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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
„Als Ludwig I. von Bayern in seiner philhellenischen Begeisterung seinen Sohn Otto samt der bayrischen Bürokratie auf den Thron des neuen, befreiten Griechenland setzte, schiffte sich sein Minister Rudhard, ein Sohn Passaus, von seiner Heimatstadt aus direkt nach Athen ein; er trank während der Reise aus einem eigens mitgeführten Bierfaß und sang dabei bajuwarische Lieder, in denen ein Hans Jörgl hinter seiner Liesl herläuft. Die in Griechenland eingesetzte Bavarokratie sorgte in Athen sogleich für die Eröffnung einer großen Brauerei sowie von Lokalen, die — wie von Wastlhuber, der geheime Ministerial-Kanzlei-Konzipist, sagte — ,Athen in eine Vorstadt Münchens’ verwandelten.“
—Claudio Magris
Notes

María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Neil Leonard

On December 3, 2016, when we sat together in their Boston kitchen, María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Neil Leonard shared with me the recording of a friend’s voice:

My name is Alfredo Comas García. I have…

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Artists

Treaty and Protest: John Miller’s Photographs by Cassandra Barnett and Jon Bywater, with an introduction by Marina Fokidis

I visited photographer John Miller’s studio in 2015, on the recommendation of friends and colleagues who reside in New Zealand. I had just met with art writer Jon Bywater in Auckland, who confirmed the…

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South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

The Apartments of Jewish Tenants as Witnesses to the Holocaust: The Paris Case

with Sarah Gensburger, Isabelle Backouche, and Eric Le Bourhis

Auschwitz, Drancy camp near Paris, the Warsaw Ghetto: the history of Jewish persecution during the Second World War is inscribed in acknowledged locations including ghettos and extermination or transit…

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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

Benaki Museum—Pireos Street Annexe

The Benaki Museum was founded in 1930 by the collector Antonis Benakis. Born into an important family of the Greek diaspora, Benakis’s father, Emmanouil Benakis, was a Greek merchant and politician who…

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Venues

Glass Pavilions on Kurt-Schumacher-Strasse

One of the main traffic corridors in Kassel, Kurt-Schumacher-Strasse also designates a border. Geographically, it traces the line between Mitte at the center and Nordstadt in the north of the city; as…

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Venues

Walking with Nandita

by Moyra Davey

New York City, 157th Street

I am trying to think “language or hunger,” but I inevitably supplant hunger with eating, not eating, and shitting, all of which differ from hunger. Hunger is abstract, and…

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South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #12: Krisis

by Dimitri Venkov

Dimitri Venkov’s Krisis is based on a Facebook discussion on December 8, 2013, the day that “Leninopad,” the widespread demolition of monuments to Vladimir Lenin, kicked off in Ukraine. The first monument to be dismantled in Kyiv was made by Soviet sculptor Sergei Merkurov and was erected in 1946, while Stalin was still in power. The Ukrainian ultra-nationalist party Svoboda (Freedom) claimed responsibility…

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Public TV

Draupadi: Translator’s Foreword*

by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

I translated this Bengali short story into English as much for the sake of its villain, Senanayak, as for its title character, Draupadi (or Dopdi). Because in Senanayak I find the closest approximation…

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South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

#17 Red Star, Crescent Moon / after Sohail Daulatzai

by Naeem Mohaiemen

In Black Star, Crescent Moon (2012), scholar Sohail Daulatzai charts post-1950s Black internationalism as an intersecting history of black Muslims, black radicals, and the Muslim third world. In response…

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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

Mare Nostrum

by Miriam Cahn

COINCIDENCES

 

i would not be

i would not be had i not not i i too but not even at all if. 
i would not be only not i i too i would not be. i am because. i am i too i because if.

i would not be if my…

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South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]