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Notes & Works

Notes & Works

Agim Çavdarbasha (1944­–1999)

Agim Çavdarbasha’s sculptural work is part of the foundations of modern art in Kosovo. He studied at Yugolslav art academies (in Belgrade 1964­–69 and Ljubljana 1970–71) within liberal circumstances…

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Zainul Abedin (1914–1976)

The Bengali painter Zainul Abedin, who began his career as an art teacher in undivided India, was jolted out of his privileged existence by the Bengal Famine of 1943–44. At the birth of Pakistan in 1947…

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Collective Exhibition for a Single Body

Collective Exhibition for a Single Body is proposed by documenta 14 curator Pierre Bal-Blanc in collaboration with the Greek choreographer Kostas Tsioukas, and performers and dancers Myrto Kontoni and…

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In Memoriam: Tshiamo Naledi Letlhogonolo Pinky Mayeng (1993–2017)

hey friend,

we never met someone whose sense of time and space moved so mysterious

so independent of the chaos of this planet…

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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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Dimitris Pikionis (1887–1968)

When I first visited the Acropolis in 1959 I found myself walking virtually by accident on the adjacent landscape of Philopappou Hill and there I felt, with surprise, the almost literal movement of the…

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UNESCO declares al-Khalil/Hebron a World Heritage Site

My photographic work Occupation—currently on view at EMST—National Museum of Contemporary Art as part of documenta 14—traces the destruction of Palestinian livelihood in the city of al-Khalil/Hebron…

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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…

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Christopher D’Arcangelo (1955–1979)

In 1974, at the age of nineteen, Christopher D’Arcangelo embarked on a series of paintings using rudimentary stenciled letters painted on a monochrome ground. Inspiration for the series came, at least…

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ANTIDORON. The EMST Collection at Museum Fridericianum

ANTIDORON. The EMST Collection at Museum Fridericianum, part of documenta 14, marks the first extensive presentation of the collection of the EMST–National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens…

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Abdurrahim Buza (1905–1986)

Abdurrahim Buza is one of the most respected Albanian painters whose career spanned the years before and after WWII. Buza was born in 1905 in Skopje (today Macedonia) in a family originally from Gjakova…

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Sound and Music, June 19–23
Jakob Ullmann / Alvin Lucier / Charles Curtis

During the week of June 19-23, 2017 documenta 14's sound and music program offers various concerts that provide a focus on and contextualization of the work of German composer Jakob Ullmann and American…

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Hallucinations / Live / Cinema / Festival

June 22–24, 2017
Greek Film Archive (Tainiothiki), Athens…

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TV Politics

A documenta 14 film program with Alberto Grifi, Isuma Productions, Sarah Maldoror, Alanis Obomsawin, Nagisa Oshima, Mohamed Soueid
June 22–September 15, Grosses BALi
8:30 pm, unless noted otherwise…

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Wang Bing: Retrospective

A documenta 14 film program and exhibition
June 7–September 17, Gloria-Kino, daily

documenta 14 presents a full retrospective of Wang Bing’s films with an accompanying exhibition of archival materials…

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David Perlov: Retrospective

A documenta 14 film program and exhibition
June 7–September 17, Grosses BALi, daily

When Israeli filmmaker David Perlov died, he left behind dozens of Hefte (Notebooks), filled with epigrams, texts for…

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André Pierre (1915–2005)

Take Grand Bois (1975), with its overlap of fluid, gesticulating branches of the tree/God; or Imamou (1970s), the stature and mysterious prominence of the rooster looking on/in at the ceremony for Agoue…

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Drawing a Line through Landscape: The Tent

by Nikhil Chopra

When seen from a distance, there is a constant glow within the tent as if it has a warm light switched on. In the day, the drawing is backlit and at night, when the oil lamps burn inside, it lights up…

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Keeper of the Art That Kept Him: David Schutter in Conversation with Dieter Roelstraete

