you where Ahsan installed his takeaway ads - look for yourself.

Voodoo in the Church

The figural sculptures by the

group make you feel like you're in a zombie movie .

Two luminaries spring out of a human skull like crazy eyes, a crooked helmet hangs above them, and a pink scarf underneath.

The body is made of scrap metal, in the genital area a huge spring coils up like an erect penis.

Tough stuff for the

exhibition space , an unused church in the Bettenhausen district.

The Ghetto Biennale collective also wants to stage ceremonies and trance nights with music here.

Bitcoins?

No, cheesecoins!

The Spanish collective

, founded in 2009, stands for the intersection of art, the exploration of agricultural spaces and strategies - and with the Documenta also for the invention of the "Cheesecoin", which establishes a new currency or many works of art, according to taste.

For their appearance at the World Art Show, the people from Germany have teamed up with the world-famous German artist

teamed up.

Your film is a potential superspreader event, the corresponding room was already too full for the experts on the days of the preview.

The story is about wolves, cheese and shepherds who know nature better than the Disney environmentalists they ridicule.

An AI-based simulation with moving cave paintings can also be seen.

All very entertaining, but with serious ulterior motives.

Very far away

The

itself is centrally located, it was opened in 1953.

It was designed by Paul Bode, the brother of Documenta founder Arnold Bode.

In one hall, the artist and scientist Molemo Moiloa and the artist Nare Mokgotho from Johannesburg – who appear here as

– have created a powerfully melodic sound installation that acoustically carries the visitor far away.

The softly illuminated floor sculpture in the dark room grounds perception and demands attention.

The loss of land to the white colonizers represents oppression and trauma that has lasted for more than 100 years.

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Silk painting by draftsman Nino Bulling

Photo: Maja Wirkus / documenta fifteen: Nino Bulling, Sometimes when we kiss, it feels like I am drinking water from your mouth, 2022, Hafenstrasse 76, Kassel, June 14, 2022

Politics for Comic Artists

In his graphic novels, Nino Bulling

draws stories about love, friendship, politics and queerness, blurring the distinction between fact and fiction.

For the Documenta he painted couples with their caresses and interactions in large format on silk.

The light material hangs from the ceiling in the

industrial complex and moves with every breeze.

The pictures continue his recently published volume »abfackeln«.

However, Bulling has put a large part of his Documenta budget into a project that is invisible to visitors: he has set up a network for comic artists, which is to become a trade union in September.

Clash with the west

In the

- a museum dedicated to dying and burial - the work of the Spanish-based Mexican

over three floors.

Something is also supposed to be buried here.

The exhibition manual states that this artist confronts “Western unity-oriented thinking with the idea of ​​multiplicity”.

In this special place (and too hot and stuffy in sunny weather) it may become particularly clear that this documenta, unintentionally or at least very consciously, repeatedly conjures up the spirit of Joseph Beuys, who always wanted to call on everyone to work on social sculpture , i.e. to rebuild the state;

this led him to say that all men are artists.

Beuys loved to draw diagrams, Beltrán creates more modern versions of them, but they are similarly confusing.

One of his initial questions, which is still easy to understand, is: "Who has the power?"

The artist would like to put the whole world in a new mood, he says he is addressing the clash of Western thought structures with other ways of seeing the world.

Questions upon questions

A huge dispute preceded this documenta - and will increase interest in the show.

The accusation was made that this exhibition could be carried by an anti-Semitic spirit, the curators defended themselves against such allegations.

The fact that they invited the collective The Question of Funding from Ramallah was one of the triggers of the debate.

The collective presents paintings and history of the artist group Eltiqa from Gaza.

Their hardships are presented as a result of Israeli policy, while supporters are also named, such as the founders of the Palestine Bank.

The first questions are already being raised in the feuilletons - may motifs from European art history be combined with the Middle East conflict, as can be seen in some pictures?

In the basement of the WH22 exhibition venue, The Question of Funding itself performs, promoting a new economy and a blockchain currency called Dayra.

If you leave the corresponding room and walk down the dark corridor, you will come across the rooms of an Indian collective that announces queer and »radical« parties.

In other words, there is a place in Kassel for many that the curators assign to the Global South, and many art scenes are entering into new neighborhoods here.

According to the definition of the organizers, Israel, and this will be discussed later, does not belong to the Global South, the art scene of this country does not get any rooms at the Documenta.