Domenick Ammirati is a writer based in New York. His criticism has appeared in various publications including Artforum, Dis, Frieze, Mousse, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. His short story “Marcy,” an excerpt from a novel in progress, appeared in Bomb magazine 135. Ammirati is an Associate Editor for documenta 14.

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) was a French dramatist, actor, and poet whose writings have greatly influenced the development of modern drama theory and contemporary poetics. Though born in Marseille, Artaud’s ancestry was Greek: his parents, Euphrasie Nalpas and Antoine-Roi Artaud, were natives of Smyrna (İÌzmir, today). Briefly involved with the Surrealist movement in Paris during the 1920s, Artaud’s revolutionary concept of the Theater of Cruelty is outlined in his book The Theater and Its Double (1938). 

James Baldwin (1924–1987) was an African-American novelist, essayist, playwright, and social critic. Born in Harlem, Baldwin served as a youth minister in the Pentecostal church until the age of sixteen. After his essays began to appear in The Nation and Partisan Review, Baldwin moved to Paris in 1948; he would mostly remain in Europe for the rest of his life. His celebrated novels include Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), Giovanni’s Room (1955), and Another Country (1962), and the essay collections Notes of a Native Son (1955) and The Fire Next Time (1963).

Cassandra Barnett is a writer focused on Indigenous and Māori aesthetics, postcolonial and decolonizing thought, and molecular aesthetic politics. She writes ficto-poetry, ficto-criticism, and essays about contemporary art from Aotearoa. Barnett also teaches in the Critical and Contextual Studies program at Massey University, Whiti o Rehua School of Art, in Wellington. Her writing has been published in Landfall, Eyeline, and World Art, and the fiction anthology Black Marks on the White Page (Penguin Random House, 2017).

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, critic, and writer. His works include “Critique of Violence˝ (1921), “Task of the Translator“ (1923), “One-Way Street˝ (1928), “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction˝ (1936), and “Theses on the Philosophy of History˝ (1940), among many other essays dealing with philosophy, literary criticism, Marxist analysis, and syncretistic theology. In 1932, Benjamin left Nazi-Germany, living in exile until his death in 1940 at the French-Spanish border. 

Lorenza Böttner (1959–1994) was an artist born in Punta Arenas, Chile, originally named Ernst Lorenz. At the age of eight, Ernst lost both of his arms in an accident. Seeking medical treatment in Germany, he went on to study at the Kassel School of Art, where s/he began an artistic self-construction, affirming an openly transgender, feminine, armless performative practice. 

Jane Bowles (1917–1973) was an American writer. Her oeuvre includes the novel Two Serious Ladies (1943), six short stories including “A Guatemala Idyll” (1944), and “Camp Cataract” (1949), as well as the play In the Summer House (first performed in 1951). Bowles lived in New York, Paris, Mexico, and Morocco. Her writings appear in My Sister’s Hand in Mine: The Collected Works of Jane Bowles, with an introduction by Truman Capote (Noonday Press, FSG, 1995).

Andris Brinkmanis is an art critic and curator of Latvian origin, based in Milan and Venice. He is Course Leader of the Bachelor program in Painting and Visual Arts and a lecturer in Art History and Curatorial Studies at NABA (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti) in Milan. His research focuses on issues of alternative and antiauthoritarian education and visual culture.

Jon Bywater writes about art and music, and teaches at Elam School of Fine Arts, the University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. His work has appeared in European and American periodicals including Afterall, Artforum, Frieze, Mute, and Wire, and Australasian journals Art New Zealand, Landfall, The Listener, and Reading Room, as well as in numerous art catalogues and monographs.

Banu Cennetoğlu is an artist who works with photography, installation, and printed matter. Her research explores areas of sociopolitical uncertainty and the documentation of such uncertainty. She has presented at the 3rd and 5th Berlin Biennales (2004 and 2008), Manifesta 8 in Murcia (2010), and the 10th Gwangju Biennale (2014). A major solo exhibition of her work was held at Kunsthalle Basel in 2011, and together with Ahmet Ögüt she represented Turkey at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009). Cennetoğlu also runs BAS, a nonprofit project space in Istanbul dedicated to archiving, exhibiting, and publishing limited edition artists’ books. She is a participating artist of documenta 14.

Yll Çitaku and Nita Deda are artists working in Kosovo. Together they produced the short film Nusja Jonë (Our bride, 2011), which most recently screened at the Brussels Short Film Festival in 2016. Çitaku’s other short film Should I Stay or Should I Go (2001) was awarded Best Film at the International and Short Film Festival DokuFest in Prizren in 2002. Since 2016 Deda has been the director of DokuFest. 

