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As a reference work, companion, and innovative art guide, the Handbook offers orientation for the lumbung processes.

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Documenta fifteen: The 15th edition of Documenta, curated by the ‘ruangrupa’ collective Kassel, Germany, 18 June–25 September 2022

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The latest news around documenta fifteen.

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We need to talk! Art - Freedom - Solidarity

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Sonntags, 8., 15. und 22. Mai 2022 Jeweils 14-17 Uhr (MESZ) In deutscher und englischer Sprache mit Simultanübersetzung sowie Übersetzung in Gebärdensprache Unter dem Titel We need to talk! Art - Freedom - Solidarity plant die documenta mit dem documenta archiv eine Gesprächsreihe, bei der in drei Gesprächsforen die Rolle von Kunst und Kunstfreiheit angesichts von wachsendem Antisemitismus, Rassismus und zunehmender Islamophobie diskutiert werden soll.

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Christopher K. Ho and Susanna Chung led a virtual walkthrough and conversation 

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On Thursday July 28, Christopher K. Ho and Susanna Chung led a virtual walkthrough and conversation about AAA's contribution to documenta fifteen.

Initiated by Jakarta-based collective ruangrupa, documenta fifteen is organized around the concept of lumbung ("rice barn"), which refers to communal buildings in rural Indonesia where the harvest is stored and distributed to the community. Collectivity and resource distribution constitute the main values and principles for the structure and working methods.

As part of a group of collectives and organizations working on education and archiving in an expanded sense, AAA's contribution to documenta fifteen is a display that foregrounds the active role artists themselves have played in preserving and mediating cultural knowledge. Located in the Fridericianum-one of the first public museums in the world and one of the main venues of documenta fifteen- Translations, Expansions presents artworks and archival materials about collective undertakings by artists who learn from vernacular cultural practices across Asia.

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Asia Art Archive at documenta fifteen * Asia Art Archive in America

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On Thursday July 28, Christopher K. Ho and Susanna Chung led a virtual walkthrough and conversation about AAA's contribution to documenta fifteen. Initiated by Jakarta-based collective ruangrupa, documenta fifteen is organized around the concept of lumbung ("rice barn"), which refers to communal buildings in rural Indonesia where the harvest is stored and distributed to the community.

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The Black Archives has been invited to participate in documenta 15. Documenta is seen as one of the most important art exhibitions and takes place every 5 year in Kassel, Germany. Our exhibition 'Interwoven Histories of Solidarity: Documenting Black Pasts & Presents' is part of the 'Fridskul' in the Museum Fridericianum, one of the oldest museums in the world.

'Interwoven Histories of Solidarity: Documenting Black Pasts & Presents'
The Black Archives is a historical archive with a unique collection of books, documents, and artifacts documenting the histories and culture of Black Dutch emancipation movements, thinkers, and activists in the Netherlands and beyond. The stories rediscovered in the archive challenge normative historical narratives which tend to whitewash histories of colonialism, racism, imperialism and its legacies in present day societies. The stories uncovered in the archive also show histories of a Black radical tradition and stories of transnational solidarity. Histories which seemed isolated and disconnected are more interwoven than we may think.

Inspired by the practice of lumbung The Black Archives will share stories uncovered in the archive which show histories of a Black radical tradition and stories of transnational solidarity. We will present the international dimension of the stories of Black radical thinkers and activists Anton de Kom, Hermina & Otto Huiswoud. These histories seemed isolated and disconnected but are more interwoven than we may think. For Documenta 15 The Black Archives developed an extra chapter of the In this extra chapter we highlight the role of German missionaries in the European colonies such as Surinam, the history of scientific racism in Europe, imagery about Black people & resistance against it.The exhibition at Documenta 15 includes art by: Raul Balai, Rossel Chaslie, Brian Elstak, Jaasir Linger, Iris Kensmil & Dion Rosina.

exhibition 'Facing Blackness: Visual Representations of Black People and Their History of Resistance' which is on view at The Black Archives in Amsterdam.
​ Extra chapter Facing Blackness
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When? 18 June 2022 - 25 September 2022
Where? Fridskul, Fridericianum
More information and tickets via the Documenta website.

Exhibition and graphic design: Serana Angelista & Tyneisha van Veltum
Concept development: Jessica de Abreu & Mitchell Esajas
Camille Parker, Gerardo Gomez Tonda, Hannah Rustomjee, Jomaira de Souza & Richard Weaver

Ruangrupa & lumbung

Indonesia based artists' collective ruangrupa is the Artistic Direction of documenta 15. They built the foundation of their documenta 15 on the core values and ideas of lumbung (Indonesian term for a communal rice barn). Lumbung as an artistic and economic model is rooted in principles such as collectivity, communal resource sharing, and equal allocation, and is embodied in all parts of the collaboration and the exhibition.

