“We are angry, we are sad, we are tired, we are united.” With this sentence begins a letter that quite a few Documenta artists and the curator collective Ruangrupa wrote to the supervisory board and the shareholders of the Documenta, to the mayor and the Cultural officer from Kassel, to the culture ministers of Hesse and the Federal Republic of Germany and of course to the German public as well. When you have read the whole text, one would like to answer, possibly also on behalf of all those who are being accused of racism, Islamophobia and anti-Palestinianism here without any evidence: It is very similar to us with you. Reading can make you angry. sad too. And tired anyway.
The letter from the artists and curators is the answer to a statement by the scientific advisory board, which the Documenta management appointed almost six weeks ago, so that it could examine the allegations of anti-Semitism against the curators and their explanations, so to speak, from outside. What the panel published over the weekend is “an initial assessment,” as the press release puts it, not an expert opinion that claims to be scientific. And whose authority is based on the fact that the scientists (including Nicole Deitelhoff, Julia Bernstein, Christoph Möllers) have nothing to gain by taking part in a campaign.