ZhDK CAS PAPER – JUNE 2015

Between Art, life and

Documentation: DOCUMENTARY STRATEGIES IN THE WORKS OF

TANIA BRUGUERA AND MARJOLEINE BOONSTRA

BY MARIANA BONILLA ROJAS

TABLE OF CONTENT

Between Art, life and Documentation: DOCUMENTARY STRATEGIES IN THE WORK OF TANIA BRUGUERA AND MARJOLEINE BOONSTRA

INTRODUCTION

pag. 1

CONTEXT [What is Documentary?]

pag. 5 [What is a Document?]

pag. 10 [What is Fiction?]

pag. 13

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES //Boris Groys//

pag. 16 //Jean-Pierre Rehm//

pag. 20

CASE STUDIES Tania Bruguera

pag. 22 Marjoleine Boonstra

pag. 29

CONCLUSION pag. 32

BIBLIOGRAPHY pag. 34

1

INTRODUCTION

Between Art, life and documentation

Since the 1990s the use and dissemination of document/ary

materials and methods in the art has become ubiquitous. Two

significant events are certainly the Documenta X (Kassel 1997)

and 11 (Kassel, 2002), where documentary took a central position

and vast range of documentary works where exposed, operating with

different representation strategies; this particular exhibitions

play a mayor role on the integration of documentary working

methods into the world of mainstream art and open up the

possibility of experimentation, where different documentary

technics and forms intersected, blended and merged. 1 (Vgl. Vgl.

Kurzführer Documenta11_Plattform5, Ausst. Kat., Kassel,

Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz 2002). Since then, numerous

documentary positions can be found in other major exhibitions and

biennials (Manifesta 5 beeing one of them), they have permeated

the whole field, even reaching spaces such as galleries an off-

spaces on its path. Documentary has become, without a doubt, a

mayor trend within the last two decades.

However, there can be no identification of a single artistic

movement, as the concept of the “documentary turn” might

suggests. Rather, the positions are characterized by a great

diversity in it practical implementation. What are the objectives

that the artist pursues once integrating documentary strategies

to its work? Which are the documentary strategies that the

artists implement to achieve its goals? To what kind of

transformations does the documentary work submits to once

1 See: Okwui Enwezor, “Documentary/Verite: Bio-Politics, Human Rights and the

Figure of‘ Truth’ in Contemporary Art,” in The Green Room: Reconsidering the

Documentary and Contemporary Art (Berlin; Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: Sternberg

Press ; Center for Curatorial Studies and Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College,

2008), 63–102.

2

crossing from one context to the other? To which extent can the

exploration within the documentary form be exercised? Where is

the line between Art document and artwork?

These are the questions I want to address in my CAS-Thesis, while

focusing specifically on the relationship between art and

documentation taking in consideration two main things: First,

that art documentation “inscribes the existence of an object in

history” 2 and by doing so provides the object with life as such.

And second, documentary forms produce reality rather than

represent it. 3 The analysis will follow the theoretical

perspectives from the German art critic, aesthetics theorist and

philosopher Boris Groys, settled within his essay “Art in the Age

of Biopolitics: From Art Work to Art Documentation”; as well as

from the French film theorist and critic Jean-Pierre Rehm,

developed on his paper “The Place of the Witnesses”. Finally I

will engaged into a practical approach by the exploration of two

pieces, Untitled (Bogotá, 2009) by the artists Tania Bruguera and

Sa Nule (1996) by Marjoleine Boonstra, seeking to identify

potential patterns or pointers within the topic of discussion.

Accordingly, this research paper (CAS paper) will develop in

three parts: CONTEXT, THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES and finally CASE

STUDIES.

Within the first part –CONTEXT- the intention is to elaborate a

panorama of the field of study that allows the reader to have an

idea on where the research is settling. As a first tactic, I will

establish a more clear understanding of what is Documentary and

what is A Document, keeping in mind the complexities that such

2 Boris Groys, “Art in the Age of Biopolitics: From Artwork to Art Documentation,” Art

Power 2008 (2002): 56. 3 Hito Steyerl, “Documentarism as Politics of Truth,” Trans. Aileen Derieg (European

Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies, 2003), Http://eipcp.

net/transversal/1003/steyerl2/en, 2009,

http://www.lot.at/sfu_sabine_bitter/Steyerl_documentarism.pdf.

3

terms imply when trying to define them and the problematic that

arrows ones they are inscribed within the art field. This will be

complemented with the examination of what is fiction as

understood under the context in which the paper is inscribed.

The second part -THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES- intends to follow up

the thoughts and theories of Boris Groys and Jean-Pierre Rehm, as

specified beforehand. With Groys, the intention is mainly to

emphasise on the concept of ‘Art Documentation’ focus on the

documentation of artistic activities, which do not represent art

understood as an end product, it merely documents art understood

as a life form. Groys argues that art documentation has taken the

place of the artwork; by this he doesn’t mean art documentation

as the recollection of a past event that already ended

(happenings, performances, temporarl intallations), his thesis is

rather focus on the idea that we are dealing today with forms of

art as life that can only exist in the form of documentation. The

question is, how to document art when art has become life itself?

The art critic also addressed Walter Benjamin concept of aura,

which will not take part of the discussions raised in this

particular paper, but that would be briefly introduced seeking to

elaborate a full panorama of his theory.

With Rehm, the attention will be placed within the appearance of

the witness understood as the manufacture that puts to rest the

dispute between fiction and documentary, this because the witness

implies the inclusion of subjective modes of seeing within

documentary forms. The manufacture of the witness grants the

spectator with the possibility to interpret what he is seen,

hence it gives the viewer the power to determined where it stands

on in regards of the history and context behind the conception of

the piece. The open questions are: what type of risks does this

imply? And, until what extend is possible to work with

documentary’s paradoxical nature without losing or perverting its

form?

