Here are some reflections on Lumbung One / documenta 15 –
For me the main motivation to visit Kassel was to try to get a sense of what Lumbung is and how it operates. It turned out that the documenta Handbook (which costs 28€) was the most useful source of information. The handbook dedicates 30 pages to introducing the Lumbung system and as far as I know, this same introduction is not available online.
To me, many aspects of Lumbung seem like steps to the right direction:
- Being sensitive to the realities of art collectives in the Global South, giving them a strong mandate to define how they will participate
- Setting the priorities right: the participating collectives should be able to keep up their regular activities even though they take part in documenta 15 (“Keep on doing what you are doing and find a translation to Kassel”)
- Bringing all the participating collectives and artists into dialogue, enabling peer-support and collaboration
- Increasing transparency in the process and finances, placing a substantial part of the funding to a common funding pool (creating a strong incentive for forming collaborations)
- Aiming for more active audience engagement (participants instead of audience)
- Aiming to build funding and collaboration models that would be sustainable and would function also after documenta (Lumbung Kios, Lumbung Gallery, etc)
- An emphasis on sharing and harvesting, via https://lumbung.space, Lumbung Press, etc
- Enabling the local art scene of Kassel to get involved
As someone who has been involved in various participatory experiments over the years, I find these aspects of Lumbung extremely interesting. I would also be eager to promote these, to send out a message that “hey everyone take a look at how Lumbung One operates, maybe there is something we could learn from it”.
However, things are not that simple. One distinct feature of Lumbung is the special vocabulary: ‘majelis’ instead of meeting, ‘ekosistem’ instead of ecosystem, ‘sobat-sobat’ instead of hosts, etc. Establishing a special vocabulary makes a lot of sense. It is an efficient way to avoid the hegemony of English/German. It forces everyone who visits Lumbung/documenta to stop and pay a bit closer attention on what’s going on. It is also a clever way to decentralise power and give room for innovation. Each of these terms has the potential of gaining a more elaborate definition and thus becoming a building block of the special Lumbung way of doing things.
The downside of the special language is that it is a barrier, a hindrance for building alliances. It is also a sort of protective buffer, which is perhaps what it is meant to be.
The complexity of Lumbung extends beyond the language. It’s a chimera with many heads and voices.
Lumbung is a practice. It is also a constellation of collectives and artists.
Lumbung refuses to conform and to be exploited: “We refuse to be exploited by European, institutional agendas that are not ours to begin with”.
Lumbung challenges the notions of authorship: “Will the much-needed dissolution of ownership and authorship happen in documenta fifteen? How will economy, credits and aesthetics be practiced and therefore understood differently in the 100 days?”.
Lumbung seeks a new aesthetic paradigm: “Socially engaged art comes from the experience of community and the needs of people. This involves participants in a horizontal situation where there is no leader or artist. This is different to the European paradigm of aesthetics which privileges the role of the spectator. We try to produce a new aesthetics – an ethical paradigm where the viewer is obsolete. They should not be there to observe but to be part of the process”.
The manifesto of Lumbung is “make friends, not art”.
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Curiously enough, one major adversary for Lumbung’s mission is Lumbung itself. Lumbung refuses to conform to any agenda, even its own: “Intuitively, every time we invent a principle, we don’t see it through completely: we happen to leave a part open and unruly, like when we decided to turn Fridericianum into a school but still needed the space for work that demands controlled museum conditions”.
So – despite aiming for a radically different manifestation of art, or perhaps even a manifestation without art, Lumbung also features plenty of art, some of which is indeed presented in museum conditions.
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So – how does one experience Lumbung as a visitor?
My own visit to Lumbung/Kassel took place in late July and I had a chance to spend three full days there. In some way my visit to Kassel was a rather typical mega scale art event visit – I spent 3 days on a bike going through most of the 32 venues, trying to see and experience as much as I could.
