<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
<html><head><style type="text/css"><!--
blockquote, dl, ul, ol, li { padding-top: 0 ; padding-bottom: 0 }
--></style><title>Documenta and Data Mining</title></head><body>
<div><font color="#000000">When Trebor invited me, as an art historian
and critic, to contribute a statement about last summer's Documenta 12
organized by Roger Buergel and Ruth Noack, it occurred to me that the
reason I liked the show (unlike many of my friends and colleagues more
directly involved in the art world) was that it<i> used</i> art works
in unexpected and often aggressive ways, creating disjunctive
connections within a high concept décor that not only included deep
and lush colors, but also theatrical lighting, intense sound bleed,
and startling visual juxtapositions. A commissioner of another
large international exhibition I recently chatted with condemned
Documenta as absolutely immoral (even criminal!) in that the
curators-according to this person-disregarded the wishes of several
exhibiting artists about the disposition of their work in the
galleries (I have no evidence for or against this assertion; I merely
repeat it). I realized with some degree of horror, that in
fact,<i> this was what I liked about the show</i>-that the normal ways
of looking at art (grouped according an artist, a period style, a
geographical location, or a cultural heritage) were systematically
called into question. Each of these four structuring
categories was de-naturalized. 1) The integrity of the
artist's oeuvre was undermined by Buergel and Noack's practice of
placing different works by individual artists in different galleries
throughout the exhibition, causing me to joke to one of my traveling
companions that Documenta 12 was nothing but a giant retrospective of
the American sculptor John McCracken. 2) By creating some
juxtapositions that were purely pseudo-morphological (i.e., bringing
together works that had no ostensible connection founded in influence,
geography or time-period) this Documenta made a mockery of style.
3) An artist's country of origin and current place of residence was
only indicated in a rather convoluted system in the guidebook to the
exhibition, not in the galleries themselves, making it difficult to
bring one's stereotypes about identity into the act of viewing; and 4)
ditto for the cultural "context" of works which was largely absent
from the gallery presentation.<br>
<br>
There's no doubt that these strong curatorial decisions did violence
to the conventional mode of address toward art publics. In a
manner of speaking, Buergel and Noack refused to provide the normal
signposts for global art world cosmopolites to map their position and
move on to the next party. I say, good for them! We've had
enough of business as usual.<br>
<br>
Here is what I think: Documenta 12 was the first exhibition I
know of that seemed founded on the logic of the search engine, where,
as in a Google search, the pursuit of a certain criterion may result
in bizarre but potentially invigorating combinations emerging from the
network's "unconscious." Of course Google did not curate
Documenta 12, but I think the exhibition's exciting contribution might
emerge from how it arrives at an "epistemology of data-mining."
After all, the explosion of art production in recent years, not to
mention the even greater proliferation of image cultures on screens
and in cities, has rendered art a kind of data. Why not treat it
that way?</font><br>
<font color="#000000"></font></div>
<x-sigsep><pre>--
</pre></x-sigsep>
<div>David Joselit<br>
Professor and Chair<br>
History of Art<br>
Yale University<br>
PO Box 208272<br>
New Haven, CT 06520<br>
phone: (203)432-2666<br>
fax: (203)432-7462</div>
</body>
</html>