The Documenta art festival was started in 1955 by local artist Arnold Bode as a way to shake off the Nazi suppression of culture and bring adventurous modern art back to Germany. It was hugely popular, and since 1959 has run every five years. Each instalment is curated and organised by a different team, choosing artists from around the world.
Documenta 14 in 2017 is now considered one of the worst instalments of the famous art festival. They tried to do simultaneous festivals in Germany and Greece, and neither of them went well. I only went to the German side, but my whole trip in general was a disaster. My recommendation if you go is to get a multi-day ticket and go midweek when it’s less crowded. Documenta 16 in 2027 is already on a shaky footing however, after mass resignations from the board after German authorities wouldn’t allow any association with the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement against the Israeli regime.
I think the whole weekend was cursed. My friend I was going to go with couldn’t make it. There had been torrential rain all week, and I’d already had a call from the bookings website that my centrally located hotel had flooded, and they’d moved me to one further out of town. My supposedly direct train journey from Hamburg had already turned into several connections due to cancellations and flooding, and became a much longer journey. The only time I had between trains where I could attempt to get some food was at a small station along the way, but the limited facilities were so swamped by stranded passengers that I only managed to grab a tube of Pringles and a drink. I only had a few minutes to change when I got to Hannover (my least favourite train station in Germany).
The train arrived and was packed. I was working in Germany for five weeks and had a large suitcase. The train was the older type where you have to climb up steps to get in. I was struggling up the steps with my suitcase. A man saw that there was only one seat left in the carriage, and physically pushed me over to get it. I landed painfully against the handrail, and gained a huge bruise. I still have a scar there.
When I got into the train, there were no seats left, so I had to sit on the floor. I got my Pringles out, and they had been crushed into dust by my fall. I had nothing else to eat with me. I’d had enough and burst into tears. Once I started crying, another middle-aged man suddenly magically made a seat available. He had been hogging it for his bag, and letting people sit on the floor. Sometimes I hate the German public.
Kassel itself has a strangely East German feel, despite being firmly in West Germany. Perhaps it’s in the same time loop as Winden from Dark.
I took a tram to my replacement hotel hoping to have a shower before going to the art festival, only to discover they didn’t allow check-in until three pm, so I dumped my cases in an empty function hall. All the other guests appeared to be from Russia, there for some kind of conference. I guess I had got one of the spare rooms from this event. It was supposed to be a courtesy upgrade from my original cheaper hotel, but the place had a very strange feel that circa 1993 it had been a luxury spa hotel, but had fallen on hard times and been neglected for a long time.
My room had a built in mini-bar, but they had taken the fridge out, and several of the cupboard doors felt like they were going to fall off the hinges any minute. I was told the swimming pool was also out of order. While writing this, I looked up the hotel on Tripadvisor and it still has bad reviews, with photos of torn curtains and mysterious stains and odours. One of the German reviews is titled “Spectacular disaster”. It was also a way out of town, with infrequent tram services, so I felt I was wasting extra time getting back. By the time I got into town I just went for a reliable chain pizza at Vapiano because I was too hungry to spend time seeking out somewhere better.
Getting my wristband took a while because the ticket office was chaotic and swamped. I also couldn’t actually get into the main exhibition hall because they’d oversold tickets. There were queues down the street, no timed slots, and not enough staff to manage the crowds. I tried multiple times over the day, and just couldn’t get in without spending half the day queuing. So I gave up and explored the smaller exhibits instead. I felt my €20 day ticket had been a real waste of money.
I liked this exhibit by Argentinian artist Marta Minujín in the town square however. From a distance it looks like a Greek temple. Up close however it was made of scaffolding wrapped in plastic, with second hand paperback books arranged under the transparent skin. All of them were books that had been banned at some point in their history. It stood on the same spot where the Nazis had burnt books in 1933. The artist had done the same project in Buenos Aires in 1983 to celebrate the end of the dictatorship there, handing out the previously illegal books to the public at the end of the show.
Milan Kundera’s The Joke. Well worth a read. I’ve written a lot about him in my book project.
I like this cover for Der Untertan by Heinrich Mann
Stefan Zweig is the novelist whose work The Grand Budapest Hotel is based on. He was an international bestseller in the interwar era, until he was driven into exile by the Nazis and eventually killed himself. I can highly recommend his novella Chess.
There was also a second hand book market on the square raising money for charity. I like this gormless cover for The Name of the Rose. Do you think he was murdered, Brother William?
Some of the exhibits were in the Orangerie.
I could actually get in there thankfully. Most of the pieces were audio visual.
I liked this video installation of Byzantine chanting by Romuald Karmakar. This was the best video I could find online.
The Ottoneum venue was also extremely crowded, and I didn’t really get any decent photos of any other artwork aside from these paintings by Mongolian artist Nomin Bold.
When I came back to the hotel, there was karaoke going on in the hall, entertaining the Russian conference who were very drunk by this point. I felt pretty defeated by the day and retired to my tired looking room from 1992.
I had bought a book at the excellent popup bookshop at the festival. The prospect of getting one of the many large and luxurious coffee table books home unscathed after several more weeks travelling around Germany was daunting, but a small paperback of essays by John Berger called Confabulations for €9 caught my eye.
Berger’s Ways of Seeing is compulsory reading for every art student, introducing the concept of the “male gaze” to wider society. Confabulations isn’t a groundbreaking work of collected thought though, it’s a collection of vignettes trying to “touch the vision or experience that prompted the words”. Berger mixes his critique of capitalism and neoliberalism with wandering discussions ranging over Rosa Luxembourg; Charlie Chaplin; attending his friend Sven’s funeral in an endless Swedish summer; swimming in the municipal pool; catching eels in Italy; Iraqi poet Adbul-Kareem Kasid; his favourite mosaic in a church in Ravenna; sign language; and Cape Verdean singer Cesaria Evora.
There’s a strong crossover in feel with Anthony Bourdain, Berger reminds us that “the digestive system is often beyond our control” and that coincidences happen when you have your eyes open. In CS Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader, there is a magic book with a story that is “refreshing to the spirit” after stressful situations. That’s exactly how I felt about Berger’s very human book.
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