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: Lala Rukh (1948–2017)

by Natasha Ginwala

During a visit to Lahore in September 2015, we converged in Lala’s home; the door to her backyard garden lay open and a light breeze drifted in. I soon learned that this garden had been transformed into…

Notes

Marie Cool Fabio Balducci

The peculiar nature of the modern state, with its complex and delicate functions, and the gravity of the political, economic, and social problems which it is called upon to solve, make it the barometric…

Artists

For K.G. Subramanyan, or “Mani da” as we called him

by Naveen Kishore

Softly
like warm breath
on a cold mirror

or a whisper
on bare feet

wearing only white

he slipped away

unable to resist
before escaping

a last glance

How many shawls from Kashmir can you give a man…

South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

#5 Freedom as Market Value. Freedom as Practice of Resistance

by Judith Revel

What does it mean to be free when the market exceedingly places the demand on individuals to be free, creative, autonomous, and striving? What is the difference between what Foucault, since the end of…

Calendar

Interview with Maria Hassabi

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

Benaki Museum—Pireos Street Annexe

The Benaki Museum was founded in 1930 by the collector Antonis Benakis. Born into an important family of the Greek diaspora, Benakis’s father, Emmanouil Benakis, was a Greek merchant and politician who…

Venues

Agim Çavdarbasha

Historical Positions

Public Radio

Neue Neue Galerie (Neue Hauptpost)

The brutalist Neue Hauptpost, renamed the Neue Neue Galerie by documenta 14, was inaugurated in 1975 as Kassel’s main post office and mail distribution center. In the wake of the partial privatization…

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 #32: Le Président (The President)

by Jean-Pierre Bekolo

The President, by Jean-Pierre Bekolo, is a witty, poetic, and humorous take on the ugly reality of power in postcolonial Africa. States ruled by men who cling to power, craving immortality. Men like Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Angola’s José Eduardo dos Santos, or Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. Under their omnipotent rule, even to imagine a state after them is a crime…

Public TV

Keeping Score: Notation, Embodiment, and Liveness

by Hendrik Folkerts

To approach a definition: the score is a notational device that connects the material of a discipline—ranging from music, dance, and performance to architecture, linguistics, mathematics, physics—and…

South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

#24 They Glow in the Dark

by Panayotis Evangelidis

They Glow in the Dark, Panayotis Evangelidis, Greece, 2013, 69 min.
Film screening and discussion with director Panayotis Evangelidis…

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

Like a Riot: The Politics of Forgetfulness, Relearning the South, and the Island of Dr. Moreau

by Françoise Vergès

The mechanism of forgetfulness has ramifications far beyond the importance it has played in psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud notes that forgetfulness is not “left to psychic arbitrariness, but that it follows…

South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]