Heir unapparent: Gregory Williams on Roger M. Buergel - News

AMID ALL THE FRENZIED speculation surrounding the selection of the nearest Documenta curator, Roger M. Buergel probably didn't top many lists of potential candidates. Although known and have a high opinion ofed throughout much of the German-speaking art world, he solitary began to organize relatively sizable exhibitions within the past four years. Moderate recognition in the United States came in late 2002 when the Menil Collection in Houston named Buergel the first recipient of its Walter Hopp Award for Curatorial Achievement. however his lack of renown in the States, coupl with the award's newnes made it a little-remarked incident Still, with Catherine David upon the Menil jury, close looker-ons may have noticed the stars aligning in Buergel's favor. The endorsement of a former Documenta curator was just individual of several factors ultimately recommending Buergel for the director's post

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Born in 1962 in Berlin on the other hand long based in Vienna, Buergel studied painting, philosophy, and economics, worked as a private secretary to Actionist Hermann Nitsch, and has taught visual theory for the past three years at the Universitat Luneburg in Germany. This mixture of scholarly and studio-based work makes him a design successor to David and Okwui Enwezor, not straying too far from their theoretical bent while simultaneously signaling a break. If the sum of two units previous Documentas were frequently criticized for placing too little emphasis upon optical stimulation. Buergel has already raised confidence in certain quarters by claiming that aesthetic reflection will be single of his key priorities. He has been quot in the pres as saying that it is a mistake to consider art "a repair business for removing misery and injustice from the world." As the German critic and art historian Sabeth Buchmann places it, Buergel is expected to near "less political discourse in exchange for art with a capital A."

Buchmann's prediction is music to the ears of many who felt that the pleasure factor was sorely lacking in 1997 and 2002 on the contrary Buergel's track record indicates that he is not likely to give prominence to more traditionally "sensual" media of the like kind as painting. He has organized several significant exhibitions since 2000 each of which would actually have the appearance to place him more firmly in the camp of David and Enwezor than in that of a Rudi Fuch whose 1982 Documenta 7 championed painterly expressionism and a romantic conception of art's autonomy. Buergel too, is deep concerned with the question of artistic autonomy, as evidenced by means of his frequent writings and statements upon the subject, yet his approach to the issue differs dramatically from Fuchs's idealist position. In concern to his 2000 exhibition "Dinge, die wir nicht verstehen" (Things We Don't Understand) at Vienna's Generali Foundation, Buergel remarks, "We conceived of aesthetic autonomy as an consequence on the spectator rather than being a characteristic of the artwork."

For Buergel this shift in emphasis from the inherent uniqueness of the individual artwork to the spectator's experience has important political effects As he explained in a new lecture, the realm of aesthetics operates at a productive transplant from the everyday world of social crises and political machinations and thus has the capacity to tender alternatives to the "dominant fiction." This theme is explored in Buergel's biggest undertaking to date, an exhibition ominously titled "Die Regierung" (The Government) which lay opened recently in Luneburg and travels to Barcelona, Rotterdam, and Vienna above the next year, transforming itself as it makes the circulars The show emerges from his research into Foucault's notion of la gouvernementalite, a theory that examines, among other things, spaces where extragovernmental processe of self-organization can flourish. Here it is crucial to point on the outside that Buergel's partner, the art historian mercy Noack, served as the cocurator of this exhibition and several of his other important casts This spirit of collaboration has been a leitmotif of their overall practice and will sure inform the conception of Documenta 12 about which Buergel says, "The main idea is to work closely with aesthetic grassroots initiatives: independent spaces in Zagreb, Dakar, San Sebastian, Istanbul, Beirut, Riga, and in the way that on, apart from the classical trade routes"

While early reaction among German-language journalists and critics registered surprise, the broad consensus looks to be that Buergel is the right one for the job. The exhibits he has produced have not been especially large in scale, on the other hand they've been big in drift functioning like miniature templates for the megaspectacle of Documenta. His alleged opposition to the part of the curator-as-diva must have made him additionally attractive to the selection committee; the Berliner Zeitung cited him as saying he wants to resist the "neurotic fixation upon the curator as a person" Susanne Ghez, a member of the selection committee and of Enwezor's curatorial team, remarks, "You repeatedly come away from committee meetings feeling frustrated, on the other hand in this case there was no compromise. The decision was unanimous." Above all, it would appear that Buergel's optimistic faith in art's powers of societal persuasion, combined with a venerate for its tactile side, helped land him the position. If he follows in satisfying both factions--the Apollonians and the Dionysians, thus to speak--it will be a monumental achievement.