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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

In Memoriam: K. G. Subramanyan (1924–2016)

by Natasha Ginwala

As the days pass by
And you gain in years

The past does not keep you captive.
—K. G. Subramanyan, from “A Near Vision” (Poems: Rhymes of Recall, Seagull Books, 2014)

A visionary artist and pedagogue…

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Notes

Christos Papoulias

In Greece, between heaven and earth, we are often prompted by the rocky surface of the earth’s crust, which to architect Christos Papoulias’s eyes appears, with its sinuous cracks, as an endless city—partly…

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Artists

Memory, Image: On Rosa Luxemburg’s Prison Letters and Gender Violence

by Sean O’Toole

Among the things I inherited from grandmother when she died were her handwritten recipes and a hardcover edition of Roberts’ Birds of Southern Africa, an illustrated guidebook to the region’s winged…

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South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

Social Economies: Deinstitutionalizing Alternatives, Global Capitalism, and Local Knowledge

with Gigi Argyropoulou, Deborah Carlos-Valencia, Lina Mourgi, and Stavros Stavrides

As austerity politics, crisis management, and economic re-adjustment show, contemporary capitalism operates through a severe reduction of the “social” on all levels. But does the privatization of the…

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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

Polytechnion, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA), Prevelakis Hall

Athens Polytechnic is among the oldest higher-education institutions of Greece. It is also a central symbolic and historical locus of contemporary Greek resistance. On November 14, 15, and 16, in 1973…

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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…

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Venues

Keimena #6: Voilà l'enchaînement

by Claire Denis

How two people come apart can be as compelling to watch as what brings them together. In Clarie Denis’ film Voilà l’enchaînement, the fissures in a relationship between a black man (Alex Descas) and a white woman (Norah Krief) are apparent from the first scene. Longing for more closeness, and caressing his shoulder, she asks him to tattoo her name on his body. He gently refuses: “for you it means eternity, for me it means branded.” Does the friction of this early exchange—still light enough to be softened with an embrace, but opening a crack of enmity—set in motion what comes next…

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Public TV

When the Dead Silently Speak Out

by Subcomandante Marcos

(Rewind 1)

(A text which reflects on those who are absent and on biographies, narrates Durito’s first encounter with the Cat-Dog, and talks about other things that may or may not be relevant, as the impertinent…

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South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

Boats of History

with Giorgos Maniatis, Servanne Jollivet, Pavlos Hatzopoulos, Anna Papaeti, and Nelli Kampouri

The session of talks and debates surrounding the political history of the Mediterranean takes place on a boat sailing along the coast of Athens and the Piraeus Port. There is no better place than a boat…

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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

“Elections Change Nothing”: On the Misery of the Democracy of Equivalence

by Angela Dimitrakaki

It has been suggested that we live in “momentous times”1—times, that is, of profound significance for the living history of humanity. I borrow this definition from a homonymous curatorial project…

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South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]