Menu
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.

 More
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…

 More
Notes

Gauri Gill

Hooran balances precariously on a jagged rock in Barmer, Rajasthan. Her hands are curled up like claws, and her gaze is fearsome. Mir Hasan clutches the body of his bedridden grandfather, Haji Saraj ud…

 More
Artists

A Guatemalan Idyll
Story by Jane Bowles
Paintings by Vivian Suter

When the traveler arrived at the pension the wind was blowing hard. Before going in to have the hot soup he had been thinking about, he left his luggage inside the door and walked a few blocks in order…

 More
South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

Black Athena Reloaded 1: Ideas as Migrants
Debt and Migration in the Postcolony. An Enquiry into Greece’s Crisis

with Ranabir Samaddar and The Apatride Society of the Political Others, Lena Platonos, Savina Yannatou, Stergios Tsirliagos and The Society of Friends of Ulises Carrión

In 1987 Martin Bernal published Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization putting forward a controversial thesis that tried to delink Greek history from the western narratives that…

 More
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…

 More
Publications

Romantso

Romantso translates to “novel.” It was also the title of the popular Greek magazine that featured novel-length stories in each of its issues. It first launched in 1934; when, in 1956, its price dropped…

 More
Venues

Zainul Abedin

The Bengal Famine 1943–44 wrecked over three million lives across undivided India during the Second World War while its colonized subjects supported the Western war effort leading to a diversion of food…

 More
Historical Positions

Giesshaus (University of Kassel)

The Giesshaus (foundry) was built as part of the Henschelei, a factory established in the nineteenth century by the industrialist family Henschel, which specialized in the construction of locomotives…

 More
Venues

To Create the Sound of Hunger: Joaquín Orellana in Conversation with Stefan Benchoam, Julio Santos, and Alejandro Torún, with an introduction by Monika Szewczyk

The Guatemalan composer and sound artist Joaquín Orellana is among the most important living members of South America’s musical avant-garde. In a career spanning half a century, his practice has combined…

 More
South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #9: The Forgotten Space

by Allan Sekula and Noël Burch

American artist Allan Sekula made The Forgotten Space after he was invited to create a work of art in a public space. He thought it important to understand television as such a public space and set out to make a film for national television with his co-director, the Paris-based American film theorist Noël Burch…

 More
Public TV

#9 Between Terror and Revelry. Collective Strategies of Resistance during Dictatorships in Argentina and Brazil

by Ana Longoni

Both the Brazilian (1964–85) and the Argentine (1976–83) dictatorships were part of the Operación Condor, an illegal repression plan coordinated by different governments of Latin America, conceived…

 More
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…

 More
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…

 More
South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]