Agitate, Educate, Organise: Caring for each other’s stories in the wake of “Documenta 15”

On the last day of the preview week at Documenta 15 a woman approached our lapak. The stall where we sold emblems, t-shirts, pins, zines and woodcut prints was tucked away in a remote corner of Hallenbad Ost, an old Bauhaus swimming pool turned events venue in Kassel. Every five years, this small German city hosts one of the world’s biggest contemporary art exhibits. I was there alongside other members of Taring Padi, the art workers’ collective we founded in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, almost three decades ago. When the woman purchased multiple copies of our posters for thirty euros each, one of our members worked up the courage to ask her who she was, even though having to speak English made him feel shy. “I am Frances Morris, from Tate Modern London,” she said, to which he enthusiastically replied: “Ah… Manchester United!”