More information about lumbung

19 June: Convo 'Archives & libraries as sites of storytelling and community building'The three lumbung artists Keleketla! Library, The Black Archives, and Asia Art Archive come together to imagine and activate libraries and archives as sites of storytelling and community building. The conversation will also invite other lumbung artists to share their stories and culminate into an after party with music selected by the participants.
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More info via Documenta 15 website.

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The Black Archives has been invited to participate in documenta 15. Documenta is seen as one of the most important art exhibitions and takes place every 5 year in Kassel, Germany. Our exhibition 'Interwoven Histories of Solidarity: Documenting Black Pasts & Presents' is part of the 'Fridskul' in the Museum Fridericianum, one of the oldest museums in the world.

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Contemporary And (C&) is a dynamic space for the reflection on and linking together of ideas, discourse and information on contemporary art practice from diverse African perspectives.

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ruangrupa has based documenta fifteen upon the values and ideas of lumbung. lumbung, which directly translates as “rice barn”, refers to a communal building in rural Indonesia where a community’s harvest is gathered, stored and distributed according to jointly determined criteria as a pooled resourc

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During documenta fifteen, a roundtable conversation took place with participants from the lumbung of publishers and two collectives from the C& project #weavingnetworks: On paper, in places. Afterwards, C& invited the speakers to write down their thoughts to capture the essence of their stim

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Amplifying the Voices of Local Communities

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C&, ifa, and Pro Helvetia invited two independent publishers from the lumbung of publishers and two artistic collectives, all taking part in this year’s documenta fifteen, to speak about collaborative publishing and sharing practices. La IMPRESORA is an independent feminist publishing and grap

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The World’s Most Prestigious Art Exhibition Is Over. Maybe Forever. (Published 2022)

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The German mega-show Documenta closes this weekend. Whatever comes next, it will never be what it was before.

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Racist graffiti has been sprayed on the inside of Documenta's curatorial offices in Kassel, Germany. On 28 May the workspace, which has also been serving as accommodation for Ruangrupa, the Indonesian collective directing the forthcoming edition, was broken into and 'defaced with what can only be interpreted as a death threat', the organisation said in a statement. The damage included '187' sprayed on the wall in black paint, slang for murder derived from the California Penal Code.

This marks another escalation of the situation surrounding Documenta 15, as tension has been mounting since the beginning of the year. In January, the Jakarta-based group were accused by the German group Alliance Against Anti-Semitism Kassel of featuring 'anti-Israeli activists' in their programming. In response the festival organised a series of public conversations titled We need to talk!, which sought to discuss 'the role of art and artistic freedom in the face of rising antisemitism, racism, and Islamophobia'.

While two of the three online events were primarily concerned with antisemitism (speakers included Forensic Architecture's Eyal Weizman and artist Hito Steyerl), the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, said that the third event in the series, the subject of which was billed as 'anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian racism' and was scheduled to take place 28 May, demonstrated 'a clear tendency towards anti-Semitism'. The series of talks were subsequently cancelled, the organisation explaining that the 'accusations and insinuations made against the discussion forum and documenta' rendered productive discussion 'impossible'. Instead, Ruangrupa would 'let [the exhibition] speak for itself.'

The Alliance Against Anti-Semitism later released a blog post which included screenshots from various open letters and social media posts made by the curators and Documenta 15 artists seeking to 'prove' their support for Palestine, and in some instances the BDS movement. The blog singles out Palestinian artists in particular. A recent editorial in Der Zeit, asked 'Does the forthcoming Documenta promote anti-Semitic tendencies in Art?'. Supporters of Documenta say that antisemitism claims are used to stifle legitimate criticism of the Israeli government.

In response to the physical attacks, the artists and members of documenta fifteen affirm: 'We are united against the racist attacks that started this sequence of events. And we stand firmly against all forms of discrimination, including racist, xenophobic, antisemitic, sexist, transphobic, anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian, anti-Roma, ableist, casteist, classist, and ageist actions and attacks.' Ruangrupa have consistently stated that 'no anti-Semitic statements were made at any time during documenta fifteen'.

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Vandalism comes amid antisemitism debate

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“It became clear that the accusations made against documenta fifteen and the forum itself currently render a free and productive discussion impossible,” the group ruangrupa wrote in a missive.

