DocLisboa Interview: “exergue” – on documenta 14
An ideologically charged documentary that clocks in at 14 hours about the contemporary art scene and the world’s most prestigious art exhibition, “exergue” – on documenta 14 is by far one of the most ambitious projects in the history of cinema; the second longest, apparently; and a film that eclipsed all others in DocLisboa 2024 where I finally got to catch up with it (the film premiered at Berlinale 2024 and made other significant stops on the film festival circuit, at Thessaloniki International Documentary Film Festival in March, and New York Film Festival more recently).
Behind it, only one man with a movie camera: the Greek filmmaker Dimitris Athiridis, who shot over 800 hours of footage. In his words: “Anything less than the 14-hour film would have been an oversimplification,” which is ironic, seeing how very complicated things get very early on.
Firstly, it should be mentioned that this is not your typical observational documentary in the tradition of cinéma vérité, or the particular strand pioneered by Frederick Wiseman. Not only does Dimitris Athiridis break his silent/neutral observer position to make his voice heard once or twice from behind the camera, spontaneously offering the curators an explanation about a Greek word or myth, but he also employs narrative cinema devices and strategies to offer us an enthralling watching experience, such as time jumps, foreshadowing devices and a generous musical score that sometimes comments ironically on the going-ons on screen. Watching the 14 chapters of “exergue” – on documenta 14feels like binging a top-notch TV series, with fascinating characters, unexpected plot twists, scenes of deep psychological intimacy, song-and-dance sequences, candid dialogue, and hilarious moments. Each chapter ends on a bit of a cliffhanger that makes you want to keep watching, the 14 hours will elapse in no time at all.
The main character driving the action, the artistic director of documenta 14, Adam Szymczyk, is a well-known Polish art critic and “superstar among curators,” as the press labeled him. Adam bears a subtle physical resemblance to Andy Warhol, but the comparison doesn’t stop there. His non-conformist personality and innovative ideas are bound to challenge the status quo and hegemonic attitude of the art world. The war of ideas unleashed at the midpoint, then the fallout, as well as Adam’s nervous breakdown in the last chapter, will have your heart pounding and core beliefs challenged.
By way of an introduction to the film, the 14th edition of documenta took place in 2017 in a double location, in Kassel (its original home, historically speaking) and also in Athens, then the focal point of Europe’s economic crisis. The prestigious art exhibition is known for its anti-capitalist spirit and unflinching curation that aims to show the most daring works in avant-garde Western art. However, “documenta 14” went far beyond this groundbreaking spirit in its radicality and clear objective to showcase less visible artists, thus challenging established power structures in the art world and playing with key notions of visibility and invisibility. Iin one very ironic and funny scene, the Scottish artist Douglas Gordon interjects, “There is nothing to see here,” referring to his own video work.
Maybe nothing in the sense of expected, usual, customary to see but a lot to think about, would be my conclusion after watching “exergue” – on documenta 14 … twice.
Composed of 14 episodic chapters, the film is fascinating from the very first frames, when you learn that “documenta 14” went down in art history as the most hated and criticized documenta ever. Accused of “artistic bankruptcy” and “financial chaos” for its €7 million deficit, promoting a “culture of waste”.
“Curating is undemocratic, authoritarian and corrupt,” reads one press article. “Subsidised revolt,” reads another, whereas a less elegant art critic titled their article “Crapumenta.” All these were media reactions to “documenta 14’s” daring ambition to “push a Western European institution which is deeply rooted in self-glorification […] to a completely different border.”
But critical voices didn’t come only from the outside, Adam himself invited this critical attitude from his own curatorial team. In a crucial dispute among the curators around the subject of which artists to select, Pierre Bal-Blanc complains that the programme is not radical enough: “‘documenta 14’ is just an update, a recycling of Western hegemony”He says/said. Brimming with challenging ideas and points of view, the ideological sparring between curators, artists, writers and philosophers is intense and passionate, offering us unprecedented access to the curatorial process of the world’s most prestigious art exhibition, to witness how value is being produced.
