Postsensual Aesthetics by James Voorhies

Author:James Voorhies [Voorhies, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Curating; Curatorial; Contemporary Art; Books; Publications; Reading; Artistic Research; Knowledge Production; Biennials; Activism; Postcolonialism; Contemporary Exhibitions; Maria Eichhorn; Claire Pentecost; Amy Balkin; Heman Chong; Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev; Ute Meta Bauer; Okwui Enwezor; Documenta; dOCUMENTA (13); Documenta11; Arts Institutions; documenta; Kassel; Singapore; Curatorial Practice; Globalism; Globalization; Postcolonial; Postcolonialism; Frankfurt School; Theory; Critical Theory; Philosophy; Aesthetics; Contemporary Aesthetics; Aesthetics Discourse; Art History; History of Art; Arts Education; Singapore; Nanyang Technological University
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2023-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

The Document of Maria Eichhorn Public Limited Company

Documenta11 created a sweeping intellectual arena to think through and expand knowledge with and among the geopolitical constituents in the platform sites. That, as stated above, was the exhibition on a macro scale. On a micro level, meaning within the exhibition itself, during Platform 5, some artists presented entire exhibitions at various venues in and around Kassel.36 Maria Eichhorn was one of them. Upon entering the stately eighteenth-century Museum Fridericianum, Europe's first public museum, visitors could walk up the stairs and then proceed to the southeast corner. Here they found a room presenting enlarged transparencies of more than twenty pages of legal documents installed in a single row inside lightboxes, inset and mounted flush to the wall. Hung on the north side of the gallery, which is about thirty-six feet long, these works were reproductions of the founding documents of a public limited company, which included a Memorandum of Association, a Commercial Register Card, a newspaper notice, and an Agreement Concerning the Transfer of All Shares. The documents were presented in the chronological order of the corporation's life, along with a stack of one hundred 500 euro notes (the highest-value euro banknote) placed inside a steel-plated safe with a thick, transparent Plexiglas window, comparatively inset on the wall. As with the other materials, the stack of euros was displayed in chronological order, situated between a document titled “Minutes of the First Meeting of the Supervisory Board” and the “Founder's Report on the Formation of the Company.” A twenty-five-foot bench was installed along the opposite wall where visitors could sit. The bench served both an aesthetic and a literal function. It was made of beech wood with dark green linoleum inlays on the seat and a modest supporting back. The bench, comparable in appearance to those used in courtrooms and government agencies, was serviceable enough as a seat to encourage visitors to linger. A wall-mounted, waist-high shelf running fifteen feet was installed on the west side of the gallery. The shelf held copies of a book of about seventy pages, with details and documents on the founding of the corporation, an introductory text by Eichhorn outlining the parameters of the corporation, and background information about the political, economic, legal, and theoretical context of the work. Visitors were welcome to read it in the exhibition space, either while standing or while sitting on the bench. They could also buy a copy at Documenta11's bookshop. The text in this book, according to Eichhorn, “provides a basis from which the work can be discussed and disseminated,” while establishing “the political, economic, legal and art-theory context of the work.” 37 The east wall of the room was the only space in the entire museum where natural light and fresh air were allowed to enter. Here, translucent scrims were installed to conceptually connect the work to the outside world while aesthetically mimicking the illuminated light boxes.38 This was the exhibition of the artwork Maria Eichhorn Aktiengesellschaft, or Maria Eichhorn Public Limited Company.

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