dOCUMENTA (13)

The exhibition poster with the inscription "documenta 13 an art exhibition in Kassel" in black capital letters.
Exhibition poster documenta 13 (2012)

Artistic Direction

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

Venues

Museum Fridericianum, Neue Galerie, documenta-Halle, Brüder-Grimm-Museum, Ottoneum, Orangerie, Karlsaue, Hauptbahnhof, Oberste Gasse 4, Untere Karlsstr. 14

Away from the main scenes

Kabul, Alexandria-Cairo, Banff

Artists

194

Visitors

904.992

Budget

30,672,871 Euro

Evaluation
Download as PDF

For the second time since 1997, documenta 2012 was directed by a woman. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, who gathered around her an advisory circle of "agents" from around the world, most notably the Spaniard Chus Martínez, confused the press in the run-up with non-concept, eco-feminism, dog calendars, an absurdly hard-to-remember title The dance was very frenetic, brisk, rattling, ringing, rolling, twisted, and lasted a long time, as well as the announcement of a parallel exhibition in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Following the platforms of documenta 11, documenta 13 went one step further by not only organizing events outside Kassel in the run-up to the exhibition, but for the first time also part of the exhibition itself during its duration. However, another location was initially important for the concept: the former Benedictine monastery Breitenau outside Kassel, which had housed a labor and concentration camp under the National Socialists and later a girls' educational home and a psychiatric institution.

Between these two locations, Kassel/Breitenau and Kabul/Bamiyan, documenta 13 established a main motif that in turn tied in with the original idea of documenta: "Collapse and Recovery" - in other words, the healing of war trauma through art. Many artists (all of whom had visited Kassel and Breitenau beforehand, some also Kabul and Bamiyan) referred to these places in the almost exclusively newly produced works - such as Omer Fast, Mariam Ghani, Goshka Macuga, Michael Rakowitz and Clemens von Wedemeyer. Workshops were also held in Kabul and Bamiyan, the results of which were incorporated into an exhibition of Afghan artists in Kassel.

While the exhibition in Kabul was seen by 27,000 visitors, the events in Cairo/Alexandria and Banff were largely closed to the public. Christov-Bakargiev associated these four locations with further states of existence that oscillated between them and became programmatic for documenta 13: On Stage (Kassel), Under Siege (Kabul), Hope and Revolt (Cairo and Alexandria) and Retreat (Banff).

The structures were also broken up in terms of time: documenta 13 officially began back in May 2010 with the erection of Giuseppe Penone's Idee di Pietra (Ideas of Stone) (2003/2008/2010), a bronze tree with an erratic boulder in its crown in the Karlsaue. This was a reference to Christov-Bakargiev's own roots in Arte Povera. The motif of planting trees, closely associated with documenta since Beuys, reappeared in other moments of the exhibition in the works of Korbinian Aigner and Jimmie Durham. Last but not least, anti-anthropocentrism was another important theme of documenta 13: seeds, apples and dogs were just as much a part of it as people and art.

A large crowd gathers in front of a historic stone wall with an archway. Two yellow banners with the inscription "documenta (13)" hang on the wall. Mountains with small houses can be seen in the background.
documenta 13 in Kabul (2012)
Interior view of a museum exhibition with a glass wall in the foreground. Framed works of art are hung on the illuminated rear wall, while exhibition tables and sculptures are scattered around the room.
Brain (2012)

Upon entering the Fridericianum, visitors found the first two first floor rooms largely empty, with only a cool breeze blowing through - a work by Ryan Gander(I Need Some Meaning I Can Memorize (2012)). The only exhibits here were three sculptures by Julio González, which had already been installed in the same place at documenta 2 in 1959, as well as a letter of refusal by Kai Althoff - a de facto participation in the form of a refusal to participate, in contrast to Robert Morris' actual refusal from 1972 (documenta 5).

