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

In Memoriam: Beau Dick (1955–2017)

by Candice Hopkins

Beau Dick was given the name “Walis Gwy Um,” which means “big, great whale” in the Kwak’wala language. His carvings tap into the supernatural, as though everything he made is invested with spirit…

Notes

Edi Hila

Edi Hila
Tirana
Albania

Athens, February 18, 2016

Letter of invitation to documenta 14, part 2

Dear Edi Hila,

I very much appreciated, as did Adam, our meeting in Tirana during the opening of your exhibition…

Artists

There Aren’t Enough Magazines ...

by Antonin Artaud

There aren’t enough magazines, or if you will, all existing magazines are useless. We are appearing because we believe we are responding to something. We are real. This excuses us from being necessary…

South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

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

Interview with Pélagie Gbaguidi

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

Stella Municipal Cinema

Located in Kypseli, a northern neighborhood of central Athens, the open-air cinema Stella sits like a blank frame set within a densely urban environment. Named after the strong-willed character played…

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…

Historical Positions

Public Radio

Friedrichsplatz

Constructed in the late eighteenth century as a way to expand Kassel from the old medieval town toward the flourishing Huguenot settlement nearby, Friedrichsplatz has often been employed as an arena for…

Venues

Lala Rukh
Introduction by Natasha Ginwala

An ink drawing entitled Hieroglyphics I: Koi ashiq kisi mehbooba se 1 (1995) unfolds Lala Rukh’s secret language, a constellation of calligraphic form, Minimalism, and symbolic writing. Borrowing her…

South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #19: 48

by Susana de Sousa Dias

A face appears in Susana de Sousa Dias’ 48 — the profile of a young woman, a black-and-white photograph, taken decades ago. Her face is stern, proud, austere. Yet she weeps. She tells a tale of humiliation, frustration, and defeat. She has no name, no age, no flesh…

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…

South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

Shame on Us: A Reading and Discussion

with Franco “Bifo” Berardi

In response to the violence and volume of complaints and disparaging remarks received during the last week, we have decided to cancel Franco “Bifo” Berardi’s performance. We respect those who might…

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

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…

South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]