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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 Syrian who wanted the Revolution

by Abounaddara

The Syrian who wanted the revolution is not in opposition. S/he does not belong to the system of opposition, the product of a power struggle in Assad’s Syria. S/he did not go out onto the streets to…

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Notes

Bili Bidjocka

In an era characterized by its identification with materiality, one tends to dissociate the material from its larger cultural and historical nexus and instead focus on it as commodity. The sculptures and…

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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]

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
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

Archimidous 15

The industrial district of Moschato is characterized by workshops, tavernas, wholesale shops, and low-income housing blocks, while also hosting the Athens School of Fine Arts Pireos Street campus. Blocks…

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Venues

Baldugiin Sharav

As legend has it, the Tibetan-born reincarnate ruler Bogd Khan (1870–1924) commissioned the famous artist Baldugiin Sharav to paint scenes representative of life in the Mongolian countryside during the…

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Historical Positions

Nordstadtpark

Nordstadtpark in Kassel is full of people on any summer evening or weekend, a place of leisure for the truly multinational neighborhood, as well as for students at the University of Kassel and visitors…

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Venues

How to Write Painting: A Conversation about History Painting, Language, and Colonialism with Gordon Hookey, Hendrik Folkerts, and Vivian Ziherl

The entwined edifice of history, the archive, and the written word have long been the subject of critique within Western theory. However, what might yet be learned from turning our attention to traditions…

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South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

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

The Fabric of Capitalism

with Click Ngwere and Denise Ferreira da Silva

The Apatride Society invites feminist activist and artist Click Ngwere and scholar Denise Ferreira da Silva to reflect and work on the fabric of contemporary capitalism. Together they look into the global…

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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

Representing Misery: Courbet’s Beggar Woman

by Linda Nochlin

Within the complex allegorical structure of Gustave Courbet’s L’Atelier du peintre (Painter’s Studio, 1854–55), the Irish beggar woman constitutes not merely a dark note of negativity calling into…

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South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]