documenta X

Poster with light gray background and oversized, superimposed letters "d" in black and "X" in bright red. The text "documenta X Kassel June 21 to September 28, 1997" is written vertically on the right edge. At the bottom are the logos and names of the main sponsors.
Exhibition poster documenta 10 (1997)

Artistic direction

Catherine David

Places

Parcours: Kulturbahnhof / Balikino, Kulturbahnhof underpass, Treppenstraße underpass, Treppenstraße, Friedrichsplatz, Museum Fridericianum, Ottoneum, documenta-Halle, Orangerie, Karlsaue

Artists

138

Visitors

628.776

Budget

21,732,293 DM

The last documenta of the 20th century was directed for the first time by a woman, the Frenchwoman Catherine David. As is so often the case, people in Kassel were skeptical. The intellectual demands that Catherine David placed on the major exhibition - the meaning and purpose of which she questioned in the introduction to the catalog - and the critical examination of the political, social, economic and cultural problems of the globalized present that she called for caused many critics to fear for the autonomy of art in the run-up to the event. Even the poster, on which the small "d" is crossed by a large "X" (Roman 10), sparked indignation - people even suspected that it called the institution of documenta into question. In retrospect, it is astonishing how little the reception of documenta 10 did justice to its concept as a "manifestation culturelle" with the claim to "enable access to recognizing the state of the world in different ways" - and this explicitly beyond a "society of spectacle".

Without falling into the trap of the "anniversary exhibition", documenta 10 confronted a variety of challenges and discourses - from the post-colonialism debate (for example with Lothar Baumgarten's series Vacuum, 1978-80, or the documenta documents) to various models of urbanity (Aldo van Eyck, Archigram, ArchizoomAssociati, Rem Koolhaas) and positions on the significance of the image in the media society (here exemplified by Marcel Broodthaers' Séction Publicité du Musée d'Art Moderne, Département des Aigles (1968)) through to current net art (Heath Bunting, Joachim Blank/Karl Heinz Jeron).

Instead of a real examination of these issues or David's curatorial achievements, however, the general tenor of art criticism of documenta 10 repeatedly boiled down to terms such as "theory-heavy" or "intellectualism" as well as the exhibition's alleged "lack of sensuality". The accusation of "senselessness" was perhaps also directed at Kassel itself - after all, in her documenta parcours, David thematized the city of Kassel, once the most car-friendly and therefore "most modern" city in Germany, as a "modern ruin". The rampant weeds - neophytes from southern and south-eastern Europe - that Lois Weinberger planted as a metaphor for migration processes along a disused track at Kassel's main railway station, which has only been a regional station since the completion of the Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe IC station and has been converted into a "cultural station" for commercial and cultural purposes, fit in with this. The route led from there through underpasses and down the Treppenstraße to the Fridericianum and past the documenta hall and the Orangerie to the Fulda. Along this axis, the various social, economic, ecological, aesthetic and cultural systems that converged here were to be examined.

The artistic works installed were not intended to be event-oriented "street furniture" with works of art, but rather to subtly intervene in the public space with specific questions. Jeff Wall's Milk (1984), a lightbox with a photo of a man sitting on the side of the road in front of a brick wall with a brown paper bag in his hand from which a fountain of milk is spraying - a banal scene at first glance, surreal at second - was installed in a pedestrian underpass. Christine Hill set up her Volksboutique (1996-today) in another underpass, while Suzanne Lafont's posters near the train station laconically traced the route of migratory movements between the metropolises of south-eastern and central Europe. The trail ended near the Fulda with the Metro-Net sculpture: Transportable Subway Entrance (1997) by Martin Kippenberger, who had died shortly before. However, the entrance to the suggested mobility was a dummy - a symbol of dysfunctional urban networks. Not far from here was perhaps the most popular work of art at documenta 10: Carsten Höller and Rosemarie Trockel's Ein Haus für Schweine und Menschen (1997) near the Orangerie. The supposed interspecies idyll subtly and disturbingly combined evolutionary theory with the cruel reality of profit-oriented factory farming.

