metropolis m

Every documenta has its own theoretical inception. This time, dOCUMENTA (13) director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev chose a series of one hundred publications dedicated to the idea of the note. Its editor is Chus Martínez, who in daily life is curator of the MACBA in Barcelona.

Domeniek Ruyters

As theoretical preparation for the upcoming documenta, you have chosen to publish a series of notebooks. Why?

Chus Martínez

‘There are many interesting aspects about the idea of “notes” and notebooks. I’m particularly talking about their condition of being in-between drawing and writing, in-between the collecting and naming of ideas. But they also involve the search, the key-chain arguments in their raw form, the temporary rupture with the discursive form they represent. Additionally, notes and notebooks relate to the way writing and reading relates to the self, which also relates to the interregnum these objects/concepts create between the private and public sphere. Notebooks, notes – hypomenmata – help us to understand methods, logics, and therefore thinking. A possible answer to the question of what is so relevant, even so political about a note is the indifference towards the function the notes play in the consumption of ideas or culture. There is one step before cultural production and it seems the right moment to go there and investigate this space of the “preliminary”. A collection of notes is a curious archive of attempts. Attempts to understand the language we use, the logic we trace, and the images we generate to understand life today. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the artistic director of dOCUMENTA (13), would say that these notebooks are “worlding” exercises, weaving and stringing together different potentials.’

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Read the full interview in Metropolis M, no. 5.

Domeniek Ruyters

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