[-empyre-] D12, Australiana in the Tower of Babel

[dt <david.teh@arts.usyd.edu.au>]

Hello all,

[A quick foreword on the mag-station in the Halle ? I bypassed it  
(apologies to any offended contributors here;-), assuming that a fair  
proportion of that material would be in the reader and on the web  
(where they perhaps belong?), and since I had limited time for  
physical browsing. It may be tokenistic, sure. But I understand the  
organisers wanting there to be some physical manifestation of the  
project in the meat-space, however inadequate a library it was. Would  
it be better to have nothing at all?]

What follows are some rough thoughts following my whirlwind visit to  
Kassel, not to be mistaken for a review ? haven't had time to look  
much at the catalogue or mag reader yet ? so really, first  
impressions. This first instalment addresses overall curatorial  
matters, getting side-tracked by Australian matters a bit, so please  
ignore that if you?re not interested!;-)

I?ll start with Ai Wei Wei?s chairs (since they?ve been raised here)  
which said more to me when empty, like the crime-scene outlines of an  
absent corpse ? which one might optimistically read as a requiem for  
the so-called ?relational? turn in contemporary art, or at least for  
the rhetorical and pseudo-philosophical posturing it has facilitated.  
But to my mind, if there?s an Ai Wei Wei work that encapsulates what?s  
going on at Documenta it?s the gorgeous heap of timber out on the  
grass (Template, 2007, some images here  
http://blog.myspace.com/artreview (scroll down a bit)), an assemblage  
of salvaged antique doors and windows (so many portals, channels for  
enlightenment, passage, encounter) which blew down in a storm. If  
every artwork is a portal of some sort, then this might be what  
happens when you get too many portals together in one place with not  
enough space, not enough voids, corridors for anything to lead  
anywhere. (If you?ll permit me the metaphor?) Interesting that a heap  
of openings amounts to an implosion rather than an explosion; it  
didn?t disintegrate, but rather performed a kind of structured  
collapse, a semi-graceful kneeling down.

What remains is still a density of form. And this still impressive  
torsional mound ? a mountain of openings blocked ? could almost be a  
metaphor for the curatorial impasse, the ?tongue-tied? silence  
mentioned already on this channel, the lack of supporting words in the  
framing of the works, which was also the main first impression I took  
away from D12.

As Merkel?s conservative coalition was proposing new linguistic  
barriers to immigration, I mused over the ?crash courses in Mandarin?  
cited in a recent D12 press release amongst local preparations for Wei  
Wei?s ?migration?. As a curious aside, the day I saw this work, the  
artist happened to be there documenting it. Hunched over his camera he  
was harangued by a middle-aged German lady who seemed intent on  
interrogating him in her native tongue. It wasn?t clear to me whether  
she knew he was the artist responsible for the work, nor whether Wei  
Wei understands German. But in any case, he was patiently, resolutely,  
politely quiet in the face her sustained questioning. Spotting me (I?m  
less Chinese than the artist) she asked, in English, whether I spoke  
English (?Yes??) and promptly relaunched her inquisition, in German  
(??but not German, sorry?) only to be frustrated again. Hands were  
thrown up, eyes rolled, she was genuinely pissed off as she pottered  
away across the Aue. How wonderfully charged with words she was! But  
how bereft of an outlet. The monolith sighed with us quietly.

I thought D12 was a curatorial failure, but as one would hope from any  
such prodigious agglomeration of contemporary (and not so  
contemporary) work, I found a lot to sink my teeth into. In summary  
(and I?ll expand on some of these later), it was great to see some  
thoughtful ethnographic work (especially from africa and the  
americas); a lot of south american conceptualism that's quite well  
presented; and some Central/Eastern European actionist stuff; all  
genres I too rarely encounter, not being on the global Biennale  
caravan. There were also a few gems that simply shone brightly in the  
clamour and the gloom. (One would be Lili Dujourie?s wall drawings in  
iron-wire ? each totally abstract but assuming all the presence and  
energy of a good portrait or bust ? beautifully presented on a  
floating interior wall, their shadows appearing to leave the wall and  
enter into the physical mess of the things.) Is it reasonable to  
expect more than this from two days of traipsing?

