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Of course, as you may have heard, these philosophical provocations about the art world and funding are hardly the most controversial story at this year’s Documenta. Throughout official festival materials, participating artists are enthusiastic about the disintegration of traditional art world rigidity in favor of a flourishing community: included collaborators Cinema Caravan and Takashi Kuribayashi, for example, self-describe as “being driven by the motto ‘make friends not art’”-a phrase rarely heard in the art world. Across Documenta, traditional explanatory wall texts are nowhere to be found: at most, installed works are paired with sheets of A4 paper stuck to the wall with a magnet.
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This is far from ruangrupa’s only move away from curatorial norms. In a repeated gesture of institutional critique, numerous rooms across this year’s Documenta are active artists’ workshops, positioned directly in the middle of otherwise-used gallery space and challenging the (arguably, fair) expectation to see any art at all.
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From the jump, ruangrupa approached a quintessentially elite European art festival from a decentralized, anti-capitalist, communitarian stance: what they term lumbung-a reference to an Indonesian word for a shared supply of rice, which the community divides with a spirit of mutual trust.