documenta 14

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.…

News

Dignity has never been photographed

by Abounaddara

Dignity isn’t well regarded at the moment. It’s seen as a normative concept, difficult to gauge and even more difficult to reconcile with artistic practices that tend to strive for emancipation from norms. It’s also a political argument that has been made by reactionaries and enemies of artistic freedom. Finally, it is an ideal that goes against the tide of nihilism in this atmosphere of triumphant post-truth…

Notes

Ross Birrell

Things tend to get personal, at times: I owe my acquaintance with Ross Birrell to Gustav Metzger, whose exhibition In Memoriam, dedicated to Walter Benjamin, I organized at Kunsthalle Basel in 2006. As…

Artists

There Aren’t Enough Magazines ...

by Antonin Artaud

There aren’t enough magazines, or if you will, all existing magazines are useless. We are appearing because we believe we are responding to something. We are real. This excuses us from being necessary…

South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

In Between
Image and Movement

with Alexandra Bachzetsis and Lenio Kaklea

Reflecting on the process of becoming a dancing body and on the paradoxes of inventing an autonomous gestural language, Alexandra Bachzetsis performs her first piece Perfect, conceived fifteen years ago…

Calendar

Interview with Emeka Ogboh

Public Education

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…

Publications

Archaeological Museum of Piraeus

This significant museum features a complete depiction of an ancient Athens naval dockyard. Some of the pieces are extremely rare, in particular the famous bronze statues and a theatrical “tragedy mask”—all…

Venues

Ivan Peries

As a founding member of the 43 Group, Ivan Peries (1921–88) was part of an avant-garde circle of artists in Sri Lanka, which also included Lionel Wendt, George Keyt, Harry Pieres, and L. T. P. Manjusri…

Historical Positions

Public Radio

Museum für Sepulkralkultur

Opened in 1992, a few quiet footsteps from Grimmwelt Kassel, the Museum für Sepulkralkultur is entirely dedicated to the culture of death, from burial customs and memorial symbols to more everyday experiences…

Venues

A Mighty Forest

by Dieter Roelstraete

It’s easily the oldest house I’ve ever lived in—known in Kassel, until I moved into it in August 2015, as the Brothers Grimm Museum. The address is Schöne Aussicht 2, hence the building’s “official”…

South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #16: Angriff auf die Demokratie – Eine Intervention (Democracy Under Attack – An Intervention)

by Romuald Karmakar

In December 2011, ten German intellectuals met in Berlin to discuss the current political crisis: how democracy had been undermined, weakened, hollowed out, and perverted by the so-called free market and its functions…

Public TV

Mask Silence, Silence Masks, or A Condition of Utmost Listening

by Stathis Gourgouris

Silence 1

The sense we have is that in the vast expanses of space between celestial bodies there is a void. Hence, total silence. The Greek word for space is διάστημα, which means literally in-between…

South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

The Parliament of Bodies: The Strategy of Joy

with Ross Birrell, Nita Deda, Hendrik Folkerts, Dimitris Ginosatis, Natasha Ginwala, Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Balitronica Gómez, Jack Halberstam, Trajal Harrell, Candice Hopkins, iQhiya, Élisabeth Lebovici, Catherine Malabou, Joar Nango, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Paul B. Preciado, Ibrahim Quraishi, Roee Rosen, Dim Sampaio, and Adam Szymczyk

A paradox lies at the heart of contemporary democratic societies concerning the center of the politics of representations of their parliaments: They have gradually turned into ensembles joined by fear…

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…

Public Education

Two Poems

by Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke

South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]