Overall, there are some really strange veins of discontinuity running  
through all the spaces, between the globalish stuff (a freshly felt  
responsibility in kassel, I imagine, since D11) and stuff Documenta is  
expected to do well ? conceptual stuff and visually pared-back stuff.  
[Technicolour, united colours of the multi-culti-artworld versus the  
greyscale minimal-Germanic thing.] Perhaps the curators were trying to  
make some sort of statement about how this clash strains, or outmodes  
(outmodifies?) the very premise of Documenta. (Cf. Robert Storr?s  
comments about Venice?s own looming quandary.) Unfortunately, the  
clash is literalised spatially: a lot of high-abstract works are just  
strewn about the place like gauche furniture. The illegibility that  
results has, i think, been read as a curatorial gambit gone horribly  
wrong, or a lack thereof, when perhaps it's more that the curatorial  
brief itself is unravelling. Anyway, ultimately I agree with the  
consensus that it fails, whatever it was trying to do.

I do applaud the decision to dip into past decades, even if some of  
the wilder wild-cards (the long Persian Rug in the Halle; the Manet in  
the Neue) add more to the clutter than to anything else. But I was  
often pleased to find a work from the 70s testing the contemporary  
exchanges, then something the same artist made this year (or the  
reverse). Also notable was the depth of works by certain individual  
artists ? again, some decidedly non-contemporary ? but I must say i  
find it hard to discern the rationales for these choices. Some worked  
(Bela Kolarova); others didn?t (Poul Gernes).

I?m still trying to get my head around the apparently pointed decision  
to include in many rooms what I?d call stylistic or formal Sore Thumbs  
(a ?real? Australian might say: ?things that stick out like dogs?  
balls?), amongst which The Guardian?s Adrian Searle found Juan  
Davila?s (twelve!) paintings conspicuous, as well as ?deliberately  
cloying?. (I may as well get this out of the way, since we?re on the  
subject of Australia, and conspicuous testicles:) Even the strongest  
of Davila?s contributions (The Arse-End of the World, 1994) had me  
cringing. It?s a homo-bestial phantasy of the fauna-cation  
[retaliatory pun for the title and the ?Cooee Camp Tea? logo] of  
explorers Bourke and Wills, framed with clippings from a duly  
forgotten Antipodean slanging match between former Prime Ministers  
Hawke and Keating, on a red gingham fringe, like a giant grubby picnic  
rug ? grubby being the operative word here ? Bourke parting his cheeks  
and being felched by a kangaroo through what looks like a prophylactic  
monocle. (Weird, huh?) What on earth could be gained from this  
parochial political allegory, this crass détournement of Australiana?  
This question, to which European viewers may have been happily  
oblivious, distracted me from the greater question, ?What on earth is  
this vulgar monstrosity doing here??, to which, sadly, they would not.  
At least partly responsible ? as has been pointed out here ? was the  
Australian Government?s arts funding body, the Australia Council,  
whose logo is defaced in Davila?s Schreber?s Semblance (1993) with the  
embarrassingly obvious slogan ?art is trade?. How lame. Anyway in  
Australia, this comparison has become so kosher, fourteen years on,  
Ozco might not even register any irony.

Davila?s imagery often grafts Latin American political history  
(particularly from the artist?s native Chile) onto the cultural  
landscape of his adopted Australia, in sometimes vaguely clever  
juxtapositions of these histories, people and the psychological tropes  
that entangle them. It fits into the wider picture here ? the picture  
of D12, with its bias towards the conceptual, jarring awkwardly  
against more expressive and narrative content. Newspaper critics seem  
to have been flummoxed by this attempted dialogue, between drier,  
cerebral forms and the various florid symbolisms afoot in the  
post-colonial imaginary. It?s a shame Buergel has muddied things with  
the now-laboured feistiness of this earlier post-colonialism, because  
much of the developing world stuff succeeds in moving beyond this  
conventional politics.

I?ve never really understood why his irreverent post-colonialism is so  
appealing to curators, and Buergel?s efforts have done nothing to  
enlighten me. For this context, Davila?s paintings are too blunt, too  
carnal, and too many. Littered around casually, yet still somehow not  
at home, they seem to be randomly dropped in, like bright  
stocking-filler, along with the odd ethnographic objects scattered  
through this often haphazard hang. What?d be the result if Davila?s  
contributions were removed? A better Documenta, slightly more  
coherent, with more room in the attention economy for works that  
deserve it, more space for dialogue between works that managed it.  
(The same could be said, on an individual level, for Churchill  
Madikida, whose room devoted to AIDS tragedy looks like a failed  
Gesamtkunstwerk, with sculpture, installation, lambda prints and two  
video works. One video (Virus, 2005) would?ve carried the idea better.)

