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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

In Memoriam: Ben Patterson (1934–2016)

by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung

This script is not a eulogy. Actually you can't write a eulogy about someone you loved dearly, but didn't really know. This script is for, on, of, about, and with Ben Patterson and the vacuum he leaves…

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Notes

Mounira Al Solh

I often wonder what people mean when they say Kassel has changed over these past two years, during what has been called the “refugee crisis.” Has the city become more diverse? Are social and cultural…

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Artists

Ahlam Shibli’s Occupation
Introduction by Ulrich Loock

Every single photograph of the work is permeated by the violence that the Israeli state exercises against the people of al-Khalil/Hebron, and all of the Palestinian people, in the occupied West Bank—through…

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South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

Encountering: Gesture as Event, or The Conceptual Body

with Hendrik Folkerts, Amelia Jones, and Arnisa Zeqo

We warmly invite you to the inauguration of The Society of Friends of Ulises Carrión. This Society takes the work and methods of Mexican artist Ulises Carrión (1941–89) as a starting point in order…

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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

Polytechniou 8

"A spring morning in the early 1950s, an excited group of young graduates crossed Patision avenue down to their favorite cafe on Polytechniou street. The wars were over, the sun was out, Athens was in…

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Venues

Yannis Tsarouchis

Zeibekiko is a popular solo dance with a free choreographic structure that originated in Greek urban centers in the late nineteenth century. It was created by Zeibekoi communities, a minority group of…

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Historical Positions

Former Underground Train Station (KulturBahnhof)

documenta 14 in Kassel might begin underground. Envisioned as the visitor’s point of entry into the exhibition, the decommissioned tunnel at the KulturBahnhof (formerly Kassel’s main rail station)…

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Venues

How to Write Painting: A Conversation about History Painting, Language, and Colonialism with Gordon Hookey, Hendrik Folkerts, and Vivian Ziherl

The entwined edifice of history, the archive, and the written word have long been the subject of critique within Western theory. However, what might yet be learned from turning our attention to traditions…

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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

The Fabric of Capitalism

with Click Ngwere and Denise Ferreira da Silva

The Apatride Society invites feminist activist and artist Click Ngwere and scholar Denise Ferreira da Silva to reflect and work on the fabric of contemporary capitalism. Together they look into the global…

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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

The Indelible Presence of the Gurlitt Estate:
Adam Szymczyk in conversation with Alexander Alberro, Maria Eichhorn, and Hans Haacke

To reiterate the facts about the now well known but as yet unseen Gurlitt estate: it consists of artworks and art objects amassed by the German art historian and dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt (1895–1956)…

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South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]