Playlist
Gentle Giant - I Lost My Head
King Crimson - A Young Person's Guide
Up early, breakfasted with Jorg, Yvonne and the kids then off into Kassel in the Panda, parking right by the Hauptbahnhof - once the main station in Kassel, now reduced to a regional outpost with nearby erstwhile upstart, Wilhelmshohe having usurped its crown a few years back...
However, the Hauptbahnhof is now an art haven and it was here we were to continue our three day adventure at dOCUMENTA (13)...
We arrived at 9:30...
...and joined the queue for tickets...
...purchasing two day passes for ourselves and Alan and Penny, who arrived around 10...
And we were off...
First stop was a white room with three speakers hanging from the ceiling blaring out talking voices in various languages...
This was Florian Hecker's "Chimerization" - now that's what I call Documenta...
Alan wasn't so sure...
You can download the three soundtracks here...
Onward to another room and this...
Rabih Mroue's "The Pixilated Revolution"...
Rather than a gun, the victim is holding a mobile phone...
And being targeted by these guys...
This was based around found phone footage of a dissident in Syria being killed by a sniper - the sniper being the last thing he saw and, indeed, filmed...
In another room, a film by Bani Abidi regarding the nature of authority in India and a minor local councilman trying to decide the best pose for a statue...
Maybe you had to be there...
In another room, unfeasibly large envelopes by Seth Price...
...which was combined with a fashion show elsewhere which presented clothes designed for the occasion by Price and NY fashion designer, Tim Hamilton...
In many of the rooms, there were just some things that I thought were good to look at...
...not sure if Anne was of the same opinion though re "Untitled" by Kudzanai Chiurai....
There was much headphone wearing and furrowing of brows...
...and consultation of the guide books...
Up at the end of the southern wing of the station/gallery, two exhibits which were much enjoyed - this, "The Sea", from Cypriot Christodoulos Panayiotou...
...which comprised five electricity poles from the early 1930's and some tiling from Limassol...
Almost immediately upon having been installed in Limassol, the poles had been brought down by heavy waves in a storm...
The smell of creosote was excellent...
And a film by Irishman Willie Doherty, "Secretion", shot around Kassel and its environs, describing a rather nasty case of karma in an almost Brothers Grimm like way...
Our quartet then made its way to the end of one of the platforms...
..where four speakers in the distance played a fragment of another quartet, "Study for Strings", written by Pavel Haas in 1943 whilst held in a Nazi death camp, to where many Jews were transported from this very spot in 1941 and 1942...
This was Susan Philipsz's "Klangtest"...
Very poignant and one of the best moments of our visit...
Inside a nearby building, a circle of dirt had a queue forming alongside it...
This was Michael Portnoy (sadly, not the ex-Dream Theater drummer)'s "Gnosis"...
People were making their way to the top of a ladder and peering down into the inside of the dirt sculpture and taking photos..
However, a passer by informed us that these visitors were unknowingly queuing to see an empty circle of dirt, the inside of which was merely painted white...
We moved on...
I discovered later that there were in fact small items inside the "hole" but I don't think we missed anything by foregoing the 30 minute wait...
In the next hall, this carved-from-wood third world sweatshop by Istvan Csakany impressed...
...as did the much touted venetian blind display on a further platform, Haegue Yang's snappily entitled "Approaching : Choreography Engineered in Never-Past Tense"...
It was impossible to catch them opening or shutting - but that was all they did - at the least expected moment...
Outside and Lara Favaretto's "Momentary Monument IV" seemed to be a pile of junk...
However, if you looked more closely, you saw some of the randomly dumped objects had been replaced with concrete...
...and the objects placed further down the site in a room...
No idea what it symbolised but I liked it...
Right at the far end of the station was a space curated by the Critical Art Ensemble...
They do not offer anything themselves but open their space up to allcomers on a day by day basis...
Today we had Chilean Indians protesting about mining, drugs and weapon running...
And that was it for the Hauptbahnhof and the morning session...
We exited below Jonathon Borofsky's "Man Walking to the Sky"...
...from Documenta IX in 1992 and bought by the city for permanent display...
...and, after some mucking about...
Took the D13 bus down to the Neue Gallerie, stopping first in the adjacent Mundo restaurant for some well earned lunch...
...before continuing the culturefest...
The permanent works at the Neue Gallerie were juxtaposed with works for the Documenta...
Mr Beuys was there again...
...and there was a portrait of Documenta founder Arnold Bode by my favourite living artist, Gerhard Richter...
..along with photos of works from previous Documentas...
I saw this Beuys work ("The Pack") a couple of years ago at the Tate in London...
Off into the main part of the gallery...
...the walls of which were adorned in places by past artists who had lived or worked in Kassel...
Then, the presence of strategically placed concrete blocks told us we were back in Documentaland...
...with little devils of Khadim Ali's "The Haunted Lotus"...
...films about lesbians...
...and disarmingly cute donkeys in Sanje Ivekovic's "The Disobedient (The Revolutionaries)"...
...each of which represented a famous dissident - from Nelson Mandela to Tank Man (the unknown person who stood in front of the tanks on Tienanmen Square)...
I was attracted by abstract art, as is my wont...
...and this was Susan Hiller's jukebox containing "100 Songs for 100 Days of Documenta", the lyrics of which were stencilled around the walls...
All so-called "protest songs"...
One whole corridor was filled with Geoffrey Farmer's "Leaves of Grass", a very impressive 3D collage consisting of cuttings from Time Life magazine...
...while the wall at the end of this room, by Hubertus Gojowczyk, was entitled "The Door to the Library" and comprised cemented books...
More films - with puppets...
...or overlooked by glass knots (Hassan Khan's "The Knot" with "Blind Ambition" in the background)...
Then, it was out and over to the Brothers Grimm Museum...
...with its rather ugly fairytale princess...
Inside, there was just one exhibiter for Documenta, Bulgarian wannabe Knight and wannabe Hard Rock Drummer, Nedko Solakov's "Knights and Other Dreams"...
I liked the cut of his gib...
..as, in his films, he drummed in full knight's armour, including helmet...
..and tried (and failed miserably) to land a remote controlled model helicopter on the miniature heliport on his left arm...
Back out into the sun, where this chap...
...was using his guide book as a pillow...
Down we walked, past the underground cemetry which we did not enter (but could have, given its exhibit status)...
We could see the Herkules monument way off in the distance...
...as we once again took the D13...
...back to the Karlsaue park, where said Herkules was said to have thrown his pick axe...
Not really, this is Claes Oldenbourg's "Spitzhacke", an exhibit from Documenta 7 in 1982 (my first) which, like the Man Walking to the Sky, was purchased by the city to have on permanent display...
Under the hot sun...
...ice cream beckoned...
...along with a well earned rest...
...followed by a visit to the Orangerie Palace...
...normally a science museum...
Foucault's Pendulum anyone?
...for more weird stuff...
Namely, Erkki Kurenniemi's "In 2048" - with robot heads rolling around the floor talking like Kraftwerk...
TVs...
Old TVs...
More old, disembodied TVs...
And that was about it for today...
We were joined on the Friedrichsplatz by Jorg and Yvonne for beers and chat...
...before heading home after a very long, tiring, brilliant day...
Highlight of the Day : Contemporary art coming out my ears...
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