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What is Platform6?

In the course of our research and preparation for Documenta11 in 2002 the curatorial team discussed the possibility of organising a sixth platform. It would feature the voices of artists, curators, critics and intellectuals formed by the experience of Documenta11 and its various platforms. The spirit of the event should be that of reculer pour mieux sauter, looking back to look forward, using the event to reformulate the issues most urgent to our practices just as Documenta11 itself enabled us to rethink our political, cultural and aesthetic engagements.

Documenta11 team members Ute Meta Bauer, Angelika Nollert and myself visited Okwui in Munich where he was confined by illness but where he continued to work on his Haus der Kunst and critical and curatorial projects. With his health deteriorating we began discussing projects such as the Exhibition Grief and Grievance with the New Museum in New York, the Sharjah Biennial where Okwui planned to present Post-Colonial, the companion exhibition to the Haus der Kunst Post War, and Platform6 which he proposed that I initiate. We approached the current managing director of documenta, Sabine Schormann, the documenta archiv and the artistic direction of documenta 15 ruangrupa to propose a collaboration on this project.

The original plan was for an international conference in Kassel in 2019, but early in the planning purposes this had to be postponed because of Covid 19. Instead, with their encouragement we began to plan this website. This is intended as an open text, a resource comprising contributions from collaborators on Documenta11 as well as other of Okwui’s ground breaking exhibitions.  The hope is that it will encourage readers and participants to explore the history of Documenta11 and its continuing relevance today.

This is a project of the documenta archive who have been researching and restoring material from the 2002 exhibition, including recordings of the platform conferences, and arranging reprints of key Documenta11 Platform and Exhibition texts, much of this material not available since 2002. At the same time we have begun to receive many exciting contributions from artists, curators and critics which you will find on the web pages which follow. New thinking for new times we hope. Please join us in developing this project.

The documenta archive is a continuous research institution working with the history of the documenta exhibitions. The focus on Documenta11, apart from its critical success as important as Harald Szeemans documenta 5, is occasioned by the so premature death of Okwui Enwezor and the commitment of the curatorial team, ruangrupa and documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH to honour Okwui’s legacy. Indeed it was the wish of the mayor of Kassel to honour Okwui that was one of the spurs to action on this project.

We invite contributions which serve to advance the global perspectives which Okwui and his collaborators initiated. Okwui was adamant that however relevant as the history of Documenta11 might be today, we should be using this opportunity to use these tools to project future research and projects.

You will find a web interface designed by L2M3 communication design to facilitate the exploration of the original Documenta11 and linked by an ingenious colour coding to present your contributions. Please send your contribution to the following address: platform6@documenta.de

Mark Nash, Ute Meta Bauer and Angelika Nollert

How is Platform6 structured?

The landing page features impressions of Okwui Enwezor and Documenta11, 2002, as well as other materials that provide an introduction to the project.
The upper menu bar has current contributions about Enwezor and Documenta11 Recently and, under Talks, related interviews and conversations.
The lower menu bar will take you to an overview of the previous five platforms of Documenta11. A selection of contributions from Platform1–4 has been made available in the form of texts or videos. Under Platform5, an image gallery and excerpts from the exhibition catalog offer a look back at the exhibition.
Using the menu on the right, you can filter contributions by keywords or conduct a full text search in the Search field. The About field provides information about Platform6 and its initiators and organizers.
The videos about Platform1–4 have been edited for the website. This historical material does not meet today's standards for image and sound quality.
Platform6 will be updated with new, additional content at regular intervals.