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Removed mural - People's Justice by Taring Padi

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KASSEL, Germany - Documenta, arguably the world's largest and most significant art event, will once again set the tone for conversations about the current and future states of contemporary art. For the 2022 Documenta 15 (D15) edition, ruangrupa, an artist collective founded in Jakarta in 2000, took the helm as artistic directors. The central theme of the exhibition is "lumbung," the Indonesian term for a communal rice barn, where surplus goods or harvests are stored for future use and shared by the community. This agrarian common-ist model was put forward by the curators to "heal today's injuries, especially ones rooted in colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchal structures."

When I wrote this article, the controversy surrounding the exhibition regarding antisemitic imagery was addressed by ruangrupa's public apology; they immediately dismantled the work of Taring Padi's People's Justice (2002). This significant oversight sadly undermined the central conceptual premises. The incident stresses the fact that "progressive" contingencies are not immune to racist, patriarchal, and/or other discriminatory ideas - quite the opposite - it should be a duty to examine any representative bigotry and discrimination claims seriously by taking the local context and sensitivities into account without compromising the core values of freedom of speech. This controversy may be a good talking point for the media outlets but should not overpower Documenta's thousands of diverse voices this year.

The group Taring Padi's now-removed installation People's Justice (2002) at Documenta

Lumbung is a political project imagined as a cooperative artistic and economic model for sharing resources, fair allocation, and equal distribution, which permeates all aspects of D15 programming. Although it is not immediately evident how the practice of lumbung is different from other common-ist examples (rural, anarchist, and/or socialist democratic traditions), the openness of the proposition can be read as one of the strengths of ruangrupa's conceptual framework.

D15 is a remarkable gathering of potentialities, a careful alignment of militant particles, and a sensational patchwork, all at once. It's also free press, skateboard park, dormitory for artists, communal kitchen, greenhouse, and sauna. Collectives, collaborations, alternative spaces, political projects, and archives unapologetically occupying D15's 32 venues and turning them into alternative sites for knowledge production and dissemination with an abundance of objects and positive energy. In line with the idea of lumbung, the power of curating is shared and distributed; the nine-member collective invited 14 other collectives to be "lumbung members"; in turn, other artists and collectives were invited, characterizing an ever-growing dynamic array of projects and ideas with 1,500 participants (with just one American contribution).

Transparency is weaved into D15; the budget is equally distributed, and members of the lumbung are given access to a shared pool to be utilized in collective decision-making in a "majelis" system - an Indonesian term for an assembly. When its corrupt military dictatorship (New Order) was over in 1998, Indonesia underwent sweeping reforms, strengthening the People's Consultative Assembly (Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat).

For instance, one of the critical exemplars of collectivist experiments is Komîna Fîlm a Rojava (The Rojava Film Commune), a collective of filmmakers based in the autonomous region of northern Syria, featured in the Fridericianum Museum and the Gloria-Kino theater. The commune explores ways to research, learn, and share through the process of filmmaking while addressing the critical issues of storytelling and artistic production within a "stateless democracy."

The Question of Funding (2019), a Palestinian collective composed of artists and organizers, brought together other artist collectives to seek out alternative economic methods that can resist the physical and geographical boundaries and the crushing restrictions imposed on Palestine. Within the lumbung's spirit of radical transparency, the collective co-curated an exhibition by the Gazan artist collective Eltiqa, which exhibits paintings alongside a detailed narrative on how the Eltiqa group managed to operate amid the systematic Israeli state violence and economic sanctions imposed on two million Gazans. To operate both in Gaza and internationally, Eltiqa artists needed to share their resources and jump many financial hoops. The project successfully weaves together the artists' desires to explore their artistic potentials and the grim facts on the ground. Their steadfast rejection of projected political readings on their work and defense of "art for art's sake" is noteworthy.

The specter of alter-global movements of the early 2000s, the occupy movements (Zuccotti, Tahrir, and Gezi, Umbrella Movement), and, more recently, Black Lives Matter and decolonization movements are looming over the exhibition. An entire social justice arch defines the exhibition's backbone, pinpointing possible organizational strategies against various forms of authoritarianism and state violence. At the same time, D15 provides necessary historical and geographical backdrops. For instance, in the Fredericianum Museum, Amsterdam-based The Black Archive's installation "Black Pasts & Presents: Interwoven Histories of Solidarity" highlights their collection of thousands of books and documents on colonialism, slavery, liberation, and emancipation and shares stories of black radical thinkers. In a neighboring installation, Archives des luttes des femmes en Algérie (Archives of Women's Struggles in Algeria), an independent initiative by Awel Haouati, Lydia Saïdi, and Saadia Gacem presents an archive of documents relating to Algerian feminist collectives and associations since 1962, composed of political tracts posters, photographs, and film clips.

