Hendrik Folkerts (1984) is curator of documenta 14. Together with artistic director Adam Szymczyk (1970) and curators Pierre Bal-Blanc (1965) and Paul B. Preciado (1970), he is responsible for documenta 14's performance programme.
Documenta, one of the leading events in contemporary art, is organised every five years. This year, the 14th edition will take place entitled documenta 14: Learning From Athens. For the first time, the documenta will be presented in two cities: from 8 April to 15 July 2017 in Athens and from 10 June to 17 September 2017 in Kassel. Performative works occupy an important part within the programming in both cities.
In a few days, the documenta will open in Kassel. What can we expect from the performative works?
We present a multitude of performances across almost all media. Starting from the visual arts, we show dance and choreography, theatre, music and sound art as well as objects that emerge from a performance (e.g. film, photography or sculptures) or that can be used for a performance. In particular, scores and visual scores[1] are a recurring phenomenon in the exhibition.
There are also works that originate from traditional media such as painting or sculpture, but which create such an immediate awareness of the body or a particular situation that I see them as performance. For example, Banu Cennetoğlu's intervention. She replaces the letters on the Fridericianum (traditionally the central location of documenta) - MUSEUM FRIDERICIANUM - in BEINGSAFEISSCARY. The fact that the entire Friedrichsplatz, the square that the Fridericianum is part of, is surrounded by roadblocks to prevent terrorist attacks, makes placing a new title in front of the building a complex, almost physical experience that makes visitors aware of a society where security restricts (freedom of) movement.
documenta 14 aims to broaden the concept of performance. We do this by not only organising an exhibition that takes place in Athens and Kassel, but also that moves between the two cities: both in terms of space (numerous works responding to both contexts) and time (there is an overlap of more than a month between the exhibition in the two cities).
Can you give an example of an artist who moves between the two cities?
Otobong Nkanga's project in Athens is a soap-making laboratory, based on traditions and ingredients from the Middle East, southern Europe and West Africa. She developed a prototype that could then be made by hand in a very large quantity. About 45,000 soap blocks are shipped from Athens to Kassel where they are kept in warehouses and sold by performers on the streets of Kassel.
What assistance do you give the participating artists when working in two completely different cities?
We invited all participating artists to visit Athens and Kassel before starting their work for documenta 14. For a documenta that deals so explicitly with the context of both cities, this was an essential element. It gave the artists space to get to know both cities and to be able to respond to what they saw and experienced from their own backgrounds and interests. It also gave us an introduction to certain historical lines and issues that play a significant role for us as a team. I think the visit to Athens in particular was hugely enriching for many. Not only because of the political conditions in the city but also the many histories that converge in this city. Some artists even decided to move to Athens. Visiting Kassel was a very different experience for many artists, perhaps because they already knew the city to some extent from previous documenta exhibitions or because it is a smaller and more orderly city. The art was to introduce facets of Kassel that were totally unknown and to make known the historical relations between Greece and Germany within German culture - relations that date back to the 18th century and have coloured the political and cultural landscape of both countries.
What exactly did you want artists to take away about this relationship between Greece and Germany?
There is a word in English that is difficult to translate but which documenta 14 succinctly summarises: displacement. The meaning lies between 'to shift' and 'dislocation', and can be taken either negatively or positively. We wanted to convey documenta's displacement between Athens and Kassel, as well as the larger and historical lines of migration, diaspora, cultural, to the artists. The exhibition is evidence of the journey they - and we with them - have made in recent years.
Documenta is known for highlighting current developments in contemporary art. What are the main developments in performance art?
One of the most important developments in performance art is the integration or complementing of the visual arts with disciplines such as choreography, theatre and music. The body as a medium and the mixing of art forms is a phenomenon that began to play a greater role in post-war art and now seems to be coming to maturity, with a generation of artists starting from choreography, for example, and experimenting with the visual arts. Maria Hassabi's work is a good example of this, which we present in the so-called Neue Neue Gallery, formerly Neue Hauptpost. Her live installation is a theatrical work whose elements are scattered throughout the building; light sculptures made of theatrical lights are located in various places in the former postal building and several solo performances in intermediate areas culminate in a group performance based on a hushed choreography in which the moving bodies almost transform into sculptures. The silence in the movement is deafening as the tension in the dancers' bodies becomes visible.
The philosophy of Adam Szymczyk, artistic director of documenta 14 is captured in the title Documenta 14: Learning From Athens. Can you explain in a nutshell what this philosophy entails?
Learning, the process of learning, is a complex concept. You don't know what you will learn beforehand and you can't go into the process with assumptions, otherwise it defeats its purpose. Furthermore, learning is also what Adam calls un-learning, letting go of assumptions and revising things you thought you knew. This shaped the entire process of documenta 14: from documenta's presence in Athens, the learning process as a team and for the artists in Athens and Kassel, and the re-questioning of what documenta means as an exhibition.
How was this learning reflected within the documenta's programming?
This is best explained by a personal example. For me, Athens was always and automatically an association with classical antiquity. This is also the image of the city that keeps the tourist industry going. Within the art history I knew, this was a fairly Western European version of Athens, based on the interpretation of Western art as a direct line from antiquity to the present and an understanding of antiquity as the cradle of the Euro-American political system. This is completely artificial and in some ways a total fiction. It has to do with archaeologists and art historians - mostly of German origin - who in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries applied the culture of antiquity to cultivate an ideal for themselves that was more in line with the ideology and politics of their own time than the reality of ancient Greece or Athens of the time. Moreover, this made the art of antiquity a rather "whitewashed" thing, while in reality - and this is more visible than ever in today's Athens - Greece and Athens was a transition zone between the Middle East and Europe, between North Africa and southern Europe. And so history is written and assumed as truth, while then and now there is so much to learn from Athens. This is just one of countless examples I can cite from the learning process of documenta 14.
What happens to the performative works when documenta 14 is over? Will they be shown elsewhere?
Yes, and it is not unusual for performances to travel on to other venues and exhibitions after an initial presentation. Many of the (performance) works will go through the same journey. Bouchra Khalili's film The Tempest Society, based on a play and filmed at the Athens Festival theatre, is also showing at the Holland Festival in Amsterdam. Alexandra Bachzetsis' video work is based on a performance work she presented last January at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Her performance, which documenta 14 produces together with De Hallen, Haarlem, will be shown in theatres and museums. Maria Hassabi's work premiered at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and we are now showing a larger version.
Finally, from mid-July you will start working as curator of modern and contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago. What experiences from your role as curator at the documenta will you take with you, and what developments do you hope to make at this venue?
documenta is in every way a unique experience, which you probably only get once in a lifetime. The time you have as a curator to research, to travel, to have conversations with artists and put together an exhibition on such a scale is unprecedented. It can be compared to an artistic laboratory where you can collect ideas and get to try things out. There are many topics I have immersed myself in, which I would like to develop further and I will take these with me to Chicago. In addition, the Art Institute, with its leading collection of prehistoric to contemporary art, offers a learning experience to apply these ideas to such an encyclopaedic collection. Where documenta 14 is a microcosm for new directions, the Art Institute and its collection is a macrocosm where art history is constantly being expanded and revised by learning from today's art.
[1] The visual score or score serves as foreshadowing or instruction and documentation of a performance. For more, see Hendrik Folkerts' essay 'Keeping Score: Notation, Embodiment, and Liveness', in: South as a State of Mind #7 (documenta #2, spring/summer 2016), pp. 151-169.
Published on 8 June 2017.
