dOCUMENTA13 == 1st installment

Hugenottenhaus = Tini Sehgal + Theaster Gates - a very Elsewhereian "renovation/repsonse" to an abandoned building in Kassel by Seghal and a collective of unemployed people from Chicago = they made the house sing with 12 ballads while living, working, collectivizing there.

This is one of my favorite newly discovered artists in the dOCUMENTA - Hannah Ryggen, a Norwegian/Swedish artist who died in 1970. She made these amazing tapestries in the 1930s!!!

Francis Alys - very underwhelming installation of paintings in an old bakery with this fabulous list of thoughts tacked to a bulletin board in a back hallway by him......had been waiting for this because LAUREN ADAMS had posted it to FB for me. Her spirit was with me throughout the show....

KADER ATTIA, another new artist for me and truly moving, awe-inspiring and smart. His room was full of artifacts, projections, display cases, shelves, sculptures, books, photographs...all about war, medical/military surgery, deformation, weapons, archiving violence and injury, scars, wounds, disfguration, history, representation and as the title says, "The repair from Occident to Extra-Occidental Cultures"

Seeing the permanent Joseph Beuys room in the Neuegalerie almost made me cry, again. I first saw his PACK in the 1970s when I was in the 6th grade and it was a very formative experience for me in terms of understanding/experiencing/wanting to make ART. He is still and always will be a genius.

Beuys by Warhol

THE PACK, my Proustian Madeline.....

A manipulated billboard outside of the Hugennotten House:

Tent encampment outside of the dOCUMENTA:

A wall of bricked-in bricks at the Neuegalerie - a piece from an earlier Documenta:

I was most pleasantly surprised by Paul Chan's installation of painted bookcovers, stripped of their inside pages, their guts, their meaning. I loved it, especially after Alys (nornally one of my favorites.)

To see another Documenta with my Kassel friend from 6th grade is a true joy - we share the same pace, perserverance, often aesthetics, energy and attention spans....

A detail from a huge window curtain in the Neuegalerie by Fusun Onur, a Turkish woman:

Mark Dion's wooden chamber filled with ancient wood books and new spoofs of wood books in the old Ottoneum was beautiful:

2 elevator ladies in the neuegalerie loving everything felt and visual....

GEOFFREY FARMER blew me away. His 3 dimensional collage from LIFE magazine (1935-1985) on thin sticks like shadow puppets filling up the loggia of the Neuegalerie was like a post-Heartfield and Hoch monument...

Seeing Marx with a VW van like the Beuys' white dirty one downstairs gave me goosebumps:

A typical German breakfast at my friend's parents' house where we stayed and were taken good care of. I have known them for 35 years!

Ryan Gander's invisible but strong breeze that blows you through the galleries....

The house where we stayed:

The HessenlandHotel, an off-site of the dOCUMENTA....considering that there were almost 30 sites for the dOCUMENTA and we saw almost 85% of it, I feel completely satisfied and full....inspired and exhausted.

Susan Hiller's room of revolutionary songs with a jukebox that you can choose from....i LOVED the idea but needed something more visually.....experientially: louder music? banners? posters?

The Hugennotten Haus again:

The functional kitchen, a bit smelly, but cool

One of the bedrooms - a detail of the felt desk!

Sculpture in the hallway vitrine:

One of the bedrooms in use:

A super cool room of 2 staircases. I think of family meetings, pow wows, consultations, therapy..

Another bedrrom in use:

Sanja Ivekovic, the Disobedient (revolutionaries), an artist from Zagreb:

http://elininparis.blogspot.fr/2012/07/documenta13-1st-installmen

EMILY JACIR!:

I didn't love this but I liked it and was impressed by the scale of such a tapestry in a half-circle architectural space!

On the side of the Huggenottenhause - Weiner?

Photographs of trangendered people in South Africa....there was very little photography in the dOCUMENTA but i still loved it:

I loved these little matted and framed clippings from books:

Claire Pentacost's compost ingots:

Poster near the dOCUMENTA

Michale Rakowitz, married to Lori Waxman, had an incredible installation of stone-carved books, fragments from destroyed buddhas and burned books from WWII:

HANNAH Ryggen again:

The Hitler Carpet:

Nedko Selakov had a complicated installation in the Bruder Grimm Museum about knights and being a drummer in a heavy metal band and I didn't care for it much but i loved this, "I miss socialism":

Spoons resting at the restaurant we ate it the first night, exhausted, I downed 2 Bitburger beers and has schnitzel with green sauce and roasted potatoes:

The first text I saw at the dOCUMENTA = what a welcome!