Issue 54 / November 2022
eds. Ronald Kolb, Dorothee Richter

documenta fifteen—Aspects of Commoning in Curatorial and Artistic Practices

This issue is the result of more than two years of intensive engagement with aspects of commoning in curatorial and artistic practice, stemming from our encounters with ruangrupa on the way to documenta fifteen. At its core, this issue follows our research into the discourse on commons and its implications for the exhibitionary complex. We have conducted interviews with lumbung members, curators, theoreticians, art historians and artists.
With practices of commoning entering a large-scale exhibition like documenta, a novel approach meets the curatorial-artistic complex. And with that, various conflicts loomed on the horizon, not to mention the internal difficulties of “scaling” a resource infrastructure and its principles of sharing, originally intended for a rather small village community or small group of people, to a global scale. The question is in what form, with what instruments, with what knowledges, and with what new alliances this apparent paradigm shift will come about. We offer a critical review from different perspectives.

Contributions by
Tanya Abraham, Unchalee Anantawat, Britto Arts Trust (Tayeba Begum Lipi, Mahbubur Rahman), Nanne Buurman, Christoph Brunner, Jennifer Deger, Wulan Dirgantoro, Dan Farberoff, Gudskul (Marcellina Putri, Gesyada Siregar, MG Pringgotono), Jatiwangi art Factory (JaF) (Ismal Muntaha, Al Ghorie), Gilly Karjevsky, Elly Kent, Ronald Kolb, Oliver Marchart, Séverine Marguin, Más Arte Más Acción (Jonathan Colin, Alejandra Rojas, Rossana Alarcón, Carmenza Rojas), Lara van Meeteren, OFF-Biennale Budapest (Hajnalka Somogyi, Eszter Lázár, Nikolett Eross, Katalin Székely, Bori Szalai, Eszter Szakács), Dagmar Pelger, David Behar Perahia, Project Art Works (Kate Adams, Patricia Finnegan), Question of Funding, Dorothee Richter, Grégoire Rousseau, Alder Keleman Saxena, Maayan Sheleff, Nora Sternfeld, Ariane Sutthavong, Trampoline House (Morten Goll), Anna L. Tsing, Wajukuu Art Project (Shabu Mwangi, Ngugi Waweru), Bart Wissink, Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik Berlin (Philip Horst), Feifei Zhou

Interviews by
Nadine Bajek, Anastasia Baka, Chiara Borgonovo, Rosela del Bosque, Sophie Brunner, Giulia Busetti, Marina Donina, Lotte Van Ermengem Marinella Sofia Gkinko, Olena Iegorova, Anna Konstantinova, Leilani Lynch, Veronica Mari, Thamy Matarozzi, Alejandra Monteverde, Maria Mumtaz, Smadar Samson, Regina Tetens, Anna Wälli