Symposium | Critical Fabulations of documenta
Free admission. Registration required. Register at: standop[at]documenta-institut[dot]de
Critical Fabulations of documenta
The symposium will be held in English.
The symposium Critical Fabulations of documenta is about the gaps, omissions, and suppressed histories in the narratives surrounding documenta. Rather than treating these absences as deficits, it understands them as productive starting points for rethinking its history. At its core are those voices, images, and narratives that have been marginalised, overlooked, or never fully made visible in the official histories of the exhibition. Instead of seeking a linear or complete account of documenta, the symposium asks how we can work with ruptures, contradictions, and gaps. What kinds of knowledge, storytelling, and curatorial practices can emerge from them?
Drawing on Saidiya Hartman’s concept of critical fabulation, the symposium brings together art historical research, archival practice, curatorial work and storytelling. Hartman suggests that the gaps in historical tradition be taken as a creative starting point, countering the silence of the archive with a critical fabulation. Critical fabulation offers a way to question dominant narratives and to experiment with alternative forms of historiography and curatorial practice. The aim is not to close gaps definitively or to produce counter-histories as complete corrections. Instead, it focuses on the conditions under which history is told, remembered and made visible.
The symposium will address geopolitical tensions, institutional narratives, and the mechanisms of global (in-)visibility that have shaped the history of documenta. It considers questions of absence and non-participation, overlooked political contexts, unrealised exhibitions, and alternative historical possibilities. At the same time, it explores how museums, archives, and exhibition institutions themselves can become sites of speculative and fictional practice: spaces in which the past is not only reconstructed but also reimagined in the present. Following Saidiya Hartman, the symposium seeks to not only imagine what was, but also what could have been.
Program
Thursday, 9 July 2026
18:00–18:15 | Welcome and Introduction
Prof. Dr. Liliana Gómez (documenta Institut Kassel)
18:15–19:45 | Keynote: Aesthetic Utopias and the Politics of Imagination
Moderated by Luisa Standop (documenta Institut Kassel)
Prof. Dr. Nikita Dhawan (TU Dresden)
20:00 Uhr | Buffet for conference speakers
Friday, 10 July 2026
10:00–10:15 | Welcome and Introduction
Prof. Dr. Liliana Gómez (documenta Institut Kassel)
10:15–11:45 | Panel 1: Absent Others: The Cold War and Beyond
Moderated by Luisa Standop (documenta Institut Kassel)
Prof. Dr. Nora Sternfeld (HFBK Hamburg): “Something Didn’t Feel Right.” A Retrospective View from the Future
Prof. Dr. Matteo Bertelé (Ca’ Foscari Venezia): An Elephant in the Room? The Soviet Union at documenta in the Sixties and Seventies
11.45–12:00 | Coffee break
12:00–13:30 | Panel 2: The Trouble with ‘Global’: Frictions, Gaps, and Ghosts at documenta
Moderated by Laura Flórez (Universität Kassel)
Dr. Nadia von Maltzahn (Orient-Institut Beirut): Interrogating the Global through the (non-)Participation of Lebanese Artists at documenta
Prof. Dr. Charlotte Bank (LMU München): Global In/Visibilities since documenta X (1997)
13:30–14:30 | Lunch break
14:30–16:00 | Panel 3: After the 100 Days: Institutions Between Myth, Crisis, and Reinvention
Moderated by Mateo Chacón Pino (HafenCity University Hamburg/documenta Institut Kassel)
Dr. Andreja Hribernik (Kunsthaus Graz): The Unfinished Institution: Working with Fiction and Speculation
Dr. Matthias Mühling (Lenbachhaus München): „Was von 100 Tagen übrig blieb…“ The Remains of 100 Days… documenta and the Lenbachhaus
16:00–16:15 |Coffee break
16:15–17:45 | Panel 4: On the Unfinished Project of documenta humana
Moderated by Defne Kizilöz (Kunsthochschule Kassel)
Prof. Dr. Fabienne Liptay (Universität Zürich) and Prof. Dr. Dorota Sajewska (Ruhr-Universität Bochum): documenta humana – a posthumanist fabulation
17:45–18:00 | Coffee break
18:00–19:30 | Roundtable: Whose Stories, Whose Voices? Archives, Absences and Critical Fabulations
Moderated by Prof. Dr. Liliana Gómez (documenta Institut Kassel)
Prof. Dr Nikita Dhawan (TU Dresden)
Prof. Dr. Nora Sternfeld (HFBK Hamburg)
Dr. Matthias Mühling (Lenbachhaus München)
Andrea Linnenkohl (documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbh)
20:00 | Dinner for conference speakers