Dieter Roelstraete: The story of the Gurlitt Estate has been an ongoing curatorial concern of documenta 14’s. For some time now you have sailed on an independent course of artistic research into the…

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Departing for Drawing a Line through Landscape

by Nikhil Chopra

Nikhil Chopra departing for part 2 of Drawing a Line Through Landscape, Athens, May 13, 2017, photo: Angelos Giotopoulous…

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Anne Charlotte Robertson (1949–2012)

Anne Charlotte Robertson, born in 1949, was a Massachusetts-based filmmaker who used her Super-8 camera and acute self-awareness to forge a radically intimate mode of first-person cinema. Although she…

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Studio 14: Greece: a (non-) European Country
by Yannis Almpanis

During a recent Eurogroup meeting, some European finance ministers allegedly told Euclid Tsakalotos that, while he may be right in protesting against the terms imposed by the IMF, he will ultimately have…

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The Day of Judgment

by Abounaddara

Abounaddara has agreed to share this film with documenta 14; it is one of over 300 films produced on a weekly basis by an anonymous collective of Syrian filmmakers. By sharing these films on our website…

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Works

David Perlov (1930–2003)

When Israeli filmmaker David Perlov died, he left behind dozens of Hefte (notebooks), filled with epigrams, texts for films, biographical notes, images interwoven with texts, and texts with images. Yet…

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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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Listening Space

Listening Space is a program of events that attempts to explore and understand sound outside established hierarchies of music production and performance. In the project’s diverse concerts, lectures…

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In Memoriam: Beau Dick (1955–2017)

by Candice Hopkins

Beau Dick was given the name “Walis Gwy Um,” which means “big, great whale” in the Kwak’wala language. His carvings tap into the supernatural, as though everything he made is invested with spirit…

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Studio 14

Studio 14 is a research and a workplace driven by a multiplicity of different subjects; capable of giving rise to certain configurations; a process involving the fields of art, education, and politics; and oriented towards the forms of knowledge that circulate and are produced in those fields…

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Dignity has never been photographed

by Abounaddara

Dignity isn’t well regarded at the moment. It’s seen as a normative concept, difficult to gauge and even more difficult to reconcile with artistic practices that tend to strive for emancipation from norms. It’s also a political argument that has been made by reactionaries and enemies of artistic freedom. Finally, it is an ideal that goes against the tide of nihilism in this atmosphere of triumphant post-truth…

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Meanwhile, Aboubakar Fofana contributes a text-ile to The documenta 14 Reader

by Monika Szewczyk

It took artist Aboubakar Fofana one day to set up a fructose-based indigo vat at the Mentis Center for the preservation of traditional textile techniques at 6 Polyfimou Street in Athens. It was December…

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The Transit of Hermes

by Ross Birrell

The Athens-Kassel Ride—a mobile, participatory, human-equine ensemble performed over 100 days—is a 3000 km equestrian long ride across Europe linking the two cities of documenta 14…

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Listening to Matanzas

by Neil Leonard and Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons

The former plantation of Álava in the Matanzas province of Cuba evokes sound before one hears it. In January 2017, we went there to record local musicians and were told to meet them near the bell tower…

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Something is Rotten

by Abounaddara

Something is rotten in the state of the media. Rotten to the point that today a man accused of war crimes can summon mainstream media to announce that reality has debunked their narrative, delighting in…

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John Berger: Between Permanent Red and the Black Box of the Universe

by Nikos Papastergiadis

Artist, art critic, novelist, and poet John Berger (1926–2017) died on January 2 at the age of 90. documenta 14 remembers his insights and influence…

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In Memoriam: Pauline Oliveros (1932–2016)

by Alvin Lucier

I first met Pauline Oliveros in 1965 in Cleveland, Ohio. Pianist David Tudor had been asked to perform a concert at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and invited Pauline and I to join him. I…

