portrait MAURITS SILLEM
No more surface!
Just substance
Documenta 12
In the final part of a two-part interview, Roger M. Buergel and Ruth Noack,
Documenta 12’s artistic director and curator respectively,
discuss their plans for the exhibition and the state of the artworld today
ArtReview: has a certain financial value. Will your vision of Documenta – as
What do y ou imagine it is going to be like to walk into an exercise in shared responsibility, with the audience creating the
Documenta 12 this summer? show and the show creating the audience, with magazine editors
from around the world creating the catalogue in a democratic
Roger M. Buergel: fashion – operate any differently?
Very relaxed, very easy-going. That is why we are ignoring the
city of Kassel, and working with a garden and the park, and RMB: I would agr ee dissent is an important element of a compositional
building a pavilion. We are fed up with using defunct factory activity like exhibition-making, and even dissent between the
spaces to house art. curatorial position and the artistic position.
AR: Y ou’ve said that your show is about shared responsibility, RN: But dissent is also something that is part of the market, because it
whereas the art market is easily described as being about is the way that the market rejuvenates itself. You have one fashion
privilege, an elite social scene and social difference in general. and then you have the next. I think it is more important to allow
How does Documenta counter the view of art as a fast- sustained arguments to happen over time, and sustainability is
growing market? something that the market can’t deal with, because it has to turn
things into forms that are fixed in order to make them sellable.
RMB: I think the art mark et is much more heterogeneous. It looks like
a monster from a distance, but in terms of curatorial work, it’s AR: And the market has to create a hierarchy to keep itself going.
marginal. We all know that the market’s 85% oil paintings and
simply cannot reflect the full spectrum of artistic practice. It’s RN: Y es, and you have to sell off a lot of things. There are a lot of dealers
also a tool, at the moment, for the constitution of something who don’t care what happens to their artists after five years, because
like a global bourgeoisie. So in a way the artworld is hijacked they only need to sell them, and then they have the next artists. So
by class formation, and quite flattered by it. If you understand I would also differentiate within the market sector: are they building
those mechanisms, you can safely ignore them or use them for up their artists over a long period of time, supporting the production
your own purposes. If people are willing to turn Documenta of work that could not be produced in any other way? Artists who
into a salon, that does not mean that Documenta will be a salon. have a gallery and are working like this are much better off than an
It just has many facets, and the high art is in having it all under artist who is successful within the Biennale system, where you have
one roof, but also being able to differentiate. to have an idea, turn it into a work and then do the next Biennale.
This means that you churn out works which are always being shown
Ruth Noack: right away, and then they are completely forgotten. After two or
This question of differ entiation, and preciseness, is really three years you are out of fashion; you are finished.
important. Sometimes the art, the market itself, really takes the
edge off things. But at the same time, if there weren’t certain RMB: I think for artists the Biennale sy stem is more deadly than the
collectors, a lot of the art that seems to be very valuable market. No one is really questioning what you are doing. You are just
wouldn’t exist. So I think that you can’t dismiss the market. in or out.
AR: The art mark et operates on the basis of consensus – the shared AR: Do you think your role as curators is to question what the artists
belief (between buyer and seller, at least) that a certain work are doing?
p 92-93 Documenta 12 AR May07.in92 92 5/4/07 14:55:32
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