Recommended: Documenta in Tel Aviv
This week I went to hear Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev– the artistic director of dOCUMENTA (13)– in conversation with Iwona Blazwick– the director of Whitechapel Gallery in London.
Christov-Bakargiev and Blazwick started by telling anecdotes about their past projects such as their first collaboration in the show (with the very long title) “On Taking a Normal Situation and Retranslating it Into Overlapping and Multiple Readings of Conditions Past and present” (1993, Antwerp).
The daring and witty Christov-Bakargiev, moved on to explain the importance of Documenta, its difference with other art events (art fairs for example) and its history. At the moment so it seems, there is no specific concept or theme for Documenta 13, but let’s wait and see.
One of the great things she has already achieved, and which marked the starting point of her thoughts about documenta 13, is the conference “d documenta” which reunited the living artistic directors of all preceding documenta exhibitions. You can watch videos from the conference here.
But for me the most captivating part was when Christov-Bakargiev explained about the “100 notes – 100 thoughts” project. 100 notebooks that are published by dOCUMENTA (13) and Hatje Cantz, and are comprised of facsimiles of existing notebooks, commissioned essays, collaborations and more.
Christov-Bakargiev explained that she enjoys the idea of the partiality of these notebooks, not in the sense of the “partial”, but in the sense that, each of these stand for themselves but also create a whole when put together.
What will I be taking from this talk?
This year will be the first time I’ll be going to Kassel to visit Documenta 13 and I am now curious to see what it will hold for us.
Encounters like these ones in Israel, with leading international art figures, are blessed initiatives and I am looking forward to go to many more.
And! I am going to order this notebook by Lawrence Weiner:
it is now on the top of my wishlist!
Organized by the Outset Contemporary Art Fund, the event was inspiring but most importantly for me, it was also one of the triggers which made me realize I wanted to get back to blogging (more about why soon…).