ABSTRACT
Documenta is an institution in the art world. Since the mid-1950s it has taken place in the German town of Kassel, exhibiting global contemporary art for exactly 100 days. Kassel is a small, almost provincial town, with just over 200,000 residents. The very location of Documenta teaches us something about ‘the south’ and ‘the north.’ The concept of crypto-colonies refracts what north/south can mean, suggesting that colonial hierarchies were not limited to ‘the colonies,’ but were also at work inside Europe. Freedom became a project of individualized self-fulfillment, rather than the collective struggle for a better world for everyone. Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Maria Paula Meneses argue that resistance and struggle are a defining aspect of southern theory; that is, resistance and struggle against colonialism, capitalism, racism, and patriarchy as forms of domination and oppression.
