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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
“There are two ways of seeing the ways of seeing the world. One is one way and the other is another. And nobody knows: ‘Is there, anywhere, one way of seeing the two?’”
—Stefan Themerson
Notes

Nilima Sheikh

Nilima Sheikh’s painterly oeuvre embraces multiple universes, composed in a unique visual language that drifts between human journeys, landforms, and states of belonging. Her story lines conflate ancient…

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Artists

Voyage of the Sable Venus

by Robin Coste Lewis

Prologue:

What follows is [an excerpt of] a narrative poem comprised solely and entirely of the titles, catalog entries, or exhibit descriptions of Western art objects in which a black female figure…

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South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

#11 Torture and Freedom Tour of Athens

by Vangelis Karamanolakis, Tasos Sakellaropoulos, Kostis Karpozilos, and Katerina Labrinou

Collective walk through the city of Athens, in collaboration with ASKI archives, exploring the historical traces of oppression, violence, and the quest for freedom during the military dictatorship of 1967–74.

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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

Aristotle’s Lyceum

Between the Athens Conservatoire (Odeion) and the Sarogleio Building (Armed Forces Officers Club) lie the foundations of the ancient Lyceum of Aristotle, established by the philosopher in 335 BC with a…

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Venues

Andrzej Wróblewski

In a life cut short before the age of 30, Andrzej Wróblewski (1927–57) produced an impressive body of work consisting of paintings, drawings, and prints, and spanning both abstraction and figuration…

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Historical Positions

Torwache

Today’s Torwache is the remnant of a palatial building plan cut short by the Napoleonic wars and invasions of the early nineteenth century. Designed by local architect Heinrich Christoph Jussow, best…

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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 #19: 48

by Susana de Sousa Dias

A face appears in Susana de Sousa Dias’ 48 — the profile of a young woman, a black-and-white photograph, taken decades ago. Her face is stern, proud, austere. Yet she weeps. She tells a tale of humiliation, frustration, and defeat. She has no name, no age, no flesh…

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Public TV

Draupadi

by Mahasweta Devi

1
Name Dopdi Mejhen, age 27, husband Dulna Majhi (deceased), domicile Cherakhan, Bankrahjarh, information whether dead or alive and/or assistance in arrest, one hundred rupees …
    An exchange between…

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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

Restif de la Bretonne’s State Brothel: Sperm, Sovereignty, and Debt in the Eighteenth-Century Utopian Construction of Europe

by Paul B. Preciado

In 1769, a few years before the French Revolution, Nicolas Edme Restif de la Bretonne published his epistolary essay Le Pornographe.1 Its subtitle, as rendered in English: A Gentleman’s Ideas on a Project…

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South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]