4

Finally, the third part -CASE STUDIES- will focus on two pieces,

Untitled (Bogotá, 2009) by Tania Bruguera and Sa Nule (1996) by

Marjoleine Boonstra, that will be evaluated under the thesis of

the theoretical perspectives seeking to identify in which ways

they deal with the notions of Art documentation as understood by

the lens of Boris Groys proposition and the manufacture of the

witness developed through the eyes of Jean-Pierre Rehm.

On the one hand, Tania Bruguera’s artistic practice is based on

art that is political. She understands art as a trigger that sets

in motion the social motor, and by doing so art becomes

experience. In that sense she relies on the idea of

“documentation democratization or having the audience complete

the work” 4 . Her documentary strategies speak about new ways to

address and document art (art=life=experience) understood within

the frame of Groys thesis; that is why I decided to select her

work as a study case, to be able to explore the implication of

presenting art within a new category of Art Documentation.

On the other hand, Marjoleine Boonstra inscribes her work within

documentary forms that move in between reality and fiction, the

fiction in her work is manifested by the use of narrative codes

that the artist implements to talk about something that in effect

happened, but that she wants to address from a different

perspective. In that sense her work adheres to the manufacture of

the witness because she relies not only on the capture of what is

there to see, but also on the making of what she calls poetic

realities5.

Lets begin…

4 Tania Bruguera. Untitled (Bogotá, 2009). August 2009.

http://www.taniabruguera.com/cms/293-0-Untitled+Bogot+2009.htm 5 Marjoleine Boonstra, “Marjoleine Boonstra,” in Documentary Now!: Contemporary Strategies

in Photography, Film and the Visual Arts (NAi Publishers, 2005), 120.

5

CONTEXT

[What is Documentary?]

“All definitions of this term… ultimately proved to be hopeless attempts to

provide a binding definition of a practice that is as nimble as variable as

life itself.”6

Documentary is a form that concerns itself with the depiction of

what is real, of the capture of the here and the now presented as

it is without any type of interference. The term implies the

intention to seize reality as it is, which means there is ‘a

will’ to be faithful to reality, and as such it is expected to be

objective and to relay on facts and evidence7.

But this clear and simple definition is exactly what shows its

problematic nature, and so the debates around the subject arise.

The veracity and authenticity of the capture of reality through

the lens of documentary is then put into question, turning the

spotlight towards concepts of truth, ethics and aesthetics.8

“As soon as one group believe they had found a descriptive

formula guaranteeing veracity, another would cast doubts on it

and seek a more suitable method to do so. This is the infinitely

productive paradox of the documentary: when its basic principle –

“to show things as they are”- seemed to restrict the genre to a

repetitive duplication of reality and deprive it of any

opportunity for development, this very simply-formulated

6 Hito Steyerl, “Politics of Truth: Documentarism in the Art Field,” in The Need

to Document, JRP Ringier Kunstverlag, 2005, 54. 7 For an interesting discussion on what is documentary? see: Carl Plantinga,

“What a Documentary Is, After all//2005,” in Documentary, Documents of

Contemporary Art (The MIT Press, 2013), 2013. 8 For more information on debates link to ethics and aesthetics within the field

see Enwezor, “The Green Room.”

6

principle actually gave rise to a constant exploration of new

procedures and forms.”9

Having said that, it becomes clear that if there is something

every critic, theorist or even artist, linked to documentary as

subject matter, agrees on when trying to define ‘it’, is its

ambivalent, vague, elusive, uncertain, contradictory, conflictive

and paradoxical nature. Hito Steyerl in her essay ‘Documentary

Uncertainty’ 10 goes to the extend of attributing the anguished,

uncertainties and doubts around documentary’s relationship with

truth, to an echo of the contemporary reality characterise by its

uncanny and suspicious nature. But dares to go even further when

she, as many others, attributes this ambiguous nature as the key

element of documentary’s rise within the arts.

“The documentary’s ambivalent nature, hovering between art and

non-art, has contributed to creating new zones of entanglement

between the aesthetic and the ethic, between artifice and

authenticity, between fiction and fact, between documentary power

and documentary potential, and between art and its social,

political, and economic conditions.”11

I would think that here is of convenience to elaborate briefly on

the concept of objectivity, as it has been indirectly put on

sight. On this topic, Bill Nichols identifies three meanings of

objectivity within the territory of documentary 12 , to specified

each and everyone of them here is of no particular importance,

what is of interest to bear in mind is, that after analysing

9 Olivier Lugon, “» Documentary «: Authority and Ambiguities,” Reconsidering the

Documentary and Contemporary Art# 1: The Greenroom, 2005, 31–32. 10 Hito Steyerl, “Documentary Uncertainty,” A Prior 15 (2007): 300–308. 11 In the Introduction by Maria Lind and Hito Stevens, eds, The Green Room:

Reconsidering the documentary and contemporary art. # 1. (Berlin : Sternberg-

Press, 2008) on Okwui Enwezor text Documentary/VeriteBio-Politics, Human

Rights, and the Figure of "Truth" in Contemporary Art. 16 12 Nichols Bill, Representing Reality. Issues and Concepts in Documentary

(Indiana University Press, 1991), 196–198.

7

them, he comes to the conclusion that each conception is flawed

and has its inconsistencies. Objectivity is elusive and beholds

in its core a sense of paradox and ambiguity, just as

documentary. It would be here, within the cracks that appear out

of the incapability of concreteness, where the possibility to

explore the elasticity of the limits –of the boundaries- in which

the documentary stands suddenly opens.

Continuing with the debates around the term, another important

one to keep in mind is centre specifically on whether documentary

can even be considered art. On this subject matter Olivier Lugon

elaborated an interesting overview in his text “”Documentary”

Authority and Ambiguities” specially with its mention of debates

on this accord within the first Congrés international de la

documentation 13 , where unusually it was stated that both fields

were part of the same coin, a kind of a truce between aesthetic

and authenticity. Having said this, ‘documentary as art’

continues to be in dispute in the present within the arts.

“Therein lies the paradox of the documentary project, even today.

“Documentary” is often taken as the antonym to “artistic”, yet it

stems primarily from the artistic field –beyond art, yet very

much a part of it.”14

Moving forward is important to clarify that the discourse of the

documentary has been established within two main fronts. The

first one is inscribed within the realistic depiction of the

image, its reliance of the objective representation and the full

belief of the veracity behind the purity of the documentary form.

This is focused on the idea of non-intervention, the notion of

becoming invisible within the process of the capture of reality

as truth.

13 Lugon, “» Documentary «,” 33. 14 Ibid., 35.

8

The second one, in contrast, adheres to the thoughts of the

deconstructivist and poststructuralist, assuming documentary

practices as produced and marketed by power relations. In this

concern the concept of truth is also put into question as a

philosophical subject matter, from Foucault 15 to Badious 16 ,

implying at the development of reflective documentary modes

within the arts.

“According to this views, we cannot speak about the truth out of

the truth but at most about truth effects, not about reality but

only about the discourses in which they are constructed, not

about facts but only about the narratives through which they are

articulated.”17

Finally, it is vital to say that documentary strategies are among

the most important characteristics of contemporary art. Since the

early nineties various documentary techniques and working methods

have been adopted and have integrated to the mainstream

positioning itself as one of the most strong tendencies in the

field, this has been named the “documentary turn”.

“In the 1990s, although there has so far been little theoretical

treatment of it, a zone emerged of an overlapping of video art,

documentary film, reportage, essay, and other forms, in which

various existing genres and formats intersect and constantly

change their stylistic devices in the form of film, video, and

installation works.”18

Exhibition such as the Documentas X (1997) and 11 (2002), and

more recent ones such as Experiments with Truth (2004), at the

Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA. and The Cinema 15 See: Michel Foucault, “Truth and Power (1977),” 2007,

http://philpapers.org/rec/FOUTAP. 16 Alain Badiou, Ray Brassier, and Alberto Toscano, Theoretical Writings

(Bloomsbury Publishing, 2004). 17 Steyerl, “Politics of Truth,” 58. 18 Ibid., 53.

9

Effect: Illusion, Reality, and the Moving Image, Part 1: Dreams;

Part 2: Realisms’ (2008), at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington

D.C. are evidence of this clear boom within the arts. The rise of

diverse and complex forms and the merge with some other forms

represent the power within documentary images, a clear interest

on the subject and an eager of on-growing exploration.

10

CONTEXT

[What is a Document?]

The term Document is an evasive one; at least within the art

field it has been used in an indiscriminate way in the texts

centre on the subject of documentary, where is possible to find

both terms used without any apparent differentiation.

Having said that, with the aim to clarify it’s meaning, a

document in simple words can be understood as an object that

refers to something that is real.

“If a document, in the definition of the term, is “an object

serving to identify a reality”, it stands in relation to a truth,

the truth of representation.

The concept of the documentary, on the other hand, stands in a

relation to point of view, and attitude. Many works… testify to

the alternating arrangement of documentary and documenting

moments, to the inscription of the document into the center of

one and the same film”19

The previous statement means that a document can be inscribed

within the documentary practice, as both suggest two different

levels of signification within the representation of reality; the

first one within its use, the second one within its practice.

Moving forward, the document can be seen under two different

strategies within the arts; on the one hand documentation as an

instrument of rule within the affirmation of power, on the other,

documentation as an instrument of memory and knowledge related to

the archival impulse.

19 Pascale Cassagnau, “Future Amnesia (The Need for Documents),” The Need To

Document, Zürich: JRP Ringier, 2005, 167.

11

The first one has been approached and discussed by Hito Steyerl

through the postulate of documentality. She talks about how the

document functions as a tool within power relations, how it

functions as an aspect of governing by means of truth.

“Documents thus often assume the character of catalysts for

actions; they are supposed to first create the reality that is

documented in them… On the one hand, the articulation, production

and reception of a document is profoundly marked by power

relations and based on social conventions. On the other hand,

though, the power of the document is based on the fact that it is

also intended to be able to prove what is unpredictable within

these power relations…”20

“…the document is not the cipher of transparency, a relation to

an assumed truth, but the sign of a profound social alterity, a

change of positivistic norms. Interrupted and incomplete, the

document is by definition unstable and metonymic: a structure of

reference.”21

Now, the understanding of the document within the logic of the

archive in the art field, that has gained a stronger position as

well, can be seen on one hand within the eyes of Jan Verwoert,

who determines that the document is understood as such -certified

as a valuable piece of information-, and not as a mere text, once

it has come to be part of a compendium of text that have been

also selected to be part of such archive. Within this topic there

are some interesting approaches worth looking, including Hals

Foster’s An Archival Impulse.

Within history, the notion of the archive presents various

changes in accordance to its context. In the 18th century, the

20 Steyerl, “Documentarism as Politics of Truth.”

http://republicart.net/disc/representations/steyerl03_en.htm 2003 [04/10/05] 21 Cassagnau, “Future Amnesia (The Need for Documents),” 166.

12

archive is invented, during the 19th it is exhibited and

recontextualized, the 20th century demanded of it veracity and

prove which implies its necessity to fulfil the means to become

evidence, and finally the 21st century archive “is an unstable and

temporary entity”22 which mean it is alive and constructs its own

resources.

To finalized with this section I would like to point out how

documentation refers to art. Firstly as a record or recollection

of a past event, implying that this past event has already come

to and end, for example a performance or a happening, it is meant

to put within an artistic venue what already has happened;

secondly and most recently, as a reference to an artistic

activity that cannot be presented in any other way. 23 In this

subject I would enter in more depth during the second part of the

essay in Theoretical Perspective, more specifically the section

dedicated to Boris Groys.

22 Ibid. 23 Groys, “Art in the Age of Biopolitics,” 52–53.

13

CONTEXT

[What is Fiction?] “A documentary aware of its own artifice is one that remains sensitive to the

flow between facts and fiction.”24

Fiction can be understood, in a simple way, as the opposition of

documentary because is not based on facts or evidence to depict

what is there in an objective way (as documentary should in

theory), but rather on narrative and rhetoric that allows

subjectivity and creativity to be in the core of the action.

Again, as with the term Documentary, this primary approach

presents itself as problematic, bringing on-going reactions and

debate to the table link to divisions between content and form.

There are three main discourses, the first one sets itself within

the margins of the definition previously established,

understanding fiction as the counter part of Documentary,

associated with the idea of non intervention. The second one

understands that within the act of capturing what is there, some

fictional technics come to play25. It’s a question of the presence

and effect of apparatus, and here it might also appear the

acknowledgment of power interventions within the construction of

reality by artificial means and subjective methods. The third one

established an approach to documentary fictions as a response to

a lack of documents and to documentary rising in the arts, which

would imply the use of it as a reflective tool. Finally there is,

in parallel, a philosophical discussion around what is reality,

24 Trinh T. Minh-Ha, “Documentary Is/not a Name,” in Documentary,

Documents of Contemporary Art (The MIT Press, 2013), 74,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/778886. 25 See: Nichols Bill, Representing Reality. Issues and Concepts in Documentary,

107–200.

14

which brings up the dislocation within the boundaries between

reality and fiction, the illusion of reality.

About the tendency of fiction within documentary as a reflective

mode it is possible to encounter some examples within the work

from artist such as Joan Fontcuberta, Alberto Baraya, Kutlung

Ataman, among others.

“When the fiction is manifested to viewers, the conceit may

function like Brecht’s use of the chorus to break the narrative

flow of the theatre, and remind the audience where they are and

what they are looking at. Fiction has many advantages in art

world settings: there is no suspicion that the artist has engages

in some naïve reflections of social reality; the artist handy

work is evident, and with it artistic expression; there is also a

built-in commentary on the conventions and rhetoric of the

documentary tradition.”26

Related to the philosophical discussion between the merge of

reality and fiction within the world we live in, Jacques Rancière

has elaborated widely about the topic stating that the boundaries

between this two established so call opposites are at present

unsettled 27 ; that they expand, contract and intertwine

permanently, which would imply the impotence of establishing a

clear differentiation.

“It is certainly true that there is no longer any mileage to be

gained from the opposition between fiction and reality. Decades

of post-Structural philosophizing (for example, Jean

Baudrillard’s notion of simulacrum) have inured us to the

argument that it no longer makes sense to try and distinguish

between reality and its representation. At the same time 26 Julian Stallabrass, “Introduction//Contentious Relations: Art and

Documentary,” in Documentary, Documents of Contemporary Art (The MIT Press,

2013), 18–19. 27 Jacques Rancière, “The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the

Sensible,” 2006, 36, http://philpapers.org/rec/RANTPO-2.

15

documentary has become a means of attempting to re-establish a

relationship to reality.”28

This also coincides with discussion that attributes this

blurriness and incapacity to determine clear boundaries between

reality and fiction to the fact that we live in a society

permeated by the spectacle. Guy Debord sums it all when he

declares: “the spectacle cannot be understood as a mere visual

deception produced by mass-media technologies. It is a worldview

that has actually been materialized.” 29 Which means that we have

already been imbibed by the influence of the mass media, and the

notion of stardom and celebrity has been accepted as our own.

The curator Kerry Brougher, as many other character within the

art field related specifically with the subject matter, adheres

to this believe pointing out the exact same thing when he states

that “We are dreaming all the time, and reality and illusion have

lost their meaning.”30.

Having elaborate on the previous, it is important to briefly

recognize that what all of it leads to, is to the recognition

that the static notion of documentary as provider of truth

inevitably has been put into question and has even been

established as inoperative. And so, more than ever before the

documentary is forced to act upon its inscription in the world,

and as such is opening up to new ways of being, consenting

subjectivity and fiction to enter its realm.31

28 M. Nash, Reality in the Age of Aesthetics’, Frieze, No. 114, 2008. 29 Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New

York: Zone Books, 1994), 6. 30 Kerry Brougher and others, The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality, and the

Moving Image (Giles, 2008), 36.  31 Ohad Ohad Landesman, “In and out of This World: Digital Video and the

Aesthetics of Realism in the New Hybrid Documentary,” Studies in Documentary

Film 2, no. 1 (2008): 33–45.

16

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

//Boris Groys// “Art documentation thus describes the realm of biopolitics

by showing how the living can be replaced by the artificial, and how the

artificial can be made living by means of narrative.”32

In the text ‘Art in the Age of Biopolitics’, Boris Groys seeks to

discuss the on-growing tendency within the art field towards Art

Documentation. His statement follows the idea that art has

removed its eyes from the artwork33 in order to set them into Art

Documentation.

At the beginning he presents a context with the main purpose to

situate the reader within the topic of interest. First, Groys

identifies two categories of Art Documentation. On the one hand

there is art documentation that presents itself as the

recollection of past events, such as performances, happenings or

temporary installations. 34 In this category, the main goal is to

present this event within an artistic venue with the purpose to

show it to wider audiences. The key aspect within it, for Groys,

is that since the event has already taken place, the

documentation is the reference of an already finished product

that was visible and presented at a particular time that already

perished.

On the other hand Groys identifies another category of Art

Documentation 35, this second one is focuses on the documentation

32 Groys, “Art in the Age of Biopolitics,” 65. 33 According to the author ‘something that embodies art in itself.’ 34 Groys, “Art in the Age of Biopolitics,” 52. 35 Is important to say that Art documentation take the same forms and media in

which art is traditionally presented: it might be through photographs, video,

painting, and installation, among others. The import aspect to bear in mind is

that within Groys category of art documentation those media do not present art

but merely documents it.

17

of artistic activities, which do not represent art understood as

an end product, but instead it merely documents art understood as

a life form.

“Consequently, such art does not appear in object form—is not a

product or result of a “creative” activity. Rather, the art is

itself this activity, is the practice of art as such.

Correspondingly, art documentation is neither the making present

of a past art event nor the promise of a coming artwork, but

rather is the only possible form of reference to an artistic

activity that cannot be represented in any other way.”36

The critic centres his whole discussion on this particular

category, whose emergence he attributes to todays Biopolitical

age. In here, the concept of biopolitics 37 , elaborated by the

French philosopher Michael Foucault, is understood as a

technology of power that can shape and improve lifespan, as well

as create life itself by artificial means. 38 This understanding

transfer to the artistic sphere, and further more to Art

Documentation in itself, implies the following aspects:

1. That Art is identical to life, and in that sense, art does

not have and end result, hence art cease to be understood

as a finished product. Art goes beyond the representation

of life (fine arts) and the offering of a product (applied

arts) to become life itself (pure experience).

2. That Art as a life form implies that the artwork as such

becomes non-art. Art Documentation is just the

documentation of the life form; hence the art/life is not

shown or presented, is just narrated and documented.

36 Groys, “Art in the Age of Biopolitics,” 54. 37To elaborate on the concept in further depth see: M. Foucault and G. Burchell,

“The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979,” 2010,

http://library.wur.nl/WebQuery/clc/2037122. 38 Groys, “Art in the Age of Biopolitics,” 53–55.

18

3. That Art becomes Biopolitical because it begins to use

artistic means to produce and document life as pure

activity.

4. That “documentation inscribes the existence of an object in

history, gives a lifespan to this existence, and gives the

object life as such—independently if it was “originally”

living or artificial.” 39 , hence art documentation,

invariable of its real or fictive origins, is inscribed

within narrative.40

“The artistic documentation, whether real or fictive, is, by

contrast, primarily narrative, and thus it evokes the

unrepeatability of living time. The artificial can thus be made

living, made natural, by means of art documentation, by narrating

the history of its origin, its “making.””41

From here on, Groys moves forward towards the concept of aura42 to

solve the following question: “if life is only documented by

narrative and cannot be shown, then how can such a documentation

be shown in an art space without perverting its nature?”43

39 Ibid., 56. 40 In this respect, Groys provides a magnificent reference with Blade Runner,

the 1982 sci-fi film directed by Ridley Scott. In it, a new generation of

replicants, a kind of artificially made humanoids, are brought to life. Their

own condition of living beings is supported on the construct of a documentation

based background, in this particular case a fabricated picture from infancy

that supports a set of fictitious memories -a link to a supposed “real” and

“tangible” event-, which sustains and inscribes them in history, and by doing

so provides them with a context that elevates them from simple entities

deprived of content, to beings that are impossible to differentiate from

humans. 41 Groys, “Art in the Age of Biopolitics,” 56. 42 For the whole panorama on the topic of the concept of aura see: Walter

Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Penguin UK,

2008). 43 For more in depth information about the concept of aura within Boris Groys

text see: Groys, “Art in the Age of Biopolitics,” 59–60.

19

Briefly, and just for the sake to bring a panorama of the whole

text, the critic refers to Benjamin’s aura to build an argument

about the process of inscription of Art Documentation within and

artistic venue, this to secure its authenticity and uniqueness.

He states that the aura, the essence or soul of the piece, lies

within its surroundings –the context- which ultimately implies

that the aura sets itself beyond the material nature of the work,

situating the issue as a topological one. With this affirmation

he concludes that if is possible to take away the aura, it is

possible to bring it back; and that restoration of the aura of

the work can be achieved by the simple process of re-

territorialisation, of putting again into context. He states as

an example that the document can be brought into context by the

production of an installation.44

And so, the interesting aspects from this particular approach lie

on the fact that Art Documentation acquires a new meaning and

features some interesting viewpoints around art and its current

aims, opening up debates around what type of works within the

field could be classified as such, following Groys criteria. I

would like to explore that possibility with the analysis of a

particular work: Untitled (Bogotá, 2009) of the Cuban artist

Tania Bruguera.

44 Ibid., 59–64.

20

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

//Jean-Pierre Rehm// “To give documentary back its relevance, to enable it to develop the barren

space it represents and signifies in its variety, is to first accept that it is

not the vehicle of supposed transparency.”45

In the text ‘The plays of the witnesses’, Jean-Pierre Rehm

discusses and explores the contradictions of documentary

representation. To do so, first he investigates those paradoxes

by putting on evidence the discrepancies between the

understanding of the documentary as a form that captures reality

as such, along with its submission to coded narrative systems.46

By doing so, he succeeds to put into sight, the ambiguous and

incongruent nature of the documentary.

The previous means in simple words that documentary contains, as

Rehm points out, opacities and thickness, so to see it as a

simple instrument of transparency is to be blind towards its

complexities and to deny its possibilities but also its risks.

He argues that the decision to mess with the boundaries in

documentary forms, to expand its frontiers beyond the mere

depiction of the here and the now, is determined by the

motivation to show something more that what is there to see. So

there is on the one hand a necessity to go beyond the

presentation of the thing that is being documented in its pure

state in a faithful and untouched manner, “to bring a substance

out into the light” 47 ; and on the other the certainty that by

45 Jean-Pierre Rehm, “The Plays of the Witnesses,” in The Green Room:

Reconsidering the Documentary and Contemporary Art (Berlin; Annandale-on-

Hudson, NY: Sternberg Press ; Center for Curatorial Studies and Hessel Museum

of Art, Bard College, 2008), 41. 46 Ibid., 40–41. 47 Ibid., 43.

21

agreeing to move in consequence with the previous necessity,

documentary allows itself the capacity to construct reality.

“In other words, rather than being satisfied at collecting a so-

called intact raw material which, moreover, would surely have to

be brought in a “pure” state from reality to its representation

in images and sounds, documentary produce the whole of this

material and also the conditions in which it appears. This is why

the opposition between fiction and documentary becomes something

inoperative, as they two introduce a manufacture of what is

visible and intelligible”48

The previous is what arguments and supports the ineffectiveness

of the opposition between fiction and documentary according to

Rehm, because their merge would introduce a manufacture of what

is visible and comprehensible. This manufacture bears the name of

witness, which will in turn grant freedom of interpretation to

the spectator since “it creates a space, a play, where everyone

is free to decide by guesswork on the history of their place as

winners or losers.” 49 Then, what this means is that the witness

stands in between the recording50 of reality and the construction

of reality.

The interesting aspect within Rehms considerations fall

particularly on the understanding of the risks that the

manufacture of the witness suppose to the fabric of the

documentary, I would question if the risk is in fact a grave one,

or rather a reasonable one that enriches the dynamics within the

form of documentary. I would like to explore on the implication

of the presence of the manufacture of the witness and its

possible interpretations within the documentary Sa Nule. 48 Ibid., 43–44. 49 Ibid., 47. 50 Maria Lind and Hito Steyerl, “Introduction. Reconsidering the Documentary and

Contemporary Art.,” in The Green Room: Reconsidering the Documentary and Contemporary

Art, vol. 1 (Berlin; Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: Sternberg Press ; Center for Curatorial

Studies and Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, 2008), 18.

22

CASE STUDIES Tania Bruguera

Untitled (Bogotá, 2009), is a Performance piece by the Cuban

artist Tania Bruguera 51 (1968, Havana, Cuba) that took place

within the frame of the 7th Encuentro of the Hemispheric

Institute of Performance and Politics, held in August of 2009 in

Bogotá, Colombia, under the title 'Staging Citizenship: Cultural

Rights in the Americas' 52 It has been inscribe as a part of a

series made up by four works, the other three are

Untitled (Havana, 2000), Untitled (Kassel, 2000) and

Untitled (Gaza, 2009).

The artist organized a round table (which took place in the

building of the School of Plastic Arts of the Universidad

Nacional de Colombia, the biggest public university in the

country), between three political actors of the armed conflict in

Colombia around the political construction of the idea of the

hero: a paramilitary, a leader of those displaced by violence and

a member of the guerrilla front.

While the members of the table, located at the stage in an

auditorium packed with people, responded to the question: What is

for you a hero?, trays with lines of cocaine were offered to the

public, deviating the spectators attention from the discussion

towards a new actor, brought to the table by the artist itself.

From this point on, a new set of behaviours and dynamics came

into play, while some of the members of the audiences consumed

the free cocaine; others felt outraged by its mere presence.

51 The artist web page: http://www.taniabruguera.com/cms/ 52 A 10-day event that aimed to bring together scholarship, activism and art

around the themes of legacies, memories, struggles, and frontiers of

citizenship.

23

Confusion, frustration, deception contrasted with enjoyment and

mockery, were some of the paradoxical feelings that the audience

had to dealt with.

The performance was suddenly interrupted by members of the

audience and figures of the art world 53 , which in turn took the

stage, making use of the microphone to elaborate on its

particular opinions and perception of the situation. Finally the

artist was called to respond on the issue and asked to respond on

the objective of the piece and the presence of the substance.

Once the artist presented herself on the stage, she stated:

“Gracias a los colombianos por estar aquí” / “Thanks to the

Colombian people for being here”, and left.

And so, in this context the following questions come up: How the

piece is being documented? How the artist presents it? And, Can

it be inscribed within Boris Groys category of Art Documentation

that focuses on the documentation of artistic activities, which

do not represent art understood as an end product, but instead it

merely documents art understood as a life form?

To answer the first question, the piece is being documented

through text, images and videos made by those who attended the

performance, and were collected within platforms of debate of

artistic and institutional practices such as Esfera Pública 54 ,

with participation of both critics and 'common people’. It has

53 Among those, David Lozano, one of the curators of the event condemned

publicly the situation, along with the director of the School of Fine Arts,

Nelson Vergara. 54 See the following links to explore the debates within Esfera Pública:

1. http://esferapublica.org/nfblog/tania-bruguera-en-el-hemisferico-del-performance/

2. http://esferapublica.org/nfblog/en-torno-al-performance-de-tania-bruguera/

3. http://esferapublica.org/nfblog/la-caida-de-la-diosa-tania-bruguera-en-colombia/

4. http://esferapublica.org/nfblog/polemica-por-artista-que-ofrecio-cocaina-en-

performance-en-la-universidad-nacional/

24

been also talked about through the mass media55 in a mediatic way,

due to its polemic approach linked to the presence of the

substance as a trigger to provoke the activation of the public.

It can be seen as a self-feeding archive that is alive and in

permanent construction within a period of time in history.

Following with the second question, the artist elaborated

afterwards some sort of a statement 56, but the way she presents

the piece in an art space is through the display of the art

documentation, the on-going debate, through the form of a video

installation in which she projects those live discussions for

wider audiences to see, it would be possible to say according to

Groys thesis that this gesture restore its aura by means of re-

territorialisation.

The third argument is a little more complex to work on, so to do

it I will first elaborate on two specific questions stated in

accordance to Groys thesis:

55 Some links to articles on news papers and magazines online:

1. http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-6086567

2. http://www.lavanguardia.com/mobi/noticia/53782046354/Polemica-por-el-reparto-de-

cocaina-en-una-performance-en-Bogota.html

3. http://bogota.vive.in/blogs/bogota/un_articulo.php?id_blog=4036597&id_recurso=4500

18430 56 To read the artist statement go to: http://www.taniabruguera.com/cms/293-0-

Untitled+Bogot+2009.htm

Figure 1 Snapshot of the debate ‘Entorno al performance the Tania Bruguera’/ ‘Around the performance of Tania Bruguera’, on the platform Esfera Pública. http://esferapublica.org/nfblog/en-torno-al-performance-de-tania-bruguera/ (08/09/2009)

25

1. Since Art Documentation focus on the documentation of art

as pure life, can the piece be categorized an artistic

activity rather than a product? (This would imply the work

to be in itself pure experience as opposed to a finished

product; hence the art piece should be understood as the

embodiment of activity)

The artist produced a space of living activity, in her artistic

practice she is interested in creating a political situation

through art, and to be able to do it she needs to inscribed her

work within the sphere of experience rather that the sphere of

representation of reality.

“I am interested in appropriating the resources of power to

create power, in creating a political situation through art, in

inserting myself in the present political moment from a space in

the future, practicable at least under certain circumstances and

for a given time.”57

Furthermore, Groys lists ‘the creation of unusual living

circumstances’ as one of the examples of “art documentation

produced and exhibited that does not claim to make present any

past art event”58. And is precisely that what Bruguera is aiming to achieve. The artist declares the following within her

statement elaborated around the piece:

“I have called this Behavior Art, an art working with social

behavior as its means of expression, its material, its finality

and its documentation: an art as the construction of what is

collective by creating a situation that will make

the transformation of an audience into a citizen possible. An art

57 Tania Bruguera. Untitled (Bogotá, 2009). August 2009.

http://www.taniabruguera.com/cms/293-0-Untitled+Bogot+2009.htm 58 Groys, “Art in the Age of Biopolitics,” 53.

26

contributing to a relationship for these conditions to appear, a

meeting point between ethics and desire.”59

2. Art Documentation is the documentation of the life form;

hence the art/life is not shown or presented (as would

happened with the recollection of a past event), is just

narrated and documented. Can this be a true statement

within the performance of Tania Bruguera?

To argument this I would like to keep in mind an example posted

by Groys, a performance by Carsten Höller, The Baudouin/Boudewijn

Experiment: A Large-Scale, Non-Fatalistic Experiment in

Deviation, (Brussels, 2001). With it, he arguments that the piece

is inscribed within the understanding of Art Documentation as

focus on an artistic activity by means of the participants

recounts of the experience:

“By contrast, Höller’s performance is not shown but merely

documented—specifically, by means of the participants’

narratives, which describe precisely that which could not be

seen. Here, then, life is understood as something narrated and

documented but unable to be shown or presented. This lends the

documentation a plausibility of representing life that a direct

visual presentation cannot possess.”

Therefor, as Höller’s performance, Bruguera's piece is not

presented or shown as an event inscribed in a particular place in

time, but instead it is documented and narrated through the

impressions, thoughts and feeling by those who participated. 60

Here two examples to support the argument:

59 Tania Bruguera. Untitled (Bogotá, 2009). August 2009.

http://www.taniabruguera.com/cms/293-0-Untitled+Bogot+2009.htm 60 Over here is important to bear in mind there are layers within the narratives

that some times can be permeated by backup knowledge on the artist work and

even mediated by the inscription of the people within institutional spheres.

27

While doing the endless line in front of the preparations for the video projection, listening to some German electronic music, it was not missing the joke about whether it was Tania Bruguera or Bono, from U2, who we had come to see. We were in the line of undocumented immigrants, mostly Colombians. The other one, those who did have their credentials where standing, was occupied mostly by people who spoke other languages. In the end, if anything, more than an hour later, it made the same. Both sides entered without further privileges (after all, the true kingship, with or without credentials, can always access first where ever it please).

Figure 2 Snapshot and translation of the text by Fernando Albarracín from the debate ‘Entorno al performance the Tania Bruguera’/ ‘Around the performance of Tania Bruguera’, on the platform Esfera Pública. http://esferapublica.org/nfblog/en-torno-al-performance-de-tania-bruguera/ (08/09/2009)

Figure 3 Snapshot and translation of the text from María Estrada Fuentes on the debate ‘La caída de la diosa: Tania Bruguera en Colombia’ / ‘The fall of the goddess: Tania Bruguera in Colombia’, on the platform Esfera Pública. http://esferapublica.org/nfblog/la-caida-de-la-diosa-tania-bruguera-en-colombia/ (27/08/2009)

It was not a big deal: people consumed until they could say "It is of the best quality but I've had enough. Thank you very much”, the people went when they got tired of listening to the speakers and the performance was suspended by order of the director of the School of Fine Arts of the Universidad Nacional. He is the first to take the microphone and expresses its outrage at the use of coca and stresses that it is prohibited on campus. Well, yes, the laws exist, but just the same people consumed. In the Nacional bareta always smells, that's no secret ... but a very different thing is that the direction of the institute support an event where consumption, try it once, or even five times if you like, is allowed. And they even hand it in for free…

28

Now, with the two previous questions already explored, I come

again to the third question formulated at the beginning of the

analysis: Can it be inscribed within Boris Groys category of Art

Documentation that focuses on the documentation of artistic

activities, which do not represent art understood as an end

product, but instead it merely documents art understood as a life

form? And so, I would argument that Bruguera’s performance can,

in fact, be read through Groys thesis, because as it has been

elaborated throughout the text, Art Documentation can be

understood as the documentation of an artistic activity (of art

deprived of object form) that cannot be presented in any other

way. And in Untitled (Bogotá, 2009), it is possible to say that

the artist is dealing with art as life, and as such it can only

exist in the form of artistic documentation.

29

CASE STUDIES

Marjoleine Boonstra

“Documentary for me means a story where there is a clear concept, where image,

sound and narrative line represent different layers and emotions. It is a

construction in which you can discover things, create a new reality. With a

line of approach that condenses and orders things in such a way that the film’s

intentions becomes clear. The poetry of reality.”61

Sa Nule (1996) 62 , is a documentary from the Dutch artist

Marjoleine Boonstra 63 (1959, Amsterdam, Netherlands), set in

Kuplensko refugee camp on the Bosnian-Croatian boarders from the

former Yugoslavia. It shows people from the camp being confronted

by their own image. They are being asked to position themselves

in front of a large mirror. They haven’t seen their own

reflection in a full body mirror for a long time, so they react

upon it and in that way they give testimony and render account of

their situation.