The following interview with the filmmaker Dimitris Athiridis was conducted by email in the days immediately following the 2024 U.S. presidential election, a political event that makes “exergue” – on documenta 14 an urgent and compulsory film watch, even more than before.
Dana Knight: In view of the recent turn (or return) in US politics and echoing what the Spanish writer, philosopher and curator of document 14 , Paul B. Preciado, says in Chapter 9 referring to Brexit and the election of Trump in 2016: “We live in dark times, in what Walter Benjamin would call midnight in the clock of history,” where would you say we are now, has the clock gone backwards? Or is it 2 a.m. and even darker? Will there be dawn soon and what needs to happen for dawn to break?
Dimitris Athiridis : That is a very interesting question and I don’t think I have a valid answer. Βut when Paul B. Preciado quotes this, he adds that we are living in institutional ruins: “We still have the architecture of the democratic institutions, we still have the Parliament, but somehow these institutions have become fake ruins.” So, this is what we are witnessing, ruins created by destructive superpowers. Unless this inequality of power is overturned, I cannot see a bright future.
DK: It was interesting to watch your footage from 2013–2016 and see how the curators were talking about those times: “The party is over,” “we live in apocalyptic times,” this is “the last documenta for the end of times,” “it’s WWIII, we’re living it on a daily basis.” One would imagine that nothing worse could follow. How ironic, like in the best of ancient Greek tragedies. How do you see that recent past now, there was still some flicker of hope then, is it all gone now?
DA: At some point, Adam quotes the definition of the contemporary by Giorgio Agaben:” The contemporary is he who firmly holds his gaze on his or her own time so as to perceive not its light but rather its darkness. All eras, for those who experience contemporariness, are obscure. The contemporary is precisely the person who knows how to see this obscurity, who is able to write by dipping his or her pen in the obscurity of the present.” In that sense, artists and thinkers can see far into the darkness, searching for the distant light. We used to think of the distant light as a friendly port, but perhaps it is just a warship coming towards us. At that time, ten years ago, perhaps there was more of? a feeling of a negotiating space between societal powers. Now we acknowledge that there isn’t any. We accept the defeat but hope is a different thing, we will die if we don’t preserve our hope.
DK: I experienced the 14 chapters like a TV series, like “Breaking Bad” in the art world, with an Andy Warhol-esque protagonist at the heart of it, Adam Szymczyk. Did you know that Adam would be such a watchable character from the first moment you met him, or how did your fascination with him develop?
DA: As a photographer, I can understand the potential of a character against the scrutiny of the lens and that was the first impression. Then there is the sound, the voice. Not to forget that cinema is audiovisual. But what really inspired me was reading Adam’s proposal for documenta 14. Later, when I started filming the curatorial team, my fascination grew even greater as the ideas started flowing in, and that is exactly what I tried to convey into the language of the film.
Cinema is a moving thing, a negotiation with emotions. So, there is struggle, fear, frustration and anticipation, and joy, but most importantly there is the intellectual emotion, the somatic experience and joy when we encounter an idea, an artwork, or a poem. I tried to focus and speak about that.
DK: I particularly loved Chapter 8, “The Summer of 2016,” it’s so fast-paced and brimming with ideas, passionate discussions among curators, controversies, disputes, and key insights from Adam that make us aware we live inside the Truman Show: “The Western system of thought in which we’re operating precludes the possibility of transgression of its border.” Culminating in a key question: “Does artwork offer a way out of this circumscription?” Or is art, as well as freedom of speech, impotent, as the philosopher Bifo seems to imply? What would be your answer, and what was your favorite chapter to shoot and why?
AD: Definitely artwork can transgress borders and limitations of any system of thought because its function is different than speech or thought or aesthetics. And an exhibition is judged by the artworks, not only the discussions. The question is how this power of art is understood and utilized by the audience. For me, it was interesting to see in the beginning of the story the initial hopes and aspirations that the exhibition “would bring hope and discursive space where art could be a cognitive extension of our existence” or “initiate a movement of social change.” But somewhere near the end, Adam speaking in a half-empty cinema before the screening of “Wanda” admits that art cannot act on the masses, it can only act on individuals. That is an arc of comprehension regarding the function of art.