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by Artur Żmijewski

The makeshift refugee camp in Calais, in the vicinity of the French port and hulking concrete bunkers, was known as the Jungle. According to different estimates, it gave shelter to nine or ten thousand…

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Elegy for Annie Pootoogook (1969–2016)

by Candice Hopkins

Annie Pootoogook was from the Arctic near the North Pole. Her community is called Kinngait in Inuktitut—the language of Inuit people—and Cape Dorset in English. Annie passed away a few days ago. Police…

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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…

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In Memoriam: K. G. Subramanyan (1924–2016)

by Natasha Ginwala

As the days pass by
And you gain in years

The past does not keep you captive.
—K. G. Subramanyan, from “A Near Vision” (Poems: Rhymes of Recall, Seagull Books, 2014)

A visionary artist and pedagogue…

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We Are Dying—Take Care of the Right to the Image

by Abounaddara

In the spring of 2011, Syrians rose up against a dictatorship inherited from another era. Schoolchildren wrote “The emperor wears no clothes!” on the walls. Young people streamed into the streets and…

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A Confession of Love

by Artur Żmijewski

On 25 October 2015, Polish parliamentary elections were won decisively by the Law and Justice (PiS) party. A few months earlier, in May of last year, the party’s candidate Andrzej Duda won the presidential…

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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…

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Honeymoon in Chaospolis & (Not very) proper names

by Mustapha Benfodil

To Paris!
To all the victims
of liberticidal barbarity…

Honeymoon in Chaospolis

We met each other in Tunis
We loved each other in Gaza
We missed each other in Beirut
We kissed in Paris
We got married in Algiers
We…

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“The thirtysomething and fortysomething generations in the Arab world (to which I belong) are the children of a generation that once believed they could change the world and reverse the order of their societies. They fought to realize their dream and were defeated. We, their offspring, have come into adulthood and consciousness of the world as their dreams and defeats have resulted in sinister schemes of despotism. All they had left to give us to face the world and guard us against the torment of its ruthlessness was their sorrow. Thus has sorrow become our skin: the skin of our cities, the skin of our voices, the skin that warms, and with which we love.”
—Rasha Salti
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2 Minutes for Syria

by Abounaddara

Since the spring of 2011, the beginning of a popular revolution in Syria, the Abounaddara Collective has released a short film on the Internet each Friday. This day, devoted to leisure and prayer in the…

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Works

An Ideal, or We Will All Die

by Abounaddara

A hideous crime was carried out in the name of God on the 13th of November in Paris. The presumed killers are French or Belgian citizens who do not identify with their national communities or with common…

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A letter from the documenta 14 team, following the attacks in Beirut on November 12 and Paris on November 13, 2015

We arrived in Beirut last Thursday morning, November 12. On that day, two blasts hit the southern suburb of the city, leaving 43 people dead and 239 wounded. On Friday, November 13, a series of coordinated…

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„Als Ludwig I. von Bayern in seiner philhellenischen Begeisterung seinen Sohn Otto samt der bayrischen Bürokratie auf den Thron des neuen, befreiten Griechenland setzte, schiffte sich sein Minister Rudhard, ein Sohn Passaus, von seiner Heimatstadt aus direkt nach Athen ein; er trank während der Reise aus einem eigens mitgeführten Bierfaß und sang dabei bajuwarische Lieder, in denen ein Hans Jörgl hinter seiner Liesl herläuft. Die in Griechenland eingesetzte Bavarokratie sorgte in Athen sogleich für die Eröffnung einer großen Brauerei sowie von Lokalen, die — wie von Wastlhuber, der geheime Ministerial-Kanzlei-Konzipist, sagte — ,Athen in eine Vorstadt Münchens’ verwandelten.“
—Claudio Magris
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“There are two ways of seeing the ways of seeing the world. One is one way and the other is another. And nobody knows: ‘Is there, anywhere, one way of seeing the two?’”
—Stefan Themerson
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