I visited a good friend the past weekend and since she lives in Kassel I grabbed the opportunity to stroll around the art exhibition which was taking place. The Documenta is organised once in five years and because of that a lot of people invade the small city to have a look at the latest in modern art. This not only takes place in the museums but there are also installations all over the city, some even remain from former Documenta editions. E.g. German artist Josef Beuys planted a lot of trees all over the city as a work of art and Swiss musician and artist Dieter Meier made a plate which was build into the floor in the inner city which was saying that he would be standing there at a certain time on a certain day in the future. Which is what he did when the day and the time arrived. So this is Documenta and I took the chance to pay it a visit. This is what I saw...
The first thing you notice - but that might be because of the weekend - are the masses who are running around the place where most of the museums and public installations are located. Since the Documenta takes place every five years the attendance rate is very high. People stream into Kassel from everywhere, from all over Germany and Europe. Some even travel from across the oceans to see the art displayed in the museums. Now I wouldn't consider myself to be someone who really knows something about art. I stand in front of something and I have my own opinion on it but I don't feel like I can talk about the whole thing in detail. I just percieve it as beautiful or ugly. Or just "there". But there's other people who can't stop talking about what is in front of their eyes and sometimes it gets hilarious when they talka and talk and talk and they sound like a bunch of weirdos who are just trying to sound cool because they think they understand what the artist wanted to express with his work. And, you might have guessed it, there were lots and lots of people like that everywhere around Kassel. When walking past some installations or pictures I was able to overhear a few conversations. I had to surpress a loud laughter at times.
Oh, the thing in the middle in the picture on top is a poppy field, by the way. Yes, this is art as well.
So when you buy your ticket at one of the numerous shops which are located at all central parts of the city (you can get day tickets, two day tickets, group tickets and so on) you get these plans to guide you around Kassel and the Documenta. As you might be able to see the different places are located at one central place, but there are also some places which are farther outside of the city. I didn't visit those since I didn't have that much time. This should just give you an impression on how huge this whole thing is...
This is another installation. That thing you can see in the back of the picture. I guess it is supposed to be some point where you can have a view on something and this thing there is supposed to be a frame for the picture you see.
The thing in the left back is the Documenta Hall, the first museum I went into. There was a moderate queue in front and I had to wait for about 30 minutes to get in. Inside was stuff this...
Don't ask me who the artists are, I have no idea. But what struck me was that I waited for half an hour to see just one rather small room full of art and packed with people. The most fascinating thing was a room competely in bright red light with a buzzing sound. I didn't make any pictures because it was impossible to capture that experience on film. That was the only thing that was interesting there, as for the rest, well, it's art, huh?
So I moved on to the Aue-Pavillion
Located at the former residence of the local ruler in the 18th century, the Orangerie, this was rather easy to get in to. Still there were lots of people inside, as you can see here.
This was bigger than the one I've been to before, but because there was so much to see I somehow had a slight information overload. Here are some impressions.
That's just random stuff that caught my attention. I won't go into detail, just have a look and decide for yourselves. The next one's were the one's in found most interesting...
This was a room in which there were only those guitars with amplifiers. While watching them I was thinking why they all had those round things on top of the strings, but, hey, it's art, right? So while I was trying to take the picture exactly at the moment I was pressing the shutter the guitars make sounds. The round thing had a plectrum and there were capodasters so each guitar played a different chord. That sounded almost like bells and chimes on chrches. But only with a guitar sound. This was great.
The other one was a video installation which showed little asian kids being sprayed with a white liquid. Although this might sound a bit cruel it was fun to watch since the children were laughing themselves when they were hit by the liquid. I don't know whether it was milk or paint. But the funniest thing were some of the reactions by the spectators. Although you can clearly see that the children knew that they were about to be covered by something some of the audience was disgusted saying that they hope the artist will experience the same thing sometime in the future.
So, off I went to explore the location and it turned out to be a beautiful baroque garden with a channel and a lake. Here are some impressions.
The most interesting thing though for a football maniac like me was the stadium located behind the building of the Orangerie.
I went on to visit one more museum, the Neue Galerie, but that was definetely too dark to take any pictures in there. By the time I got there I was tired as hell and I just went through the rooms rather quickly. There was an interesting installation though, a movie which had Harvey Keitel reciting something, but I didn't really get what it was. But it was a huge thing, almost like a cinema.
The thing that I enjoyed more was the exhibition me and my friend went to the next day. The "Caricatura" was a display of caricatures by different German writers. Great stuff. We took a very close look at each one of the pictures hanging there. This was completely different from what I had seen the day before because each picture actually had a meaning and it was easy to understand. Well, at least most of them. There were three different rooms with lots of stuff to see. On the top floor they had a small documentation about what caricatures can cause when they are misunderstood. This was a nice way to end the exhibition.
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