[iDC] Documenta and Data Mining
David Joselit
david.joselit at yale.edu
Tue Oct 9 15:59:49 UTC 2007
When Trebor invited me, as an art historian and
critic, to contribute a statement about last
summer's Documenta 12 organized by Roger Buergel
and Ruth Noack, it occurred to me that the reason
I liked the show (unlike many of my friends and
colleagues more directly involved in the art
world) was that it used art works in unexpected
and often aggressive ways, creating disjunctive
connections within a high concept décor that not
only included deep and lush colors, but also
theatrical lighting, intense sound bleed, and
startling visual juxtapositions. A commissioner
of another large international exhibition I
recently chatted with condemned Documenta as
absolutely immoral (even criminal!) in that the
curators-according to this person-disregarded the
wishes of several exhibiting artists about the
disposition of their work in the galleries (I
have no evidence for or against this assertion; I
merely repeat it). I realized with some degree
of horror, that in fact, this was what I liked
about the show-that the normal ways of looking at
art (grouped according an artist, a period style,
a geographical location, or a cultural heritage)
were systematically called into question. Each
of these four structuring categories was
de-naturalized. 1) The integrity of the
artist's oeuvre was undermined by Buergel and
Noack's practice of placing different works by
individual artists in different galleries
throughout the exhibition, causing me to joke to
one of my traveling companions that Documenta 12
was nothing but a giant retrospective of the
American sculptor John McCracken. 2) By creating
some juxtapositions that were purely
pseudo-morphological (i.e., bringing together
works that had no ostensible connection founded
in influence, geography or time-period) this
Documenta made a mockery of style. 3) An
artist's country of origin and current place of
residence was only indicated in a rather
convoluted system in the guidebook to the
exhibition, not in the galleries themselves,
making it difficult to bring one's stereotypes
about identity into the act of viewing; and 4)
ditto for the cultural "context" of works which
was largely absent from the gallery presentation.
There's no doubt that these strong curatorial
decisions did violence to the conventional mode
of address toward art publics. In a manner of
speaking, Buergel and Noack refused to provide
the normal signposts for global art world
cosmopolites to map their position and move on to
the next party. I say, good for them! We've had
enough of business as usual.
Here is what I think: Documenta 12 was the first
exhibition I know of that seemed founded on the
logic of the search engine, where, as in a Google
search, the pursuit of a certain criterion may
result in bizarre but potentially invigorating
combinations emerging from the network's
"unconscious." Of course Google did not curate
Documenta 12, but I think the exhibition's
exciting contribution might emerge from how it
arrives at an "epistemology of data-mining."
After all, the explosion of art production in
recent years, not to mention the even greater
proliferation of image cultures on screens and in
cities, has rendered art a kind of data. Why not
treat it that way?
--
David Joselit
Professor and Chair
History of Art
Yale University
PO Box 208272
New Haven, CT 06520
phone: (203)432-2666
fax: (203)432-7462
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