what's behind it?

What's inside?

Mary Kelly's lighthouse of feminists' experiences

I've been thinking for a while now how to write about what I saw and learned at the Documenta 12, a big exhibition of contemporary art in Kassel, Germany. Time to write it down before the memories fade completely...

As usual, I already forgot most of the names and all the "important" stuff. What I remember quite well, though, is a way of thinking, a state of mind and the kind of bliss resulting from heavy intellectual labour...

I remember a group of people under the guidance of an admirable teacher, getting cerebral exercise in onion-peeling; finding layers within layers, within layers, within layers...

I remember being more than relieved to find myself with people and most of them not confusing their dislike of a work with its being art or not.

I remember thinking, rethinking, twisting things, looking at them again and again, feeling - really dissecting them... Asking zillions of questions:

Simple questions, but hey, once you start there's no stopping: What's the artist's object? How is it transferred? Why this way? Why not another? Do you actually understand the accompanying text? [good one!] Where does it come from? Where is it going? References? Memories? Facts? Beliefs? And - in what way can a museum destroy art?

I remember transformative experiences: meeting a work of art, not understanding it, and stepping away an hour later being all enthusiastic. I remember going to bed at night still brooding about something I saw, or heard, or felt, trying to catch it and find out what's behind it...

I also remember tired feet, an ugly city including pretty depressed looking people, a yummy turkish dish (forgot the name again...), cheap beer from plastic (?) bottles and lunch packages made from the hotel's breakfast buffet that fell apart in their paper wrappings after being tossed around for hours in our bags. Oh yes, and long busrides...

Alexander in battle, mosaic from Pompeji -
a still familiar viewpoint of history...

... transposed into "magnet" by Simon Wachsmuth
"Where we were then, where we are now", 2007

Celestial Teapot, 2006/07

Lukas Duwenhögger's proposal for a memorial site for the persecuted homosexual victims in the Third Reich