Wilma Cruise shows on 'Documenta USA'
by Kathryn Smith
'Documenta USA'? Described as an "unfiltered survey of the world's art", 'Documenta USA' is currently installed in America's newest museum - the Museum of New Art (MONA), Detroit. Unlike its eponymous rival, this Documenta is not a grandiose global art-supermart, but, by the sounds of it, a truer, if not as daunting, interpretation of the processes of "documenting". The media release goes: "Documenting implies research, study and analysis, but it may also be raw, emotional, and creative. It is defined as information gathering, but at the same time, the processing of information into something new."
Using all the material that defines an exhibition (slides, postcards, biographies), as well as all those materials that remain once the exhibition is gone (catalogues, critical reviews, interviews), the show becomes, according to MONA director and instigator Jef Bourgeau, "an investigation into what decides art, and at the same moment, who decides art: by allowing the museum visitor to exercise that role for the first time without prejudice."
Condensed from the "other" Documenta's 100 days, this show will renew itself by changing the exhibited material every 100 minutes. With over 2 000 artists from more than 40 countries represented, this won't be hard in terms of content, but an apparent nightmare in terms of logistics and simply being noticed amongst the fray.
Be that as it may, Bourgeau managed to round up an impressive roster of artists including Arman, Jenny Holzer, Peter Halley, Christo, Vito Acconci and our own Wilma Cruise, through an open call to artists to submit a work that fits inside a standard archive box, in order to create this active archive collection. As long your work fitted through the door, you were included.
The exhibition is hands-on - viewers are encouraged to physically handle the archive, as well as be privy to 'Fifteen', a video component in which artists speak one-on-one to a camera about their process and production.
Bourgeau, who is best known for a censorship controversy surrounding an exhibition of his own work at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), is also notorious for being ignored when he established a contemporary art museum in a closet in Pontiac. Perhaps Barend de Wet of Cape Town's Museum of Temporary Art and Bourgeau should trade stories? The DIA abruptly closed his above-mentioned exhibition in November 1999, deeming it "potentially offensive to museum visitors for its use of pejorative words, its overt sexual references and its desecration of religious symbols".
According to Detroit Free Press staff writer Frank Provenzano, Bourgeau is considered
"a passionate believer in the power of current art to provoke much-needed discussion about contemporary values" by those who love him, and as a shameless "self-promoter" by those who don't. Either way, with the development of experimental art spaces and project rooms in Gauteng that sound not too dissimilar to the MONA, it's good to identify similar headspaces across the globe.
Before the opening of this new space, the Free Press talked to Bourgeau, 51, about what he and MONA are trying to accomplish. An extract follows (for the full interview see www.freep.com/entertainment/newsandreviews/mona9_20010909.htm):
Q: About 5 years ago, you began an artist's project called the Museum of Contemporary Art in Pontiac. At one time it was a converted closet inside an art gallery. What was that about?
A: There was a fictitious director, and I used a fictitious person to write a phony review of the show that blasted it. It was all meant to be satirical. I wanted to show that what is or isn't art is no longer clear. I did a phony museum show with work on the wall, and small reproductions of it all in a display case. I hired a person to sit behind the display, read a book and be obnoxious. I was playing with the notion of what museums were becoming and what and who decides art.
Q: Do you think of yourself as a gadfly?
A: Art should be for everybody, but there's a hierarchy. Collectors, critics and curators determine what is art, museums - and the audience is often left out. I'm rearranging these issues. Trying to involve the audience, more and more. I don't know if that means I'm a gadfly or not.
Q: The May auction for MONA raised $40 000. How did the local arts community respond?
A: Well, the response was about two-thirds from artists outside the area. There's an enthusiasm elsewhere for Detroit to join the global art conversation. Yet, there's still a hesitation here to believe anything positive can happen.
Q: Are you tired of people questioning your motivations?
A: Yeah, yeah. I don't even understand them myself. I ask myself all the time, "Why am I doing this? It's killing me."
'Documenta USA' runs until October 27.
Museum of New Art (MONA), 1249 Washington Boulevard, Detroit, MI 48226
Tel: 313 961 2845
Email: detroitmona@aol.com
