Re: <nettime> Josephine Bosma, review of Documenta XI [3x]

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   Re: <nettime> Josephine Bosma, review of Documenta XI                           
     Diana McCarty <diana@vifu.de>                                                   

   Re: <nettime> Apologies for posting Josephine Bosma, review of                  
     "b g" <brucegottlieb@hotmail.com>                                               

   Re: <nettime> Apologies for posting Josephine Bosma, review of Documenta XI     
     "porculus" <porculus@wanadoo.fr>                                                



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Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 01:56:31 +0200
From: Diana McCarty <diana@vifu.de>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Josephine Bosma, review of Documenta XI



Sigh... I'm with Mr. Spooky. Josephine, even for an article in progress,
your review of Documenta XI exposes assumptions that really need to be
questioned. Disneyland opened up shop just outside of Paris a few years
back for those that need cheering up on this continent (not to mention a
hell of a lot more interesting interactive gadgets than one finds within
new media art). Even having seen just a tiny fragment of the show, I take
issue with you summing up its only positive aspect as "its openness to
artists that are not white, male and 'western'." With all due respect, you
are missing the point - It is not a mere "openness" to individual artists
that don't represent the establishment, it is a conscious focus on
political work done by artists from all over. As in international, global.  
Maybe a bit of west african dancing would have lightened things up enough?

Josephine, what on earth are you talking about with suggesting that
Enwezor has no background in art?  What depressed me the most about your
review is that while you dismiss the exhibition as "protestant" and
preachy, you yearn for exactly those few new media artists that work
politically (with the exception of OBN) to say "... this much clearer?""
What does that mean exactly? How would those pedantic works not preachy
enough have benefited by being "explained" by these white/western/male new
media types? What I find positive about the show is that Enwezor and his
team do have a vision, an agenda, one that challenges the bubble gum
status quo art work that Hickey (and plenty of others) advocate. And it is
intelligent. Is Enwezor an expert in new media and copyright? Far from it,
but gee, would you believe it? Instead of dismissing those points as
useless, he actually joined a discussion and got engaged there. He might
even, oh gasp, do a little research and find out more about these topics.
I'm including a portion of Enwezor's bio which is easily accessible on the
Documenta XI website at the end of this mail.

You end with " This Documenta seems to be a message of change to all those
who would like to see art as something which represents the so called
virtues of the "free west". The problem is however that there are not that
many people who really believe in those virtues anyway, especially amongst
the European art audience." What do you mean with virtues of the free
west?  Intelligent works? Political? Sorry my dear, but I think you are
way off on all counts with this one... Maybe you need to go back for a
second viewing and bring your own bubble gum to chew on while you reflect
on what that show is really about.


Love,

Diana





Born in Nigeria, Okwui Enwezor, is the Artistic Director of Documenta11, in 
Kassel Germany, 2002. He was the Artistic Director of the 2nd Johannesburg 
Biennale, 1997. Enwezor until recently hold a position as the Adjunct 
Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of. He is the publisher 
and founding editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, a critical 
art journal co-published with the African Studies Center at Cornell 
University. A poet, critic, and curator, Enwezor has written extensively on 
contemporary African art and artists, as well as on American and 
international art and artists. His recent essays have appeared in numerous 
international exhibition catalogues and books, including Future, Present, 
Past (47th Venice Biennale). Inklusion Exklusion (Steirischer Herbst, Graz, 
Austria). CROSSING: Time, Movement, Space (Art Museum, University of South 
Florida, Tampa). Interzones (Kunstforigen, Copenhagen). Transforming the 
Crown (Studio Museum in Harlem and Bronx Museum). Contemporary South 
African Art: Gencor Collection (Jonathan Ball Publishers, Johannesburg).
Democracy's Images: Photography and Visual Art After Apartheid (BildMuseet).

As a critic, Enwezor is a correspondent for Flash Art, consulting editor to 
Atlantica (a bilingual art and culture publication of the Museo Centro 
Atlantic de Arte Moderno, Canary Islands), editor-at-large of aRude and a 
regular contributor to Frieze, International Review of African-American 
Art, Third Text, Index on Censorship, Glendora Review, Africa World Review, 
African Profiles International and SIKSI, amongst others.