This archival mode permeates the exhibition, and forms of political and artistic militancy have been temporarily institutionalized, reframed, and exemplified for the exhibition's duration; D15 turns into a repository of political projects, ideas, and attitudes as the outcome of careful investigations. However, one of the blind spots of D15 is how little the artistic team paid attention to alternative technological and networked modalities that enable new social organizations, collectivities, and the dissemination of information over diverse regions. Although, since the 1990s, opensource (read as form of lumbung) communities and artists have explored the potentialities of the networked media and have had plenty of social and artistic experiments, ruangrupa's choice to disregard these collective social-technological experiments and outsource the central premise of the D15, "lumbung artists website," to theartists.net, with a seemingly all Euro-White team with an unproven financial model without much discussion or consideration is a little confusing - as they say in the casinos, the house always wins.

Still, let's "make friends, not art." The slogan reverberated in my mind during the frantic preview days of D15. As an artist and practitioner, you feel right at home with your peers; the horizontality of the exhibition grabs you and pulls you into a kaleidoscope of geographies, many unfamiliar. Friendship is possible through gatherings: rituals, ceremonies, meals, workshops, performances, and celebrations, and these situations abound in D15.

D15 is no art fair. There are no NFT droppings, cool "collabs," no private jets shuttling oligarchs. In fact, art world darlings and their cheerleaders may be disappointed; the exhibition pays no respect to "market forces." In D15, artists are not treated as the sidekicks of collectors and museum trustees, and no one is getting a free VIP ride in a high-octane BMW. The only high-value German cars worth nothing in the show are Selma Selman's stunning sculptural paintings on old Mercedes and BMW hoods. Cars are both loved and hated symbols of authority, success, and breaking the spatial boundaries, especially in the developing countries. Utilizing scrap metal, Selman skillfully recycles cars, bringing forward her memories and addressing her Roma heritage. The Germany-based *foundationClass* collective also uses cars in their work for D15. They have collaborated with the migrant taxi company MiniCar to install a sound sculpture in the company's cabs, and the drivers are rightfully credited as participants of D15, with equal standing as the artists invited by the collectives.

There are so many clusters that are worth noting at D15, particularly the OFF- Biennale Budapest and Artis Rezistans/Ghetto Biennial. The OFF-Biennale Budapest has two markedly different projects in D15. The first is a long-term collaboration with the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) which attempts to map the history and present of Roma art, and includes Selma Selman's work mentioned above. One of the few more museological displays in D15, a second installation pivots around a monumental work byTamás Péli, based on 19th-century painting, which depicts a Roma creation myth. The second project by OFF-Biennale Budapest takes place in a boathouse site, and functions as a kind of utopian playground, with installations ranging from a dreamscape for children byEva Koťátková, and a healing garden by Ilona Németh.

Stopping the visitor in their tracks, so to speak, is the vodou-inspired Ghetto Biennial, amplified by its apt location in the St. Kunigundis Church. Held every two years since 2008 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the Kassel iteration features 36 artists that mostly use found and recycled materials, wood, and human remains to create non-human animal and figurative sculptures, as well abstract assemblages, and video works. Stepping into the Ghetto Biennial at D15 is like stepping into another world - full of spirituality, creativity and awe. Like many of the D15 collective projects, the Ghetto Biennial will be activated by performances, screenings, and other events throughout its time in Kassel.

Finally, D15 resists the tokenism of e-flux ads transmitting your daily dose of inclusivity and tolerance. D15 goes all out and poses the most pressing questions by activating a diversity of vectorial forces (modern, alter-modern) of the Global South. D15 provides tools to think, do things, and accumulate. It is a proposition with many parts. It is time to rethink art education and dissemination in fundamental ways to have an expanded reading of art practices without marginalizing them into new domains with an expiration date on them. After D15, business cannot be as usual.

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Beyond the Controversies, Documenta Is a Remarkable Gathering of Voices

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KASSEL, Germany - Documenta, arguably the world's largest and most significant art event, will once again set the tone for conversations about the current and future states of contemporary art. For the 2022 Documenta 15 (D15) edition, ruangrupa, an artist collective founded in Jakarta in 2000, took the helm as artistic directors.

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head of its upcoming curatorial project at the prestigious Documenta art exhibition in Kassel, Germany, in 2022, Indonesian art collective Ruangrupa has already established itself as the preeminent contemporary art institution in Indonesia.

It started out humbly as a forum for artistic collaboration that rewarded critical thinking about one's surroundings.

The Jakarta-based art collective was founded in 2000, two years after the fall of the repressive Soeharto regime. Coming out of the authoritarian era, Ruangrupa took advantage of the newfound freedom by providing exhibition spaces, publishing services, workshops, research and setting up festivals and events.

