[iDC] Documenta and Data Mining

[David Joselit]

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 used 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, this was what I liked 
about the show-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.

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.

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?

-- 
David Joselit
Professor and Chair
History of Art
Yale University
PO Box 208272
New Haven, CT  06520
phone: (203)432-2666
fax: (203)432-7462
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