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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

Maria Lai (1919–2013)

While living with her aunt and uncle near Cardedu in the Sardinian countryside due to poor health, as a child Maria Lai traced bold sketches on the walls of their kitchen with charcoal from the fireplace…

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Notes

Daniel Knorr

Q: What was the first work of art you ever sold?
A: It was a watercolor by my uncle that I pretended was mine.[1]

Daniel Knorr’s contrarian reply is reminiscent of Paul de Man prefacing his essay “The…

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Artists

Double Gambit: Katerina Koskina and Adam Szymczyk in Conversation with Domenick Ammirati

The collaboration between documenta 14 and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST) seemed both inevitable and unlikely. But no more unlikely than documenta 14 dividing like a replicating…

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South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

#3

by Niillas Somby

Niillas Somby is a Sámi political-rights activist, journalist, videographer, and photographer. He was one of the seven hunger strikers during the Alta controversy (1982) and lost an arm during a sabotage…

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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

Filopappou Hill, Pikionis Paths and Pavilion

Filopappou Hill takes its name from Gaius Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappos, a consul and administrator under the Roman emperor Hadrian; it is also known as the Hill of the Muses, and it is where…

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Venues

Karlsaue Park

Measuring 1.5 square kilometers in total, the Auepark or Karlsaue, so named after its patron Landgrave Karl of Hesse-Kassel, is the tautly composed, arch-symmetrical Baroque counterpoint to the sprawling…

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Venues

So Many Hungers

by Natasha Ginwala

It is believed the spotted hyenas of Harar came to roam the city during the Ethiopian famine of 1888, surviving on organic refuse and human remains.1 Traveling through Ireland preceding the Great Hunger…

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South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #14: Elias Petropoulos: Enas kosmos ypogeios (Elias Petropoulos: An Underground World)

by Kalliopi Legaki

Elias Petropoulos, who died in 2003, was the first Greek folklore researcher, author, and historian to document underground cultures and figures shunned by official history. A restless, inquisitive spirit, he was the enemy of academicism and the establishment…

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Public TV

Occupy Collections!*
Clémentine Deliss in conversation with Frédéric Keck on access, circulation, and interdisciplinary experimentation, or the urgency of remediating ethnographic collections (before it is really too late).

Is it possible to transform the role of a museum and provide it with an educational remit distinct from that of the university? Can we change the consumerist imperative of the museum and re-implement its…

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South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

Social Economies: Deinstitutionalizing Alternatives, Global Capitalism, and Local Knowledge

with Gigi Argyropoulou, Deborah Carlos-Valencia, Lina Mourgi, and Stavros Stavrides

As austerity politics, crisis management, and economic re-adjustment show, contemporary capitalism operates through a severe reduction of the “social” on all levels. But does the privatization of the…

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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

Always Struggle with the Object, Always Rewrite the World

by Kaelen Wilson-Goldie

Early in the winter of 2015, the Archaeological Museum at the American University of Beirut quietly reopened its permanent display of Islamic art and architecture. Less a wing than a modest corner of a…

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South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]