Current conflict at the documenta
Ernst informs about the current conflicts at the documenta. This conflict doesn’t influence our planning in respect to organizational issues, nevertheless we can learn a lot from it in respect to what we are talking about: What is art and what is propaganda? What is an artwork in the public space? What is curating? Can we consider this conflict also as a conflict between curatorial concepts between the Global South and the Global North?
Planning for the summer school
The general idea how the summer school shall be structured can be seen on our website: https://www.explore-vc.org/en/documenta-xv/evc-summer-school.html The Expert Panel agrees with it and we can start with the concrete planning from there.
On the base of this general structure a more detailed agenda is proposed (see attachment). Regarding the introductory inputs as well as the moderation of the panel we suggest to have one person from each country for each topic. Mary Claire suggests Suki Mwendwa, also Avi and Ernst have been suggested. Thus we would need one more from Ghana and from Cameroon. These input givers / moderators shall not be presenters of a project on the same day.
Ernst mentions that the character of the documenta visits during the summer school will not be traditional “guided tours” but joint explorations and discussion.
Residencies
The group of residents (one from each country – see: https://www.explore-vc.org/en/documenta-xv/narratives-of-the-anthropocene.html) is already preparing a joint project that will be exhibited in Berlin. An exciting group and an exciting project!
Conference in Augsburg in October
Due to the increasing costs for flights in July/August and the additional residency program (that was not calculated) and as we could not find additional funds, we can unfortunately invite only one representative from each country to the conference in October.
Present at the meeting: Ebenezer Acquah, Ghana; Paul Assako Assako, Cameroon; Patrique deGraft-Yankson, Ghana; Osuanyi Essel, Ghana; Mary Claire Kidenda, Kenya; Lize Kriel, South Africa; Nicola Pauli, Germany; Bernadette Van Haute, South Africa; Ernst Wagner, Germany
Apologies from: Avi Sooful, Stefan Eisenhofer, and Constanze Kirchner