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: 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…

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

“There is one myth in which women do not disappear ...”

by Kim Hyesoon

To introduce Korean women’s poetry in the space of five minutes would be as difficult as shrinking five thousand years into five minutes. The Korean male literary establishment differentiates and categorizes…

South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

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

Interview with Mounira Al Solh

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

Coastline

Cecilia Vicuña completes the Athenian chapter of her documenta 14 project by way of a ritual offering to the sea gods of ancient Hellenic lore. The sacrifice in question consists of Vicuña presenting…

Venues

Sedje Hémon

It is obvious I have to solve this problem. From 1954 until 1958, so for four years, I listened halfheartedly to people who insisted that there is music present in my paintings. Since nobody could actually…

Historical Positions

Public Radio

BALi-Kinos

BALi-Kinos is located in Kassel’s former central train station. In 1995 it became part of the complex developed as the KulturBahnhof, and since 1997 it has been the home of the documenta film program…

Venues

H+G: An Introduction

by Pope.L

For the past five winters, I have taught a course at the University of Chicago that consists of readings, screenings, discussion, and analysis of the work of the Brothers Grimm and their collecting and…

South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #3: Oncle Bernard—L’anti-leçon d’économie

by Richard Brouillette

Depicted in Richard Brouillette’s Oncle Bernard – A Counter-Lesson in Economics, Bernard Maris, who wrote under the pseudonym of Uncle Bernard in his “Charlie Hebdo” column, had the mission of unmasking the professional fabricators of the economy—those who, every day, wherever we are, fill us with the same rubbish, draped in a phony pseudo-science whose goal is to disguise the mechanisms of that power which enslaves us…

Public TV

Draupadi: Translator’s Foreword*

by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

I translated this Bengali short story into English as much for the sake of its villain, Senanayak, as for its title character, Draupadi (or Dopdi). Because in Senanayak I find the closest approximation…

South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

#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…

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

I Had Nowhere to Go

by Jonas Mekas

When, in 1944, Jonas Mekas left the small village in Lithuania where he grew up, he was twenty-two years old and a man of “some reputation,” as he puts it. Editor-in-chief of a weekly paper and a young…

South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]