Documenta, The Next Documenta Should
be Curated by an Artist
During a conversation between artist Carsten Höller and me in Stockholm in 2002, right after the opening of Documenta 11, an idea emerged that was based on a discussion around concepts of some of the previous Documenta exhibitions. Towards the end of the meeting one of Höller’s remarks was: “I think that it would be challenging development if an artist would be invited to curate Documenta.” Based on Höller’s idea and formed by the thoughts expressed during the discussion in Sweden grew The Next Documenta Should Be Curated By an Artist.
Today it is nothing exceptional that curators occupy a more noticeable role in the process of producing an exhibition then some decades ago. While their task was historically related to the conservation of art works and the maintenance of a museum collection, curators began more and more to be creatively and conceptually involved in the making of exhibitions. Exhibitions became the creative principle of so-called exhibition makers who were described as exhibition directors and who became catalysts between the creative individual and society. Yet in recent years the focus has shifted and exhibitions in which art works are employed to illustrate the fixations of curators have been widely criticized. The creative and intellectual exchange between artists and curators has, however, been irreversibly changed and created a new condition in this relationship. It is on this backdrop that The Next Documenta Should Be Curated By an Artist is coming together.
The title of this project is less a demand than a question. A question that does not articulate a critique of previous Documenta exhibitions but rather investigates, in a provocative way, the relationship, which artists have to the profession of curating. Curators are showing more and more interest in setting up art exhibitions with greater creativity while artists are becoming more seriously involved in curating—note for example the participation of artists Gabriel Orozco and Rirkrit Tiravanija as co-curators of the 2003 Venice Biennial. For this project, following a continuous string of criticism from artists in regard to exhibition concepts that simply illustrate the curator’s ideas, a group of artists has been invited to reflect upon the conditions of the relationship between artists and curators. More importantly, the artists were asked to propose a brief concept of how they could imagine putting together an exhibition such as Documenta. An exhibition that would, from their particular point of view, represents an adequate form of exhibiting and presenting art within the model of a large-scale group exhibition.
Jens Hoffmann
Between June and October 2003 around 25 artist’s contributions will be presented on the e-Flux web-site. An area for discussion and comments for the audience of this project will be available inviting everyone to comment on the overall idea of the project, the contributions of the artists or even to post their own ideas for a Documenta. The generated material will be presented in a book published in collaboration with Revolver in November 2003.
Participants:
Marina Abramovic
Pawel Althamer
John Baldessari
Ricardo Basbaum
Laura Belém
Dara Birnbaum
Daniel Buren
AA Bronson
Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset
Morgan Fisher
Liam Gillick
Joseph Grigely
Natascha Sadr Haghighian
Carl Michael von Hausswolff
Isabell Heimerdinger
Federico Herrero
Alfredo Jaar
Tim Lee
Ken Lum
Dorit Margreiter
John Miller
Jonathan Monk
Boris Ondreicka
Serkan Özkaya
Florian Pumhösl
Martha Rosler
Julia Scher
Markus Schinwald
Tino Sehgal
Lawrence Weiner
The Next Documenta Should Be Curated By an Artist
Copyrights Jens Hoffmann and 
Electronic Flux Corporation, 2003 / design and architecture by 
FDTdesign.
A paper back version of this project will be published by 
Revolver (Archiv für aktuelle Kunst) in the Fall of ‘03.