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09.19.2017

documenta 14, April 8–September 17, 2017, in Athens, Kassel, and beyond, has reached more people than ever before

documenta 14 is not owned by anyone in particular. It is shared among its visitors and artists, readers and writers, as well as all those whose work made it happen.

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News

Listening to Matanzas

by Neil Leonard and Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons

The former plantation of Álava in the Matanzas province of Cuba evokes sound before one hears it. In January 2017, we went there to record local musicians and were told to meet them near the bell tower…

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Notes

Manthia Diawara

In August 2008, Manthia Diawara returned to Bamako, Mali, where he was born in 1953, to film rehearsals for an opera performed by an all-African cast on a stage specially erected on the banks of the Niger…

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Artists

For K.G. Subramanyan, or “Mani da” as we called him

by Naveen Kishore

I

Softly
like warm breath
on a cold mirror 

or a whisper
on bare feet 

wearing only white

he slipped away 

unable to resist
before escaping

a last glance

How many shawls from Kashmir can you give a man…

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South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

SPOTS

with Aysun Bademsoy, Mareike Bernien, Madeleine Bernstorff, and Cana Bilir-Meier

September 1, 2017
8 pm, Fridericianum
Presentation and film screening
Live stream available…

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Calendar
New York
Athens
New York
Kassel

The documenta 14 Reader

The main book of documenta 14 takes the form of a Reader, evoking the various meanings associated with the term…

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Publications

Attis

Founded in Delphi by Theodoros Terzopoulos in 1985, the Attis Theatre is dedicated to performing the work of ancient Greek tragedy. The theater collaborates with international festivals and theaters to…

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Venues

Zainul Abedin

The Bengal Famine 1943–44 wrecked over three million lives across undivided India during the Second World War while its colonized subjects supported the Western war effort leading to a diversion of food…

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Historical Positions

Nordstadtpark

Nordstadtpark in Kassel is full of people on any summer evening or weekend, a place of leisure for the truly multinational neighborhood, as well as for students at the University of Kassel and visitors…

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Venues

Lala Rukh
Introduction by Natasha Ginwala

An ink drawing entitled Hieroglyphics I: Koi ashiq kisi mehbooba se 1 (1995) unfolds Lala Rukh’s secret language, a constellation of calligraphic form, Minimalism, and symbolic writing. Borrowing her…

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South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #38: Ismyrna (Ismyrne)

by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige

Ismyrne, co-directed by the Lebanese artists Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, tackles issues of identity, belonging, and nationalism…

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Public TV

Outlawed Social Life

by Candice Hopkins

U’mista and Nuyumbalees. Kwak’wala words. Names bestowed on two new cultural centers in Alert Bay, British Columbia, founded to house masks and dance regalia repatriated after the potlatch ban (1885–1951)…

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South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

#21 Outlawed Social Life

by Candice Hopkins

U'mista, in the Kwak'wala language, means the return of something or someone thought to be lost or taken. In Alert Bay and Cape Mudge, First Nations communities along the northwest coast of Canada repatriated…

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Calendar

Material Matters Library

The “Material Matters” library is a collection of objects and sounds that have been entrusted to aneducation by documenta 14 artists…

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Public Education

What Foundations Have Been Laid for Them: The Building and Burning of Knowledge

by Pierre Bal-Blanc, Marina Fokidis, Quinn Latimer, Yorgos Makris, Marta Minujín

We are accustomed to equating literature and architecture—a stanza, the basic unit of poetry, is, after all, a “room” in Italian. But in the case of the edifices built to hold books, this relationship…

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South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]