When: May 4th, 2010, 8pm
Where: TPTP Space, 20 rue Muller, Paris
If in Paris, feel free to drop by for a talk and screening of two very important but rarely seen documentaries on exhibition making by the Belgium filmmaker Jef Cornelis:
Documenta 4,
1968, 54'German,
French, English, Dutch spoken
When
Professor Arnold Bode thought up documenta in 1955, his job was
putting West-Germany arisen from the ashes, back on the international map. When
documenta
IV takes place in 1968, the international art world was entangled in an
authority crisis as well. The politicization of society in the late 1960s made
itself felt in Kassel – red flags and groups of people chanting slogans meant
that the opening speeches could not be held. Moreover, documenta IV was streaked
with controversy and debate on the fragile relationship of aesthetic judgement
and democratic forms of reaching a consensus. Interviews with, among others,
Sol Lewitt, Joseph Beuys, Harald Szeemann, Allen Jones, Christo, Martial Raysse
and Robert Rauschenberg.
Documenta 5,
1972, 54'
German,
French, English, Dutch spoken
According to
Cornelis, documenta 5 could have gone into history as the first instance
of an exhibition as a spectacle. Supervised by Harald Szeemann, art made its
way back to the museum. It was as if the avant-garde was buried for good.
Artist-curator on one side, artist-singer on the other: this constellation was
to determine the Documentas of decades to come. For that reason, this film
cannot be considered merely as a report of a historical event (with an outlook
on trends of the moment: hyperrealism, kitsch, conceptual art, Art &
Language, Herman Nitsch, Joseph Beuys, Bruce Nauman, Daniel Buren etc.). It is
as well a possible approach to the phenomenon of Documenta as a whole.
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