Plants grow over the tracks at the station. Many people are standing on the platform.
Lois Weinberger, Das über die Planzen/ist eins mit Ihnen (1990-97). Photo: Bernhard Rüffert
A pig is standing in a meadow, another is lying on its belly. Several piglets gather around the lying pig.
Carsten Höller and Rosemarie Trockel, Ein Haus für Schweine und Menschen (1997). Photo: Bernhard Rüffert © documenta Archive
The documenta Halle at night. On the roof above the entrance, "Kino" is written in large red illuminated letters.
Peter Friedl, Kino (1997). Photo: Werner Maschmann © documenta Archive

To situate documenta at the end of the century, David had also conceived a series of "retroperspectives" that, on the one hand, made visible important tendencies of the post-war past in the sense of a "post-archaic, post-traditional and post-national" memory and efforts at identification (Marcel Broodthaers, Aldo van Eyck, Öyvind Fahlström, Richard Hamilton, Gordon Matta-Clark, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Gerhard Richter with Atlas (1962-96)) and, on the other hand, to reveal the omissions of Western art historiography (for example with the presentation of works by Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark as representatives of Brazilian modernism). With the "Retroperspektiven", documenta 10 returned to the founding idea of documenta.

In addition to the film programme and the publication of the documenta documents, the "manifestation culturelle" included above all the 100 Days - 100 Guests series, for which David hosted discussion partners from all corners of the globalized world for discussions on various topics in the documenta Hall, which was built in 1992 as a multifunctional venue and now furnished by Franz West: ranging from Edward Said to Rem Koolhaas ("New Urbanism"), Okwui Enwezor - who was to become David's successor - ("Biennials"), Matthew Ngui, Suely Rolnik and others, and Wole Soyinka ("Art and the Ethnocentric Gaze"). Above the entrance to the documenta hall, Peter Friedl had placed the lettering KINO in large red letters in ironic reference to the lettering of the neighboring Staatstheater - a promise that deliberately took its misinterpretation into account.

Artists

a

  • Adams, Robert
  • Althamer, Paweł
  • Archigram
  • Archizoom Associati
  • Art & Language Institute
  • Aya & Gal Middle East

b

  • Bamgboyé, Oladéle Ajiboyé
  • Baumgarten, Lothar
  • Beaugrand, Catherine
  • Beckett, Samuel
  • Blank & Jeron
  • Broodthaers, Marcel
  • Bunting, Heath
  • Burnett, Charles
  • Bustamante, Jean-Marc

c

  • Cabelo
  • Clark, Lygia
  • Coleman, James
  • Collective
  • Craig, Stephen
  • Crandall, Jordan

d

  • Del Giudice, Daniele
  • Douglas, Stan

e

  • Elsken, Ed van der
  • Esposito, Bruna
  • Evans, Walker
  • Eyck, Aldo van

f

  • Fahlström, Oyvind
  • Faigenbaum, Patrick
  • Farocki, Harun
  • Feng Mengbo
  • Fischli & Weiss
  • Friedl, Peter
  • Friese, Holger

g

  • Gillick, Liam
  • Gob Squad & Stefan Pucher
  • Godard, Jean-Luc
  • Goebbels, Heiner
  • Golz, Dorothee
  • Graham, Dan
  • Grand, Toni
  • Graumann, Hervé
  • Grimonprez, Johan
  • Grimonprez, Johan & Herman Asselberghs
  • Grossarth, Ulrike

h

  • Haacke, Hans
  • Hains, Raymond
  • Hamilton, Richard
  • Hamilton, Richard & Ecke Bonk
  • Hapaska, Siobhán
  • Hausswolff, Carl Michael von
  • Heiman, Michal
  • Herold, Jörg
  • Hill, Christine
  • Hohenbüchler, Christine & Irene
  • Honetschläger, Edgar
  • Huber, Felix S. & Philip Pocock & Florian Wenz & Udo Noll
  • Hybrid WorkSpace
  • Höller, Carsten & Trockel, Rosemarie

