How the Documenta Fifteen went wrong

As curators at Documenta Fifteen, the Indonesian collective Ruangrupa wanted to champion community and tolerance. But its "People's Justice" banner, featuring anti-Semitic stereotypes, caused an outcry. After two days, the work was taken down. That wasn't the end of it. Further examples of anti-Semitism were found in the featured artworks at the Documenta, including Palestinian propaganda films. Documenta's reputation suffered immensely. All 1500 participating artists felt implicated, and saddened that the scandal overshadowed the exhibition's original vision of a mutually supportive art scene, independent of the market. Documenta could have become a festival of cultures that redrew the map of the art world. Instead, it ended in irreconcilable differences. We talked to artists and organizers and asked where Documenta Fifteen went wrong.

00:00 Intro
00:54 The idea behind Documenta 15
04:25 The anti-Semitism scandal
14:46 The artists and the collectives
27:05 Success or failure?


#dwhistoryandculture #indonesia #art

[meulia]

A question from someone far from Germany is: What is anti-Semitism? Isn’t it a linguistic category since Semitism linguistically includes both Arabs and Jews? Culturally, they are classified as Semitic. It seems that what RuangRupa meant as collective curator team is anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism. They are angry at states that wield power to take lives. As Indonesians, we understand colonialism very well and may be related to "anti-Israel experssion" (the Taring Padi mural that had to be removed) because it exhibits colonial traits towards Palestine, which does not even have an army. The big question is whether Germans can distinguish between anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment?

[parkereve]

This video helped me a lot in my Kassel abroad program, thank you!

[fredericschikoratamarit]

Israel kritisieren ist nicht Anti-Semitisch.

[yen-chiehhuang]

Thank you DW. What a good video which shows different perspectives. :)
I don't think Documenta should remove the art work of Indonesien team because that also means the dialogue were removed. How can we really talk about the topic which should be taken seriously without a foundation? For some countries, people really don't know exactly what anti-semitismus is because there is no such context in their culture or history. Let's say, the other side of anti-semitismus is semitismus. If people don't have a clue what semitismus is, how can they understand the meaning of "anti-semitismus" ? I totally agree artists have freedom to present what they want and it should also be respected. Documenta should be a open-stage for everyone and voices from everywhere. In this case, it is pretty critical... Since when should the artisits who were invited to the famous exibition should adjust there art works in order to comply with the culture of the place, where the exibition is held? It is also unfair for other artists, because people focus on the scandel mostly but hardly talk about other works. I feel sorry about that...

[--]

nah, there wasn’t any problem with the artworks