Art and politics continued: avant-garde, resistance and the multitude in Documenta 11

Dimitrakaki, Angela (2003) Art and politics continued: avant-garde, resistance and the multitude in Documenta 11. Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory, 11 (3), 153-176. (doi:10.1163/156920603770678346).

Record type: Article

Abstract

The article examines the wider ideological framework operative in one of the most important events of the contemporary international art scene: Documenta 11 in Kassel in 2002. The author considers various aspects of Documenta 11, which is not however approached as a group art show but as a curatorial initiative responding to the challenge of 'globalisation' as orchestrated by capital and the networks of resistance to the latter. The author considers in particular the deployment of key terms such as 'avant-garde', 'postcoloniality', 'postmodernism' in the Documenta 11 discourse as well as the curatorial engagement with recent political theory and specifically Hardt and Negri's concepts of 'empire' and 'multitude' to propose a reading of Documenta 11 that does not exclude its function as spectacle.

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Published date: 2003

Additional Information: The article submitted received comments by three anonymous reviewers and was revised on the basis of these comments. The author, an Editor of the journal at the time when the article was submitted, was not present during Editorial Board discussions concerning her submission.

Keywords: art and politics, avant-garde, multitude, documenta 11

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