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| Solakov at the Brothers Grimm Museum |
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documenta13, Part 1
Freshly back from two art and
action packed days in Kassel, and I want to give the mind-bogglingly big art show the
proper writing treatment I hoped for, but first I just want to tell about my
two favorite pieces while they are fresh in my mind.
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| free jukebox and comfy headphones |
The first was Susan Hiller’s
Die Gedanken Sind Frei. 100
songs, in 5 jukeboxes located throughout documenta13, completely free of charge
and with an accompanying songbook. The book reads like the text of a mixed tape
for the world. The songs all tend toward the protest and social change theme,
but are really varied from Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” to the American Indian Movement Song to “Clampdown” by the Clash. The title refers to a German protest song, translated
as “Thoughts are Free” (Thinking is Free). In the songbook, Hiller relates how inmates in a
concentration camp were ordered to put on a show to celebrate Hitler's 46th birthday and the Jewish lawyer Hans Litten sang
this song, and was executed 3 days later (other sources claim he committed suicide after the incident). The first song I listened to was The
Mothers of Invention “What is the Ugliest Part of Your Body” and I have to
admit, providing headphones and a big comfy bench to sit is an excellent way to
capture your audience in a sprawling art show.
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| songbook |
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| listen closely |
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| and read those lyrics |
The first and central jukebox of
the piece is in it’s own room at the Neue Galerie, with the lyrics of the 100
songs plastered up on the walls. I sat and listened, reading the lyrics and
getting emotional at Hiller’s anecdotes and stories after each one. At one
point, “Die Gedanken Sind Frei” came on and the room changed, people who knew
it sang the words and as the song ended everyone clapped and it brought several
in the room to tears, including me.
Hiller has captured the essence of what attracts me to music, the “it”,
that unnameable and intangible thing that makes songs ours, something that, while
we maybe didn’t write it or create it, hearing it and participating in it makes
it our own, and something that we share with others. Hiller writes, referring to the songs she chose
“Whenever I hear one of these songs, a gap opens up in ordinary everyday-ness
and a past abruptly emerges.” I
made it my goal the rest of the weekend to find the other 4 jukeboxes and play
both “War” by Edwin Starr and “Gimme Hope Jo’Anna” by Eddy Grant.
The other pleasant surprise
was Bulgarian artist Nedko Solakov’s multi room installation a the Brothers Grimm Museum. I saw this on Sunday when I had only two hours left to see the last pieces I wanted to, and that museum was not on the
list but I figured there was no line so a quick look couldn’t hurt. What I
found was a hilarious and absurd series of works with a distinctively Slavic
(read: about mortality) bent. Solakov begins by telling us about childhood
obsession with knights, and also a long held dream of being a hard rock
drummer, and lastly, about owning remote control helicopters. I wont’ give too much away when I say
the video that made me laugh the hardest was Solakov dressed up as a knight
while three gifted drummers played and he had a remote control helicopter land
on his arm. The best was the last
video where he goes on a ride on white horse in a snow, dressed in a complete
suit of armor, with a bendable unicorn toy (his daughter’s) wrapped around the
horse’s halter. It was a patently ridiculous, Solakov fulfilling childhood
dreams in his 50s, but that it was made it great, the ability to look back on
your dreams and joyously still participate in the them.
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| a painting he commissioned combining all his long held dreams |
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| on TV with the drummers |
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| more hilarious videos and paraphernalia
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