No subject

When I read Catherine David´s texts before I came to see the documenta, I had 
already gotten the impression that she was resisting works from the other 
parts of the world. She had used two or three terms like »I´m not interested 
in culture shopping,« or »I´m not going to have an ethnic feast,« and had 
said that works from other cultures appear in Europe as exotic or even as 
neocolonial if they are not contextualized. I was not sure whether this was a 
defense mechanism, or if she was really thinking these things. After having 
had some dialogs with her, I think that this is just part of a general 
preoccupation, so I´m more respectful now of her position. 

David does seem to have one very strong inclination as an art historian and 
art critic, which is to contextualize historically. She does not want to show 
any art object, even a Western object, without making sure that its 
historicity is apparent in some way. It must be available to the viewer and 
sufficiently contextualized either by supporting information or by supporting 
works. I´m basically very sympathetic to this curatorial position. 

The other preoccupation she has is trying to resist commodification, 
reification, as it is occurring in the Western art market. I think that the 
reification of the art object is not the only way that reification takes 
place, and I did comment upon this to her. Reification cannot be avoided: 
whatever is put out in an exhibition like the documenta is already reified, 
and the documenta itself is the most reified art event of Europe or of the 
world (it has private sponsors, and is seen everywhere as an advertising 
image, etc.). There is no way to overcome that. One can, however, try to 
resist it by keeping the documenta from becoming an art festival for the 
galleries, and I think David has done that. 

In relation to the »100 Days 100 Guests« program, I raised the question as to 
whether the exchange through discourse isn´t too easy of a way out. It has of 
course its advantages: people use a similar code in discourse, which allows 
100 guests from everywhere to communicate, and allows a general audience to 
listen and make sense of it all. However, discourse and intellectual life are 
also prone to a certain degree of commodification. It is an easy packet to 
get Geeta Kapur, Gayatri Spivak, and Edward Saïd to Kassel. I see it as a 
problem that one encapsulates entire cultures by expelling their art works 
while at the same time including their discourses. It´s like substituing an 
easily transportable commodity for one which is more difficult and more 
expensive to install. 

I think that David´s point of view is that, though a piece of art may sit in 
the exhibition and look like an exotic object, by the very nature of the 
people she invites, issues will be raised, the documenta, its concept, and 
the Euro-American situation may be critiqued, so that contextualizing and 
historicising is already taking place. I think this is a fair assumption. 

One statement which she clearly made in the introduction to the shortguide, 
is that in the art of many non-Western cultures there are local modernities, 
but not what one might call advanced or avantgarde works. The dynamic, she 
says, is in other forms of expression: in cinema, theater, literature, music, 
and in the oral traditions. There are cases in which this is true. For 
instance she has said that in Iran, cinema is the most advanced art form, and 
we all seem to have the same impression. But I wouldn´t say that this is true 
for India, for Indonesia, Korea, nor the Philippines, because I know that in 
these countries, the visual arts have a very definite positioning within the 
cultural complex. The same is true for Singapore and Thailand, and certainly 
South Africa (where David took Kentridge from), has one of the most vital 
visual art scenes. And Cuba´s, as we know, is one of the most advanced in 
South America, in terms not only of the production of art, but having become 
the point of convergence for the Latin American avantgarde. 

I have actually had quite a lot of problems with this assumption. Even though 
she wants to open up the critical discourse on art, she is still protecting 
the nature of the art object as it has developed in the West. Also, she is 
more comfortable addressing the other arts, where strong intervention from 
her is not required. She is interested in cinema, but she is not a curator of 
film. Literature, music, and theatre are not her fields either, so she isn´t 
held responsible when she says there is a greater dynamic in these areas. 

It is easier for her to protect a certain ground where she is very particular 
in what she wants to show. David is very stringent and has a clear idea of 
where the avantgarde comes out of modernity. She has narrowed it down from 
the general historical avantgarde to what she calles »critical art.« This is 
a critical intervention into the avantgarde itself. She understands very 
clearly the ways in which artists have intervened in, disrupted, and 
interrogated urban lives, society, and contemporary history, artistic 
positions commonly found in Europe and the USA, and to an extent in Latin 
America. She is much more confident and convinced about these, and the »rest« 
she is literally seeing as simply the rest. 

In response to her comment that there exists »elsewhere« some other dynamic, 
I said to her that she is speaking as though it is an abstract dynamic. I 
believe this is a shortcut, and not a real investigation of the cultures 
involved. One of the reasons for her position, is that in these other art 
forms, (music, performing arts, cinema, etc.), the axis between the 
traditional form and the popular, urban form is more easily located. And that 
is what usually interests the Western intellectual, critic or curator. 

One thing I would like to add is that, though I come from India, I´m no 
longer interesed in repeatedly telling European curators that they must 
include Asian art in their exhibitions. There is a certain kind of parallel 
developement of regions now, and that´s for the best. I´m not saying that 
regionalism is important; what I´m saying is that there are parallel 
expositions and parallel discourses, and it´s not necessary to have 
everything come to Europe or go to America. If it happens, then good: it 
means that there is a greater balance of exchange, that a new form of 
internationalism is developing. On the other hand, it doesn´t seem to trouble 
me very much anymore. One can now be sure that there will be something in 
Kwangju, or in Queensland, or in Johannesburg. Sao Paulo has always had an 
interesting viewpoint. 

I would not be very concerned that the documenta X doesn´t have more Asian or 
African artists. Of course, it would have been a more complete understanding 
of contemporary art, and if she is interested in the historical avantgarde 
then she should have taken into account the historical avantgarde in 
different parts of the world. If she means to present just the Euro-American 
avantgarde with supplementary discourses, it remains just one point of view, 
and she and other curators will have to go elsewhere to see what´s happening 
in the world. 

If David said that she was going to present a resume of contemporary culture, 
this is not represented by the actual exhibition. But, if she claims to be 
interested in the deconstruction of cultural practices through very rapid 
(and often destructive) processes of urban acculturation, then I think that 
she has made her point. In my mind, she has created a phenomenology of urban 
culture in the European-American context, concentrated (if you have noticed 
the works) on negative species, on species of destruction and death, of abuse 
and marginilization of peoples and populations in Western cultures. 

There is definetely a point of view on which she is putting a critical edge. 
However, the objects she recognizes come out of the Western avantgarde. She 
doesn´t seem to recognize other objects, or when she does recognize them, she 
fears that they are »exotic.« To some degree, as a European curator she makes 
a very exclusive choice in the matter, and that choice is based on criteria 
that come out of Western modernism. How radically she makes her choices, or 
whatever cutting edge she tries to give the exhibition, she is still in an 
exclusionary mode rather than in an inclusive one.