A long-prepared project that ultimately could not be realized was the proposal by artists Guillermo Faivovich and Nicolás Goldberg to bring the second-largest meteorite in the world from northern Argentina to Kassel for 100 days - a 3.5-tonne iron object ultimately bore witness to the plan.A 3.5-tonne iron cube not far from Walter De Maria's Vertical Earth Kilometer from 1977 (the mass corresponded to the difference in weight from the results of two historical attempts to weigh the absent meteorite) and a documentation of the project in the Fridericianum bore witness to the plan.

In terms of content, the various strands of thought of documenta 13 were brought together in the so-called "Brain" in the rotunda: Here, for example, the "Bactrian Princesses" (stone miniatures from Central Asia around 2000 BC) met photographs by Lee Miller in Adolf Hitler's bathtub, taken on April 30, 1945, or Vandy Rattana's photographs of bomb crater lakes in Vietnam met bottles by Giorgio Morandi.

A musician plays the clarinet on a small raised platform while a cellist sits on a chair. The room has worn, partially exposed walls with traces of old wallpaper.
Theaster Gates, 12 Ballads for the Huguenot House (2012)

In addition to new productions by contemporary artists, historical positions by modern artists such as Hannah Ryggen and Maria Martins set important accents in the Fridericianum and the Neue Galerie. The theme of science was represented by experimental models by physicist Anton Zeilinger.

However, documenta 13 certainly left the deepest impressions where it reactivated long-forgotten places in Kassel's city center: There was, for example, the Hugenottenhaus, which had been vacant and decaying since the 1960s and was temporarily transformed into a living work of art by Theaster Gates and his troupe using building materials from Chicago; right next door, Tino Sehgal's 100-day performance in the darkness of a side room of the historic ballroom of the Hotel Hessenland; Francis Alÿs' miniature paintings from Afghanistan in a vacant store; or Tacita Dean's atmospheric chalk drawings of Afghan landscapes in a former tax office stairwell.

Pierre Huyghe's hallucinogenic plants, a sculpture of a woman with a beehive for a headand a dog with a pink leg in a hidden corner of the Karlsaue(Untilled (2012)), Lara Favaretto's industrial scrap sculpture behind the north wing of the main railway station(Momentary Monument IV (2012)) or Susan Philipsz's fragmented sound installation at the end of a platform, based on the composition Studie für Streichorchester by Pavel Haas, who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944, were among the most impressive moments of this documenta.

Spread over a large number of locations, including not only the traditional institutions such as the Fridericianum, documenta-Halle and Neue Galerie, but also museums with their own collections such as the Natural History Museum in the Ottoneum, the Astronomical Cabinet in the Orangery and the Brothers Grimm Museum as well as the two wings of the former main railway station and the entire Karlsaue (equipped with temporary prefabricated houses), documenta 13 was almost impossible to manage in just a few days.

In addition, there was an exuberant program of events and films as well as a number of permanent performative "animated" works of art. The 12,500 season tickets sold are proof of the great response from the local public. A special feature of documenta 13's "Perhaps mediation and other programs" were the "Worldly Companions" - citizens of Kassel with different backgrounds who, after completing a training course, passed on their individual knowledge about documenta 13 to visitors in so-called "d-Tours".

With almost 905,000 visitors, visitor records were once again broken. However, long queues, which made it almost impossible to visit some of the exhibition venues towards the end of the documenta's run, raised doubts as to whether it would still make sense or even be possible to attract more visitors to Kassel.

A large sculpture of a bare tree with a massive stone in its fork stands in a green park landscape. Several people and a dog are standing nearby.
Giuseppe Penone, Idee di pietra (Ideas of Stone) (2003/2008/2010). Photo: Rosa Maria Rühling