Credits of Platform6

Special thanks to the curatorial team:
Mark Nash, Ute Meta Bauer, Angelika Nollert

and Vladimir Seput, UC Santa Cruz

Idea: Sabine Schormann
Concept: Martin Groh

Realization: documenta archiv team
Birgitta Coers, Martin Groh
Coordination and editing: Alexandra Winterhoff
Image- and text-editing: Natalie Schmidt
Video-editing, images, film and media restoration: Michael Gärtner, Maximilian Preuss
https://www.documenta-archiv.de/de/

Webdesign and technical implementation: L2M3 Kommunikationsdesign, Stuttgart
https://www.l2m3.com/

Platform6 - Opening Adress

Documenta11 Team 2001/2002

Okwui Enwezor (in the middle) ends Documenta11 with (from the left) Ute Meta Bauer (co-curator), Sarat Maharaj (co-curator), Susanne Ghez (co-curator), Mark Nash (co-curator) and Angelika Nollert (project manager)
© Lothar Koch
Co-Curator Documenta11: Ute Meta Bauer
© Werner Maschmann
Co-Curator Documenta11: Mark Nash
© Photo: unknown / Courtesy of the curator
Co-Curator Documenta11: Carlos Basualdo
© Werner Maschmann
Co-Curator Documenta11: Susanne Ghez
© Werner Maschmann
Co-Curator Documenta11: Octavio Zaya
© Werner Maschmann
Co-Curator Documenta11: Sarat Maharaj
©Werner Maschmann
Okwui Enwezor
© documenta archiv / Photo: Ryszard Kasiewicz

Captions Landing Page

Okwui Enwezor
© documenta archiv / Photo: Ryszard Kasiewicz
Queue in front of the Museum Fridericianum
© documenta archiv / Photo: Ryszard Kasiewicz
"Double bass solo, opus 45" by Hanne Darboven is being set up at the Museum Fridericianum
© Hanne Darboven / Photo: Werner Maschmann / Hanne Darboven Stiftung, Hamburg / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024
Museum Fridericianum
© documenta archiv / Werner Maschmann

Library

In the Platform6 library, the documenta archiv makes both historical and new text contributions from the platforms available as PDF downloads. The texts can be downloaded under the respective contributions as well as in the overview in the library.
Texts that have previously been published and republished on Platform6 are not made available as downloads due to copyright restrictions. The credit lines of the first publications are indicated under the respective contributions.

Enwezor
Download

Vivan Sundaram’s exhibition, ‘Disjunctures’, at Haus der Kunst, Munich

Documenta11 Recently
Download

Reflections on Okwui Enwezor, Platform VI Regarding Critical Globalism for the 21st Century

Download

Creole Concerns

Download

Exhibiting the Postcolonial Constellation

Talks
documenta fifteen
Download

The Past in the Present – A Conversation between Co-Curators and Team of Documenta11 with Artistic Directors of documenta fifteen – Part 1

Download

The Past in the Present – A Conversation between Co-Curators and Team of Documenta11 with Artistic Directors of documenta fifteen – Part 2

Democracy 2001
Download

Platform1 Democracy Unrealized

Download

Democracy, Globalization, and Difference

Download

Identity, Relativism, and the Liberal State

Download

Deepening Liberal Democracy

Download

The Prospects of Radical Politics Today

Download

For an Agonistic Public Sphere

Download

Democracy, Capitalism, and Transformation

Download

Global Justice and the Failure of Deliberative Democracy

Download

The Roma and Democracy: A Nation without a State

Download

Inequality, Democracy, and Parliamentary Discourses

Download

New Rules of the New Actonomy 3.0

Download

The State of Hate in America: The Growing Conflict Between Identity Politics and Multiculturalism

Download

Arquitectos Sin Fronteras—España (ASF-E)

Download

Demokratische Offensive

Download

Enacting the Unrealized: Political Theory and the Role of „Radical Democratic Activism“

Download

The Subject of Politics — The Politics of the Subject

Download

Beyond Diversity: Cultural Studies and Its Postcommunist Other

Download

Globalization and Democracy

Download

Democracy, Economics, and the Military

Download

Democracy De-realized

Download

Awaiting The Beautyful Ones

Download

Democracy between Autonomy and Heteronomy

Download

In Search of Dynamic Republicanism for the 21st Century

Download

Liberal Democracy and Its Slippages

Truth 2001
Download

Platform2 Experiments with Truth: Transitional Justice and the Processes of Truth and Reconciliation

