Abstract

The large-scale painting ›People’s Justice‹, a work by the artist collective Taring Padi, originally intended as an agit-prop artwork in Indonesia two decades ago, was publicly exhibited in Kassel in 2022 at the international art exhibition ›documenta fifteen‹. Public criticism declared the large-scale image to be an anti-Semitic machination and scandalized the art exhibition as a whole as marked by anti-Semitic activism. Taring Padi’s large-scale painting was first covered, then completely removed. – In our paper, we analyze the political problematic that set the matrix for the scandal and the organizational ethical aporia of a diffusion of responsibility: the organization of the art exhibition sought to maximize the curatorial freedom of the artist collectives, but in doing so increased the risk of dramatic reputational damage. Then we develop the specifically aesthetic problematic that the novel genre of ›post-autonomous art‹, so characteristic of ›documenta fifteen‹, makes particularly high demands on the ability to reflect on the difference between art and politics, as well as on cultural identities and differences, when post-autonomous art operates in multicultural contexts. These high demands affect not only the artists and curators, but also the real and virtual audiences of an open multicultural art exhibition. We identify some reasons why the high demands were not well met in the staging of ›documenta fifteen‹. Then we develop some suggestions within the normative framework of discourse ethics that reveal the deep normative aporias of such exhibitions and their difficult discourse culture and can be prospectively helpful. Finally, we briefly summarize the characteristic difficulties and aporias we have elaborated and end with an outlook on Aline Caillet’s art-philosophical concept of a specifically aesthetic responsibility.