Artists

a

  • Abdul, Lida
  • Abidi, Bani
  • Adnan, Etel
  • Aigner, Korbinian
  • Akhunov, Vyacheslav
  • Akram, Barmak
  • Ali, Khadim
  • Allora & Calzadilla
  • Althoff, Kai
  • Alves, Maria Thereza
  • Alÿs, Francis
  • Anastas, Ayreen
  • AND AND AND
  • Applebroog, Ida
  • Aranda, Julieta (Time/Bank)
  • Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook
  • Asefi, Mohammad Yusuf
  • Ashford, Doug
  • Atoui, Tarek
  • Attia, Kader

b

  • Bachzetsis, Alexandra
  • Balestrini, Nanni
  • Balkin, Amy
  • Barry, Judith
  • Bartolini, Massimo
  • Baruchello, Gianfranco
  • Basiony, Ahmed
  • Bayrle, Thomas
  • Bel, Jérôme
  • Bennett, Gordon
  • Biscotti, Rossella
  • Boetti, Alighiero
  • Boghiguian, Anna
  • Bove, Carol
  • Buch, Kristina
  • Byrne, Gerard
  • Büttner, Andrea

c

  • CAMP
  • Cardiff, Janet & Miller, George Bures
  • Carr, Emily
  • Castillo Deball, Mariana
  • Chan, Paul
  • Chiurai, Kudzanai
  • Critical Art Ensemble
  • Cruzvillegas, Abraham
  • Csákány, István
  • Csörgő, Attila
  • Cumella, Antoni

d

  • Dalí, Salvador
  • Dean, Tacita
  • De Boer, Manon
  • Dion, Mark
  • Djordjadze, Thea
  • Doherty, Willie
  • Donnelly, Trisha
  • Durant, Sam
  • Durham, Jimmie

e

  • Epaminonda, Haris & Daniel Gustav Cramer
  • Erek, Cevdet

f

  • Faivovich, Guillermo & Nicolás Goldberg
  • Faldbakken, Matias
  • Farmer, Geoffrey
  • Fast, Omer
  • Favaretto, Lara
  • Floyer, Ceal
  • Foulkes, Llyn
  • Foushanji, Abul Qasem
  • Fumai, Chiara

g

  • Gabri, Rene
  • Gander, Ryan
  • Garcia, Dora
  • Garcia Torres, Mario
  • Gates, Theaster
  • Gaussi, Jeanno
  • Ghani, Mariam
  • Gill, Simryn
  • Gonzalez, Julio

h

  • Haidary, Zainab
  • Hall, Fiona
  • Hecker, Florian
  • Henderson, Tamara
  • Hiller, Susan
  • Hoheisel, Horst
  • Hopf, Judith
  • Hourani, Khaled
  • Huyghe, Pierre

i

  • Ivekovic, Sanja

j

  • Jacir, Emily
  • Johannessen, Toril
  • Jonas, Joan
  • Jungen, Brian

k

  • Kaesbach, Rudolf
  • Kahn, Robin & La Cooperativa Unidad Nacional Mujeres Saharauis
  • Kamandy, Masood
  • Kanwar, Amar
  • Kentridge, William
  • Khan, Hassan
  • Kurenniemi, Erkki

l

  • Lara, Adriana
  • Larrain Barros, Horacio
  • Lester, Gabriel
  • Link, David
  • Loboda, Maria
  • Lombardi, Mark
  • Lopez, Anibal
  • Lucas, Renata
  • Lutyens, Marcos und Raimundas Malasauskas, featuring Sissel Tolaas
  • Lê, Dinh Q.

m

  • Macuga, Goshka
  • Maiolino, Anna Maria
  • Malani, Nalini
  • Martins, Maria
  • Matarrese, Francesco
  • Mauri, Fabio
  • Mehretu, Julie
  • Menick, John
  • Menke, Christoph
  • Metzger, Gustav
  • Miller, Lee
  • Mojadidi, Aman
  • Moon, Kyungwon & Jeon, Joonho
  • Moore, Gareth
  • Morandi, Giorgio
  • Mroué, Rabih
  • Muholi, Zanele
  • Müller, Christian Philipp

n

  • Nordheim, Arne
  • Numminen, M.A.

