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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

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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Notes

Joaquín Orellana Mejía

My first encounter with Joaquín Orellana Mejía was in late May 2015, in his studio in Guatemala’s National Theater, amid his sound utensils (útiles sonoros). That the Guatemalan composer and innovator…

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Artists

Lost and Found

by Susan Hiller

 

 

 

 

 

 

BO
(recently extinct)
Andaman Islands, India
Speaker: Boa Sr, the last speaker of Bo (1925–2010)
Recorded by: Anvita Abbi, 2005–10
Source: Harmeet Shah Singh, CNN

WICHITA
(dormant)
Oklahoma…

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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

Avdi Square

In a prelude to Athenian industrialization, the silk company of Athanassios Douroutis defined the working-class neighborhood of Metaxourgeio (which means “silk factory”) and gave the central square…

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Venues

Baldugiin Sharav

As legend has it, the Tibetan-born reincarnate ruler Bogd Khan (1870–1924) commissioned the famous artist Baldugiin Sharav to paint scenes representative of life in the Mongolian countryside during the…

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Historical Positions

Friedrichsplatz

Constructed in the late eighteenth century as a way to expand Kassel from the old medieval town toward the flourishing Huguenot settlement nearby, Friedrichsplatz has often been employed as an arena for…

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Venues

Keimena #30: Sound Cage: A Portrait of Katalin Ladik

by Kornél Szilágyi (Igor Buharov)

In Sound Cage: A Portrait of Katalin Ladik by Kornél Szilágyi (also known as Igor Buharov), the many languages of Serbian-Hungarian poetess, actress, and visual artist Katalin Ladik come together…

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Public TV

Taci, anzi parla

by Barbara Casavecchia

Taci, anzi parla: “Shut up. Or rather, speak,” as Italian art critic turned activist Carla Lonzi called her “Diary of a Feminist” in 1978.2 Her title indicated an imperative mood full of doubts…

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South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

How does it feel to be a problem?

This performative gathering establishes no hierarchies between radically different knowledge, languages, and practices, between activism and performance, between theory and poetry, between art and politics: collectively, we experiment with the construction of a public space of visibility and enunciation…

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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

Representing Misery: Courbet’s Beggar Woman

by Linda Nochlin

Within the complex allegorical structure of Gustave Courbet’s L’Atelier du peintre (Painter’s Studio, 1854–55), the Irish beggar woman constitutes not merely a dark note of negativity calling into…

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South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]