In my view the next Documenta or visual art in general should not ask the question of how art can represent or document politics, but rather how visual art is inextricably intertwined with the politics of production. One could say that visual art is a kind of celebration of production, a production which has no primary use value, but which is a reflection of production in general. In consequence visual art has always reflected, consciously or not, the latest in technology: From the very beginnings of civilization with the recognition of stones as a tool enabling cave drawing until the latest in military technology resulting in video or internet art.

But what does it mean for visual art if the cultural technique or very idea of technology itself becomes problematic? The development of technology has always meant progress in how to transform material or natural resources via human labor. The transformation of material is the key mode of production of any society up to date. It transforms "nature" into supply goods in order to decrease supply shortage and to diminish the threats of nature, both of course aiming at enhancing quality of life. But since the middle of the 20th century, with the appearance of excess supply in Western societies as well as mankind’s endangering of the specific disposition of nature in which human life seems possible, the hegemony of the transformation of material as the mode of production has been fundamentally questioned. So the development of this mode of production, technological progress, has become equally problematic.

Basically all visual artworks are produced by transformations of material, with only very few exceptions (e.g. some of Michael Asher’s works). For visual art to keep on affirming this mode of production and following its developments does not seem very interesting to me.

In contrast, the last Documenta, through not addressing the politicity of its own medium, but all the same putting itself underneath the banner of progressive politics, has performed a gesture which is dangerously reactionary: on the one hand, because it proposes that there can be critique without self-critique (which implies the possibility of a place outside of society, a site of disengagement), and on the other because it proposes that art has to actively connect itself to politics, implying that there is no a priori connection between art and politics. Jacques Rancière (to refer to a philosopher who has been used as theoretical reference for the last 2 Documentas) has pointed out the inconsistency of the latter standpoint, saying that like proclaiming "the end of politics", proclaiming "the return of politics" is just another way of cancelling out politics, which in this particular case would mean cancelling out the intrinsic connection between visual art and economic production.

The question I would prefer visual art to pose itself is how can it help develop and promote alternative modes of production or other approaches to production rather than constantly reaffirming the dominant and highly problematic ones. So that in a Rancièrean sense a new voice ruptures the hegemonic discourse on production of which visual art has until now been a chief representative.