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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

Dimitris Pikionis (1887–1968)

When I first visited the Acropolis in 1959 I found myself walking virtually by accident on the adjacent landscape of Philopappou Hill and there I felt, with surprise, the almost literal movement of the…

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Notes

Nikhil Chopra

Upon an oriental carpet, propped up with pillows, the mustachioed subject with kohl-lined eyes in Nikhil Chopra’s The Death of Sir Raja III (2005) projects the decrepit, decadent state of royalty after…

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Artists

Lives and Works of Lorenza Böttner

by Paul B. Preciado

Lorenza Böttner (1959–1994) was an artist who held an acute, embodied relationship with transformation. She transformed a painting practice into a performance art that took to the streets and made public…

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South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

In Between
Image and Movement

with Alexandra Bachzetsis and Lenio Kaklea

Reflecting on the process of becoming a dancing body and on the paradoxes of inventing an autonomous gestural language, Alexandra Bachzetsis performs her first piece Perfect, conceived fifteen years ago…

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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

August Spies

August Spies was born near Bad Hersfeld in central Hessen in 1855 and trained at the Polytechnikum in Kassel. Orphaned at age 17, he emigrated to the US, finally settling in Chicago in 1873, where he became…

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Historical Positions

Gloria-Kino

Gloria-Kino first opened its doors in 1954. Today it retains the typical architecture of its time, while the interior was renovated in the 1980s. An important venue in Kassel’s cinema landscape, the…

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Venues

Revolutionary Work: Pandurang Khankhoje and Tina Modotti

by Savitri Sawhney

My father, the agronomist and political revolutionary Pandurang Khankhoje, was born in 1886 in British colonial India, the son of a Marathi vakil, a petition writer in the courts of law, and the grandson…

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South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #36: Golden Eighties and No Home Movie

by Chantal Akerman

Chantal Akerman, the director of No Home Movie and Golden Eighties among other classics of independent cinema, died in October 2015. Her uncompromising career culminated in the singularly radical testament of her final feature film, No Home Movie

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Public TV

Draupadi: Translator’s Foreword*

by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

I translated this Bengali short story into English as much for the sake of its villain, Senanayak, as for its title character, Draupadi (or Dopdi). Because in Senanayak I find the closest approximation…

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South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

#11 Torture and Freedom Tour of Athens

by Vangelis Karamanolakis, Tasos Sakellaropoulos, Kostis Karpozilos, and Katerina Labrinou

Collective walk through the city of Athens, in collaboration with ASKI archives, exploring the historical traces of oppression, violence, and the quest for freedom during the military dictatorship of 1967–74.

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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

What Foundations Have Been Laid for Them: The Building and Burning of Knowledge

by Pierre Bal-Blanc, Marina Fokidis, Quinn Latimer, Yorgos Makris, Marta Minujín

We are accustomed to equating literature and architecture—a stanza, the basic unit of poetry, is, after all, a “room” in Italian. But in the case of the edifices built to hold books, this relationship…

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South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]