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

The Syrian who wanted the Revolution

by Abounaddara

The Syrian who wanted the revolution is not in opposition. S/he does not belong to the system of opposition, the product of a power struggle in Assad’s Syria. S/he did not go out onto the streets to…

Notes

Stanley Whitney

In the early 1990s, Pennsylvania-born painter Stanley Whitney came to the Mediterranean, where his experience of the ancient architecture, particularly in Egypt and in Italy, inspired him to settle some…

Artists

Blood Is Flowing in Carthage: Simone Weil between Force and Colonialism

by Richard Fletcher

The destruction of ancient Carthage served as the inspiration for a work by Italian artist Lara Favaretto in the inaugural (and so far only) Carthage Contemporary exhibition, titled Chkoun Ahna (meaning…

South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

600 Notes
Dedicated to Sedje Hémon (1923–2011)

with Marianna Maruyama and Andrius Arutiunian

Between 1958 and 1965, the Dutch artist and composer Sedje Hémon kept a chronologically ordered (but not dated) record of 600 numbered notes tracing the development of her method of integrating visual…

Calendar

Interview with Emeka Ogboh

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

Temple of Olympian Zeus

One of the largest temples of the ancient world, the Temple of Olympian Zeus was first planned in 515 BC by Peisistratus the Young. Construction, however, stalled for more than six hundred years and only…

Venues

Ivan Wyschnegradsky

An avant-garde composer, Ivan Wyshnegradsky’s research into microtonal music was inspired by Mikhail Matyushin. In the 1940s, already living in France, Wyschnegradsky started using colors to describe…

Historical Positions

Public Radio

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)…

Venues

Windless Path

by Synnøve Persen

South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #35: Louomenoi (Bathers)

by Eva Stefani

The title of Eva Stefani’s Bathers points to a painterly tradition that emerged in the nineteenth century alongside the advent of leisure, the nudist movement, and love for nature. Its most famous examples are the Bathers of Edgar Degas or Paul Cézanne…

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)…

South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

The Parliament of Bodies: The Strategy of Joy

with Ross Birrell, Nita Deda, Hendrik Folkerts, Dimitris Ginosatis, Natasha Ginwala, Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Balitronica Gómez, Jack Halberstam, Trajal Harrell, Candice Hopkins, iQhiya, Élisabeth Lebovici, Catherine Malabou, Joar Nango, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Paul B. Preciado, Ibrahim Quraishi, Roee Rosen, Dim Sampaio, and Adam Szymczyk

A paradox lies at the heart of contemporary democratic societies concerning the center of the politics of representations of their parliaments: They have gradually turned into ensembles joined by fear…

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

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…

South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]