Yael Davids is an artist working in performance, writing, and sculpture. Her practice considers the intersection of personal and political narratives, the collection and collective heritage, and examines the body as a site of convergences and conflicts. In her assemblages and performances for documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel, as well as in her essay published here, she brings together different characters, such as painter Cornelia Gurlitt, and the German-Jewish writers Else Lasker-Schüler, a poet and playwright, and Rahel Varnhagen who was known for her significant European salons.

Angela Y. Davis is a political activist, scholar, and writer deeply involved in the struggle in the United States for racial, gender, and economic equality. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1944, Davis studied philosophy at Brandeis University, the Sorbonne, and at the Goethe-Institut. In 1998, Davis helped organize the Berkeley conference “Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex.” Her books include Women, Race & Class (Vintage, 1983), Abolition Democracy: Beyond Prisons, Torture and Empire (Seven Stories Press, 2005), and Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (Haymarket Books, 2016).

Richard Fletcher is Associate Professor in the Department of Classics at Ohio State University. His core research focus is on the intersection of literature and philosophy in Ancient Rome, especially the works of the Platonist Apuleius of Madauros. He is the author of Apuleius’ Platonism: The Impersonation of Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2014), and is Coeditor (with Will Shearin) of The Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy (forthcoming, 2017). 

Marina Fokidis is the Founding and Artistic Director of Kunsthalle Athena, and the Founding Director of South as a State of Mind. She was a curator of the 3rd Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011) and the Commissionaire and Curator of the Greek Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003). She is a Curatorial Advisor for documenta 14, where she also served as the Head of the Artistic Office Athens until December 2016.

Susan Hiller is an artist who grew up in South Florida but has lived in London since the early 1960s. Initially a student of anthropology, undertaking postgraduate work at Tulane University in New Orleans, she left the discipline to become an artist. Since the 1980s, her work has been focused on cultural artifacts mediated through audio and visual video installations. Her works The Last Silent Movie (2007–08) and Lost and Found (2016) are exhibited in documenta 14.

Kim Hyesoon is a South Korean poet. She was among the first women to be published in Munhak kwa jisŏng (Literature and intellect), one of the leading Korean literary publications in the cultural movement against the military dictatorships of the 1970s and ’80s. A recipient of the Kim Su-yŏng and Midang Literature Awards, her work has also been widely translated. Her books in English translation include Mommy Must Be a Fountain of Feathers (2008), I’m OK, I’m Pig! (2014), and Poor Love Machine (2016).

Naveen Kishore is a lighting designer, photographer, filmmaker, and publisher of Seagull Books in Kolkata. He is a recipient of the Goethe Medal and a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Kishore lives and works in Kolkata.

Katerina Koskina is an art historian, curator, and, since 2014, Director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) in Athens. She was the Greek Commissioner at the 23rd Biennale of Sao Paulo (1996) and at the 51st Venice Biennale (2005), as well as the Director of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011–15). She has been awarded the Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Stella d’Italia and Chevalier of the Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur. She curated ANTIDORON: The EMST Collection at Fridericianum, Kassel, for documenta 14.

Asja Lācis (1891–1979) was a Latvian actress and theater director who witnessed the October Revolution of 1917. The consequent Russian war orphans inspired her to develop an experimental children’s theater in Orel. From 1924–30, living between Berlin, Moscow, and Riga, Lācis became acquainted with Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin. During World War II, she was imprisoned for a decade in Kazakhstan, but returned in 1948 to Valmiera, Latvia, where she became Director of the Valmiera Drama Theatre.

Quinn Latimer is a poet and critic. Her books include Rumored Animals (Dream Horse Press, 2012); Sarah Lucas: Describe This Distance (Mousse Publishing, 2013); and Like a Woman: Essays, Readings, Poems (Sternberg Press, 2017). Her writings and readings have been presented widely, including at Chisenhale Gallery, London; Qalandiya International, Ramallah; and the 14th Venice Biennale of Architecture. She is Editor-in-Chief of Publications for documenta 14.

Robin Coste Lewis is an American poet. She studied poetry at New York University, and Sanskrit and comparative religious literature at the Divinity School of Harvard University, Cambridge. Lewis is a Provost’s Fellow in Poetry and Visual Studies at the University of Southern California. Her first book of poetry, Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems (2015), won the National Book Award for Poetry.

Ulrich Loock is an art critic, curator, and lecturer based in Berlin. From 1985 to 2010, he was a director of contemporary art museums in Switzerland and Portugal, where he organized exhibitions with artists across many generations. He has edited various monographic catalogues and has contributed to numerous publications. Since 2003, Loock has been collaborating with artist Ahlam Shibli. 

John Miller is a photographer, documentarian, and humanitarian, who for five decades has photographed social and political dissent, and cultural events in Aotearoa New Zealand. Miller’s photographs are featured in publications including Rautahi: The Maori of New Zealand (1976); By Batons and Barbed Wire: A Response to the 1981 Springbok Tour of New Zealand (1981); Hı¯koi: Forty Years of Māori Protest (2004); and Negligent Neighbour: New Zealand’s Complicity in the Invasion and Occupation of Timor-Leste (2006).

