documenta.

An exhi­bi­tion spread over two floors offers a chance to stroll through the art but also take a deep look behind the scenes. Vis­i­tors are guid­ed by a com­plex, rhyth­mic archive struc­ture, inspired by the light pre­sen­ta­tion style of the first doc­u­men­ta. It offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty for mul­ti-per­spec­tive and in-depth explo­ration, and becomes the key to under­stand­ing the select­ed art­works as well as the polit­i­cal char­ac­ter of documenta.

The art­works are shown as artis­tic works (arti­facts) and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly as his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments (sources) for their spe­cif­ic polit­i­cal mes­sage. Due to this impor­tant dual func­tion, they are placed on indi­vid­ual wall pan­els. They can thus func­tion as art­works, yet still enter into a dia­logue with the archive and frame the archival mate­r­i­al with its numer­ous doc­u­ments, films, posters, and oral his­to­ry inter­views. Visu­al works not avail­able at the time of the exhi­bi­tion are staged in expan­sive repro­duc­tions of his­tor­i­cal pho­tographs – they repro­duce doc­u­men­ta as a sit­u­a­tion and not just the exhib­it as a replica.

An impor­tant task of the scenog­ra­phy was to clear­ly posi­tion the visu­al­ly per­cep­ti­ble state­ments and to devel­op the­mat­ic con­nec­tions between the archive struc­tures and the sig­nif­i­cant works of art and sculp­tures. Direct con­nec­tions between the exhibits are cre­at­ed through path lay­outs and lines of sight.

The syn­the­sis of the spa­tial struc­ture and the com­plex exhi­bi­tion graph­ics is con­sti­tu­tive of the entire scenog­ra­phy. It is struc­tured in a con­sis­tent sys­tem (grid) – derived from the his­tor­i­cal exhi­bi­tion posters – and thus inte­grates the var­i­ous lev­els: archive, chil­dren’s trail, inclu­sion ele­ments, and others.