There are others in this ?stocking-filler? category, mostly abstract  
work drawn from far-flung collections. Most annoying by far are the  
perspex sculptures and vomitous psychadelic paintings of John  
McCracken. The former might be exemplary of a kind of stilted  
conversation between Pop and Minimalism, and might thus be interesting  
in, say, an historical show about either or both, or about the legacy  
of this dialogue in contemporary practice. But here, in the global  
bazaar of Documenta, they look more like over-priced mod-furniture  
borrowed from some trendy Latin-American design café. Also generously  
scattered is Gerwald Rockenshaub, who manages a mini-retrospective by  
stealth. And similarly irritating is the abstraction of Poul Gernes  
from the 60s and 70s. Perhaps there?s some sub-plot here that I?m too  
ignorant to discern clearly, in the mutterings of 2D art  
half-responding to, half-ignoring the unruly unravelling of form being  
effected by the documentary and process-oriented stuff all around it.

[On which point, there was criticism also about the lack of  
geographical info. There used to be a related debate in Australia, on  
the question of whether to present (contemporary) aboriginal art as a  
cultural artefact (encased in ethnological support info), or whether  
to stick to one?s aestheticist guns and let it stand on its own merits  
in the white cube. At Paris?s shiny new Musee du Quai Branly they have  
mangled this problem even further. This place is not an art gallery;  
stuff is framed with information about its origins; but their  
Aboriginal paintings ? whose living context (effaced here for the sake  
of efficient ethno-historical profiling) is not ?primitive society?  
but the world of contemporary art ? are cramped and poorly lit, tossed  
in amongst the colonial bric-a-brac. Kathleen Petyarre?s work is  
particularly challenging here because, while grounded in ancient  
tradition, they?re at once contemporary objects, and very modernist  
objects. They certainly dialogue with other things in the Musee?s  
collection. The problem is that, formally, they?re so modern/ist  
(we?re talking big, flat, abstract, synthetic polymers, Belgian linen,  
the works) as to also demand, or at least imply, a kind of  
phenomenological latitude which the institution could provide, but  
which?d upset the whole equilibrating logic of (soft) cultural  
colonialism the place embodies. I?m still not sure where I stand on  
this overall problem; but I?m sure the Musee?s thrift-store solution  
does nothing to illuminate it.]

Which brings us back to Documenta and the problem of its own silence,  
its own denial of metadata. In this context, I?m sympathetic to the  
attempt to escape the World-Art-Supermarket framework exemplified by  
Venice and most biennales. But I can?t help thinking this distinction  
is made more for its own sake ? i.e. the curators? and the D brand?s  
sake ? rather than for the sake of the works themselves. I don?t doubt  
that the goal of juxtaposing work without national pigeon-holes is  
worthy. But it?s a token nod that ends up more like an Indian  
head-wobble ? it?s endearing in its ambivalence, but it frustrates  
understanding ? especially when the geographical reach is so wide.  
Geography and geo-politics remain crucial frames for international  
curatorship. I don?t see good reasons for trying to deny it or  
downplay it. It?d be different if, say, the overall curatorial rubric  
had some geographical angle (however syncretic); or if it was  
explicitly anti-geospatial (critique of borders; or ruminations on  
this or that internationalism). But no show of this size is going to  
achieve this sort of cohesion, so why not accept that geography has a  
lot to do with how work is produced and exchanged (especially here in  
Kassel!), and should therefore have something to do with how it?s read  
or received as well? (At least tell us something about the situation  
in which it arose ? this needn?t refer to a nation-state.)

ok that?s all for now ? more soon.
cheers,
dt


--
Dr David Teh
Independent Curator/Writer/Teacher
Bangkok, Thailand
m. +66 (0)84 673 7178
e. david.teh@arts.usyd.edu.au
w. bangkokok.typepad.com/platform | www.halfdozen.org