documenta diaries iii: neue neue galerie

documenta diaries iii: neue neue galerie

by | 24 Aug 2017 | Art History, LÖL, Re-Enactments© and MashUps

Arin Rungjang, 246247596248914102516 … And then there were none (2017). Video still.

The German friend I went with said aloud what I was thinking: “Whoever at Documenta decided to call this the ‘Neue Neue Galerie’…just…shouldn’t…ever…” accompanied by a grim sächsische head-shake. Restyling the already-interesting and well-known Brutalist Neue Post building in this way is so typical of Documenta 14: It’s that Mentos-commercial “humor” that isn’t funny and also isn’t nostalgic, ironic, kitschy, or whatever else might have settled the account with the “marketing team.” Nonetheless despite being afflicted by branding and the continuing curatorial confusion that has muddled much of Documenta 14, some of the art inside the former mail-sorting center ascends on its own merits.

The most interesting, and centrally important to Kassel, entries in all of Documenta is the project by the Society of Friends of Halit, a group of artists and researchers who apply pressure to the investigation into the 2006 murder of 21-year-old Halit Yozgat. Yozgat was shot to death in the Internet café his family ran on Höllandischestraße, just around the corner from the Neue Post, the ninth in a string of Neo-Nazi hate crimes. Hessian undercover detective Andreas Temme was in the café yet claims to have seen and heard nothing. With 77sqm_9:26min (2017), the Society reveals their findings – reconstructed through forensic architectural, olfactory projection (!), and sound renderings; interviews with passersby, and film clips of testimony and evidence. Finally an example of the ability of art to change and influence events in the world, and even render justice.

Arin Rungjang (geb. 1974, Bangkok) 246247596248914102516 … And then there were none (2017) Digitalvideo, Farbe, Ton; Holz- und Blechplastik; 2 Malereien und 2 Arbeiten auf Papier Video: 30 min

Perhaps the lone Documenta installation aspiring to Gesamtkunstwerk is Arin Rungjang’s 246247596248914102516… And then there were none (Democracy Monument) (2017). The installation is composed of a wood and brass panel-frieze, sculpture, photographic portraits, video installation, paintings, drawings, and books. The video itself includes an original modern dance performance about World War II historic sites in Berlin and Munich, the manufacture of the frieze, and an attendant controversy in Thailand, and – rare for Documenta Kassel – an acknowledgment of the fair’s earlier iteration in Athens. 246247596248914102516 is a reach that might not have worked, but Rungjang’s combination of precision and sincerity is peerless.
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Haus der Kunst in the House!

Haus der Kunst in the House!

by | 14 Apr 2013 | Art History, Re-Enactments© and MashUps

Gideon Mendel and Okwui Enwezor at Haus der Kunst.

I approached the tour of the exhibition The Rise and Fall of Apartheid (10 April 2013 at Haus der Kunst) featuring curator Okwui Enwezor and photographer Gideon Mendel with equal parts hopefulness and skepticism. The conversation and the galleries of photographs and videos were very interesting and relatively straightforwardly informational, and impressively accessible.

The event was arranged in quite a different manner than other “conversations” of this type I’ve attended before. Enwezor and Mendel actually occupied the same space as the 30 or so low-key attendees who surrounded the speakers attentively but not crushingly, giving listening and looking but not acting at all starstruck from being inches away from one of the most influential curators in the world.

The centerpiece of the talk was perhaps Mendel’s music and photo installation Yeoville, created especially for this exhibition and featuring the music of Dynamics, a South African band Mendel says he strongly associates with the mid-1980s when many of these photos were taken. Cropped to isolate details alternating with full-frame shots, these projections show Johannesburg residents during these years interacting in leisure and daily life in quotidian activities that nonetheless show, through the engagement of the mix of races and generations, the gradual, natural, erosion of the Apartheid system.

Mendel has much other work in the exhibition including a stunning color series of some Afrikaans “heritage” re-enactors. South African Jürgen Schadeberg’s work spanning 50 years is also wide-ranging. Most stunning, to me, were some of the covers and images from the 1950s magazine Drum, one of which stunningly restored the recently deceased Miriam Makeba to vibrant zenith. (more…)