Street paper Asphalt has exclusively revealed the line-up for documenta fifteen, next year’s instalment in the long-running documenta series, one of the world’s most prestigious contemporary art exhibitions.
Gracing the cover and pages of its October issue, the latest edition of Asphalt reveals the exhibiting artists and overall focus of the event, which will take place in the German city of Kassel next year. Asphalt is based in nearby Hanover, home of the Sprengel modern art museum, and will act as an official media partner of the exhibition.
Curated by the Indonesian art collective ruangrupa, the core values and ideas of documenta fifteen will be based around the concept and practice of ‘lumbung’, an Indonesian term for a communal rice barn. ‘Lumbung’, as an artistic and economic model, is rooted in principles such as collectivism, communal resource sharing, and equal allocation, and is embodied in all parts of the collaboration and the exhibition.
Participating artists (a full list of which can be found here) hail from the local area, Indonesia and beyond. The choice of Asphalt as media partner is apt. Both the street paper and the artistic directors have a kinship in their ethics and values, while making an anticipated announcement in a street paper is in line with documenta’s experimental approach.
Volker Macke, Asphalt’s editor-in-chief, told INSP: “The idea of ‘lumbung’ fits perfectly with the idea of street papers. It is about solidarity, sharing, justice and togetherness. With the coup of the exclusive publication, all media and the art world are looking at Asphalt and will understand the principle of street papers. On the day of publication, we already received calls from all over the world, from New York, Delhi, Italy and Seoul, for example. This attention and appreciation strengthens the pride and self-confidence of those people who sell the paper. That alone is great. But the sales on the street are also going great.
“We will now have exclusive contributions from artist groups in our magazine for a year. All this will strengthen our reputation as street papers, I’m sure. Many thanks go to ruangrupa – I already met them three times and they are great people. They are very approachable, not at all distinguished, and very conscious.”
In the lead up to the exhibition, Asphalt will be exploring some of the group of artists and themes instilled in this iteration of documenta, which is mainly absent of any of the contemporary art world’s more mainstream names and focuses more on community and those working off-beat.
documenta fifteen takes place from 18 June until 25 September 2022.
Read more about documenta fifteen here.