As to which chapter I enjoyed filming, I have to say that I used 800 hours to make the first 13 chapters, but for chapter 14, the epilogue, I used only three hours of footage. So there is an 80-minute film almost shot in real time, on the Opening Day. It is somehow the apotheosis of observational cinema, an intense moment both for the main character and for me. It is the closing of the film but a symbolic opening to a new awareness.
DK: I particularly loved the scenes with some of the artists who were brought in to present their projects, you managed to capture their most authentic selves when they were at their most vulnerable. I’m thinking of the Greek artist Danai Anesiadou and her detox project, “The Great Gallbladder Cleanse,” a slightly wacky idea of making jewelry out of her gallstones. Also, the scene with Douglas Gordon who’s asking right off the bat, “Where is the nearest hospital?” because he’s about to have a nervous breakdown. Or the philosophical musings of artist Daniel Knorr, “We humans burn a lot of energy into the air for nothing… this is what we do, how we survive, by consuming ourselves.” …Have they taken you completely by surprise?
DA: The meeting of an artist with a curator is truly a fragile moment, and I was inspired by the respect Adam showed to the artistic genius and the protective framework he provided for them.
There is fragility and vulnerability, but also in the sense of sensitivity. Like, the artists have this ultra-sensitive device of understanding and transmitting phases of our reality. And this sensitivity can only work within the vulnerable state one has the courage to put himself in. I am grateful to all the artists that appear in the film for giving me the permission to film them and their artwork.
DK: You captured some memorable art performances, such as “This Reality” by Mattin and “Whispering Station” by Pope.L. among many. What pieces of art or art performances resonated the most with you in “documenta 14” and why?
DA: Indeed, I was moved by many of the artworks presented in documenta 14 and by their relation to each other within the context of the exhibition. And that is the effect of intelligent curating by the artistic team. There were many works of genius but it still gives me goosebumps to watch the Lady R. performance, based on the last letter by Rosa Luxemburg, an artwork of Sophia Mavragani performed by Chara Kotsali.
DK: Documenting “documenta” was a daunting project, you got to shoot a frightening amount of footage, 800-plus hours. Are you planning to do something else with the rest of the footage? After all, you don’t want to be accused of “waste,” the critic who coined the term “the culture of waste” in response to “documenta 14” might get angry again…
DA: Documenta exhibitions and all exhibitions in that respect are very well documented, by the catalogs, the critiques, the media coverage. I think the 14 edited hours are a pretty good archive, a document I would like to add to the discussions about “documenta 14.” The rest can stay in a box, and perhaps in 100 years, some art historian can find his meaning in life.
DK: Talking about the criticisms thrown at “documenta 14” with newspapers titles such as “How Documenta Failed Everyone but Its Curators,” “Get Rid of the Curators,” “Obscurity of Purpose, Immediacy of Experience,” “Crapumenta,” “artistic bankruptcy,” “financial chaos,” “subsidised revolt.” What do you think triggered this harsh response that Adam himself labeled, “Organised mobbing from otherwise intelligent journalists”? Was it simply the choice of the curators to curate art that differed from the Western avant-garde tradition? Or to bring less visible artists to the forefront in order to balance out the playing field?
DA: Let’s say that what we understand as the art world consists of many different levels and players, and in the case of “documenta 14,” not all players were satisfied, especially those related to the art market. There was an attempt by the artistic team of “documenta 14” to disrupt known models of art production and exhibition making, or at least to question them. On an institutional level, Adam questioned even the “ownership” of “documenta” acknowledging, again,different levels of the institution, the artists, the artistic team, even the visitors and of course the people of Kassel. “Documenta” is a cultural institution that is not identified only with the administrative company or the politically controlled supervising board, because art is happening exactly outside of these borders. So, again, not everybody was happy. Additionally not everyone enjoyed the idea that “documenta” could become a traveling exhibition away from Kassel. In other words, the attack and defamation of “documenta 14” reminds us of the multiple-factor theory of accident causation. The financial deficit in the end was only the pretext.
