Fair enough. I was talking with Esther Leslie who runs the political aesthetics course at Birkbeck in London who'd had a similar experience to you and having looked at the show (which is I think fair to say, appalling) I have to agree.
I do think the ideas as starting points are decent ones, unfortunately Roger Buergal doesn't seem to be a) particularly sensitive or b) to have read enough (or any) Said. As a result the show succumbs to a particularly obnoxious vein of orientalism.
Nevertheless I do not think the magazines are particularly bad - their scope is narrower than the exhibition and the editor (Georg Schollhammer) seems to have compiled a reasonable collection of essays that are not such a disservice to the starting points. My comment was made in respect to art magazines in general and I still think that in that (often rubbish) field the Documenta mags have stuck out. Lastly, what on earth is wrong with being an 'uppity 3rd world person'??
nope, nothing wrong about being such a person, just me being weary of forever negotiating as such in a place like berlin, where i thought they'd know better (ie, orientalism isn't really kewl, and people of colour don't need patronising etc). Re: documenta 12 - after spending the first w'kend there, the curatorial conceit struck me flat, as fairly sophomoric, and in some of the stagings, it seemed insulting to the works (eg, that awful pavilion's dead spaces and light). As for the much-touted edukators/guides, more training is required - or at least enthusiasm to switch back on video work gone on the blink (rather than an indifferent shrug...). i've to go back and write a 'critique' of the mag project, and show, and it bores me silly already despite some good nuggets scattered here and there
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Re: documenta mags??
Date: 2007-07-01 04:00 pm (UTC)I do think the ideas as starting points are decent ones, unfortunately Roger Buergal doesn't seem to be a) particularly sensitive or b) to have read enough (or any) Said. As a result the show succumbs to a particularly obnoxious vein of orientalism.
Nevertheless I do not think the magazines are particularly bad - their scope is narrower than the exhibition and the editor (Georg Schollhammer) seems to have compiled a reasonable collection of essays that are not such a disservice to the starting points. My comment was made in respect to art magazines in general and I still think that in that (often rubbish) field the Documenta mags have stuck out. Lastly, what on earth is wrong with being an 'uppity 3rd world person'??
Re: documenta mags??
Date: 2007-07-01 05:40 pm (UTC)