HD-KS: A dOCUMENTA (13) Review

Hey Everyone,
Everything's going swell so far in Germany. Here's a little update/info post which gives you my take on Germany's ( and maybe the world's ) most prominent exhibition of contemporary art, the documenta, this year in its 13th incarnation.
Please note, this little guide is absolutely reflective of my own opinion and I don't claim a lot of knowledge about the scene ( + I didn't feel like reading 'The Guidebook', so much ). I'm only presenting some of my personal likes & dislikes. For a more thorough overview & walkthrough for those who might still decide to go themselves, I highly recommend the ArtOrbit illustrated guide, which gives a nice summary of all the major venues.
Thanks go to my aunt for letting us crash at her house!

We arrived in Kassel on thursday around noon by car. Having private accomodations makes things a little easier, but even if you plan on arriving by train getting around and finding your way should be no problem at all. The city is in its five-yearly documania ( or dOCUMANIA, this time? ) and there are signs, arrows, info centers and helpful passers-by all over. That way, in the tram en route to the city center we got our first insider tip: the Huguenot House ( Friedrichstraße 25 ). This, uhm, project consists of a formerly abandoned house redecorated & refurbished by Theaster Gates:

The Huguenot House's entrance behind yours truly

From the looks of it, the house is being used as shared living quarters, presumably to accomodate the people helping with the redesign and maybe the performers of Tino Sehgal's piece, which was housed in a large metal shed next to the house: Except for some very dim lighting the inside is completely dark. Upon entering one is greeted by an a-capella gust of voices producing various beatbox-ish sound-effects as well as the occasional vocal piece ( I unfortunately missed their rendition of 'Good Vibrations' ). After one's eyes get used to the dark, one is surprised to find out that around 90% of the people in the well-populated room are actually perfomers with single visitors stumbling inbetween. The Huguenot House seemed a little over-hyped in light of what is actually offered. I guess it's really more of a hot-spot for the art crowd to hang out after closing time than a can't-miss for visitor Joe Everyman.
After a peek into Obere Karlsstr. 14 ( Francis Alys -  two rooms of tiny pictures of what resembles TV test-screens, meh. The man has done way more interesting things ), we hit up one of the major venues: Neue Galerie, featuring one of this year's flagship pieces, Geoffrey Farmer's ensemble of Life Magazine cutouts glued onto little bamboo sticks - one of the many projects for which one has to stand in line to see it. What's easiest to appreciate about it, is probably the amount of tedious work that went into making it.

Neue Galerie - outside

The cutout mashup

Cutouts - detail

Next up was the documenta-Halle; the audience's darling here were Thomas Bayrle's sawn up combustion engines. Attached electric motors set the pistons in motion, displaying the full wobbling, clockwork-like elegance of an 8-cylinder radial aircraft engine. I wouldn't call them readymades - the artist's setup opens a ( usually hidden ) perspective on the motion of everyday machinery which here appears fluent and organic.

View into the documenta-Halle

cut-up engine - engineered aesthetics?

We topped of the day with a stroll through the Karlsaue park. The location is beautiful in the late afternoon of a sunny day. The archetypal baroque landscaping is sprinkled with classicist knick-knacks and left-overs from 5 decades of documentas as well as some current installations, such as Sam Durant's gallow-playground and Anna Maria Maiolino's clay sausage house.

On friday we made an early start to check out the Hauptbahnhof location. When it comes to real can't-misses - this is it, definitely my favorite venue. It's worth coming in before 10am, to get a chance to take part in Cardiff & Miller's video walk. The concept is simple but effective - the visitor gets an iPod which leads him on a guided tour of the station and its history. Not overwhelming, but a neat idea. It's recommended to show up either early ( 9.45ish ) or around 5-6pm to get one of the 60 iPods without having to wait for too long. Also located in the Hauptbahnhof area is Epaminonda & Cramer's house. This would probably be my favorite project this year, well worth the little wait out front. While not overly intellectual, it still takes some time to access and sure has to it the kind of vibe which I'm looking to experience in a contemporary art exhibition.

