А pilgrim in tie-dye clothes with a hiking stick hewn from a tree branch in her hand led me off into the forests of San Cristina in the mountainous Val Gardena valley, narrating the journey with a dizzying mixture of anecdotes, poetic observations of nature, stories on ecological sensitivity, and tales of the local flora and fauna. Every so often, we would halt under the oak trees and drink flower soup. Later I was told to lay on hay in a picturesque yurt woven from hand-dyed fabrics that had been subjected to eco-printing techniques. The meditative babble of a nearby stream and exposure to natural energies precipitated a semantic and sensorial fever dream that opened up to inner transformation.

While entering a recovered old warehouse, now the K1 KANAL Center Georges Pompidou, the audience encounters a bewildering image: a transparent glass box where a strange headless figure with a human body, suspended by its arms on ropes, stands on a small blue wooden chair on a pile of dark sand. It is the first and striking image of idiota, one of the works that opened the Kunstenfestivaldesarts last May, and the most recent work by Cape Verdean choreographer and dancer Marlene Monteiro Freitas, who was awarded in 2018 the Silver Lion by the Venice Biennale, and in 2021 the Chanel Next Prize and the Evens Art Prize.

Right from its onset, the statement made by Kader Attia’s Berlin Biennale Present! Still—co-curated with Đỗ Tường Linh, Marie Helene Pereira, Rasha Salti, Noam Segal, and Ana Teixeira Pinto—is that our current state of world affairs is not a random unfolding of history, but the consequence of centuries of economic developments and power mechanisms, from slavery to colonisation to racism to subjugation. And at its centre resides the self-deceptive belief the capitalistic Western model has in the superiority of its modernity and progress.

Before the whole thing went sour, following several accusations of antisemitism and communication faux pas, documenta fifteen’s energy was quite exhilarating and inspiring during its preview days. It all started with a cheerful press conference in a stadium — how low-key and working-class of the organisers — which was where the evening’s party was also hosted. Open to everyone, with meat and vegan sausages and beer and live bands, it was not unlike being on the side-lines of a large music festival, seating on the terraces and the floor, and chatting with your [new and old] friends — with the occasional whiff of Indonesian fragrant clove cigarettes travelling from the smoking areas.