documenta 15: Compost heap (Karlsaue), Greenhouse (Karlsaue), Hiroshima-Ufer (Karlsaue) and Karlswiese (Karlsaue)

In this venues: La Intermundial Holobiente, Más Arte Más Acción, Sourabh Phadke, ZK/U – Center for Art and Urbanistics, Cao Minghao & Chen Jianjun, Cinema Caravan and Takashi Kuribayashi, The Nest Collective

Exhibition title: documenta 15

Curated by: ruangrupa

Venue: documenta 15, Compost heap (Karlsaue), Greenhouse (Karlsaue), Hiroshima-Ufer (Karlsaue), Karlswiese (Karlsaue), Kassel, Germany

Date: June 18 – September 25, 2022

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and ©documenta 15

Near the Greenhouse in the Karlsaue is a compost heap used by the landscape gardeners of the Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel (MHK).

In this “feral” area that escapes human design, La Intermundial Holobiente has created a habitat for The Book of the Ten Thousand Things, a book created collectively by seven artists and seven writers around the idea that the main text on it has been written by a nonhuman being. Human and nonhuman agencies play their part in allowing the visitor to have a contemplative, unwinding experience.

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Más Arte Más Acción (MAMA) brings artists, scientists, activists, and writers together on Colombia’s Pacific coast to dedicate themselves to thinking about climate change and other environmental issues in an interdisciplinary way. Thematizing environmental and socio-political problems, MAMA’s installation in the Greenhouse, the Staatspark Karlsaue management depot, includes a sound collage, tree trunks, and salvaged wood from HessenForst.

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August 6, 2022, marks the 77th year since the US dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. A memorial for this day has traditionally been held on Fulda-Ufer, where Claes Oldenburg’s 1982 steel sculpture Spitzhacke (Pickaxe) stands. Several years ago, this section of the riverbank was renamed Hiroshima-Ufer.

During documenta fifteen, the citizenship, a boat built from a dismantled roof truss by ZK/U – Center for Art and Urbanistics in Berlin, Germany, will dock here, having been brought from Berlin to Kassel using muscle power and renewable energy. At various moorings, artists seek exchanges with local communities through workshops, debates, and performances.

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The large Karlswiese in front of the Orangerie is the heart of the 125-hectare Karlsaue state park. Named after its patron Landgrave Karl of Hessen-Kassel, the Baroque park has been an important exhibition venue for documenta over the years. It was also the site of the 1955 Federal Garden Show, during which Arnold Bode conceived his first documenta.

This year, Cinema Caravan and Takashi Kuribayashi are also present in the park with mosquito tents, an herbal sauna, and an open-air cinema. The collective uses the caravan as a model of a community in which individuals retain their autonomy, yet grow together with others to form a community. The Nest Collective from Nairobi, Kenya, draw attention to the transport of garbage, e-waste and textiles to the countries of the Global South, which contribute to the destruction of the environment and the economy there, with Return to Sender, a walk-in installation made of garbage. In addition, Cao Minghao & Chen Jianjun from Chengdu in China, who work on the current socio-ecological realities and the human-nature relationship, erect a nomadic yak tent here.

documenta fifteen: La Intermundial Holobiente, Theaterschlag, 2022, The Holobiente Trail, 2022, installation view, Compost heap (Karlsaue), Kassel

documenta fifteen: La Intermundial Holobiente, Theaterschlag, 2022, The Holobiente Trail, 2022, installation view, Compost heap (Karlsaue), Kassel, June 14, 2022, photo: Nils Klinger

documenta fifteen: La Intermundial Holobiente, Theaterschlag, 2022, installation view (detail), Compost heap (Karlsaue), Kassel, June 14, 2022, photo: Nils Klinger

documenta fifteen: La Intermundial Holobiente, Signoteca, 2022, installation view, Compost heap (Karlsaue), Kassel, June 14, 2022, photo: Nils Klinger