Waiting for Epaminonda/Cramer

Waiting for Cardiff/Miller

Inside Epaminonda/Cramer

Istvan Csakany's wooden workshop

 The Hauptbahnhof's Northern Wing [sic!] offers Michael Portnoy's mud hill ( 'no touching, please' - it's a large pile of dirt, for crying out loud! ) and Clemens von Wedemeyer's three panel work camp movie set-up, which is really not bad if you have enough time to actually watch all three films.

Haegue Yang's window shutters w/ no windows

 Haegue Yang's automatic window-shutters were , uhm, interesting. We decided not to wait a half hour or so for William Kentridge's installation, puzzled over Lara Favaretto's trash mountains and caught the last two minutes of a performance of the Critical Art Ensemble ( still seemed pretty cool, though; they offer performances everyday at 12.00 o'clock sharp ). Due to time constraints we had to skip the South Wing and the Nachrichtenmeisterei. Go & see this if you can!

Favaretto's artsy trash

The exhibition's own bus line took us over to the Weinberg bunker - not worth putting on the safety helmet.

However:

Rojas - beams

Rojas - hollow tree stump

 Rojas - cat which died on account of a parasitic egg breaking through its underbelly

Rojas - church bells

Much cooler than the bunker are Adrian Villar Rojas' Weinbergterrassen. The fact that his outdoor sculptures have already suffered under the weather only adds to their particular presence. Great city views included when it's not raining!















The Fridericianum, traditionally the exhibition's main venue, didn't knock my socks off. The ground floor was dominated by Ryan Gander's easy breezes - breezing through mostly empty halls. Meh.
One cool thing: Anton Zeilinger's ( yes, the Anton Zeilinger ) quantum optics set-up. One of the few pieces that I thought I understood pretty well. Surprisingly hot with the crowd, too:

'Plain wave? Singlet state? Spontaneous Parametric Down-Conversion? Piece-a-cake!'

This is art now!

For those with a technical inclination, the Orangerie down by the Karlsaue also incorporates the Physikalisch-Astronomisches Kabinett, with some pretty neat 18th-century-nerd playthings.
To end it off some more non-descript pieces from the Fridericianum:

If you came all the way down here - thanks for reading. Drop me a little 'hi' here or on the book.

Best
 Dennis.

BTW: All picture credits to Weiwei!

Home

Hey Everyone,

I left China early last Monday morning, arrived in Frankfurt Monday night, and I've been in Heidelberg for two days. Everything went smooth, I had some close friends see me off at the airport in Shanghai and I had some close friends ( +mother ) pick me up here, which made me really happy.
So these were my 10 months. I didn't work that much, still learned a lot. They say you go to China in order to study the language in a natural environment, which wasn't really the case for me - most people I spent my time with were foreigners after all. I still made progress, I passed my HSK & my exams. The exposure to 'real' Chinese life fell a little short, but that's to be expected if one lives in a city like Shanghai. That's okay. Anyhow, I'm really glad I met all the people I met, they made my stay special and memorable. I don't know with how many of them I'll still be talking in 3 months, a year, ten years, but I hope it's not going to be too few. I don't want to give a long account of what I experienced in this year, much of it can be found just a couple of posts back. If you have the chance to go to China -  take it! No need to stay for a whole year, it's an exciting place to be even if only for a week or so.
Thank you everybody for reading, this concludes my China story ( for now! ).
Be in touch, people!

Bonus Post

Here are two little extras for my avid readers. One is the description of a school trip taken on May 27th, not to be taken all that seriously. The other is some photos from my ( second! ) trip to Yangzhou, to where my friend took me last weekend and let me stay with the family at their home. We had some great fun, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Since I've gotten the question quite a bit recently: I'll be leaving Shanghai on Monday the 18th, and I'll be back to Heidelberg sometime within that week.