Rosalind Nashashibi is an artist who lives in London. She works in film, painting, and printmaking. Her solo exhibitions include Electrical Gaza, Imperial War Museum, London (2015); On This Island, CAC Gallery, University of California, Irvine (2016); Two Tribes, Murray Guy, New York (2016); and Jack Straw’s Castle, Lux, London (2017). She has been nominated for the 2017 Turner Prize. She is a participating artist of documenta 14.

Sean O’Toole is a writer and editor living in Cape Town, South Africa. He has published a book of fiction, The Marquis of Mooikloof and Other Stories (Double Storey Books, 2006), and jointly edited two volumes of essays, Über(W)unden: Art in Troubled Times (Jacana, 2012) and African Futures (Kerber, 2016). He is also an editor of the occasional magazine, Cityscapes, a project of the African Centre for Cities. His journalistic criticism has been widely published.

Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor are filmmakers, artists, and anthropologists who work at the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University. Their work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the British Museum, London, and has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, KunstHalle, Berlin, and in film festivals worldwide. They are participating artists of documenta 14.

Hila Peleg is a curator and filmmaker based in Berlin. She was Co-Curator of Manifesta 7 in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol (2008) and Curator of the film program at the 10th Shanghai Biennale (2014). Her films A Crime Against Art (Germany, 2007) and Sign Space (Germany, 2016) have screened in festivals worldwide. Peleg is the Founder and Artistic Director of the biannual Berlin Documentary Forum at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Editor of Documentary Across Disciplines (MIT Press, 2016), and a Curator of documenta 14.

Paul B. Preciado is a philosopher and transfeminist activist. He holds a PhD in Philosophy and Theory of Architecture from Princeton University. He is the author of Contra-Sexual Manifesto (2002; Columbia University Press, forthcoming), Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era (The Feminist Press, 2013), and Pornotopia (Zone Books, 2014). He is the Curator of Public Programs of documenta 14.

Laura Preston is a writer and editor, as well as researcher at the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. She has published books and curated exhibitions at the Adam Art Gallery, Victoria University of Wellington; Portikus, Frankfurt am Main; and Witte de With, Rotterdam. She is an Associate Editor for documenta 14.

Gene Ray is Associate Professor of Critical Studies in the CCC Research-based Master’s Program at Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD – Genève). He is the author of Terror and the Sublime in Art and Critical Theory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). His essays on the intersections of art, radical politics, and ecology appear in Third Text, Brumaria, Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, Historical Materialism, Left Curve, and the Yale Journal of Criticism, as well as other journals and edited books.

Ben Russell is an artist and curator whose work lies at the intersection of ethnography and psychedelia. His films and installations are in conversation with the history of the moving image, providing a time-based inquiry into trance phenomena and evoking the research of Jean Rouch and Maya Deren, among others. He resides in Los Angeles and is a participating artist in documenta 14.

Ahlam Shibli is an artist from Palestine. Through a documentary aesthetic, her photographic work addresses the contradictory implications of the notion of home. Shibli’s practice deals with the loss of home and the struggle against that loss, but also with the limitations that ideas of homeland impose on individuals and communities marked by repressive identity politics. She is a participating artist of documenta 14.

K. G. Subramanyan (1924–2016) was an Indian artist, writer, theorist, teacher, and art historian. He studied in Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, under Benode Behari Mukherjee, Nandalal Bose, and Ramkinkar Baij, and later taught fine arts at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. His painting, pottery, and weaving has been widely exhibited, including recent exhibitions by the Seagull Foundation for the Arts in collaboration with the Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, and at the Harrington Street Arts Centre, Kolkata (2015–16). 

Vivian Suter is an artist born in 1949 in Buenos Aires. Her family returned to Europe after their exile in Argentina to live in Basel, Switzerland, where she grew up, went to art school, and started painting. It was in 1983, when traveling through Guatemala, that she discovered her current home of Panajachel. She lives there with her mother, the artist Elisabeth Wild, on part of a former coffee plantation that she has transformed into a wild garden.

Adam Szymczyk, prior to his appointment as Artistic Director of documenta 14 in 2013, was Director and Chief Curator at Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland, between 2004 and 2014. He cofounded Foksal Gallery Foundation in Warsaw, in 1997, and co-curated (with Elena Filipovic) the 5th Berlin Biennial of Contemporary Art When Things Cast No Shadow in 2008. In 2011, he received the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement at the Menil Foundation in Houston.

Diana Taylor is Professor of Performance Studies and Spanish at New York University. She is the author of Theatre of Crisis: Drama and Politics in Latin America (University Press of Kentucky, 1991); The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Duke University Press, 2003); and PERFORMANCE (Duke University Press, 2016). Taylor is the Founding Director of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, a network of scholars, artists, and activists in the Americas that work for social justice.