Thread by @nikadubrovsky

#dokumenta15 is first and foremost a truly anti-colonial exhibition. There are almost no Western artists and even fewer individual celebrities.
Most of the artists of #dokumenta15 are collectives.
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Significant Western exhibitions of recent years have struggled to dilute their decades-long menu of white famous men with women and men of color, to make as many postcolonial gestures as they can.
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But somehow it always turns out that the Russian artist lives on Long Island, the Nigerians moved to London long ago, and the women are the wives of the gallerists.
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#dokumenta15 is a parade of collectives from the Global South.
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Not only are there virtually no Western artists in the exhibition, but there are very few individual works, demonstrations of innovative authorship, discoveries of new plastic language and other crap that endless art shows are littered with.
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#dokumenta15 consistently demonstrates the behavioral practices of very different сommunities around the globe, where art is embedded as an organic part of life.
There, art does not exist separately and has no value outside of society.
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Art at #dokumenta15 is part of activist initiatives, education, and practices of care.
Most of the installations are arranged in a way that one can use, touch, participate in, learn, print a poster,
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figure out how to make furniture, and share cooking recipes with friends and strangers, in short, you can live there right here and now, or you can go home and live better than before.
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Special thanks for the practice of care for the visitors and especially for the children. My kids are grown now, but I remember how difficult and uncomfortable it was to attend any exhibition with kids.
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Children at the show always felt like a burden, an inconvenience and a parent unable to hire a babysitter just prevented serious people from doing really important thing - art, that had have a very little to do with life outside of the White Cube (an exhibition).
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#dokumenta15 - one of the main halls is given over to a carefully organized playground, a kitchen, and rooms where you can rest with your child.
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Almost all projects are organized around a direct conversation with the audience.
And it's not idiotic schemes of the type: let's hire refugees to assemble my designer lamas for a minimal wage and not a criticism of the contemporary Art World.
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There is no criticism of the Western art world at #dokumenta15.
As one participant told me: we don't have your Art World. We go home to our own lives, where there are no galleries, curators or sponsors.
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The enormous world came to us, but not to squat on the edge of our chairs, but to show us how they live.
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A small example:
Regular exhibitions are organized around screenings, snacks at frantically expensive commercial cafés where you have to pay because you can't get away anyhow and private invitations to evening meals (for a select few).
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#dokumenta15 project by Bangladesh's collective named Britto is an architectural structure from bamboo for the production and distribution of food. It's built outside the Documenta (i.e. no need to buy a ticket).
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The artists integrated vegetable gardens with tomatoes, peppers, and so on into the structure and made the kitchen at the end of the gallery. Those who wish to share recipes and cook together are welcome. The food is shared with everyone.
There is a kind of endless potlatch.
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You wanted new contemporary art - here it is. There is an endless supply of it. It's the whole world. There is little of it only where we live.
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