DK: About the financial deficit that brought “documenta 14” such notoriety, whether it was deliberate or not is a moot point, but considering the acerbic reaction it gave rise to, couldn’t we say that creating this deficit, and thus hitting “the neoliberal” where it hurts the most, counted as the main artistic gesture of the curatorial team? Because “this is how the neoliberal speaks, with money,” to quote the curator Pierre Bal-Blanc…
DA: Ι don’t believe it was intentional, but rather symptomatic of the change of epoch. Financial and content control go hand in? hand ever since. We can see that in Germany and many other countries. It is true, though, that certain political nuances of “documenta 14” were regarded as radical. The media scandal that erupted a few days before the closing of the exhibition was a weapon instrumentalized in a local political battle just before the elections. If the elections were not there, perhaps a year later there would be a pleasant announcement that the great double “documenta 14” created a small deficit that was covered by the city of Kassel as it generated huge profits for the city. So there is no scandal, or the scandal is what the media did.
DK: Adam’s plight all along seems to be how do we criticize the current (Western) political model since we are fully immersed in the Western tradition at its core? Do you feel you would have found yourself in a similar predicament if, hypothetically, you had something to criticize about Adam and his team?
DA: This question is inherent to the position and it is somehow the opposite of the question we hear often these days about the right or not to speak about something. Who has the right to tell a story about Black or trans people, and so on. In that sense, the artistic team of “documenta 14” had every right to question the model of production of mega exhibitions, even within the same system they operate. And I believe they achieved that goal, to seed some doubt at least about certain practices. But in the end, it is the artwork itself that will tell the story, and that is the beauty of it.
DK: The very last chapter shows Adam unraveling right before he is due to give a speech at the opening of “documenta 14” in Athens, in front of presidents of state and other high officials, there is so much drama and suspense. My heart went out to him when he said “No one gives a shit, I felt so alone in doing this.” Do you share his feelings as a filmmaker, or are things a little better in the film world?
DA: Obviously he was not alone as he was working with a large team, but it is always lonely at the top. Anyone who experienced a place of high hierarchy or responsibility can say that. And the task of organizing a documenta can be a very tough job. I believe he was referring to this loneliness, and for once in the film he was expressing this frustration, this feeling of entrapment between institutional, financial, and political leverages.
Documenta exhibitions are usually named and referred to by the name of the artistic director, so it is Catrine David’s documenta, or Okwui’s documenta or Caroline’s documenta. So, there is always a person carrying that responsibility and accountability, until recently anyway. That is interesting too, as we still don’t know what will evolve as a new model.
Additionally, the job of the artistic director of documenta is and has been called a “career killer.” It was usually followed by immediate harsh critique, and perhaps isolation. That applies even to exhibitions that were later glorified, for the right reason.
DK: You’re ending Chapter 14 with the predictions of astrologer Bella Kydonaki who provides a very surprising sort of “epilogue” that is rounding off the 14-hour documentary beautifully. She speaks of documenta in general as a “mother” and “documenta 14” as one of its more difficult children that is harder to love, perhaps. She also talks about “universal truths,” the only ones that matter. How did you come up with this idea, and do you believe in astrology yourself?
We have reached a point of great overturns at which any prediction, especially in societal or political matters, is almost impossible, so even astrological predictions can be regarded as valid.
This video of the astrologer is an artwork by artist Fotini Gouseti and anthropologist Eleanna Yialouri, which was created in the framework of an artistic and anthropological project titled “Learning from Documenta” held in Athens that was monitoring the “documenta 14” project.
At some point, Adam in his opening speech says “’documenta 14 is comprised of its making, its experience, its discussion and its possible continuations. Not just an exhibition.”
In that sense, this interpretation by the astrologer on institutional critique, an artwork that was created after and outside of “d14,” seemed appropriate regarding the troubled present and future of this historical art institution and its exhibitions. It also felt a bit absurd and funny.
Regions: Lisbon