Menu
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.

 More
News

In Memoriam: Lala Rukh (1948–2017)

by Natasha Ginwala

During a visit to Lahore in September 2015, we converged in Lala’s home; the door to her backyard garden lay open and a light breeze drifted in. I soon learned that this garden had been transformed into…

 More
Notes

Olu Oguibe

The mirror is a window.
It offers a glimpse
Of where we are from
But cannot return.
We are all travelers
On this endless road
Condemned to roam
Without repose.

Olu Oguibe’s poem “Conversation,” excerpted…

 More
Artists

Resisting Extinction: Standing Rock, Eco-Genocide, and Survival

by Gene Ray

Modernity has its forms, its laws, its fatal fantasies.1 Extinction is their logical drift. For five hundred years, ecocide and genocide have belonged to the dynamics, the very energetics, of modernity…

 More
South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

Shame on Us: A Reading and Discussion

with Franco “Bifo” Berardi

In response to the violence and volume of complaints and disparaging remarks received during the last week, we have decided to cancel Franco “Bifo” Berardi’s performance. We respect those who might…

 More
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…

 More
Publications

Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika Gallery, Benaki Museum

This house, which belonged to the modernist artist Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika, is a typical example of interwar Athenian architecture. The mansion was a meeting point for the Athenian intelligentsia of…

 More
Venues

BALi-Kinos

BALi-Kinos is located in Kassel’s former central train station. In 1995 it became part of the complex developed as the KulturBahnhof, and since 1997 it has been the home of the documenta film program…

 More
Venues

So Many Hungers

by Natasha Ginwala

It is believed the spotted hyenas of Harar came to roam the city during the Ethiopian famine of 1888, surviving on organic refuse and human remains.1 Traveling through Ireland preceding the Great Hunger…

 More
South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #24: Ának Araw

by Gym Lumbera

Gym Lumbera’s Ának Araw begins with words on the screen: a procession of basic English nouns accompanied by pictographic representations. These are followed by their live-action representations, subtitled in Tagalog. Words, but no dialogue…

 More
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)…

 More
South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

Communism will be the collective management of alienation*

with Nadia Bou Ali, Ray Brassier, Dimitra Kotouza, Mattin, and Paul B. Preciado

Previous revolutionary theories thought that it was possible to live in unalienated conditions. However, the question of mediation and how we understand ourselves is being radically challenged today: technology…

 More
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…

 More
Public Education

I Had Nowhere to Go

by Jonas Mekas

When, in 1944, Jonas Mekas left the small village in Lithuania where he grew up, he was twenty-two years old and a man of “some reputation,” as he puts it. Editor-in-chief of a weekly paper and a young…

 More
South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]