My personal highlights were perhaps the Ghetto Biennale at St Kunigundis, Intermundial Holobiente at Compost Heap, Taring Padi at Hallenbad Ost, INLAND at Ottoneum, Eltiqa group at WH22 as well as works by many individual artists (Pınar Öğrenci, Nino Bulling, ikibawiKrrr, FAFSWAG, etc). In other words – the most engaging things in Lumbung were the exhibitions and artworks. This felt a bit odd since as a visitor I was expecting a radically different experience, even a sort of rejection. This also felt a bit unfair for the artists – their works would have deserved to be acknowledged as an important key part of Lumbung, rather than being mentioned as a sort of anecdotal sidenote.
The participatory nature of Lumbung was definitely present as well. The overall vibe was more relaxed and unhinged compared to a conventional art event. One gets a sense of arriving to a festival and there is a promising feeling that many things are just about to happen. Unfortunately, in many locations things don’t evolve past this point. There are many amazing spaces that have been specifically designed for a participatory event, but there is simply nothing going on. If feels like arriving in a festival location a day after everyone else has left.
There are some exceptions though – some of the spaces remain engaging even though there would not be an event going on. It’s possible to browse books and magazines, to touch items, to dig into materials. I particularly enjoyed doing sort of detective work to try to figure out what had been going on in the Intermundial Holobiente workshops.
One visible feature were the big prints of the harvested material from Lumbung meetings. If one browses these materials online (at https://lumbung.space) then one can see them in a context, and can get some sense of the discussions that the community has been having. The big prints in the spaces do the opposite – they rather mystify than clarify. I find this a bit disappointing since this may give many people a wrong idea of what harvesting is about. Harvesting is one term in the Lumbung vocabulary, but it’s also a commonly used term in participatory practices (see for example https://artofhosting.org).
I also did try to make some friends! I had some nice (although short) chats with Lumbung Gallery people, as well as AKA Kassel people. If one would stay longer, these dialogues could have a chance to evolve further.
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What could Lumbung have done differently? Obviously, almost everything could have been done differently. Lumbung seems to have evolved in a very organic way, with many features being added during the years of preparations. In many ways it is a bold, unique experiment. The documenta organisation would deserve to get more credit for going along with this challenging, constantly evolving process.
Looking at Lumbung from the perspective of participatory practices, what was missing was an updated invitation (or a “calling question”) to documenta. Lumbung invested enormous efforts into changing the way documenta is put together, but from the perspective of a visitor all the basic things still remained pretty much the same. Thousands and thousands of people still flocked to Kassel, they all bought a tickets and perhaps a t-shirt or a book, and they saw plenty of art. If they did buy the documenta Handbook then they could learn about the Lumbung system but it is not the same as an invitation to take part in the system. The story does give some hints on how one could join or contribute, but these don’t match with the actual experience. In some way it’s simply a question of setting the wrong expectations. If Lumbung says that in Fridericianum “anyone can take part” then it’s odd if there is nothing there to take part in.
Would it have been possible to drastically change the fundamental mechanics of documenta? Perhaps not. One way to approach the situation is to acknowledge that Lumbung is doing many important and essential things, but documenta is just not the right context for these. Lumbung is already striving to do some many things that it’s maybe not fair or relevant to question what Lumbung does from the perspective of a regular visitor. However, Lumbung’s focus has been in changing very concrete, practical aspects of documenta, which in my opinion is an invitation for discussing these perspectives.
The most interesting and fruitful things have probably been happening inside Lumbung, among the members of Lumbung and their close collaborators. The positive effects might have been strong for the art scene in Kassel and for the activities in some far away locations – Indonesia, Colombia, Haiti, Palestine, etc. I’m afraid that these aspects will not be get the attention they would deserve. It’s tragic that fringe far-right groups were so successful in both instigating fear on location in Kassel as well as planting the seeds for the ‘anti-semitism scandals’ which derailed the public discussion.
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The images are from various Lumbung Majelis harvests. Links to harvests: