Global fiction @ Documenta 11
1st besetzt? (Is this seat taken?):
The Cinema versus the Art Gallery
I was told that there was a 'lot of film' at Documenta 11. After seeing it for myself I would prefer to use the term 'photomedia' - embracing videography, world wide web, digital art, graphic design, books and other print media that employ reprographic imagery. Following Waiter Benjamin we are well aware of how powerful photomedia can be and in many, although by no means all, instances the photomedia art at Documenta was powerful and sophisticated in its ability to convey not just visual but also other forms of information. This was a very political Documenta but more interestingly it was an exhibition that showed ways in which political art can combine an interaction with life praxis and a highly creative use of media. In this sense Documenta 11 indicated that politically oriented art has continued to evolve in the wake of the deconstruction of mass media imagery left by the work of artists such as John Heartfield, Barbara Kruger, Hans Haacke and Victor Burgin.
A second feature of this Documenta was an underscoring of the fact that video art is emerging as the single most powerful medium of the 2000s. This is not surprising, since the technology has passed its third decade of development. Video art evolved through its seminal experimental phases in the 1970s and '80s and emerged into more mature modes of expression in the 1990s led by the doyen of video installation art, Bill Viola. But to call the best instances of video art on display at Documenta 'film’ is to completely miss the point. Video art is composed of many subgenres-video still, video... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline