In the fall of 1977, Joseph Beuys participated in both documenta 6 in Kassel and the first edition of Skulptur Projekte Münster. At documenta, he installed a “honey pump” (titled Honey Pump at the Workplace), which circulated honey through plastic tubes that ran through the halls of the Fridericianum, the 18th-century building that serves as the exhibition’s main venue.
How much theory is there in art – and how much art is there in theory? This question has shaped debates around documenta at least since its 10th edition in 1997, when Catherine David placed theoretical discourse at the center of the exhibition. Nearly 30 years later, the curator of the upcoming documenta 16, Naomi Beckwith, revisited this question: in her exhibition ECHO DELAY REVERB at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, she examined the influence of poststructuralist and postcolonial theories on US-American art.
The symposium "Critical Fabulations of documenta" is about the gaps, omissions, and suppressed histories in the narratives surrounding documenta. Rather than treating these absences as deficits, it understands them as productive starting points for rethinking its history. At its core are those voices, images, and narratives that have been marginalised, overlooked, or never fully made visible in the official histories of the exhibition. Instead of seeking a linear or complete account of documenta,