As much Performance as never before - The documenta 14 in Kassel has opened!
At noon, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, together with the Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos, opened the world's most important exhibition for contemporary art in Kassel. The documenta 14 will take place from 10 June to 17 September in the entire city. A tour.
Let's start with the Lutherplatz / Hauptpost. Here you can follow the trend towards Slo-Mo performances. The German-French performance duo Prinz Gholam poses here in slow, sluggish poses in between gravestones. They are supposed to reproduce classical poses on antique pictures. In the stairwell, you can also see women with silver shoes lying motionless on the ground. If you want to help them, they move a little and concede their participance in the minimal performance around the choreographer Maria Hassabi.
In the New Gallery, the artist Yael Davids hang herself headfirst at a knotted rope. She reads texts about sitting, giving and asking questions in her 40-minute performance.
The most disturbing performance throws the artist Regina José Galindo from Guatemala in the Kassel city museum. She stands in a windowless chamber, in which arrow loops with gun barrels for plastic weapons appear in its four corners. Visitors can target the artist. This mock execution entitled "El Objectivo" (The Objective) is intended to reveal the mechanisms of violence in society.
The partnership with the Athenian documenta taking place for the first time this year gets significantly obvious in the Fridericianum. There the Turkish artist Banu Cennetoglu changed the name of the place into the words "Being safe is scary", parts of the collection of the Athens National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) are beeing exhibited. The retro-looking show features works by Jan Fabre, Mona Hatoum, Kendell Gers and many others. Greek artists, who are rather unknown around central Europe, are exhibiting their artworks here.
In the main post office, an old 70s concrete building, the documenta makers have now also brought in art. They provide the building the somewhat strange name "New New Gallery" for this purpose. For example, the artist Gordon Hookey has installed a large wall painting on the history of Australia from an aboriginal point of view. The artist Máret Annasara shocks with a curtain of reindeer skirts. Its goal is to bring back memories of the forced slaughter of the animals by the Norwegian Government.
There is a really great installation on the Friedrichsplatz. It is about the book cult of documenta 14. The impressive monument "Panthenon of Books" by Marta Minujín houses thousands of plastic-welded books that re-enact the temple framework. Have fun!
