Dorothea Von Hantelmann from Exhibiting To

Dorothea von From Exhibiting Hantelmann to Embedding: The Situated Art Work 14 Dorothea From Exhibiting von to Embedding: Hantelmann the Situated Artwork 1. Artworks and ant colony had formed at the situations foot of an oak. Even on closer inspection, it was unclear what Pierre Huyghe, had been altered artistically Untilled, 2012 and what hadn’t, where the composting facility ended and Pierre Huyghe’s the work of art began. contribution to dOCUMENTA There was something (13) required some effort in like a center to the work: order to be discovered at all. It a reclining concrete figure was not just that Huyghe had placed on an open space in the chosen a decidedly decentered middle of the lot—a replica of exhibition site: a composting an artwork by the sculptor Max facility located in the Aue-Park. Weber from the 1930s, which Even after one had located the on its shoulders had, in lieu of site, it was anything but obvious a head, a beehive populated that it was art. One found by a trembling, buzzing oneself in a kind of overgrown swarm of bees. And there lot: a pile of compost, sprouting was the elegant white female growth, through which a greyhound called Human, who, walkway led—at times really with her pink leg, became the just a beaten path, with algae- trademark of this documenta. covered puddles. The hills were Other elements of the work overgrown with plants and came to light over time: the weeds. Off to one side, paving compost hills were planted slabs were stacked; nearby, a with psychotropic, medical, mound of black chippings. An and aphrodisiacal plants such 1 von Hantelmann ——— From Exhibiting... as deadly nightshade, and planning. The bees not only angel’s trumpets. Cannabis distributed seeds, but also was also there, as well as rye, multiplied themselves, so that which although a completely the head of the sculpture harmless grain, it is particularly continued to grow; becoming likely to harbor ergot, a fungus after a few months monstrously that can be used to synthesize swollen. The site was LSD. At some point, visitors characterized by an interplay began to sense that the of design and the undesigned, stacked slabs were arranged making it seem strangely in a particular way, as was the charged—a place where the surrounding basin, in which artistic labor invested in its tadpoles splashed. Huyghe had composition became palpable, collected several artifacts—he even if this composed quality calls them “markers”—from was never entirely revealed. various times and contexts. The stacked sidewalk Robert Smithson, Spiral slabs, for example, recalled Jetty, 19 7 0 the form and materials of the aesthetics of Minimal Art, while Spiral Jetty is Robert a felled tree alluded to Robert Smithson’s magnum opus. It is Smithson’s Dead Tree from a monumental piece of Land 1969. A bench, tipped over Art constructed in stone on the and resting between the stone shore of the Great Salt Lake in slabs, was part of Dominique Utah in 1970, taking the form Gonzalez-Foerster’s installation of a spiral: the ancient symbol at Documenta11 and a small, connecting beginning and end, desiccated oak lying around space and time, and expansion was part of Joseph Beuys’s and contraction that traverses 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks). cultural and natural histories. Among these artistic The work that had been arrangements, other organic/ covered by water for years biological processes of before suddenly reappearing, formation were at work: has a somehow mythical status that bees and ants would that not only derives from disseminate seeds from the its remote placement in the plants was part of the artwork’s salt desert. Smithson himself, conception. The way in which in an essay corresponding this occurred of course evaded to the work, describes how 2 the overpowering, mythical many different levels: it can experience of the place hit him stem from the architecture of when he first encountered it, the given place or from the how space and time began conventions of its use, from its to intertwine through circular relations to the city, to history, movements and how the form or to society. of a spiral appeared to him as in a vision.1 Smithson’s film Decor, Villa Empain/ that is also part of the work Boghossian Foundation, Spiral Jetty unfolds manifold 2016 connections from this spiral form. He interweaves the Villa Empain is an Art salt crystals that grow on the Deco villa built in the 1930s in jetty with the solar system, Brussels, which today houses prehistoric times and science the exhibition space of an art fiction – thus reality and foundation. For this space, I fiction, present and past – in a recently curated, together with spinning dynamic. the artist Tino Sehgal and Asad Raza, the Artistic Director of Daniel Buren the Villa, an exhibition titled Decor, involving twentieth and Daniel Buren has twenty-first century artists who worked in situ since the 1960s. have no fear of the decorative. From his first situated pieces Among the participating artists with their pre-printed striped are Daniel Buren, who realized motif onwards, it is the elision an artwork in situ; Dominique of the boundaries between art, Gonzalez-Foerster, who has framework, site and context of realized several works that presentation that characterizes occupy an ambivalent place Buren’s art. He incorporates between installation and all parameters respective to interior; Felix Gonzalez-Torres, their context, which influence with some of his curtains the existence and experience that suggest hospitality and of an artwork, into the work’s domesticity; Philippe Parreno; conception from the very Pierre Huyghe; Marcel beginning and thus abolishes Broodthaers; as well as one the clear-cut distinction of Carl Andre’s floor pieces between artwork and context. that can be walked on, which “Context” here can encompass the artist also called zones or 3 von Hantelmann ——— From Exhibiting... roads, in order to highlight that Because, we are interested in artwork and viewer share the the decorative objects’ different same space. way of being and mode of Decor is an exhibition operation. An artwork functions about the decorative in like a magnet; it asserts itself contemporary art and, at the as a center, as a protagonist same time, itself a decor of this in the production of meaning. (already highly decorated) Villa. Decor, by contrast, draws the Through this ambivalence, it gaze only to then deflect it addresses a kind of blind spot back onto the broader spatial in modern art: the unresolved and situational context. The and conflicted relation to philosopher Hans Georg decoration. With the inception Gadamer calls this the “double- of modernity around 1800, the sidedness of decorative idea of a decorative artwork mediation.” As decor, the became a contradiction in object cannot assert autonomy, terms. Painting was separated because it exists— by definition from architecture and —only in relation to a place and became autonomous, thereby as the carrier of a function. We abandoning decoration as its bring artistic positions from the primary function. Historically, visual arts together to approach this was the end of the this paradigm of the decorative, decorative and integrated and, in this villa, make its mode aesthetic object, and the advent of operation tangible. of the modern idea of the work of art. From now on, as Hegel writes in the Aesthetics, 2. The situated artwork the artwork’s “function is not merely filling surfaces on a What do these artistic wall; on the contrary, it is there approaches have in common? on its own account.”2 The Despite their different aesthetic decorative is a zone from which orientations, they share, I would the artistic object must retreat claim, a common interest. in order to become an artwork They are works that do not in a modern understanding want to be autonomous, that (which is why art wants to be are not exhibited (in the sense everything, just not decorative). of showcased objects), but So why, now, take a step enter into a connection with back from this development? the place in which they are 4 embedded. The common of objectivity, for considering interest that they share the respective historical and is their concern with the political embeddedness of forms and processes of this scientific practices as well embeddedness; their concern as the material conditions of of situating the artwork. the production of knowledge, The term “situated” has in i.e. the objects, tools, recent years become a central technologies, institutions etc. topos of a critique of science, that are implicated. A situated triggered by Donna Haraway’s knowledge is embodied, concept—formulated as embedded, inserted into early as in 1988—of “situated language, into cultures and knowledge”; a concept also traditions; it is always local, increasingly embraced in art delimited, and conceived from contexts. Carolyn Christov- its own, present situation, Bakargiev, Artistic Director based on experience, and of the last documenta, for experimental. instance, opened her first Does it make sense to press conference with a live carry this concept over into art? hook-up to Donna Haraway, in What can we even understand order to declare, in an almost by “situated artwork”? I paradigmatic manner, a “site- propose to describe the works specific turn.” presented here as attempts at With the concept of situating, which—each in their “situated knowledge,” Donna own way—approach the idea of Haraway substantially critiques a situated artwork. notions of knowledge as In the case of Robert abstract, absolute, autonomous, Smithson, turning away from and universal. She contrasts a predominant notion of art the idea of disembodied based on the centrality and objectivity with specificity and autonomy of the object begins embodiment.

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