So, How does the manufacture of the witness appear within the

work of Boonstra?

The manufacture of the witness appear at the moment the artist

decides to go beyond the mere act of showing what is there to

see, and introduces narrative to the equation. But, what does

this mean? It means that by asking those to whom she is filming

to confront themselves to their own image by looking into a

mirror, the artist establishes a subjective approach to access

their reality by implementing narrative strategies to tell their

story. Consequently it comes as no surprise that the artist

61 Boonstra, “Documentary Now!,” 119–120. 62 Translated from Croatian to English “Square one”. To see it:

https://vimeo.com/89381269 63 The artist web page: http://www.marboni.nl/index.html

30

describes its own practice as the one of a storyteller; and by

positioning herself within that role, she creates the possibility

within the documentary form to move in-between recording and

constructing reality64.

The condition of refugee is put on the table by the gesture of

the artist of confronting them with their own reflection, a

simple ordinary action that they have been deprived off. Which

are the implications of being a refugee? What does it mean to be

labelled as such? What are they supposed to do under the barbaric

implication of war? Where do we stand on as spectators when we

are confronted by their reflection, and through it, forced to

think about the implications of the war? Is here where the fabric

of the witness plays its most important role and exposes its

risks, because it gives the spectator the power to choose its

position towards what is been shown to them.

The witness manifest itself as the testimony of the implications

of the war through the incapability of the people to handle the

view of their own image on a mirror and their reflections on

their changed appearance. This simple gesture expresses the power

of documentary strategies that play with the paradoxical nature

of the form, because once the dispute between fiction and

documentary is overruled, the inclusion of fictional codes by

means of narrative creates a space that brings perception and

subjectivity to the equation. In this sense the reflection of

the people -both physical and emotional- becomes a better

witness 65 of the horrors and implications of the war than the

direct and unaffected look at it. Hence, Boonstra creates a

64 Lind and Steyerl, “The Green Room,” 18. 65 It is as the piece of Avi Mograbi, Wait, It’s the soldiers, I have to hang up now, analysed by Jean-Pierre Rehm, in which the critic identifies that

precisely what is not shown, what is missing, its what offers the best

testimony of the situation.

31

space, a framework, for the refugees to approach their situation

through a different mean; and for us, the viewers, she does

exactly the same.

In conclusion the documentary strategy in this particular piece

holds itself upon the paradox of the form that goes beyond the

faithfulness of the capture of an untouched and pure reality (a

mimetic and naturalist reproduction) towards the submission to

coded narrative systems66 (a documentary production of reality) to

introduce the manufacture of the witness.

66 Rehm, “The Green Room,” 41.

Figure 4 Still from the Documentary Sa Nule. (10:01 minutes)

32

CONCLUSION

Art has set its focus on documentary and its multiple practices;

it is without a doubt a fact. Along the research project, and

through the exploration within the topic, I have encountered with

infinite examples of documentary strategies appropriated and

implemented by artist all over the globe, as well as interesting

theories and debates around the subject matter, all of them

pointing out not only on the complexities and paradoxes of the

form but also on their amazing possibilities and variations.

My interest through this paper was to get acquainted and get in

depth with two particular strategies within the subject: the

category of Art Documentation from Boris Groys, and the

manufacture of the witness within documentary put on the table by

Jean-Pierre Rehm.

To summarize, art documentation and documentary can be understood

within the thesis of Boris Groys and Jean-Pierre Rehm as follows.

While the first one looks after how to document art, when art has

become life in itself, and as such it is understood as an

artistic activity; the second one can be seen as a form that

responds to its paradoxical nature since it sets itself in

between the capture and construction of the real: fiction and

reality merged, and by means of narrative codes the manufacture

of the witness is introduced. That manufacture implies the shift

from an objective non-interventionist view, towards a subjective

point of view or attitude.

From the previous, and after the analysis of both case studies,

is possible to conclude that perception and narrative have become

significant methods and mechanisms on the construction of new

documentary strategies. In the case of Boris Groys, narrative

becomes the only mean to document art as life, because it

inscribes the art within history; and in the case of Jean Pierre-

33

Rehm, narrative manifests in the form of codes that permeate the

documentary and convert it in a powerful tool to meet with the

real by subjective ways, although some might say that perverts

it's nature.

The later can be seen in both works. In Tania Bruguera Untitled

(Bogotá, 2009), the spectator is the one who documents the

artistic activity by narrating the experience. As it was shown,

Bruguera exert what she calls a documentation democratization,

which –according to the artist- allows the audience to become

active participants within the artistic activity, granting them

the possibility to be seen as co-authors 67 . In Marjoleine

Boonstra’s Sa Nule (1996), she is the one who sets in motion and

implements narrative systems in order to tell a story that is set

within the parameters of reality, in this case the war, but

constructed on a framework that the artist defines, which would

be the confrontation of the refugees to their physical images,

and through the action, to their status as such.

Coming from the previous conclusion, it can also be stated that

the role of the spectator occupies a vital place in both case

studies. For Bruguera’s work there are two types of

spectator: the spectator who is in action, the spectator as

active participant inscribed within a life experience created by

artistic means; but there is also the spectator who have access

to the art documentation once produced, situation that would

raise the question already dealt by Groys in his text through the

concept of aura: how to presented it in and art space without

perverting it's nature? For Boonstra the spectator is also

active, but it is not inscribed within the experience of life.

Instead it is active in the sense of a judge who determines its

position after being confronted by a case.

67 See statement for the piece Untitled (Bogotá, 2009),

http://www.taniabruguera.com/cms/293-0-Untitled+Bogot+2009.htm

34

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