"Since its initiation by the architect and painter Arnold Bode in 1955, Documenta has pushed the boundaries of curatorial frameworks and art- making. Documenta is a large-scale quinquennial exhibition less concerned with the art market than other major exhibitions of its scale (such as the Venice Biennale), instead favoring the platforming of social practices and often radical artistic propositions. Remarkably, it has taken fifteen editions for a group of artists to take the curatorial reins. The word “documenta” was an invented word supposed to demonstrate the intention of every exhibition (in particular the first Documenta) to be a type of documentation of the contemporary world — a world that the German public was not able to see during the Nazi era. Later in this text I will return to this notion of state-regulated visual arts in relation to the unfolding controversaries of Documenta 15 and the organization’s inability to deal with the complexity of recent events."