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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

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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Notes

Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt

These works traveled the globe, sent as postcards from Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt in the GDR capital of Berlin to Western Europe, the Eastern Bloc, North America, Latin America, Asia, New Caledonia. No rules and…

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Artists

For K.G. Subramanyan, or “Mani da” as we called him

by Naveen Kishore

I

Softly
like warm breath
on a cold mirror 

or a whisper
on bare feet 

wearing only white

he slipped away 

unable to resist
before escaping

a last glance

How many shawls from Kashmir can you give a man…

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South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

An homage to Pavlos Fyssas

documenta 14 opened in Athens on April 6. That was also the day of remembrance for Halit Yozgat, who was killed at his family’s Internet café on Holländische Straße in the Nordstadt district of Kassel…

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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

Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA)—Pireos Street (“Nikos Kessanlis” Exhibition Hall)

Above the entrance of the Athens School of Fine Arts on Pireos Street we find the popular Greek slogan Ένας στο Χώμα χιλιάδες στον Αγώνα (One in the soil, thousands on the battlefield)…

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Venues

Ballhaus

The Ballhaus—Leo von Klenze’s first authored building—stands next to the Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, the neoclassical palace of Kassel, inside the Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe. It was built in 1808 by Jérôme…

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Venues

Lala Rukh
Introduction by Natasha Ginwala

An ink drawing entitled Hieroglyphics I: Koi ashiq kisi mehbooba se 1 (1995) unfolds Lala Rukh’s secret language, a constellation of calligraphic form, Minimalism, and symbolic writing. Borrowing her…

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South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #6: Voilà l'enchaînement

by Claire Denis

How two people come apart can be as compelling to watch as what brings them together. In Clarie Denis’ film Voilà l’enchaînement, the fissures in a relationship between a black man (Alex Descas) and a white woman (Norah Krief) are apparent from the first scene. Longing for more closeness, and caressing his shoulder, she asks him to tattoo her name on his body. He gently refuses: “for you it means eternity, for me it means branded.” Does the friction of this early exchange—still light enough to be softened with an embrace, but opening a crack of enmity—set in motion what comes next…

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Public TV

Mythopoeic Acts: Mariana Castillo Deball’s Newspaper Works

by Adam Szymczyk

Mariana Castillo Deball’s contribution to this magazine is a series of contour drawings made by perforating pages from daily European newspapers. Crude, geometric, and, in their hypnotizing symmetry…

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South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

Indigenous Knowledge 1: On Violent Waters. A Discussion on Borders and Migration

with Dimitris Parsanoglou, Maria Iorio, and Raphaël Cuomo

In contemporary discussions of European borders, the sea stands as a silent and invisible yet violent medium that accentuates the tragic or heroic border crossings of migrants and refugees. Although it…

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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

Editors’ Letter

by Quinn Latimer, Adam Szymczyk

The first issue of South as a State of Mind in its new, temporary role as the magazine of documenta 14 arrives more than a year and a half before the exhibition is scheduled to open, in Athens in April…

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South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]