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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

Iver Jåks (1932–2007)

When Iver Jåks first saw the light of day on a mountain near the village of Karasjok in Northern Norway in 1932, the Sámi did not have a word for “art.” Life, art, and craft were the same; the word…

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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…

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Artists

Voyage of the Sable Venus

by Robin Coste Lewis

Prologue:

What follows is [an excerpt of] a narrative poem comprised solely and entirely of the titles, catalog entries, or exhibit descriptions of Western art objects in which a black female figure…

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South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

Black Athena Reloaded 1: Ideas as Migrants
Our Common Ghosts

with Christian Nyampeta and Isaïe Nzeyimana

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…

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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

National Archaeological Museum

Originally designed in 1866 to host finds from nineteenth-century archaeological excavations, the museum’s collections—the most extensive in Greece—date from the sixth millennium BC to late antiquity…

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Venues

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]

#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…

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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

“Elections Change Nothing”: On the Misery of the Democracy of Equivalence

by Angela Dimitrakaki

It has been suggested that we live in “momentous times”1—times, that is, of profound significance for the living history of humanity. I borrow this definition from a homonymous curatorial project…

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South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]