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

Maria Lai (1919–2013)

While living with her aunt and uncle near Cardedu in the Sardinian countryside due to poor health, as a child Maria Lai traced bold sketches on the walls of their kitchen with charcoal from the fireplace…

Notes

Sammy Baloji

CONGOLESE MASS

For Sammy Baloji, born in 1978 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, now lives and works in Brussels

bodies torn from their dreams
bodies perfectly subjugated
bodies bled white
bodies deprived…

Artists

Lives and Works of Lorenza Böttner

by Paul B. Preciado

Lorenza Böttner (1959–1994) was an artist who held an acute, embodied relationship with transformation. She transformed a painting practice into a performance art that took to the streets and made public…

South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

Communism will be the collective management of alienation*

with Nadia Bou Ali, Ray Brassier, Dimitra Kotouza, Mattin, and Paul B. Preciado

Previous revolutionary theories thought that it was possible to live in unalienated conditions. However, the question of mediation and how we understand ourselves is being radically challenged today: technology…

Calendar

Interview with Olu Oguibe

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

Athens Conservatoire (Odeion)

The Athens Conservatoire, commonly referred to as Odeion, is part of an unrealized urban plan that won the architect Ioannis Despotopoulos first prize in a competition held for the Athens Cultural Center…

Venues

Iannis Xenakis

Historical Positions

Public Radio

Stadtmuseum Kassel

Similar to the Landesmuseum a couple of blocks to the south, the Stadtmuseum has had a recent rebirth. Founded in 1979 inside a typical 1870s Gründerzeit building, it reopened in 2016 after a long period…

Venues

Editors’ Letter

by Quinn Latimer, Adam Szymczyk

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…

South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #23: Mababangong bangungot (Perfumed Nightmare)

by Kidlat Tahimik

Perfumed Nightmare is directed by the self-taught filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik, who also plays the lead role. It tells the story of a humble, small-town lad who drives a “jeepney,” one of the trucks left behind by the US military that are still the main form of public transportation in the Philippines…

Public TV

Prayer to Masks

by Léopold Sédar Senghor

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…

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

“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…

South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]