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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
“The thirtysomething and fortysomething generations in the Arab world (to which I belong) are the children of a generation that once believed they could change the world and reverse the order of their societies. They fought to realize their dream and were defeated. We, their offspring, have come into adulthood and consciousness of the world as their dreams and defeats have resulted in sinister schemes of despotism. All they had left to give us to face the world and guard us against the torment of its ruthlessness was their sorrow. Thus has sorrow become our skin: the skin of our cities, the skin of our voices, the skin that warms, and with which we love.”
—Rasha Salti
Notes

Angelo Plessas

As I walked back from the communal showers, I paused at the gate to take in the scene. It looked like a kid’s drawing of a small village, straw huts on the edge of the desert. The sun was rising over…

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Artists

We Are Somatic Creatures: Hila Peleg in Conversation with Rosalind Nashashibi, Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, and Ben Russell

Few filmmakers in recent years have managed to combine formal innovation with a programmatic stance toward filmmaking quite like Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor. In the process of reinventing…

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South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

A Century of Camps: Refugee Knowledge and Forms of Sovereignty Beyond the Nation-State

With: Isshaq Al-Barbary, Mohammed Allahham, Niklas Goldbach, Sandi Hilal, Elias Khoury, Alessandro Petti, Lorenzo Pezzani, Rasha Salti, Jad Tabet, and Eyal Weizman

Curated by Rasha Salti and Paul B. Preciado…

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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

Syntagma Square

Due to its prominent location in front of the Greek Parliament, the central square of Athens has long served as the starting and ending point for many assemblies and demonstrations. Its original name was…

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Venues

Museum für Sepulkralkultur

Opened in 1992, a few quiet footsteps from Grimmwelt Kassel, the Museum für Sepulkralkultur is entirely dedicated to the culture of death, from burial customs and memorial symbols to more everyday experiences…

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Venues

Editors’ Letter

by Quinn Latimer, Adam Szymczyk

I.

Art is “not a hobby—it’s why we wake up every morning,” as artist Naeem Mohaiemen recently put it to his graduate advisers, explaining the year he took off from writing his PhD dissertation…

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South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #8: Ku Qian (Bitter Money)

by Wang Bing

“Time is money (bastard)” sang the Swans in 1986. The same refrain—deprived of its punk rage—drives the subjects of Wang Bing’s Bitter Money. The film follows country people moving to the city to be employed as textile workers on daily or seasonal contracts…

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Public TV

Mask Silence, Silence Masks, or A Condition of Utmost Listening

by Stathis Gourgouris

Silence 1

The sense we have is that in the vast expanses of space between celestial bodies there is a void. Hence, total silence. The Greek word for space is διάστημα, which means literally in-­between…

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South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

What is a Circular Economy and How Can We Make It Possible?

with Erik Van Buuren and Otobong Nkanga

The hunt and greed for resources has shaped economic and societal models over the ages. A growing world population is affecting the way resources are being depleted, causing major societal disruption on…

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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

The Construction of Southern Ruins, or Instructions for Dealing with Debt

by Aristide Antonas

 

In Greek, the word κείμενο (keímeno) has a double meaning. As an adjective, keímeno describes something that has fallen or toppled over, but the ancient adjective is also the Modern Greek noun…

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South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]