To close off this week I am wondering if I am doomed to repeat this question forever: when will I understand contemporary art? Take the ongoing exhibit in Switzerland right now, Manifesta 11, which displays several art works curated by German Christian Jankowski under the title What people do for money. Mind you, I have only read about it and seen photos in diverse news outlets, so it is a Gedanken experiment of what would move me, and, more pressingly, what I would understand.

The general idea is nifty: he asked a number of artist, 30 or so I believe, to pair up with a professional of their choice working currently in Zürich, and create an artwork out of the collaboration. The works were to be (and are in most cases) displayed in and around the city, at the site of the profession, and also provided with short documentary films. Here are two examples, each of which has me stymied. Artist Jennifer Tee, for one, chose the director of the local mortuary. The artistic outcome consists of a floating cinema, anchored on the lake, with built-in hair dryers and changing cabins and lounges, direct access to the water for swimming and a huge screen that shows crematorium ovens at work, and people taking the remaining bones, shredding them and filling them into urns. Watch that before or after your swim? Is the Holocaust so long behind us that ovens can be used in a provocative context, regardless of the associations they might stir in people who have not forgotten? (Montage of KZ Ravensbrück)

Mike Bouchet chose a worker from the local sewage treatment plant and presents huge cubes of compressed sewage and feces (of all those using the bathroom on 3/24/2016 in Zurich) in geometric arrangements in a white hall. They had to install an industrial exhaust vent to protect visitors from the maximalist stench of this minimalist art. A modern Rumpelstiltskin turning not straw but you know what into gold, if the Swiss Gold Coast millionaires invest in this art?

Photo: Camilo Brau

Read the review for yourself: It is somewhat kinder, more learned, and obviously written by someone who does not wonder….https://news.artnet.com/art-world/manifesta-11-christian-jankowski-zurich-515741