Common Views at DOCUMENTA FIFTEEN
Common Views were invited to present their work at the DOCUMENTA FIFTEEN in Kassel, as part of the Commoning Curatorial & Artistic Education CAMP Notes on Education Summer School. We presented our methodology, of applying a commoning perspective and a social-ecological re-framing to contested issues within the context of arts engagement, outlining how this methodology has evolved over the course of our projects, beginning with our work with Bedouin communities in the Negev desert and continuing with projects in Poland and Germany.
We also got the opportunity to assemble our installation the Tent of Assembly in Kassel’s Friedrichsplatz, in front of the Fridericianum. The tent attracted a spontaneous assembly of a diverse group of passers-by. The easeful exchange flowed organically, touching on issues of nomadism, architecture and vernacular forms, home, displacement and exclusion, politics and war, the documenta and anti-Semitism.
There’s a deep wisdom to this practice, which we‘ve borrowed and combined from a range of traditions, of gathering together in a circle and facing each other, while sitting at ground level. The quality of conversation, of sharing, listening and witnessing, is so much deeper and gentler.
Whatever one’s views, there is an urgent need for a different way of meeting and exchanging. The competition for the supremacy of one‘s own Truth over any other is simply not a sustainable way to foster interaction between our diverse communities. This isn‘t about agreeing to disagree, but about listening while disagreeing, and expressing oneself without the need for another to accept one‘s view. The world needs more such spaces, made for meeting and gentle gathering.
We are very grateful to Karl Leonard Heinemann of Feinmechanik Kassel and Fernando García-Dory of Inland Collective at the documenta’s Confederacy of Villages Assembly for helping out with the locally sourced wood for the installation and providing the necessary tools. And of course to documenta’s CAMP notes on education Summer School’s Dorothee Richter and Ronald Kolb of the ZHdK for inviting us.
