Productive failure at the documenta 12

As if it wasn't bad enough that Kassel's street cleaners removed the work of Chilean artist Lotty Rosenfeld, the documenta 12 exhibition is also having to battle against the elements. The most popular work of art at the exhibition, Ai Weiwei's sculpture titled "Template", consisting of a tower made of old doors and windows that have fallen victim to the Chinese construction boom, collapsed after a storm. The artist from China thinks his work is even better now, and Niklas Maak was also impressed by the results: "Visitors to the ruin could give it the following interpretation: Ai made a sculpture using bits of destroyed houses, thus transforming the destructive energy of globalisation into a new free-spirited aesthetic form, and now this work of art has been deformed by the forces of nature unleashed by climate change... Productive failure is one of the fundamental themes at this documenta, and Ai Weiwei's collapsed cathedral of ruins fits in well with this art history of resignation and form liberated by deformation. From this perspective the weather gods have ultimately presented Roger M. Buergel and his documenta with the perfect work of art."

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