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 mandatory comparison, but a comparison with the number of visitors in the world's most important art institution in addition to the Venice Biennale is still not uninteresting.

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? As many as fit in the shooting tent at the Munich Oktoberfest (which is fully booked in advance)? If you then still know that almost 60 percent of visitors are stem visitors, the art -loving newcomers are reduced among visitors to just as many people as fit into a rather small disco or in a rather large pub. The German citizens do not seem to be very interested in this “center of the art world”.

Why is that?

Too high admission prices? Probably not, for 20,- € the normal visitor can stay on the documenta 10 hours, pupils, students and other groups of people pay € 14,- €, families with up to three children 50 (what happens to the fourth child?). But there is a whole day of art, 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, he still knows nothing about the artistic creation of Anna Boghiguian, and this type of information transfer has a completely different catch: there is no continuous presentation, each artist would have to be clicked individually. Click back and forth 175 times, and afterwards the artistic layperson has no pale idea what kind of art all these artists actually do.

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”.

In addition, it is not necessarily too much if a website that presents an art exhibition briefly announces curious future visitors with the artists and their works. Other exhibition organizers can do this, see z. B. the website of the “Great Art Department NRW Düsseldorf 2012”, on which one page introduces all artists with one work each, which can also be enlarged: www.diegrosse.de/EdzneMendendende-kuenstler .