Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev: Letter to a Friend - dOCUMENTA (13): 100 Notizen - 100 Gedanken No. 003

In her Letter to a Friend, dOCUMENTA (13)’s artistic director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev gives an insight into her working process, outlining some of the key issues around the 2012 exhibition. In shifting voices, such as storytelling, theoretical speculation, travel diary, press release, or critical reflection, she describes dOCUMENTA (13) as something more than an exhibition—for her it is a state of mind. It is a constellation of artistic acts and gestures that are already taking place as well as an exhibition that will open on June 6, 2012, and that will run for 100 days. Given the heterogeneity of the audience it addresses and the historical development of group exhibitions as “a non-commercial place to intensely aggregate,” what can this exhibition be today? Opening the boundaries of disciplines and fields of knowledge and emphasizing the procedural questions, dOCUMENTA (13) is coming together by thinking through a number of composite entangled ontologies instead of following a defined curatorial concept.