He was one of the speakers at 100 days - 100 guests (Documenta X, Kassel, 
1997), Ecole des Beaux Arts Superieur, (Paris), Royal College of Art 
(London), Moderna Museet, (Stockholm), National Arts Academy (Oslo), Center 
for Curatorial
Studies, Bard College (Annandale on Hudson, New York), Humboldt University 
zu Berlin, and Columbia University, New York.

Some of Enwezor's curatorial credits are In/sight: African Photographers, 
1940-Present, which he co-curated at the Guggenheim Museum (New York). 
Modern Life at Alijira Center for Contemporary Art in conjunction with
the Newark Museum. Mirror's Edge, Bild Museet, Umea and Kiasma : Museum of 
Contemporary Art, Helsinki. He was one of a group of international curators 
preparing a major survey of conceptual art, entitled Global Conceptualism 
at the Queens Museum (New York) in April 1999. He also organized a major 
survey of South African Photographer David Goldblatt at Equitable Gallery 
(New York) during 2000. He organized The Short Century: Independence and 
Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994 at the Museum Villa Stuck, Munich 
which opened in March 2001 and traveled to Berlin, Chicago and New York.


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Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 15:01:13 +0000
From: "b g" <brucegottlieb@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Apologies for posting Josephine Bosma, review of

I don't expect any exhibition that size to offer more than a general 
overview of who's hot in the international art scene now...  I was also 
frustrated with the lack of adventurous media/net art and there was an 
overabundance of known quantities like Stan Douglas and Joan Jonas whose 
presentations fell somewhat flat in the surging sense of global urgency that 
I think came across well with the unprecedented diversity of the artists.
Can't have everything. I enjoyed it, and it was sunny, warm and I ate well.
If you haven't been yet, I also have a review of my Documenta experience up 
on: http://www.critiquing.net.

Baruch Bruce E Gottlieb

new strategies for today's metaphysic:
http://www.vociferous.org
get your private reflections out of your head and on the net on:
http://www.critiquing.net



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Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 13:46:41 +0200
From: "porculus" <porculus@wanadoo.fr>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Apologies for posting Josephine Bosma, review of Documenta XI


> Hey Florian - the Josephine review is up on Rhizome... that's pretty
> public. IN any case, point taken, but with a twist: I might be writing
> here in Germany, but I'm from the good old USA where stuff like the public
> beatings of African Americans hey!  It's the 21st century and this still
> goes on.... check out several quite graphic incidents this summer alone...
> that were only made public because of video documentation etc etc this
> seems like a pretty straightforward approach coming from a culture where
> "reality TV" is a very big deal... there is no "unfiltered truth" - just
> alot of different perspectives, and I really feel we haven't really got
> that many different perspectives in the conventional artworld or the
> conventional digital media "art scene" - but that's slow ever so slowly
> changing.
>
> Paul


hihi javol it's somezing funny & hard to synchronize sometimez, but plus the
idea itz better to not plan his or her heart move let me to say just one
more zing about  zuch kassel blah that soundz az  zuper pleonazmatic buz :
zis inderterminazion and desire to be worldly exhaustive is an old refrain
but also was regularly discuss on all boring curatorz debate ad
nauseam..specially about bad european consciouz in their protestantz panz
etceteraz..olala, for 15 years at least. but hey i find rather funny to see
'technological newmedia netcomputer art & dot.bull' stamp its feet for seing
it could be consider az super untermenshen & antartete kunz after 3
world and lower than any cannibal macramé of some anthropophage gang from
east los angeles haha, or even after some men in black culture of death in
glitter white house, yez itz what it yeal in my small ears till here &
probably in colossus of rhodes'ones..well so i contresign zis super good m.
miller's crual but fair conclusion, and honni soit qui mal y pense
"Documenta is probably the most dynamic thing going in the conventional
artworld, and in a way, that's great. From another point of view, it's kind
of a tragedy"





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