The school trip:
On an early morning in May, the sun already glaring down on us and setting the tone for a glorious day, our group of a dozen Confucius Institute Scholarship students set out for a forenoon of fun and adventure.
Following a one-hour bus ride, introduction round and gift trinkets included, we arrived at the first ( and foremost ) of our destinations: The Shikumen rice wine factory. Not only were we provided a tour of their Huangjiu museum und manufacturing facilities but we also had the opportunity to sample the company's fine products, and generously we did.
With this little treat sweetening our day, we went on to our second stop, scenic Fengjing oldtown, one of Shanghai's famed suburban recreational districts. As our tour guide pointed out us, Fengjing is famous beyond its borders for its quirky dialect as well as its exceedingly bright inhabitants. Nested among the living quarters and little shops that make up the traditional Chinese canal town are the two pearls of Fengjing; One is the domain of Ding Cong, nationwide known cartoonist and greatest son of Fengjing. His personal domicile and workshop are open to the public, his works on display. The inclined visitor can also take a tour of Ding Cong's personal slaughterhouse which provided him with his daily fix of pickled pork knuckle, a local specialty, which he required to be served with his every meal. The other is the renowned Museum of Mao Badges, an impressive collection of thousands of metal badges illustrating episodes of the life and doings of the Great Chairman. While curated with meticulous care and attention to detail, the original intended use and meaning of the badges did not become clear to this student. As a fun extra for the kids, presumably, the museum's courtyard featured a decomissioned howitzer gun as well as jet fighter plane flown by Mao Zedong himself.
After a typical Chinese famer's lunch, which included all-Chinese favorites such as chicken feet, bony fish and cold slices of the abovementioned pickled pork knuckle, we moved on to the highlight of our trip: the “Chinese Farmers' Paintings Village”, which offers a glimpse into the work of Chinese farmers-turned-painters, and gives the esteemed visitor a chance to familiarize himself with their colorful, often almost childlike joyful works depicting scenes of everyday village life and similar sujets encountered by the farmer-turned-painter. Our group was shown a variety of works by the different masters, all with their distinct yet inter-connected styles. No purchases were made.
This concluded our little excursion and most of our group seized the opportunity during the two-hour-trip home ( Shanghai late afternoon traffic-induced travel time multiplier: 2 ) to sleep of the last effects of the morning's rice wine degustation.

Dennis J. Roehner for SJTU/SIE
2012-06-09


The weekend vacation:

  

 

 

Home Stretch

Hey Everyone,
Some things have happened in the interim; We had midterm exams in April, and today I finally had my HSK language exam. Now I can officially attend a Chinese university and take regular classes ( not that that was my goal to begin with ). Anyways, this pretty much concludes my project "Learning Chinese in Shanghai", from now on it's coasting all the way home. I still have about four weeks here, with final exams on June 10th-15th. My flight back to Germany is on June 18th, and I'm already looking forward to coming back and seeing all the old places people again. For those who want to come visit me when I'm back: I'll be in the same place as before, just one floor down ( single appartment, too, yeah!  ).
I plan to spend my remaining time on seeing some things I haven't seen yet, doing some stuff I haven't done ( I still haven't taken my trip to the countryside; ; my one Chinese friend promised to take me there soon ). I'm sure now that I can 'speak Chinese' it'll be much easier to get around and all. Really though, ten months are hardly enough to build up a working knowledge of this language. While I can now have conversations with native speakers ( of Mandarin, not one of the countless dialects ), I still wouldn't dare pick up a newspaper. No choice really but to keep on studying..!
What else happened? I had another encounter with the Chinese hospital and this time I got the Middle Kingdom's universal treatment of choice: the IV drip. It may seem kind of drastic, but here they prescribe those even for people who come in with a common cold. What can I say, sitting in a room with 40 old Shanghainese people for three hours ( multiplied by three days! ) is boring, but the stuff actually works. Doctors make more money, I get well, fine by me.
That's it for now. Sorry about the short post, but I was mostly busy with studying the last couple of weeks - not that much else going on.

Best from sunny Shanghai!

