Platform 6: Unrealized Openness

Performers from Central Europe thank politicians and leading curators for their neglect and perfect isolation
Ewa Rybska & Wladyslaw Kazmierczak


Documenta 11, from the performance artist’s point of view, is an ingenious exhibition. What performance art was postulating 30 years ago was finally carried out in this exhibition. Divisions between the art disciplines have been ripped asunder. Art has been released from the pressure of the art market and rules of aesthetics. Critics are not required to interpret works of art. Anyone is capable of comprehending it. Exhibitions present art that is unaccepted to the art world, because this art speaks seriously about the tragedies of this world.
Documenta 11, for the first time, is no place for the refined games of the art establishment. Always before this sort of exhibition was an opportunity to establish seasonal trends and the position of genius artists. Documenta 11 warns that this is not the time for art, whose value lies in a modern background or the Dadaists’ perfidy, irony, jokes, displaying their sense of humor or eccentric imagination. The time for this kind of art has now passed. Art is to serve people with disinterest. It’s not for those in authority or the art market. This exhibition proves that overcoming Euro-centrism and Ameri-centrism is possible. It proclaims that the world is bigger and more complicated than the axis G8. This openness — still impossible to realize — is the only alternative for today and for the future.
Documenta 11 again reminds us of Western cultural domination, which is unacceptable today. Looking at the exhibition, we cannot know whether the introduction of unknown artists into the worldwide art scene is only a temporary whim by Western Man. Or is it just a test of the art system, a political reaction to attacks by anti-globalizationists, or a deep, humanistic process (or only a gesture)? Western culture has the fantastic ability to assimilate and proclaim the notion of openness when in fact it is a hermetic structure that forces its own incomprehensible rules. We will not accept any excuses for ignoring and isolating Central European culture more than other cultures. We are unable to explain logically the marginalization of performance art in Western culture, which was paradoxically born in NYC. By remaining separate from the art world, we are more conscious of the signs of hypocrisy in Western culture and other patterns within this globalized civilization. And we thank you very much for this possibility.

01.02.2002