11. September
we are angry, we are sad, we are tired, we are united
After Kassel, there was no more communication in our WhatsApp group or mail, we needed, for sure, a break from documenta, even if there was still a LE 18 event in September organised by Meriem Benmhamed, Hercules in the land of golden apples.
End of August and the beginning of September was the time we were supposed to prepare the publication that lumbung Press offered to each collective (with 1.000 copies). Laila and Montasser tried to collect all the information produced during documenta, and in the previous months, but the deadline, September the 11th, was too short after the exhaustive months of June and August. Finally the only publication printed was the one from Safina made by Amine, Elisa and Taoufiq. In any case, Laila said there will be a book resuming the participation in documenta and it will be presented during the 10th anniversary of LE 18 in 2023.
Even if we had finished our participation, documenta was still running till September the 25th and we thought documenta was going to finish without more controversies despite the complaint made in August related to an image of the Archives des luttes des femmes en Algérie, but after an examination made by documenta archive they decided there was no problem with that image. Nonetheless, on September the 3rd Laila shared a mail with a document; Preliminary assessment of the expert panel on the problem of anti-Semitism at documenta fifteen that could be made public at any time. It was like a bomb for all the collectives because the pressure to cancel documenta was going to be unbearable.
We had a first zoom meeting with all the collectives that same day, in which we discussed actions to be taken and the way to organise ourselves; poster design group; banner design group; statement group; media communication…It was Ade Darmawan who explained us the situation and the conversations they had with the interim Managing Director, but as we already knew, the matter was a political one. It was the first time ruangrupa shared with the lumbung community the fact that they were thinking of resigning because they were under too much pressure. I spoke briefly twice, once to say that if we left they would win and then another to propose a solution in which ruangrupa resigned as Artistic Directors (as they wanted) but immediately afterwards we (the lumbung community) would invite them as a collective, so that they would no longer have to deal with documenta, politicians , press… The general feeling was to stay and to protest. Some collectives did not want to accept that someone could accuse them of being anti-Semites or of pouring out their guilt and complexes on them. Besides, the “expert panel” wrote on its conclusions something we already knew, there is no place to criticise the Israeli government in Germany, any critic would be categorised as anti-Semitism and what it worst, the presence of Palestinian artists and collectives would be considered as a provocation. That is one of the reason I wrote a note on the document we were preparing as a statement collectively that we should appeal to the European Union because we could not accept that kind of discrimination against anyone who wants to criticise a governmental action, because that had nothing to do with religious issues.
During these days I wanted to be involved in all the conversations and try to contribute, for me it wasn’t just about documenta, for me this was a sample of what is happening in Europe, a sign of the drift that populism is taking throughout the continent. In a previous Zoom meeting I mentioned that if the event took place in Italy, France or Spain, we would have had the same problems and it seems as if no one wanted to be aware of the dangers of giving in to extremists (right and left, religious…). The pattern is repeated over and over again throughout history and especially in recent years, it is based on provocations and threats with the aim of imposing a way of thinking, and it is not just about big events, but also in the day to day of our societies. We also have extremists in Ceuta and their political representatives do not stop provoking in all the municipal plenary sessions, dividing our society, giving classes on supposed morality, deciding who is a good Christian and therefore a good Spaniard and if you belong to another religion and you do not fall within its parameters, then you become a traitor, an outcast. But if we also take into account that all this happens in a border city with practically half of a population of one religion and the other half of another, then it will be better understood how this type of behavior becomes a serious threat not only to the coexistence of its inhabitants, but for the relations between Spain and Morocco. For all this, the controversies in Kassel affected me fully because it is one more example of the serious danger that Europe is running with this extremist drift. That is the reason I did not agree with one of the proposals mentioned during our meetings, the withdrawing of all the collectives. After a consultation, we realised it wasn’t clear in what legal position some of the contracts with documenta could fall, we also argued that the visitors were not guilty of this situation and therefore it would not be fair if they could not visit the exhibitions, so we decided to organise a campaign where posters would be placed in visible areas of each venue (in those whose collectives agreed) and the images would be shared on our social media networks. Everything should be ready by the time the “expert panel” report was made public.
On September the 10th, at 10:28 a.m., one of the members of the scientific advisory panel published on her Twitter account a short version of the report in German and an English version.
That same morning, we published our statement We are angry, we are sad, we are tired, we are united and we shared it on our social media and the posters were placed in the venues.
Of course German medias echoed the report in which, according to the scientific advisory panel, there were more antisemitic works, demanding the removal of the art works concerned, and openly qualifying documenta fifteen as an anti-Semitic exhibition, increasing the pressure on documenta, on ruangrupa and on the lumbung members. However, specialised media all over the world started to share our statement and outside Germany, the initiative and the control of the narrative were not exclusive to the German media. Some articles were about the use of scientists by politicians. Moreover, on September the 15th, the Finding committee published a forceful statement in support of ruangrupa and the collectives and harshly criticising the position of the German press.
I think that was an important support because we realised we were not alone, thanks to the Finding Committee and to articles that appeared in international media.
5 days before the end of documenta fifteen a conference was organised, Let there be lumbung to contextualise art practises by ways of lumbung. There were two forceful and also clarifying talks, both by members of the Finding Committee, Philippe Pirotte and Charles Esche (from minute 1:46), about what had happened in Kassel, the hypocrisy of politicians and the importance of the achievements of this edition.
The last few days the WhatsApp group lumbung in Kassel, was full of farewell messages, events announcements and website links with texts explaining what had happened with controversies and our reactions; Aneta Rostkowska and Giulia Bellinetti, Alberto Aguilar, José Manuel Springer, Maria Nadotti…
It was very emotional to follow the “closing ceremony” of documenta fifteen through the images and videos shared on WhatsApp, with numerous people gathered in the museum, with posters thanking ruangrupa for their curatorial proposal and for having resisted until the end. documenta fifteen closed on September the 25th and with an attendance above expectations, 738.000 visitors in 100 days (in 2017 Documenta 14 had 850.000 visitors). Great museums have not yet recovered the number of visits prior to the pandemic. Despite all the controversies, it is evident that traditional and social media, and politicians are not a real reflection of society, otherwise this year there would not have been so many visitors and in a radically different edition.
Credits texts, photos and drawings: Carlos Pérez Marín