documenta fifteen

I squint at my creased map from a clearing in the Karlsaue Park. In an attempt to escape the sting of the sun, I’d decided to take a shortcut to the “compost heap” – the location of La Intermundial Holobiente’s installation – but there are more tracks through the forest than marked on the documenta fifteen map. Of course there are. It’s an art map, after all: minimal, beautiful, not always helpful. I’m on a strict schedule, having covered a thirteen-kilometre loop from Kassel’s centre to the eastern ex-industrial venues and back again in the stinking heat: compost heap by 3:00 p.m., the Stadtmuseum by 3:30, leaving me enough time to attend Richard Bell’s Tent Embassy conversation at 5:00 p.m. For extensive events like documenta, the planning, the walking between venues (thirty-two this year), and the approach, is such an integral part of the exhibition, and so when I finally find the installation built upon the park’s compost heap, my experience is inevitably shaped by the journey.

Compost heaps are generally hidden from view, the dumping ground of plants that refuse to sit nicely in a well-maintained park. At Karlsaue, the artist collective La Intermundial Holobiente, 2022, to which visitors are invited to contribute. Unlike the busy larger venues that are dominated by live artist discussions, performances, and other interactions, this archival installation provides welcome space and thinking time, accompanied only by a soft soundtrack and the surprisingly inoffensive smell of the rotting plant matter cooking under the mid-summer sun.