Springtime

Hey Everyone,

It seems winter is finally over, the city's getting warm & people are feeling frisky ( I know I am ). The new semester started a couple of weeks ago. The workload became a little more, but no reason not to take it easy. After staying in my room by myself for over a month, my new roommate finally moved in two weeks ago. His name's Tee, he's from Thailand, and he's pretty cool so far, and, as a plus: he doesn't speak much English, so yay for extra free Chinese practice everyday ( which he, gladly, speaks better than me ). Other than that, my mom came to visit me here in Shanghai beginning of the week. We had a great little dinner with some friends ( once again, thanks for joining! ) and spent a whole day out and about, and I finally got a chance to show off some of my China/Shanghai knowledge. While she had a mere three days here, I believe she enjoyed it and had some cool and sometimes 'interesting' experiences ( the latter being mostly food-related, I guess; I tried, but I couldn't get her to embrace the delights of Chinese cuisine ).
What else? We recently did the math - it's not even three months left in Shanghai anymore. Naturally, I'm excited to get back home and get on with my actual work, and naturally I already feel a bit uneasy about leaving this place and all the people here. My plans for the time to come include taking the HSK ( which is essentially a Chinese TOEFL ) and maybe also finally making my journey to the west, now that my original travel-mate-to-be is free to come along again ( we were thinking Sichuan, or maybe more exotic?; has anyone ever been to Gansu? Qinghai? Anything to be seen there? ). At any rate, we'll be on vacation ( again?! ) in three weeks from now.
So much for the update!

New Year and all that

Hey Everybody,
Sorry to let you wait for the update, I'll start where I left off: Hainan was really nice. Warm weather, yet not overly sunny. Although we were off season the island was pretty crowded, mostly with Chinese and Russian tourists. No major drawback, though - there's some nice places to be found if you just look a little ( or go to an upscale Yalong Bay hotel right away ). It makes for a nice beach vacation ( fresh coconuts, mangoes and seafood all over the place ), while being a bit meh on the culture side; I hear you can visit some Hainan native folks in a jungle and, of course, a more or less ancient temple. We opted for the Nantian hot springs instead, really enjoyable. All in all the vacation was really relaxing and nice; what followed not so much. Suffice it to say, I broke a heart and had mine broken -_-
New Year's ( i.e. 12.31.2011 ) wasn't a big thing here. Foreigners and Shanghainese alike flocked to the Bund in anticipation of fireworks. Well, they did have a countdown...   It took the Chinese about two weeks to realize what was missing, but then hell broke lose: Chinese ( i.e. the actual ) New Year, aka Spring Festival. It sounded like a war was going on outside, more or less all fifteen days long, and especially on days no. 1, 15 and, to please the god of wealth, the 5th. While this doesn't get as bright and shiny as it does in Germany, it does get noisy. They sure drove away the bad spirits this year. On the downside: Shanghai was pretty deserted for two weeks. Most of my friends here went home or on vacation, stores were closed, streets empty ( okay, still more people around than on any given sunday afternoon in Heidelberg ). ' Left me with enough time to finally clean my place ( my roommate Tony went back to Korea - someone new should be coming one of these days ), watch all of the fake DVDs I bought on the streets, and, of course, brush up on my vocab ( 中三, I'm coming ). While it was kind of boring and lonely ( think: spending Christimas & New Year's alone at home; well, maybe not that bad ) I did have some real time off, some time to reflect. Could've been worse.  Sure enough, people are starting to come back, and classes will be kicking in soon ( finals went smooth, btw. Nothing to be compared with 'real' [i.e. physics] exams, though ).
So, half-time summary: Shanghai's been good so far, some hitches notwithstanding. Plans for the second half include: Getting my Chinese to a level where I can have a meaningful conversation with a native speaker and completely understand Chinese television ( not that I ever really watch ). Also, cutting back a little on the whole 'expat/intern' lifestyle and do more things Chinese ( spending a sunday afternoon playing Majiang in a shady tea house/pool hall/internet bar: check! ).
So, that's my news. If we haven't been in touch for a while: Hit me up! Here, the Book, E-Mail. I'd love to hear how things are going in Germany, Europe, the Rest of the world!