Documenta as a Fiction Workshop :: August 2-4, 2007 :: Wyspa Institute of Art in Gdansk, 1 Doki Street, building #145B, 80-958 Gdansk, Poland :: +48 58 320 44 46.

Fiction touches on invented stories, fantasies and literary conventions. It sits on the side of creativity, arbitrariness and doubt. Its power belongs to the speaking subject… but also to the listening one, flickering in the instantaneous and capricious relation between the two (or more) of them. In this framework, Documenta as a Fiction is foreseen as both an event and a theoretical figure based on an actual story. Resonating the ontological dissonance between the traditional notions of document and fiction, the workshop seeks for the plots and narratives of contemporary art as well as its institutional visions, giving a space for the performative encounters of individuals.

The participants will investigate the stories and their tellers with reference to the set of narratives grown over Documenta as a discursive engine. Especially over the current Documenta that outsources a part of its intellectual power to the network of art magazines and amplifies interconnections within the institutionalised art world, opening up a broad field of criticality over the predominant language in which art is being conveyed to the public. What is story? What is narrative? What is document and what is fiction? Whose is credibility? Which languages relate to or mediate reality — those of theory or of practice? How does vision turn into visibility? How does artistic action turn into actuality?

Students of art, art history and philosophy from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk, Gdansk University, the Royal College of Art in London and Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, none of whom has yet visited this year’s Documenta in Kassel, will analyse public and personal representations of this event. They will examine the languages in which art is being communicated, observe intellectual and institutional frames and create their own narratives through drawings, confessions, interviews, video, photo and textual documentations that will be frequently posted on the web. Grounded in the performativity of the group, Documenta as a Fiction is aimed at the collaborative process without conclusion. The group will reunite in Kassel on September 18-22 to confront the real and the fictions.

Participants: Maks Bochenek, Igor Duszynski, Ola Grzonkowska, Anne Hoffmann, Hiwa K., Kordian Lewandowski, Zuzanna Malicka, Ulrich Mauer, Mathias Pelda, Roma Piotrowska, Konrad Pustola.
Workshop moderators: Aneta Szylak and Magda Pustola.
Special guest: Artur Zmijewski.
Special project “Ungeklappte Arbeiten” by Hiwa K.

Conceived by Wyspa Institute of Art as a part of the workshops organised by the Brussels-based A Prior Magazine participating in the Documenta 12 Magazine Platform, Documenta as a Fiction is being additionally supported by the Schwerpunkt Polen at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk, Kunsthochschule Kassel and 3City.pl. Documenta as a Fiction logo was designed by LOWBUDGET.