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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

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…

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Notes

David Lamelas

I recently stumbled into the pioneering Argentinian conceptual artist David Lamelas on his way to a rendezvous with a friend. He was running late, but the exchange was typically intense. I’d been rereading…

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Artists

Editors’ Letter

by Quinn Latimer, Adam Szymczyk

I.

It’s been nearly three years since we first embarked on the journey toward South as a State of Mind, the magazine of documenta 14, edited and produced in and out of Athens. The issue you hold, our…

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South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

#3

by Niillas Somby

Niillas Somby is a Sámi political-rights activist, journalist, videographer, and photographer. He was one of the seven hunger strikers during the Alta controversy (1982) and lost an arm during a sabotage…

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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

Syntagma Square

Due to its prominent location in front of the Greek Parliament, the central square of Athens has long served as the starting and ending point for many assemblies and demonstrations. Its original name was…

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Venues

Pavel Filonov

Pavel Filonov was an art theorist, painter, and poet. Discharged from the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Art in 1910, Filonov travelled across Europe, during which time he formulated his first theoretical…

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Historical Positions

Henschel-Hallen

Since the closing of the Henschel factory during World War II—once a pivotal site in German industrialization and the development of military technology—the Henschel-Hallen today stand empty, to be…

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Venues

Keimena #8: Ku Qian (Bitter Money)

by Wang Bing

“Time is money (bastard)” sang the Swans in 1986. The same refrain—deprived of its punk rage—drives the subjects of Wang Bing’s Bitter Money. The film follows country people moving to the city to be employed as textile workers on daily or seasonal contracts…

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Public TV

Outlawed Social Life

by Candice Hopkins

U’mista and Nuyumbalees. Kwak’wala words. Names bestowed on two new cultural centers in Alert Bay, British Columbia, founded to house masks and dance regalia repatriated after the potlatch ban (1885–1951)…

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South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

Biafra’s Children: A Survivors’ Gathering

Organized by Olu Oguibe, with Faith Adiele, Phillip U. Effiong, Okey Ndibe, Vivian Ogbonna, Obiageli Okigbo, E.C.Osondu, Emeka Okereke


Fifty years ago, in 1967, a bitter civil war broke out in the newly…

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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

Restif de la Bretonne’s State Brothel: Sperm, Sovereignty, and Debt in the Eighteenth-Century Utopian Construction of Europe

by Paul B. Preciado

In 1769, a few years before the French Revolution, Nicolas Edme Restif de la Bretonne published his epistolary essay Le Pornographe.1 Its subtitle, as rendered in English: A Gentleman’s Ideas on a Project…

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South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]