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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

A letter from the documenta 14 team, following the attacks in Beirut on November 12 and Paris on November 13, 2015

We arrived in Beirut last Thursday morning, November 12. On that day, two blasts hit the southern suburb of the city, leaving 43 people dead and 239 wounded. On Friday, November 13, a series of coordinated…

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Notes

Roger Bernat

First, imagine a theater with no actors. Now get rid of the stage. Then take out the walls and the chairs. What remains? The audience—a public confronted, as in a mirror, with itself, no longer able…

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Artists

For K.G. Subramanyan, or “Mani da” as we called him

by Naveen Kishore

I

Softly
like warm breath
on a cold mirror 

or a whisper
on bare feet 

wearing only white

he slipped away 

unable to resist
before escaping

a last glance

How many shawls from Kashmir can you give a man…

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South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

The Apartments of Jewish Tenants as Witnesses to the Holocaust: The Paris Case

with Sarah Gensburger, Isabelle Backouche, and Eric Le Bourhis

Auschwitz, Drancy camp near Paris, the Warsaw Ghetto: the history of Jewish persecution during the Second World War is inscribed in acknowledged locations including ghettos and extermination or transit…

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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

Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA)—Pireos Street (“Nikos Kessanlis” Exhibition Hall)

Above the entrance of the Athens School of Fine Arts on Pireos Street we find the popular Greek slogan Ένας στο Χώμα χιλιάδες στον Αγώνα (One in the soil, thousands on the battlefield)…

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Venues

Yves Laloy

Yves Laloy’s paintings defy categorization. André Breton was the first to call his work surrealist, a label that Laloy felt overly limiting. Yet, Laloy embraced another relationship also put forward…

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Historical Positions

Grimmwelt Kassel and Weinberg-Terrassen

Having opened its doors to the public in September 2015, Grimmwelt is the latest addition to Kassel’s museum landscape: perched atop the so-called Weinberg, this museum devoted to the life, work, and…

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Venues

To Create the Sound of Hunger: Joaquín Orellana in Conversation with Stefan Benchoam, Julio Santos, and Alejandro Torún, with an introduction by Monika Szewczyk

The Guatemalan composer and sound artist Joaquín Orellana is among the most important living members of South America’s musical avant-garde. In a career spanning half a century, his practice has combined…

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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

Occupy Collections!*
Clémentine Deliss in conversation with Frédéric Keck on access, circulation, and interdisciplinary experimentation, or the urgency of remediating ethnographic collections (before it is really too late).

Is it possible to transform the role of a museum and provide it with an educational remit distinct from that of the university? Can we change the consumerist imperative of the museum and re-implement its…

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South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

Were the anxieties around immigration and globalization any different in antiquity?

with Dr. Naman P. Ahuja and Natasha Ginwala

There are fears that globalization is making different cultural identities homogeneous, yet it often enables a cosmopolitanism that enables different local practices to coexist although some differences…

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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

Marx and Stilinović

by Sven Stilinović

Landing page and following images: Sven Stilinović, Marx and Stilinović (1980), three black-and-white photographs, sheet of paper with text, corduroy cover

 

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South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]