DOCUMENTA IX

documenta 9 is considered one of the most popular documenta exhibitions, not least due to its artistic director Jan Hoet. The charismatic Belgian succeeded in staging his enthusiasm for art and for his documenta in a media-effective manner. And he conveyed programmatic approaches that could also be quickly understood by visitors who were not art connoisseurs: Hoet wanted his exhibition to focus on people and their sensual, perceptive, suffering physicality, which was being displaced by an increasingly digital-virtualized world. "From the body to the body to the bodies" was the poetically expressive motto of documenta 9.

Jan Hoet formulated his curatorial concern as follows: "At a time when people are confronted more than ever with dangers such as AIDS and multinational wars, with nuclear disasters and global climate catastrophes, at a time when threats are becoming more and more abstract and fears more and more diffuse, the only adequate response seems to me to be a reflection on our physical conditions." Hoet wanted to find this answer, not only in collaboration with his team, consisting of Bart De Baere, Pier Luigi Tazzi and Denys Zacharopoulos, but not least, and this was new, in intensive collaboration with the artists. Above all, the location of the respective artworks and the resulting dialog between location and work were discussed in this non-hierarchical collaboration.

The artists were involved in the creation of the exhibition from the very beginning. What was also new about this documenta was that its "Eurocentrism" was criticized for the first time in its history. Towards the end of the 20th century, a broad awareness had slowly emerged that interesting art was also being created in Asia and the so-called "Third World".

The outdoor space as a "place for strolling and mental excursions" was heralded from afar, as Jonathan Borofsky's Man Walking to the Sky (1992) towered some 15 meters high into the sky on Friedrichsplatz. The people of Kassel christened this male figure "Himmelsstürmer" ("Sky Striker"), who seems to be walking unperturbed upwards on a 25-meter-long steel tube set up at an angle of 63 degrees. The sculpture was so popular at the time that it was purchased by the city with the help of a collection and donation campaign - today it stands on the square in front of the main railway station. Also remaining in Kassel are Thomas Schütte's ceramic sculpture group The Strangers (1992) - on the canopy of the Rotes Palais -, Per Kirkeby's room sculpture (1992) and two - though never officially
(Untitled (1992)) by Jimmie Durham, which the artist exhibited again for documenta 13 (2012) and then took back with him.

For the first time, separate buildings were also erected for documenta, such as the temporary Aue Pavilions in the park ("Place of Dionysian Lightness"). The recently completed documenta-Halle, situated on the slope of the Karlsaue, housed installations by Absalon, Jean-Pierre Bertrand, Cildo Meireles, Matt Mullican and Panamarenko, among others, as a "place of democracy". Rebecca Horn created a highly intense atmosphere with her installation Der Mond, das Kind, der anarchistische Fluß (1992) in the former Gerhart Hauptmann School. The accompanying program also caused a sensation, as Jan Hoet had integrated boxing events into this art event alongside jazz and baseball. Hoet justified this by saying that boxing is a physical act that is close to life "because it emerged from life itself".

Despite or perhaps because of its popularity, documenta 9 also had to face fierce criticism: Hoet was reproached for the lack of concept he postulated at the beginning, the exhibition was conventional and arbitrary due to its "juxtaposition at the end of styles", an "entertainment business". However, most of the 615,640 visitors remembered it as a sensual experience.