Assalamualaikum Documenta Fifteen
Visiting Documenta Fifteen was the best Documenta we have been to. It also felt like the most inclusive environment we have ever experienced in an established, large scale European contemporary art institution. Opening the guide, the first words are, ‘Assalamualaikum reader’. Walaikumusalaam Documenta Fifteen.
It is no joke. What Ruangrupa has attempted to achieve in their radical re-orientation of Documenta is resounding. It is a success in every sense of its bravery and boldness in attempting to overlay and re-organise the purpose and power that is held within the Eurocentric elite art infrastructures. Exemplified here by Documenta as an institution and the westernese curatese hegemonic community in its orbit. It is crucial to start any conversation on Documenta Fifteen with this reminder. Its overshadowing critiques and accusations dominating the headlines of that very nexus. The initial superficial glance that generated flat headlines seldom went beyond defining Documenta Fifteen as ‘controversial’. It is re-orientating, reconsidering and experimenting with the boundaries of using the infrastructure to see how far an echo of anti-colonial solidarity and communal, global joy of the marginalised can be platformed, achieved and shared with equity. In its critique, it is now in a power of narrative control, with increasingly numerous essays and articles, bringing nuance to the world it opens and to the hostilities it has received. Equally, a bombastic, populist consensus narrative is rife, sucking the nuance and change of meaningful exchange. This is just the strong side of a circle of angles that has aimed to delegitimize Documenta Fifteen from the start. Documenta Fifteen is left out of the shade by the dominant culture who find themselves bewildered in a space they would expect to flourish in.
‘It’s actually a good thing, the real problem is the over-professionalism of the arts — curators to artists’. The participating artist and writer Hamja Ahsan said in response to a comment from one of the (relatively few) institutional chieftains present during the opening weekend of Documenta Fifteen. He was responding to a comment that there has been a discursive impression in certain circles that there is an ‘amateurish’ feel to it. This framing of ‘amateur’ doesn’t reflect the reality but is more the bewilderment of the art world nexus with Documenta Fifteen — the struggle to find the safety of that reference point that their precious Venice or Art Basel gives them. Be it in the tools of interpretation, the clarity of its relation to the art market or the reality that the minorities are always the minorities. The intimidating ‘amateur’ to their safe ‘professional’. The collective to their ego-ripened artists. The warmth of community to their champagne driven art markets. The enchanted to their disenchanted. The Non-Aligned to their NATO. The anti-colonial to their colonial. The Assalamualaikum to their VIP welcome. The anti-oppressive global solidarity to their multicultural global hegemony.
Ruangrupa themselves define the institutional ecosystem of these large-scale art world holy spaces and biennale circuits as ‘exploitative’ and ‘extractive’. They also reflect on the reality of attempting to flip the binary of the values in these spaces, with and within the infrastructure of an institution that works for the artworld taste buds. The last line of Ruangrupa’s opening reflection of their process in the programme states, ‘negotiation becomes the name of the game’. Ruangrupa have articulated their curatorial vision in the concept of lumbung — a collective rice harvest for when times are tough. In the context they draw it into — the harvest at Documenta are snippets of methodology, practice, artwork and conversation by the artists, collectives, and community movements, selected through networks and values in an iterative and evolving discursive process. The production budgets, each selected artist or collective, could be used within their own localities or within Documenta itself. The results are a programme full of successes, failures and experiments but all are in the same procession of thought processes to re-centre the world on the side of justice. A justice kept on the outer circle of the West dictated multicultural hegemony.
It is this sense of justice which has exposed the limits of institutional mechanisms of the euro-infused contemporary art infrastructure, the limits in giving legitimacy to this justice. Contemporary art institutions exist to give legitimacy to the artists asking questions, challenging, and establishing values and pushing ideas and concepts. The entire infrastructure of Documenta is to give legitimacy to the curatorial visions and artist expressions they hold. The infrastructure just about held to give legitimacy to the dominant culture detractors who viewed this Documenta with a bewilderment in its detachment to the art market, its centering of experiences of the global south and its aesthetic of a lumbung. But the limits were tested, and the immediate fissures started emerging after the venue hosting ‘A Question of Funding’ was broken into, vandalised and death threats sprayed on to the wall. A collective whose harvest was speculating ‘alternative economic structures that can resist the physical and geographical boundaries and restrictions in Palestine and, hopefully, beyond it’. There was no institutional weight to respond to this, to respond to the duty of care the organisation has to the artists and artistic team.