Throughout the years of Ruangrupa's success in the contemporary art scene, certain themes, colors and methods started to become noticeably characteristic of their works and exhibitions. For one, even though most of Ruangrupa's artists tend to focus on bleak social commentary, many do so with the use of everyday objects and bright colors.

"Maybe you can see a characteristic because we tend to focus on certain social phenomena and environments, such as urban landscape," Ade Darmawan, one of the co-founders of the collective, told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

Ruangrupa made history by becoming the first ever Asian group - and first ever art collective - chosen to curate at Documenta, an exhibition that started in the industrial German town of Kassel in 1955 to bring Germany back into a dialogue with the rest of the world after the end of World War II.

"If Documenta was launched in 1955 to heal war wounds, why shouldn't we focus Documenta 15 on today's injuries, especially ones rooted in colonialism, capitalism or patriarchal structures, and contrast them with partnership-based models that enable people to have a different view of the world?" Ade said, sharing his vision for Ruangrupa for the 15th edition of Documenta in 2022.

As the collective prepares for one of its largest events, Ade said he felt that the participating members of Ruangrupa would serve as examples in their respective disciplines for the Indonesian contemporary art scene.

Documenta 15 will be the latest entry to Ruangrupa's vast portfolio of international art events, an impressive feat considering that not all of the art collective's members are full-time artists.

"We often analogize Ruangrupa as a band," Ruangrupa member and architect Iswanto Hartono said. "Each person has their own instrument [and uses it] to contribute to our harmony."

The collective's core members consist of 10 individuals, each of whom are becoming leading artists in their disciplines, although the collective states that it does not see itself as a member-oriented group, as it prefers to keep membership fluid in order to collaborate with artists of all kinds.

"We just try and work with other suitable artists so that they can help us articulate our expressions a bit more," Ade added.

Ade has headed the collective since its inception. He is known as a celebrated mixed media artist, dabbling in the mediums of installations, digital prints, drawings and video art and has held solo exhibitions abroad in places such as Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore and South Korea.

Two of its members share similar backgrounds in architecture. There is perennial hat-wearing architecture professor Farid Rakun, who is currently the Jakarta Biennale interim director, and Iswanto Hartono. Both apply their knowledge in construction, design and understanding of equilibrium into their works.

Iswanto tends to focus his works on forgotten history, particularly on colonialism and post-colonialism in Indonesia. He has exhibited his works in Japan, Senegal and the Netherlands among many other places. In the collective, Iswanto manages the ArtLab that conducts research and leads creative collaborations on urban and media issues.

Directing the ArtLab alongside Iswanto is performance artist Reza Afisina. Both men are part of a conceptual, collaborative art duo called RAIH. Reza's new media works have been showcased in premiere shows in New York, Venice, Taiwan, Bangkok and Paris, and Reza served as an interlocutor at the Asia Pacific Triennale in 2018.

Two of its core members, Indra Ameng and Narpati "Oomleo" Awangga, are prominent senior figures in the Jakarta independent music scene. Indra is the director of Ruangrupa's RRRECFEST music festival and also part of a small music promotional duo The Secret Agents with his wife Keke Tambuan. Oomleo, meanwhile, is best known for his role in electronic indie band Goodnight Electric and is also a notable columnist, comic book artist, radio announcer and illustrator.

Members such as Ajeng Nurul Aini and Daniella Fitria Praptono are responsible for more of the behind-the-scenes duties of the collective's operations, with Ajeng serving as the collective's managerial backbone and Daniella mainly running regular art workshops for women and children at Ruangrupa's GUDSKUL institute.

Rounding up the main team are Julia Sarisetiati and Mirwan Andan. Having graduated as a photography major, Julia was in charge of curating OK. Video, a biannual media art festival from Ruangrupa, and the RETURNS: Migration Narratives in Southeast and East Asia event at the Goethe Institut. Her works have reached events in Denmark, Vietnam and South Korea.

Meanwhile, Mirwan Andan's background is perhaps the most intriguing out of the bunch, as he did not graduate with an arts background, having spent six years at an Islamic boarding school in his native Makassar before studying French literature and political science in college; all the while acting as a researcher for Ruangrupa since 2007. He currently runs a small library in Jakarta and runs the Jalur Timur artist development project in Makassar, South Sulawesi.

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Ruangrupa's 19-year journey to Documenta - Art & Culture - The Jakarta Post

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Ahead of its upcoming curatorial project at the prestigious Documenta art exhibition in Kassel, Germany, in 2022, Indonesian art collective Ruangrupa has already established itself as the preeminent contemporary art institution in Indonesia.

