INTERVIEW WITH KATHRIN LUZ

Art critic Annette Lettau in conversation with Kathrin Luz, Head of Communication for dOCUMENTA (13).

Since August 2010, you have been in charge of the documenta press office. Does this demanding and undoubtedly quite arduous task feel like a sort of accolade?

That naturally depends on one's perspective. But documenta is still considered one of the most important art exhibitions, if not the most important art exhibition in the world. For someone who has been working in the art mediation business for over ten years, such an "olympic" challenge is naturally exactly what one has always wished for. There is a team, a special place, and above all, the collaboration with the artists. Something is constantly developing with them; new approaches and works emerge, so that you truly feel like you're allowed to be part of something special at a unique place, where a lot happens. Which then also goes beyond art.

How do you define your activity? And is there already a special team of employees?

My role as head of communication encompasses all areas related to communication, and involves building up, supporting, and managing a continuously growing team in their individual tasks. This includes – always in collaboration with the documenta management and this team – marketing, parts of sponsoring, and also cultivating specific visitor groups. For example, the friends of international museums who visit documenta in Kassel. However, the focus is on traditional press work. This cannot be handled alone, especially when 2,000 journalists attend the opening press conference. Therefore, staff is continuously increased in the communication sector and other areas. A very important role is played by the project management under Christine Litz, who, together with the artistic director, the curatorial team, and the artists, develops the works on site. Furthermore, and equally important, there are accompanying publications. So, essentially, there are four areas in development: project management, the publications and communication departments, and mediation.

In your role, do you have the opportunity to influence the planning process?

I need to get biographical here. I worked for several years in advertising, specifically in advertising concept development, and got to know the craft of communication, so to speak, in all its ups and downs. I started this after studying art history, while I was writing my dissertation. There's almost a common thread, as the topic of my doctoral thesis was dandyism and self-marketing among artists. Afterwards, I worked as an art critic and realized there was a great need for professional support in the art world. I then founded a PR agency with a colleague and took over public relations for major projects. I also developed concepts for art fairs, but also for exhibitions as communication platforms. In the current case, I think that even as a mediator, one has many opportunities to co-develop the idea of documenta, because the artistic director is very interested in "thinking along" communication in everything she does. It's obvious that this leads to a stimulating exchange of ideas with her, as well as with the management and the entire team, where all topics are naturally touched upon. But as for curating itself: I have no personal ambitions in this area; there are enough – good – curators in the art world, and the need for good mediation seems more urgent to me.

Let's talk about the documenta management: Even at the last four events, there was a tendency towards personalization. Now, too, everything is focused on the personality of Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, who has already successfully managed the Sydney Biennale. So far, she has tended – also a familiar documenta phenomenon – to avoid overly profound statements.

This public-media game surrounding concealment and revelation, the secret of the artist list, and the dramaturgy of preparation is certainly as old as documenta itself, even if it has become increasingly amplified and developed its own dynamic. This naturally has various reasons; it certainly also has to do with the overall development of the art world and the art market, from which one sometimes has to protect oneself. It may be that Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev initially appeared as if she would play along. But if you follow her appearances closely, you can see that she considers very carefully how one can – sometimes ironically and in any case subversively – deal with this strategy, this dramaturgy, this game.

Can you elaborate on that?

Of course, I don't want to pre-empt anything here, but perhaps this much: there will be "notebooks," and many will speculate: are the authors also the future documenta artists or not? Moreover, on the internet, which we will relaunch shortly, one or two discoveries can certainly already be made. So there is no truly absolute hermeticism, no rigid isolation. Slowly, the public and the media are becoming aware that documenta, with all its diverse activities, has actually already begun. This is exemplified by the events of the artist initiative AND AND AND, which, in the run-up to documenta, is already staging colloquia, exhibitions, and projects with various artists in various parts of the world, thus carrying the spirit of documenta to peripheral places and into unjustly marginalized discourses.

At the big press conference that took place in Berlin at the end of October 2010: The presented staff members were referred to as Agents – a rather unusual term in the documenta context...

Yes, there are now Agents and also Advisors, to make it clear who is specifically involved in the work processes of documenta or who acts as a consultant and point of contact for interdisciplinary discussions. After all, the artistic director also engages in an exchange with natural scientists and other interdisciplinary fields, and we can be curious to see how far this will actually be reflected in the end. Regarding the new classifications: perhaps this also conceals an attempt to move away from the diverse fashions of curating, from the phenomenon of star curators. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is concerned with networking, certainly also a little bit with working undercover, with more subtle activities, not loud appearances. ...

With Catherine David – that was in 1997 – documenta became more ideologically charged, more theory-oriented. Jean-Christophe Ammann recently commented on this development: "I'm tired of being enlightened." What position does Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev take?

For her, the world is not linearly structured or logically ordered in itself; it’s not a world where one thing simply follows another and everything has its own coherence. That's why an art exhibition or a curatorial concept with a dictatorial strategy or an overarching thesis is not a model for her. She prefers a more open principle that consciously emphasizes the process-oriented, where many things are possible side-by-side. Moreover, she believes in the poetic power of artifacts – this is beautifully demonstrated, for example, by Penone's tree object installed in Kassel – and it also shows that she works very closely and intensively with the artists.

Earlier you mentioned the "notebooks" in the run-up to documenta. What can we imagine by that?

The "notebooks," which we are currently producing in collaboration with Hatje Cantz, will appear in various formats – 100 volumes are planned – and have, one could say, a charming incompleteness. They are deliberately quite inexpensive and offer the opportunity to dive into documenta's intellectual cosmos already now. Crucially, these notebooks are largely printed in facsimile, giving them a somewhat "thrown together," co-written, impressionistic feel. They convey the evolving thoughts of scientists and artists as they emerge...

...so a very unpretentious endeavor...

... quite incidentally, without the claim to be perfect and without having to follow the constraints of logic. They are very associative, not to say "artistic" in the best sense of the word. And this can also be visually understood in the remarks, sketches, corrections – this whole process of grasping thoughts, of the process itself, thus takes on a visible form that leads up to documenta as a large-scale exhibition project.

29.12.2010