[Reader-list] Documenta 12 - Project One

[Jeebesh Bagchi]

Documenta 12 has worked out it's first project and it looks like an 
imaginative expansion on the Documenta 11 ideas of Platforms. best j

http://www.documenta12.de/documenta12/english/

In the first important press conference since his election as artistic
director of documenta 12, Roger Martin Buergel introduced in Kassel
one main project on the way to the exhibition in 2007: a journal of
journals. More than 70 print periodicals worldwide, editorial offices
and online-media are going do discuss the exhibition’s central
subjects together with documenta 12. This global network project, in
which international prestigious publications as well as specialized
media of small linguistic areas away from the big artistic centres are 
going to participate, is to Roger M. Buergel “not only an important 
medium of information but also the organizational form that prepares the 
ground for the exhibition at the preliminary stage.” The first journal 
of documenta 12 will be published in spring 2006 and is
dealing with the subject: “The Modern Age is our Antiquity”. Until
then the participating magazines will engross in this topic locally
and with their specific knowledge in texts, features and images. The
project is organized by the Viennese art publicist, Georg Schöllhammer
<http://www.documenta12.de/documenta12/english/schoellhammer.pdf>.
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The documenta12 magazine


1. The project:


During the next two-and-a-half years, documenta 12 will work together 
with more then 70 print and online periodicals throughout the world. 
These journals and magazines will discuss the main themes and theories 
behind documenta 12 and reflect upon their meaning for the respective 
local context. The documenta partner journals will publish texts on the 
documenta together with reactions to these texts, entering into a 
dialogue with the documenta. The documenta will then compile these 
debates and the texts central to them into a comprehensive publication. 
This publication - a journal of journals, so to speak, published in 
three issues - represents a platform for worldwide aesthetic discourse. 
This platform will in turn also form part of the documenta 12 exhibition 
in Kassel.


2. The context:


Magazines and journals represent a central interface between the 
production, discussion and criticism of art. Various positions taken in 
the discourse are developed here and subjected to ongoing discussion. 
These periodicals thus play an important role in translating these 
positions into terms that can be understood and made use of by either a 
specific audience or by a broader public. The journal, and more 
specifically the art and culture journal, is a medium uniquely devoted 
to reflecting the relationships between art and theory, and between art 
and the public, as well as dealing with the issues involved in artistic 
practice and theoretical work. With this project, the documenta enters 
into a dialogue with those journals across the world that are important 
to its work. The means by which this dialogue takes place can be 
understood within the context of how it relates to local configurations 
and translocal intentions. Not the size of the medium is significant 
here, but rather its relevance. The project therefore spreads its 
activities among media of different sizes, ranging from 
micropublications in relatively uncommon languages, to leading 
transnational media, with the aspiration of becoming a platform for the 
transfer and discursive consolidation of specialized knowledge.


3. The structure and sequence:


The project begins with a research phase, in which we put together an 
editorial team made up of local experts and draft a mapping of 
discourse-relevant journals and their positioning. This editorial team 
acts as a curatorial network, selecting potential partners to serve as 
authors for the project, and encouraging their participation and 
progress. Editors, critics, theorists and artists will thjen take part 
in "silent colloquia", electronic working symposia in which the 
conceptual and theoretical leit motifs of the various documenta 12 
publications will be developed. This procedure takes place in the form 
of a dialogue. Each of the journals participating in the network prints 
one of the texts or devotes an article, section or even an entire issue 
to one of the themes, utilizing various formats: interviews and essays, 
features and fiction. By virtue of the autonomous editorial departments 
participating in the project, the discourse is already embedded in the 
local context and conveyed to the corresponding public. It is thus able 
to reach very specific audiences all over the world. This also ensures 
that disparate local and editorial approaches become discernible. The 
texts and contexts, as well as the discussions in the silent colloquia 
and in the individual journals will form the basic material used to put 
together the documenta publication series. This material will be 
supplemented with pivotal texts on the concept and context of documenta 
12. Each publication will thus offer a general introduction to one of 
the core themes of documenta 12, a reader addressing not only a 
specialist public, but the interested layperson as well. The series will 
appear in at least two languages: German and English. A print on demand 
tool makes them available in other world languages, such as Russian, 
Chinese, Spanish and French


4. The main aims:


Every response to a question, every theoretical debate, will bring up a 
whole series of further issues: What does cultural transmission mean? 
Where are the boundaries between theoretical assumptions and actual 
aesthetic practice? What form do discourses take in alleged centres as 
opposed to putative peripheral areas? Which shifts in thematic emphasis 
and changes in paradigm can be ascertained between various disciplines? 
How does the concept of artistic work differ from other kinds of work, 
if at all? How does artistic theory differ from practice, and from other 
kinds of texts, for example from literature and politics, etc.? The 
documenta 12 publication project opens up a lasting dialogue. The 
project is not about a theoretical self-appraisal carried out by 
documenta 12 itself, but rather about the process of developing the 
theories of the documenta and juxtaposing these with ideas currently 
circulating in the art discourse and among artists in the international, 
local or other specific contexts. The point of the project is thus not 
the role played by discourses in artistic practice, but instead the 
discursive practice itself, with its media, dialects and transformations 
in various contexts. . Since the project is based in particular on 
transregional themes and motifs, it can help to elucidate the 
differences and similarities between local dimensions of aesthetic 
practice. With information being transmitted directly to particular 
scenes and editorial departments, it is possible to involve precisely 
those persons and audiences around the world who are interested in the 
relevant issues in exhibition work. Another objective is to gain broader 
insights into present-day transformative processes: What kinds of 
mentalities have evolved in various regions? What kinds of discussions 
are taking place on the changes occurring in the various economic, 
social, intellectual and artistic milieus? Which impulses can be derived 
for the international discourse from these regional self-concepts? An 
important aim of the network is to provide a broader forum in which 
authors, theorists and artists who work on the local implementation of 
discursive practices can expound on their experiences, and compare these 
experiences with those of people in other situations and contexts. The 
creation of long-term international cooperations and excellence networks 
beyond the scope of the project itself should provide inspiration and 
ideas for local and regional cultural milieus. The project will also 
endeavour to open up new channels for independent distribution networks, 
and to encourage flexible forms of translocal communication. 
Particularly interesting here are the long-term effects of the project 
well beyond the period of documenta 12 itself, such as the development 
of sustainable information infrastructures, databases and other 
communication tools.

31.01.05 Georg Schöllhammer 
<http://www.documenta12.de/documenta12/english/schoellhammer.pdf>