Documenta 13 - Information as an annoying scavenger hunt

Documenta 13 started on Saturday, June 9, 2012, which was one day after the opening game of the European Football Championship. At this opening game, 400,000 visitors were on the fan mile of a single German city, and two -digit million rises for public viewing will have been traveling throughout Germany.

Certainly not a compelling comparison, but a comparison with the visitor numbers of the world's most important art institution alongside the Venice Biennale is nevertheless interesting.

At the opening of the documenta, “thousands of visitors” from all over the world were in Kassel, that sounds more like a four -digit than a six -digit number. And that's exactly how it is: According to the statisticians, around 750,000 people will visit the documenta, almost 550,000 of them from Germany, the documenta runs 100 days, so there are around 7,500 visitors a day, including around 5,500 from the organizer country.

5,500 visitors? That's how many visitors fit into the Schützenfest tent at the Munich Oktoberfest, which is booked out weeks in advance. When you consider that almost 60 percent of the visitors are regulars, the number of art-loving newcomers among them is reduced to just enough people to fit into a fairly small disco or a fairly large pub. German citizens don't seem to have much interest in this "center of the art world."

Why is that?

Are admission prices too high? Probably not. For €20, a regular visitor can spend 10 hours at documenta. Schoolchildren, students, and other groups entitled to reduced admission pay €14, and families with up to three children pay €50 (what happens to the fourth child?). But at least you get a whole day of art , and every pop concert is much shorter and many times more expensive.

Too few artists?

Certainly not either, around 175 artists from 55 different countries exhibit on Documenta 13. Only 8 of them can be found on the current “world ranking of art” (two of which are no longer among us), so the documenta does justice to its postulate to give the visitor a representative overview of what moves global art and the artists of time. If various critics of Documenta see it very differently, this fact should not be opposed to a visit to the documenta, but rather begin the discussion and interest.

But who does the documenta actually want to introduce these artists? Does the art lover, who is not one of the insiders of the art business, get information about these avant -garde artists who would make him curious? Not that: If the artistic layperson on the Documenta website wants to get an overview of the approximately 175 participating artists, this is not made easy for him.

First he has to find the artists, for which he will probably press the “Participant” button on the homepage of the website (“artists” does not exist). A list of 87 terms appears, mostly professions that are continuously written and connected by commes, somewhere in the middle are the artists, even twice, once as “artists”, once as “artist/artist”. Around 20 names appear under “artists”, nobody knows why. Under ““ Artist ”are the rest of the artists (some of which are part of artists here, sometimes not), in an alphabetical list.

Then click on one of the names, e.g. B. on that of Anna Boghiguian, he learns the following:

“Anna Boghiguian
artist
Venue: Fridericianum
Anna Boghiguian, born in 1946 in Cairo, lived in Montreal and Toronto and is currently at home between Cairo, India and Europe. She has studied art and music at Concordia University, Montreal, and political sciences and business at the American University. Biennial (2011) and the Istanbul Biennial (2009).

Unfortunately, this still leaves them with no knowledge of Anna Boghiguian's artistic work, and this method of conveying information has another drawback: There's no continuous presentation; each artist would have to be clicked on individually. Clicking back and forth 175 times leaves the artistic layman with no clue what kind of art all these artists actually create.

An idea of ​​the artists is too much asked for a website via an art exhibition, is there a catalog for that? Yes, sure, there are even 3 catalogs.

Catalog 1 of 3 is called “The Book of Books”. It has around 750 pages and costs around € 68, here “essential projects and the core topics of documenta (13) are brought together, the entire series of publication 100 notes- 100 thoughts are reproduced and supplemented by essays by the artistic director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Chus Martínez, the head of the department and member of the core group.”

Catalog 2 of 3 is “the logbook”, with about 450 pages for around € 30, here Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev has primarily documented her work in the run-up to documenta since 2010.

Catalog 3 of 3 is called “The Accompanying Book”, and here it is about 350 pages with approx. 250 illustrations for approx. 24,- € finally for the artists: “The short guide is entirely dedicated to the artists and introduces everyone involved in an illustrated article, which was written by one of the agents of the documenta (13) in close exchange with the artists themselves. ... All exhibition locations and projects, the short guide is an indispensable tool for all visitors to Documenta (13) and for all those who cannot see the exhibition themselves. ”

Certainly not an exaggerated price for a work of this scope, but unfortunately as the only information about the “artistic content” of this documenta, a reason for many people to live out their art interest somewhere else. Especially since it is unfortunately not possible to visit the Documenta 13 in a part of people in life situations that could use the “silent power of art that may transform us”.

Furthermore, it's not necessarily too much to ask for a website presenting an art exhibition to briefly introduce curious future visitors to the artists and their works. Other exhibition organizers certainly manage this.