The documenta is coming to an end, at least the 15th edition. How and whether the Kassel art festival will continue after that is written in the stars. Because the Indonesian curatorial collective Ruangrupa did not prevent anti-Jewish exhibits from being shown. And the fact that Ruangrupa are still getting in their own way when dealing with the anti-Semitism scandals is made clear by an interview that Farid Rakun and Reza Afisina gave to the “Tagesspiegel” on Monday.
“We never thought it would escalate like this,” Rakun and Afisina say in it. The first allegations of anti-Semitism in January came unexpectedly. “When politics and the media got involved, a new dynamic emerged. From this we learned that we need to explain better what we do.”
But the learning curve was flat. Even after the scandal at the Documenta opening in June, other anti-Semitic motifs surfaced. Finally, the headgear of a figure in a picture was pasted over so that it cannot be confused with a kippah. This overlay caused even more confusion.
All of this shows that the collective method of holding inexperienced gatherings rather than responsible curating of exhibitions is a problem for an art festival. But Ruangrupa still doesn’t question it: “Lumbung” (after the idea of the distribution of goods in the rice barn) will continue to exist.
They felt misunderstood by Germany: “No one really listens here, although we are concerned with dialogue.” Unfortunately, the difficult to understand variety of voices of the curators met a documenta management – internally and externally – who was unable to communicate. She did not manage to provide adequate information about the German point of view.
But even for being able to represent the “Global South”, Rakun and Afisina argue too much from the perspective of their country of origin: “In Indonesia nobody cares much about us,” they say. There is “still no proper vocabulary for articulating what an anti-Semitic motive is” and there is “no critical examination of the subject”. Everyone has been developing “their own idea of history” since the end of the Suharto dictatorship.
They dismiss the fact that they are accused of naivety or ignorance, “we have to work through our own traumata”. Documenta 15 would be a good thing if Ruangrupa used the learning processes from Kassel.