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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

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…

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Notes

Beatriz González

Beatriz González began her artistic practice in the early sixties in Bogotá, where she studied architecture and painting, as well as art history with the critic Marta Traba. In her pictorial investigations…

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Artists

We Are Somatic Creatures: Hila Peleg in Conversation with Rosalind Nashashibi, Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, and Ben Russell

Few filmmakers in recent years have managed to combine formal innovation with a programmatic stance toward filmmaking quite like Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor. In the process of reinventing…

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South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

Native Foreigners

with Natasha Ginwala, Kyrillos Sarris, and Cecilia Vicuña

Guests open up current forms and strategies of artistic self-determination beyond, behind, or within institutions. The program brings together fans and scholars alike across space and time, for discussions…

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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

Avdi Square

In a prelude to Athenian industrialization, the silk company of Athanassios Douroutis defined the working-class neighborhood of Metaxourgeio (which means “silk factory”) and gave the central square…

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Venues

Arnold Bode

Arnold Bode is best known today as the founder of documenta and the driving force behind its first four editions (1955–64). Born in Kassel in 1900, Bode initially trained as an artist, while he was also…

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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

Lala Rukh
Introduction by Natasha Ginwala

An ink drawing entitled Hieroglyphics I: Koi ashiq kisi mehbooba se 1 (1995) unfolds Lala Rukh’s secret language, a constellation of calligraphic form, Minimalism, and symbolic writing. Borrowing her…

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South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #9: The Forgotten Space

by Allan Sekula and Noël Burch

American artist Allan Sekula made The Forgotten Space after he was invited to create a work of art in a public space. He thought it important to understand television as such a public space and set out to make a film for national television with his co-director, the Paris-based American film theorist Noël Burch…

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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]

Encountering: Gesture as Event, or The Conceptual Body

with Hendrik Folkerts, Amelia Jones, and Arnisa Zeqo

We warmly invite you to the inauguration of The Society of Friends of Ulises Carrión. This Society takes the work and methods of Mexican artist Ulises Carrión (1941–89) as a starting point in order…

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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

Two Poems

by Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke
South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]