j

  • Jackson Pollock Bar
  • Jodi

k

  • Kelley, Mike & Tony Oursler
  • Kelley, Mike & Tony Oursler & Diedrich Diederichsen
  • Kentridge, William
  • Kippenberger, Martin
  • Koester, Joachim
  • Kogler, Peter
  • Konrad, Aglaia
  • Koolhaas, Rem
  • Kroesinger, Hans-Werner

l

  • Lafont, Suzanne
  • Landau, Sigalit
  • Lassnig, Maria
  • Lauwers, Jan
  • Legrand, Jozef
  • Lerch, Antonia
  • Levitt, Helen
  • Lovink, Geert

m

  • Marker, Chris
  • Marshall, Kerry James
  • Marthaler, Christoph & Anna Viebrock
  • Matta-Clark, Gordon
  • McQueen, Steve
  • Milev, Yana
  • Mosler, Mariella
  • Moulène, Jean-Luc
  • Mucha, Reinhard
  • Mullican, Matt
  • Muntadas, Antonio
  • Müller, Christian Philipp

n

  • Ngui, Matthew
  • Nicolai, Carsten
  • Nicolai, Olaf
  • Nordey, Stanislas

o

  • Oiticica, Hélio
  • Orozco, Gabriel

p

  • Page, Adam
  • Pataut, Marc
  • Peck, Raoul
  • Peljhan, Marko
  • Pistoletto, Michelangelo
  • Pittman, Lari
  • Prini, Emilio

r

  • Radio Mentale
  • Reeb, David
  • Richter, Gerhard
  • Roberts, Liisa

s

  • Schlingensief, Christoph
  • Schneider, Anne-Marie
  • Schoellkopf, Jean-Louis
  • Schütte, Thomas
  • Simon, Michael
  • Sissako, Abderrahmane
  • Smithson, Alison & Peter with Nigel Henderson
  • Sokurov, Aleksandr
  • Spero, Nancy
  • Steinbrecher, Erik
  • Stuart, Meg & Gary Hill
  • Suleiman, Elia
  • Syberberg, Hans-Jürgen

t

  • Tolj, Slaven
  • Tunga
  • Tzaig, Uri

v

  • Vallet Kleiner, Danielle
  • Vito Acconci Studio

w

  • Walde, Martin
  • Wall, Jeff
  • Wang, Jian Wei
  • Warmerdam, Marijke van
  • Weinberger, Lois
  • West, Franz
  • Winogrand, Garry
  • Wohlgemuth, Eva & Andreas Baumann

y

  • Yassour, Penny Hes

z

  • Zaremba, Lilian
  • Zittel, Andrea
  • Zobernig, Heimo

Artistic Director

Catherine David
born 1954 in Paris

  • Studied art history, linguistics and Portuguese and Spanish literature at the University of Paris

  • 1981-1990
    Curator Musée d'ArtModerne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

  • 1990-1994
    Curator at the National Gallery of the Jeu de Paume, Paris

  • 1994-1997
    Artistic director of documenta 10, Kassel

  • since 1998
    Project manager "Représentations Arabes Contemporaines"

  • 2002-2004
    Director of the Witte de With, Rotterdam

  • 2006
    Fellow of the German Federal Cultural Foundation at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin

  • 2009
    Artistic Director of the Pavilion of the United Arab Emirates, Venice Biennale, Venice

  • since 2014
    Deputy Director of the Musée d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1997
    documenta 10, Kassel

  • 2005-2006
    Contemporary Arab Representations. The Iraqi Equation, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Kunst-Werke, Berlin

  • 2007
    DI/VISIONS. Culture and Politics in the Middle East, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin

  • 2009
    Bahman Jalali, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona

  • 2009
    Curator of the Pavilion of the United Arab Emirates, Venice Biennale, Venice

Awards (selection)

  • 2015
    Hessian Culture Prize for her work as Artistic Director of documenta 10

A portrait of the Artistic Director of documenta 10.
Catherine David (1997). Photo: Gitty Darugar