Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Spotlight on the world’s most prestigious art fair

Besides the traditional prime venues of documenta in Kassel, namely the documenta-Halle, the Neue Galerie, and the Fridericianum, - museum spaces plus white cubes – dOCUMENTA (13) also took place in many of other spaces, representing an array of physical, psychological, cultural, historical realms and realities.

Located in an apparent simultaneity of both places and times, it was articulated through four distinct positions, corresponding to conditions within which artists and thinkers, in particular find themselves acting often in the present. Far from considered exhaustive of all the positions a subject can take, they tend to acquire their very significance in their interrelation.

These pre-conditions invariably related to the locations in which the event was sited physically and conceptually - Kassel, Alexandria/Cairo, Banff, and Kabul. They were seen as phenomenal spatialities, which embodied the four stated conditions, blurring the associations typically made with those specific places and conditions, and which instead shift as well as overlap constantly. 

A curatorial note explained: “Each of the positions is a state of mind, relating to time in a very specific way: while the retreat suspends time, being on stage creates a lively and vivid time of the here and now, the continuous present; while hope tends to release time through the sense of a promise, of time opening up and being unending, the sense of being under siege compresses time, to the degree that there’s no space beyond the elements of life tightly bound around us. Artists, artworks, and events occupy these four positions simultaneously.”

A prominent participation from India was in the form of a trans-disciplinary studio from Mumbai, CAMP, was also there at dOCUMENTA (13). Trio of Sanjay Bhangar, Ashok Sukumaran and Shaina Anand presented a film and photo installation, ‘The Boat Modes (2009-12)’ that stemmed from their research on mystical marine communities, piracy, trade relations in the Indian Ocean and sea routes – both ancient as well as present-day. All in all, India enjoyed a strong presence at the world’s leading art showcase this year, underlining its growing stature as an art superpower.

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