Lumbung, Commons and Community Art

documenta fifteen was a large-scale collective experiment in creating a commons using the art system. How did its lumbung community experience it? What happened on site and behind the scenes? What went wrong, and what can we take away from it? How does documenta fifteen fit into a larger picture of collective and community-oriented art practices?

This publication takes is base from a radio conversation between Simon Kentgens and Florian Cramer, where they together ruminated on their experiences and takeaways as peripheral participants in documenta fifteen.

As the publication is based on a transcript of a radio interview, it was important to visualise its origins in the layout: an ongoing conversation, with no headlines or images in between, just three pieces of music playing. Only at the very beginning the two speakers introduce themselves, so why show their names every time they talk? The conversation is a continuous layout, with the headlines mixed in. Pictures are small references and added as an appendix at the back. A simple guidance system for who's speaking - and the sound waves of the three songs playing, breaking up the layout, visualising the pauses they've made in the interview. The fonts chosen are Benoît Bodhuin's playful and swirling Harber, which seems to be made up of dots, visualising the commons, and Klim Type Foundry's very straightforward Söhne, which makes for a good readable body of text.