The opening weekend of Documenta was a privilege to be part of. Joyful even if intoxicated by the hedonism of extrovert post-secularity. Parties, gatherings and picnics sprouting all over the city to the tunes of anti-champagne art market classes. During this weekend, speaking to a regular Documenta attendee — they proclaimed that the lack of the ‘art basel’ crowd will impact the next Documenta. The curatorial lead would be a close heartbeat to the comfort of that crowd. Richard Bell spoke of bracing for the ‘white revenge’ that exists around every corner of radical liberation activity and theologies. We guess opening Documenta with Assalamualaykum results in the vitriol and institutional lava that has consumed Documenta Fifteen since its opening weekend. From the removal of Taring Padi’s mural ‘The Peoples Justice’ to the ‘organisational reviews’ of artworks without the support of the artists or artistic team. A review to decide what is legitimate and what is not dictated by a lens of pressure that falls to the populist right harmonising with a liberal professionalism within the arts whose values are consciously or unconsciously grounded in a post-Christian secular civilising mission. Which is why opening Documenta with Assalamulaykum is profoundly radical and that is why the echo of that greeting in the programme has struggled to be supported by the infrastructure.
Whilst Taring Padi’s artwork that was exploring the power structures, violence and elusive empathy in relation to the 1965–66 Indonesian genocide and the following legacy of Suharto’s military dictatorship was literally removed, in a programme full of collectives, the targeting never became personal. Artist Hamja Ahsan was the first artist to be personally targeted, with racist and Islamaphobic trolling amplified by populist right political figures in Germany. Hamja, whose harvest at Documenta overlays a world of fictionalised Halal Chicken shop signage across Kassel. Comments calling Hamja a ‘terrorist’ or needing to be ‘forcibly replaced’ became common place, with Hamja reacting and responding with vitriol and heartbreak to the trolls and attacks. He has since been banned from any public programming from Documenta due to calling the Chancellor of Germany a ‘fascist pig’ in a pithy statement on his personal Facebook in response to the constant trolling. A strange choice to ban artists at Documenta on but it was a response to a call to arms by odious amounts of trolls on twitter on this specific line. Documenta reacted to this pressure to drop Hamja, but the mechanisms failed to react or respond or offer the necessary support to the Islamaphobia and constant threats he faced. Hamja Ahsan became the shaheed of Documenta, a martyr making visible the harmonisation of the populist right wing and the liberal elite cultures of the art world. The harmonisation that a presence of a Muslim beyond politically passive, fabulous and wine-drinking is seen as the stranger, the other, the danger.
Ironically, I (Hassan) was invited by Hamja to speak in one of his public programme conversations. I was going to speak for the first time in depth about my research, particularly, the access of Muslims in the contemporary art space. This has been cancelled due to Hamja insulting the German Chancellor. Yet, Hamja’s artworks are still on display. Taring Padi still has a significant presence in the programme. The collectives, individuals and futures of anti-oppressive world building that Ruangrupa has convened are still there. Egg on the face of the detractors and downright racists. As the last weeks and days of Documenta Fifteen roll on, looked on with relief from the delegitimisers and the staff whose energy has been sapped in the cross-fire (many of whom are good hearted). A countdown of the days for the mechanisms of re-address kicks in, the ‘white revenge’ as Richard Bell told us may not just be round the corner in response to the programme of Documenta Fifteen. It is already here.
This is a call to all those working and navigating within the spaces of the art world — particularly those with decision making power. Documenta Fifteen is not finishing in September, the solidarity that is necessary for all those who have participated and to Ruangrupa who have convened is now of the utmost importance. This solidarity is beyond the social media tweet or the soft statement, whilst important, solidarity now is ensuring all those who have participated in Documenta have the resonance that is associated. That their reputation travels through the various networks and resources of the cultural landscape across the world. For all those in the spaces of influence, in your organisation and networks, ensure the narrative of Documenta Fifteen is authentic. That it is:
· The best Documenta that many have ever been too.
· A radical experiment in restructuring the possibilities of the contemporary art ekosystem.
· The failure of institutional processes of the contemporary art cultures to act on Islamophobia, racism and antisemitism in anti-oppressive ways.
If you can attend in these last weeks, we urge all to make the pilgrimage to Kassel, to show support and solidarity by seeing the harvests of the programme. If you are unable too, reach out and speak to artists involved — follow their work and advocate for them in the networks you are adjoined too. Documenta Fifteen may be coming to an end, but the fight for its legitimacy will continue and its legacy needs to be safeguarded. The ‘White Revenge’ will not win.
Walaikumusalaam Documenta Fifteen,
Hassan and Khaled