Download

Making Sense of Political Violence in Postcolonial Africa

Download

Different Kinds of Truth: The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission*

Download

Is Truth the Road to Reconciliation?*

Download

Truth and Reconciliation Are Not What We Really Need

Download

The „Melancholization“ of the Witness: The Impotence of Words, the Power of Images

Download

Sagas of Victory, Memories of Defeat? The Long Afterlife of an Indo-Muslim Warrior Saint, 1033-2000

Download

The Order of Truth and the Order of Society

Download

A Finer Balance: An Essay on the Possibility of Reconciliation

Download

Trauma and Truth

Download

The Persistence of Memory: The Search for Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation

Download

An Experiment in International Criminal Justice: The Philosophy, Methodology, and Working of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Download

Facts versus Truth: The Dilemmas of a Reluctant Member of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Download

Torture, Recovery, and Truth in Morocco

Download

The Search for the Truth Before the Courts

Download

Transitional Justice as Liberal Narrative

Download

The Denial of Justice and the Loss of the Subject

Download

Archive Images: Truth or Memory? The Case of Adolf Eichmann’s Trial

Download

It is Difficult

Download

African Literature and the Rwandan Expedition

Download

Constructing Memorials

Download

Between Truth and Reconciliation: Experiments in Theater and Public Culture

Créolité 2001
Download

Platform3 Créolité and Creolization

Download

Créolité and the Process of Creolization

Download

Paradise, Primitivism, and Parody

Download

Global Islands

Download

Sound Systems Against the “Unsound System” of Babylon: Rude/Lewd Lyrics vs. Nude Tourists in Jamaica

Download

Creolizing Vision

Download

The Length of the Breath

Under Siege 2002
Download

Platform4 Under Siege: Four African Cities, Freetown, Johannesburg, Kinshasa, Lagos

Download

The Visible and Invisible: Remaking Cities in Africa

Download

Order and Disorder in African Cities: Governance, Politics, and Urban Land Development Processes

Download

Figures of the Subject in Times of Crisis

Download

Popular Shaping of Metropolitan Forms and Processes in Nigeria: Glimpses and Interpretations from an Informed Lagosian

Download

Fragments of a Lecture on Lagos

Download

„There’s Space for Africa in the New South Africa (?)“: African Migrants and Urban Governance in Johannesburg

Download

Freetown: From the „Athens of West Africa“ to a City Under Siege: The Rise and Fall of Sub-Saharan First Municipality

Download

The Production of the City and Urban Informalities: The Borough of Thiaroye-sur-mer in the City of Pikine, Senegal

Download

Housing in Marrakech: The Contradictions of Public Interventions

Documenta11 2002
Download

Preface of Documenta11_Platform5: Exhibition Short Guide

Download

The Black Box, 2002

Download

The Space of Documenta11. Documenta11 as a Zone of Activity

Download

Realities of the Artistic Imagination

Download

Art and Cinema: Some Critical Reflections

About the Platforms

In the course of our research and preparation for Documenta11 in 2002 the curatorial team discussed the possibility of organising a sixth platform. It would feature the voices of artists, curators, critics and intellectuals formed by the experience of Documenta11 and its various platforms. The spirit of the event should be that of “reculer pour mieux sauter”, looking back to look forward, using the event to reformulate the issues most urgent to our practices just as Documenta11 itself enabled us to rethink our political, cultural and aesthetic engagements.

Documenta11 team members Ute Meta Bauer, Angelika Nollert and myself visited Okwui in Munich where he was confined by illness but where he continued to work on his Haus der Kunst and critical and curatorial projects.

Introduction by Mark Nash, Ute Meta Bauer and Angelika Nollert

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