From Bonn West to Berlin

Photos by Iris Gonzales. Edited by Jes Aznar.

Notes from Documenta (13)

KASSEL, Germany – The scorching sun is relentless while a gentle, icy breeze blows in this quiet city in Central Germany one Thursday afternoon of June. The weather offers a possible metaphor -- albeit incomplete -- for Documenta 13’s jab on the senses.

The latest version of this international exhibition of mostly contemporary art held every four or five years, is spread throughout the city of Kassel – from public parks, theaters and museums, chaotic train stations to places long forgotten – lending significance to each of the spaces and at the same time offering an exploration to other dimensions and perspectives that exist somewhere between time and these platforms. 

The exhibition’s Artistic Director Carolyn Christove-Bakargiev says in her statement that Documenta 13 is dedicated to artistic research and forms of imagination that explore commitment, matter, things, embodiment and active living in connection with, yet not subordinated to, theory. 

“Documenta 13 is driven by a holistic and non-logocentric vision that is skeptical of the persisting belief in economic growth. This vision is shared with, and recognizes, the shapes and practices of knowing of all the animate and inanimate makers of the world, including people,” she says. 

The exhibition does not disappoint. It is complicated to say the least but how could it not be? Any real attempt to make sense of what is and what is not is bound to extend beyond what can be defined. 

And the impact is anatomical as it is physical. Metaphysical, too. The exhibition is serious and overwhelming, free from artistic pretentions and ignorance. 

Yet, the journey throughout the exhibition is uniquely one’s own. 

I paused for a while on the short stretch of photographs by Lee Miller. The self-portrait of her taking a bath in Hitler’s tub in his apartment in Munich – supposedly taken just hours apart Hitler’s death in Berlin -- gave me a lesson in history and left an imprint in my inner mind’s eye of life over death. 

Jes searched the exhibition map for 117, Man Ray’s photographs. 

At the elegant, ivory-colored Fridericianum Museum, the most vivid expressions (and celebrations) of the strongest human emotions possible are captured in the different rooms and dimly lit hallways. 

I heard screams from possibly a child sexual abuse victim reverberating in a room not far from another one filled with scientific masterpieces of quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger. The juxtaposition is perhaps a fitting allegory to the long established notion that science, however fascinating it may be, cannot possibly explain everything. 

There is a wall with paintings of apples and another with draperies that tell stories.

In a dark room at the Kassel central train station, a man tells the story of that fleeting moment of eternity – from one’s life to one’s own death. 

The artist is Rabih Mroué and in his recorded lecture, The Pixelated Revolution, he shows acts of violence recorded by civilians in the Syrian Revolution. 

In Double Shoot, he tells the story of a civilian who captures with his mobile phone camera the exact moment when a gun is fired at him. 

“We cannot grasp the moment of death with our naked eye, even if we manage to steady our gaze and keep our eyes peeled at all times, without blinking,” he says. 

Documenta 13 – from the glimpse I had of it – to me, is all about making sense of things nonsense and otherwise; sensual and enigmatic; of the mysterious and the miserable; of the shadows and the blinding lights. It is at times funny, too. And cathartic. 

It poses questions and offers answers and as it should be, leaves more questions unanswered. 

But most of all, it is disturbing, as disturbing perhaps as the artists intended it to be. 

I am tempted to think that the curator has one foot out there, somewhere between the planes. 

Letters from Bonn

BONN, Germany – Grey is the color of departure, that short kiss of goodbye, that open-ended farewell. Of fourteen hours of separation. There are no warm hues, no kaleidoscope, no crimson orange sun on the horizon nor are there denim-color clouds above. There is nothing but gray, as gray as the last hour of a rainy day, as drab as the last smoke from a smoker’s burned lips.

The clock reads 8:44 pm but the sun has yet to set.  It is already pitch-black elsewhere in the world but not here in Europe. Yet, the long hours of daylight bring me no warm, especially not today as I stand on the dusty pavement of platform 1 at the Grand Central Station of Bonn and watch the red and gray IC train leave the rustic tracks and disappear toward a place called Hannover. I bade Jes goodbye as he left to pursue a total stranger in that far-away city to talk about photography. 

The departing train leaves those left behind with nothing but the smallest particles of dust, too small to see but large enough to represent the feeling of melancholy on anyone left alone on that empty platform.

What follows after the deafening sound of a speeding train is total silence, a dingy emptiness. And then the footsteps of hundreds of passengers walking toward the rest of their lives as they wait for the next train.

Train stations are a stark metaphor of life. It represents hellos and goodbyes; of endless journeys; of people coming and going, disappearing into different directions. It’s about people moving on, moving away, moving to nowhere or moving to stop again. It’s about getting lost along the way and for the lucky ones, finding their way back or to those who choose otherwise, it’s about choosing to die by jumping off the tracks.

It’s about getting derailed. It’s navigating through the labyrinth of the subway at least 10 feet below the ground.

It was getting dark when I left the train station. It would be the first time on this trip that I would be walking alone on the cobbled streets of Bonn, back to a two-star hotel that had been our home for days since we hopped on the train from Frankfurt.

I managed to make it back to our borrowed room, thankful to my heart for lending some buoyancy when I need it, especially on the heaviest of days.

I spent the rest of the evening packing my stuff while the rest of Germany or perhaps the whole of Europe – in street cafes and bars, over beers and cigarettes  -- watched Portugal battle with Spain on a jam packed football field in Poland.

I was, as always, eager to go and leave again to yet another place and to go back to Manila in a few days.  I could never get used to the coldness and grey skies of Europe, notwithstanding the fact that I have visited more countries in this continent than I have ever done in Asia or America. I don’t really mind the weather. I have a wardrobe to keep me warm for any country on the world map but even the thickest of clothes can never warm the heart. 

And so I bade the cobbled stones and the Renaissance architecture of Bonn goodbye, the blue cheese and the ice-cold beer, the euphoria in the air over Spain’s victory the night before and walked back to the Grand Central Station of Bonn to take the train to where my home really is whichever part of the world I may be. See you in three hours.