Hospitality

Hospitality draws and makes tangible a possible image of this world which for many is increasingly rare and whose encounter determines what we take with us and pass on to others. Hospitality is a resource that becomes richer the more we use it. And, of course, it is not just about the guest. Those who welcome guests and share what is theirs affirm and strengthen their own belonging and identity. The joint experience of sharing can be about everything that is important to us, be it traditions, customs and passions, ideas, or plans but also failures, fears, and experiences.

In 2020, OFF-Biennale was invited by the curators of documenta fifteen, ruangrupa, to participate in the lumbung community that was shaping the program for documenta. The lumbung, the name of which comes from the Indonesian word for a communal rice barn, had become the central metaphor and modus operandi of this edition of documenta: a space of hospitality. ruangrupa invited communities from all over the world to collaborate—thus subverting Western hegemony—and asked them to share their own agendas, commitments, and experiences of how they operate with each other and with the documenta audience and to create a radically different economic and collaborative mode of operation for the fifteenth edition of this prestigious event of the Western art world. Friendship became the basis for cooperation, and it was on the basis of these economics that the institutional framework of documenta was redesigned. Invitations gave rise to further invitations: The communities involved by ruangrupa were given the opportunity to invite others, thus unlocking the foundations of centralized functioning.

This is how OFF-Biennale Budapest was able to host a number of artists and artistic initiatives, redistributing and multiplying the resources offered to it. The first challenge to this radically new way of operating, which tested the concept of hospitality, was the Covid-19 pandemic, which prevented face-to-face meetings and the possibility of getting to know each other on site and initiated more limited forms of hospitality through referrals. In Zoom talks, sometimes attended by hundreds of people, we made friends in ways we had never done before: We met online, played games, played music, and partied to ease our bitterness and fears while trying to shape the framework for the next documenta and the foundations of a community that would work afterward as well.

It was noticeable that while for some, hospitality is a more culturally embedded gesture that defines everyday life, for others it is a learning process with which they can engage in very different ways.

This learning requires less of a formal education and more experience. Those who are hosted—and thus experience different ways of being welcomed and accepted—become more open to passing on these experiences. When we enter into someone’s own environment—their “home”—we are welcomed not only by those people but by the entire milieu. In recognizing and understanding cultural differences, the multifaceted experience of being in the environment helps us to grasp the points of connection. We had a limited opportunity to do this as the sensory experience, the immediacy, and the nonverbal gestures came to us through an inhibiting medium (distance, meditation, time, and the uncertainty caused by Covid) that dampened the power of the messages.

We travelled in our heads, in front of monitors, and after many months, with the slow lifting of restrictions, when we could meet in small groups for the first time in Kassel, we looked for familiar faces behind the masks. Even with the end of the epidemic, there was still enough of a challenge; hospitality ran up against the strong walls of maintaining the status quo of big art shows. documenta could not transcend its own shadow, and many of those who came to visit left bitterly, even earlier than planned.

However, it also allowed us to experience many of the joys of being a guest and hosting guests, which opened up new perspectives beyond the given situations. Solidarity between communities was the main factor in ensuring that they did not return home with their heads down, as victims of the attacks that subverted the foundations of this edition of documenta. In response to the difficulties, it was important that they also had positive experiences, many strong commitments, responsibilities, and consolations. For OFF-Biennale, this visit brought new friends, allies, knowledge, and a number of themes, communities, and creators as well as the important feedback that the way of working that we have envisioned and lived is fundamental for many global partners, so we are not living naive dreams but rather another shared reality.

We were guests, and thanks to the generosity of our hosts, we were hosts ourselves—both in the stately rooms of the Fridericianum, brought to life by the lumbung school, and in the boathouse Ahoi! (another venue of documenta fifteen) on the banks of the Fulda, where in the framework of a project thematizing playgrounds we invited everyone who considers play a way of life.

The bridge we built with Recetas Urbanas (the Allesbrücke, the Everything-bridge), which led through the boathouse building into the realm of fantasy, was a tribute to the hospitality of the students of a local school. We invited them, and they welcomed us by letting us into not only their school but also their visions, the shortcomings they had experienced, as well as their ideas and plans. All of this was lifted to the sky by the Everything-bridge, whose life continued in the schoolyard even after documenta.

It was the generosity and trust of the host that opened up the possibility to invite our guests. And here the complex web of the host–guest relationship was revealed: As ruangrupa, our host, was already a guest in Kassel, we were their guests, while at the same time we were also guests of the city and of the local communities. After a while, it becomes difficult to follow who shares what resources, which of them they consider their own, and what privileges they recognize and renounce. The renunciation here does not mean loss but rather transmission and thus enrichment. Also, to a certain extent, it means letting go of their control over the process since this kind of trusting camaraderie, the escalation of hospitality, does not allow for the all-seeing control of the central gaze. With this freedom we were not only given opportunities but also a sense of responsibility for our guests, which, however, must not become a means of control and censorship, a means of diminishing the autonomy of the guest.

We came back from this trip with a lot of baggage—a lot of experiences, lessons learned, and also doubts—and the hospitality we experienced from the lumbung members, the artists, and the children, which we are committed to passing on, is perhaps the most important of all.