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This letter was sent on July 18, 2022 from the artists, ruangrupa, and the artistic team of documenta fifteen to the members of the documenta supervisory board. With surprise we discovered that it became public in the German media, which quoted only selective parts of it, producing a misinterpretation. Here is the letter in full. We appeal to the international press and public to support us in our refusal of censorship.
We, the signatories of this statement, address you today as the participating artists and collectives, along with ruangrupa and members of the artistic team of documenta fifteen.

Following the statement by the supervisory board of documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH dated 16 July 2022, we take the opportunity to write a statement in response to the recommendations initiated by the supervisory board of documenta, and specifically the recommendation to "enter a process of consultation with scholars from the fields of contemporary anti-Semitism."

While we recognise and regret the pain caused by the sequence of events in relation to Taring Padi's work "People's Justice," we believe that this should not lead to a general atmosphere of probing and censorship. We once again express our stance against all forms of discrimination, including anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia, sexism, transphobia, islamophobia, anti-Palestinian, anti-Roma, anti-Black, anti-Asian, ableist, casteist, classist, and ageist actions and attacks.

We are deeply disappointed that you chose to ignore the racism and violence that the artists and the artistic direction and team have been exposed to over the past eight months. Many of us have invested time, resources, love, and good will in the joint undertaking of documenta fifteen. Artists have spent months and years away from their homes and families to bring collective, collaborative work to Germany and Kassel-based communities. These gifts have not been acknowledged or valued in published statements by politicians, press releases, and/or media coverage.

Since the first media attacks in January, Palestinian, pro-Palestinian, Black, and Muslim artists have been targeted and discriminated against by the media, the politicians, and already exposed to censorship by the institution in consequence. This discrimination has made it clear to us that we cannot trust the proposal of the supervisory board. To remind you of some of these incidents, we mention only a few here:

On 23 June 2022 without informing the artists or curators, WH22 Werner-Hilpert-Strasse 22 was closed for at least two hours until members of ruangrupa and the artistic team re-opened it. On the same day part of Hübner Areal, where Subversive Film's artworks were exhibited, was closed for the entire day.

On 10 July 2022 sections of archival material referring to Palestine were removed from the work of the Archives des luttes des femmes en Algérie (Archives of Women's Struggles in Algeria) collective without their knowledge or consent. It was only put back on 11 July 2022 upon the request of the artists.

These attacks have created a climate of hostility and racism towards the artists, which lead to exposing them to more attacks. We remind you here of some more:

On 27 May 2022, WH22, the venue hosting artist collectives Question of Funding, Party Office, and Hamja Ahsan, was broken into and vandalized, with spray-painted slogans reading "187" and "Peralta." The artists suspected that the slogans referred to the California penal code section on murder and the Spanish neo-Nazi activist Isabel Peralta, who has encouraged violence against Islam. The artists decided to keep the graffiti at the venue, and documenta filed a criminal complaint.

On 13 & 17 June 2022, after 5 days of being watched by a woman in a car, the venue St. Kunigundis church, where the work of Atis Rezistans|Ghetto Biennale (Haiti/international) is exhibited, was raided by a man threatening and shouting at the Atis Rezistans|Ghetto Biennale artists present. He was also filming with his phone, and the video is circulating. On 17 June 2022 the same man was loitering outside.

On 2 July 2022, Party Office collective members were attacked by transphobic men on the streets of Kassel and then assaulted by the Kassel Police. The aggressors were let go. Party Office have demanded an apology as to how the situation has been handled and further steps to guarantee their safety and well-being.

Numerous cyberstalking attacks and threats to staff members and artists have been made by JuFo (Junges Forum DIG), notably on its Instagram account.

Many other documented incidents took place, as well as institutional racist, islamophobic, and transphobic discrimination. Artists and team members working for documenta fifteen are still experiencing multiple levels of harassment and bullying, up until this day.

Besides these direct racist and transphobic incidents, artists and lumbung members have experienced structural racism and neglect. These have become explicit through issues related to visas, inhospitality, and neglect of data and communication related to artists and workers that identify as BIPOC, nonbinary, and trans artists. This has obstructed their physical and mental well-being and artistic process. This includes several artists and ruangrupa members not having been granted visas or instead granted limited-period visas, as well as putting artists in appalling accommodations. We feel the need to underline that we are not putting these responsibilities on the overworked, understaffed, oftentimes unfairly treated documenta fifteen team personnel.

