text and image roberto voorbij
This Monday starts the final week of dOCUMENTA (13). The still urgent and internationally, still most authoritative art event. Many of the works in this by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev curated edition combined engagement with poetry. As if the harsh reality was converted by the artists into a softer substance. As a consolation or as a way to cope with matters, or as renewed attention, a renewed focus. Whether it concerned Korbinian Aigner’s sensitive series of drawings of apples, whose origins carried back to the farthest imaginable contrast, a concentration camp. Or the hypnotic video / magic lantern projection In Search of Vanished Blood by Nalini Malan, which presented to the viewer in mantras among other things “the fatal position of the widow in Indian society” and seemed to send him into raptures. Or the video work The Most Electrified Town in Finland (Suomen sähköisin kunta) by Mika Taanila that in different sequences of time-lapse images showed the construction of a nuclear reactor in the Finnish Eurajoki in a remarkably hopeful manner and caused a next video trans. To only mention a tiny fraction of the overwhelming amount. Five years to let it sink in, to reflect, to analyze, to continue to let it resonate…
Korbinian Aigner – Apples (1912-60s).
Ryan Gander – I Need Some Meaning I Can Memorise (The Invisible Pull) (2012).
Khaled Hourani – Picasso in Palestine (2011).
Pratchaya Phintong – Sleeping Sickness (2012).
Mika Taanila – The Most Electrified Town in Finland (Suomen sähköisin kunta) (2004 -2012).
Claire Pentecost – When you step inside you see that it is filled with seeds (2012).
Nalini Malani – In Search of Vanished Blood (2012).
Zalmaï – Ghost War. Playing With Empires (2012).
Geoffrey Farmer – Leaves of Grass (2012).
Lori Waxman – 60 Wrd/min Art Critic (2008).
Audrey Sluiter, Bas Fontein, Michel van de Waart, Barbara den Ouden, Roberto Voorbij.