o

  • Ohtake, Shinro
  • Omarzad, Rahraw
  • Ondák, Roman
  • Onur, Füsun
  • Otolith Group

p

  • Panayiotou, Christodoulos
  • Penone, Giuseppe
  • Pentecost, Claire
  • Philipsz, Susan
  • Phinthong, Pratchaya
  • Pich, Sopheap
  • Porsager, Lea
  • Portnoy, Michael
  • Preston, Margaret
  • Price, Seth
  • Prvacki, Ana

r

  • Rakowitz, Michael
  • Ray, Man
  • Raʼad, Walid
  • Reid Nakamarra, Doreen
  • Reyes, Pedro
  • Richter, Gunnar
  • Ringholt, Stuart
  • Robbins, Ruth & Tremmel, Red Vaughan
  • Rodas, Juana Marta und Isidrez, Julia
  • Ryan, Paul
  • Ryggen, Hannah

s

  • Sadr Haghighian, Natascha
  • Sala, Anri
  • Salomon, Charlotte
  • Samb, Issa
  • Schaber, Ines
  • Sehgal, Tino
  • Serra, Albert
  • Shah, Tejal
  • Shawky, Wael
  • Sherzad, Zolaykha
  • Solakov, Nedko
  • Song, Dong
  • St. Turba, Tamas
  • Sukhareva, Alexandra

t

  • Taanila, Mika
  • Taasha, Mohsen
  • Tarakhovsky, Alexander
  • Texmon Rygh, Aase
  • Thornton, Warwick
  • Tjapaltjarri, Warlimpirrnga
  • Trockel, Rosemarie
  • Téllez, Javier

v

  • Vandy, Rattana
  • Vaṇṇ Ṇāt
  • Vidokle, Anton (Time/Bank)
  • Villar Rojas, Adrián
  • Voss, Jerónimo
  • Vu Giang Huong

w

  • Warboys, Jessica
  • Waxman, Lori
  • Wedemeyer, Clemens von
  • Weerasethakul, Apichatpong
  • Weiner, Lawrence
  • Worldly House

y

  • Yan, Lei
  • Yang, Haegue

z

  • Zaatari, Akram
  • Zalmaï
  • Zeilinger, Anton
  • Zuse, Conrad

Artistic Director

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev
born 1957 in Ridgewood, New Jersey, USA

  • until 1981
    Studied philosophy at the University of Pisa, Pisa

  • 2000-2002
    Senior curator at P.S.1, New York

  • 2002-2009
    Chief curator at Castello di Rivoli, Turin

  • 2008
    Artistic Director of the 16th Sydney Biennale

  • 2008-2012
    Artistic director of documenta 13, Kassel

  • 2014-2015
    Artistic Director of the Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1993
    John Cage, II suono rapido delle cose, 45th Venice Biennale, Venice

  • 1996
    Alberto Burri, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; Lenbachhaus, Munich

  • 1997
    Città-Natura, various exhibition venues, Rome

  • 1998-2000
    La Ville, le Jardin, la Mémoire, Villa Medici, Rome

  • 2000
    Carla Accardi, P.S.1, New York

  • 2000
    Georges Adéagbo, P.S.1, New York

  • 2000
    Around 1984: A Look at Art in the Eighties, P.S.1, New York

  • 2000
    Greater New York, P.S.1, New York

  • 2001
    Animations, P.S.1, New York

  • 2001
    Janet Cardiff, P.S.1, New York

  • 2002
    Francis Alÿs: Matrix.2, Castello di Rivoli, Turin

  • 2003
    The Moderns/I moderni, Castello di Rivoli, Turin

  • 2004
    William Kentridge, Castello di Rivoli, Turin; K20, Düsseldorf; MCA, Sydney; MAC, Montréal; Art Gallery, Johannesburg

  • 2012
    documenta 13, Kassel

Awards (selection)

  • 2015
    Hessian Culture Prize for her work as Artistic Director of documenta 13

A portrait of the artistic director. She laughs and looks over the camera.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. documenta archiv / Photo: Ryszard Kasiewicz