documenta's supervisory board's recommendation to "enter a process of consultation with scholars from the fields of contemporary anti-Semitism" was made against the opinion of ruangrupa and the artistic team. The supervisory board did not consult the participating artists. The supervisory board has chosen this course of action despite its stated commitment to mutual respect, good conduct, and loyalty to ruangrupa, as stated in their contract (clause 12.1 of the Vertrag between Documenta gGmbH and ruangrupa).
Why we refuse the supervisory board's recommendation to "enter a process of consultation with scholars from the fields of contemporary anti-Semitism."
We would like to remind you that we have attempted to start a dialogue with the forum "We Need to Talk! Art, Freedom and Solidarity" last May, whereby we made an honorable but futile attempt to formulate a good response to a bad question. We also wish to remind you that the dialogue was suspended after intensive discussions with the forum participants, where it became clear that a free and productive discussion was impossible. It followed criticism by Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, over the composition of the forum. Some of the participants withdrew, or considered withdrawing, just a few days before the forum's intended opening.

The artworks have been on display for more than 30 days now. They have been open for the public to see in full transparency. More than in any previous documenta artists have been, and are, present in the exhibition spaces to exchange with the public. The public has responded to the exhibition with great enthusiasm. To investigate artworks and artists is accusatory and disrespectful. We see it as an investigation which could imply that every artist or artwork is anti-Semitic until proven otherwise.

Investigating artworks which question and push histories and presents means that artworks can no longer address the complexity of those histories. The role of the audience is to engage with this on an equal level, not in an accusatory manner. Subjecting the artworks to examination will deeply affect their local communities and political contexts.

Accepting an advisory board will become a precedent and will create an environment of fear and self-censorship that will make it impossible for curators and artists to engage openly in a safe environment with the public. Art is not only about aesthetics and comfort zones, art has a significant role in opening channels and dealing with our histories, let it be. This is what artistic freedom means.

This environment of intimidation, suspicion, and censorship is untenable and some of the collectives in the exhibition have been experiencing it for far too long. Therefore, we collectively and categorically object to your recommendation to "enter a process of consultation with scholars from the fields of contemporary anti-Semitism," or any re-examination of the artworks. We will not accept any result that comes from such re-examination. In an email sent to the management on 25 June 2022, we asked that the institution immediately stop the re-examination of our works and open all venues and artworks for our artworks to be experienced and embraced by the people without disruption. We ask you here again to retract your recommendation.

We wish to remind you that censorship boards have their histories and contexts in Germany and worldwide. We come from many countries where we face censorship boards and oppression, where we also refuse to abide by them. Censorship committees deprive audiences of the responsibility of engaging, of learning, and of unlearning. They deprive the audience of forming independent political views. Censorship committees are the end of an era of art as we know it; they represent the beginning of a new era (or rather the return to an old era) where art is in the service of political regimes.
In conclusion we expect the following from the Supervisory Board:
1. That the recommendation to hire a board of scholars to review the artworks is immediately retracted.

2. That artists and documenta fifteen team members (namely Party Office, Hamja Ahsan) who have sent numerous e-mails about both physical and cyber attacks be answered and followed-up on and that such messages on documenta fifteen official Facebook and Instagram pages are retrieved immediately.

3. That the offenders and perpetrators of the recorded offenses thus far are held accountable by documenta and the city of Kassel.

4. That a safer environment free of all forms of discrimination and attacks is ensured in Kassel by elaborating a code of conduct, protocol of complaints, and responsive structure (such as access to the documenta gGmbH lawyers) for said discrimination.

We expect a retraction of your recommendation on the advisory board by 22 July 2022. Otherwise, we reserve the right to take further action collectively.

We also expect a public apology for ignoring to follow up on or mention the racist, islamophobic, and transphobic attacks as well as a specific strategy to address the above-mentioned discrimination towards many artists by 30 July 2022.

