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

Blood Is Flowing in Carthage: Simone Weil between Force and Colonialism

by Richard Fletcher

The destruction of ancient Carthage served as the inspiration for a work by Italian artist Lara Favaretto in the inaugural (and so far only) Carthage Contemporary exhibition, titled Chkoun Ahna (meaning…

South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

Oracle Drawings

with Karen Finley, Adonis Volanakis, Chrysanne Stathacos, and Sozita Goudouna

“Oracle drawings” is a project initiated and curated by Sozita Goudouna and Paul B. Preciado. It consists of a collaborative staging of a public participatory installation by Karen Finley and Adonis…

Calendar

Interview with Kettly Noël

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

Gennadius Library

In 1922, diplomat and bibliophile Joannes Gennadius offered his 26,000-volume library to the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, on the conditions that the holdings be housed as a separate…

Venues

Ioannis Despotopoulos

Historical Positions

Public Radio

BALi-Kinos

BALi-Kinos is located in Kassel’s former central train station. In 1995 it became part of the complex developed as the KulturBahnhof, and since 1997 it has been the home of the documenta film program…

Venues

H+G

by Elizabeth Allen-Cannon, Vidura Jang Bahadur, Andrew Bearnot, Jan Brugger, Evan Carter, Kyle Hossli, Ben Nicholson, Shanna Zentner

Scene 1: Prologue

The stage is dark. Lighting is eerie and is slowly introduced as performers enter the stage. A slowed down version of the opening drum riff to Natti Vogel’s “Cannibal” plays. The…

South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #11: Loubia Hamra (Bloody Beans)

by Narimane Mari

Bloody Beans, Narimane Mari’s first feature-length film, is a dreamlike take on the violent spiral of Algeria’s recent history. Its force and beauty is that it does not employ a straightforward historical narrative, but instead re-enacts the past through play…

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…

South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

Emancipating the Eyes of History

with Georges Didi-Huberman

Some reflections on the image as a way of “seeing time.” On necessary transgression. On the dialectics of desire and memory. On images as uprisings…

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

I Had Nowhere to Go

by Jonas Mekas

When, in 1944, Jonas Mekas left the small village in Lithuania where he grew up, he was twenty-two years old and a man of “some reputation,” as he puts it. Editor-in-chief of a weekly paper and a young…

South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]