We are here to stay and want to keep this exhibition open, but with the guarantee of artistic freedom. We are convinced that the artworks can speak for themselves and we believe in the audience's agency to engage with the complexities of the artworks as responsible citizens without the supervision of the state. We are here for open and sincere conversation and collective exchange. We are here as humans with our vulnerabilities, strength, courage, and art, and we want to stay as long as possible to invite and facilitate critical and joyful dialogue with those who accept us as equals in diversity.
Signatories
Gudskul
Question of Funding
Jatiwangi Art Factory
Britto Arts Trust
OFF-Biennale
INLAND
Trampoline House
FAFSWAG
Fondation Festival sur le Niger
Más Arte Más Acción
Instar
ZK/U
Project Art Works
ook_reinaart vanhoe
Taring Padi
Richard Bell
ikkibawiKrrr
Wakaliwood
Jumana Emil Abboud
Water Diviners
Chimurenga
Subversive Film
Arts Collaboratory
Nino Bulling
Safdar Ahmed
Nguyen Trinh Thi
Marwa Arsanios
Sourabh Phadke
yasmine eid-sabbagh
Members of the *foundationClass* collective
LE 18
Serigrafistas queer
Party Office b2b Fadescha
Erick Beltrán
MADEYOULOOK
BOLOHO
CHANG En-man
Sa Sa Art Projects
Amol K Patil
Saodat Ismailova
La intermundial Holobiente
Pınar Öğrenci
Jimmie Durham (A Stick in the Forest by the Side of the Road)
Baan Noorg Collaborative Arts and Culture
Dan Perjovschi
Fehras Publishing Practices
Another Roadmap Africa Cluster (ARAC)
Archives des luttes des femmes en Algérie
Asia Art Archive
Centre d'art Waza
El Warcha
Graziela Kunsch
Keleketla! Library
Komîna Fîlm a Rojava
Siwa plateforme - L'Economat at Redeyef
The Black Archives
Kiri Dalena
Sebastian Diaz Morales
Pedro Lasch (Atis Rezistans / Ghetto Biennale)
Leah Gordon and Andre Eugene (Atis Rezistans / Ghetto Biennale)
Laura Heyman (Atis Rezistans / Ghetto Biennale)
Simon Benjamin (Atis Rezistans / Ghetto Biennale)
Members of Sada (regroup)
Hamja Ahsan
ruangrupa and members of the artistic team

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Censorship Must Be Refused: Letter from lumbung community - Notes - e-flux

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This letter was sent on July 18, 2022 from the artists, ruangrupa, and the artistic team of documenta fifteen to the members of the documenta supervisory board. With surprise we discovered that it became public in the German media, which quoted only selective parts of it, producing a misinterpretation.

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Removed mural - People's Justice by Taring Padi

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documenta fifteen - Retrospective - documenta

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Art Contribution: Collective Crafting in Post-suharto Indonesia

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The lumbung practice enables an alternative economy of collectivity, shared resource building, and equitable distribution. lumbung is anchored in the local and based on values such as humor, generosity, independence, transparency, sufficiency, and regeneration.

lumbung is the Indonesian word for a communal rice-barn, where the surplus harvest is stored for the benefit of the community.

After ruangrupa was invited to be the Artistic Direction of documenta fifteen, the collective, in turn, invited documenta to be part of its ekosistem. To this end, ruangrupa then established ruruHaus in Kassel as a local meeting point, living room, and laboratory. The collective is engaging intensively with Kassel's ekosistem. Not only during but also leading up to and beyond the 100 days of the exhibition. Thus, in addition to the development of new sustainability models, the establishment of lasting relationships is at the core of this documenta.

For ruangrupa, lumbung is not a concept, but a practice. This practice changes dynamically through interactions between people. Therefore, documenta fifteen is not theme-based. It is not about lumbung, but it evolves together withlumbung. documenta fifteen is practicing lumbung. This affects the artistic process, which is shaped collectively.

Practicing lumbung means that the exhibition is not static. Many contributions by lumbung members and lumbung artists will continue to evolve and change over the course of the exhibition and even beyond. Essential to many of the artistic contributions are the artists' events, such as workshops, performances, lectures, and screenings.

Sharing as a practice

As a structure for storing and collectively managing food, the lumbung serves the long-term well-being of the community through resource sharing and mutual care. ruangrupa continues this tradition in its own practice, and the artists, collectives, organizations, and activists they have invited to documenta fifteen also share their means such as time, space, money, care, ideas, and knowledge.

In addition to an equally distributed production budget, each lumbung member and lumbung artist received an amount reserved for a common pot-a place for shared means to be distributed collectively through a majelis system. majelis is an Indonesian term for an assembly established at documenta fifteen. Therefore, the individual artists and collectives do not work separately from one another; instead they engage in a collaborative working process.

documenta fifteen is not a static, curated exhibition that remains the same throughout the 100 days. Instead, the venues are constantly changing: they are places in which to meet, discuss, and learn. Exhibition buildings become living rooms, and together the artists decide how to use each venue. Through this process, the rooting of artistic practice in daily life is made tangible.

documenta fifteen seeks to test alternative approaches to economy, collectivity, and sustainability through the practice of lumbung. Even if this approach is not visible at first glance, it may be noticeable at the venues and in the programs.

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lumbung members & artists

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This is a historical website. The imprint available here was valid on the date of the website's publication and is only kept in the original for archival purposes. Here you can get the imprint currently valid for this site and further information.

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lumbung is the concrete practice adopted on the path towards documenta fifteen in 2022 and beyond.