Menu
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.

 More
News

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…

 More
Notes

Nairy Baghramian

In her short story “The Iron Table” (1943), Jane Bowles describes a couple who are discussing whether or not the woman would be happy living in the desert, where the man wants to be. They seem to be…

 More
Artists

Voyage of the Sable Venus

by Robin Coste Lewis

Prologue:

What follows is [an excerpt of] a narrative poem comprised solely and entirely of the titles, catalog entries, or exhibit descriptions of Western art objects in which a black female figure…

 More
South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

Black Athena Reloaded 2: A Trial of the Code Noir

with Colin Dayan, Pélagie Gbaguidi, Tavia Nyong’o, David Scott, and Françoise Vergès

Books are material surfaces of inscription where political fictions have the opportunity to become collective reality. The Code Noir was an economic and legal decree passed by King Louis XIV in 1685 to…

 More
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…

 More
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…

 More
Venues

Ivan Peries

As a founding member of the 43 Group, Ivan Peries (1921–88) was part of an avant-garde circle of artists in Sri Lanka, which also included Lionel Wendt, George Keyt, Harry Pieres, and L. T. P. Manjusri…

 More
Historical Positions

Neue Galerie

Housing the Museumlandschaft Hessen-Kassel’s collection of nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century art, the Neue Galerie has been an important venue in a number of previous editions of documenta…

 More
Venues

Negative Moment: Political Geology in the Twenty-First Century

by Nabil Ahmed, with images by Gauri Gill and Rajesh Chaitya Vangad

Peter Sloterdijk famously wrote that modernity began on the northern fronts of World War I, when imperial Germany first deployed poisonous chemicals, which they dug into their trenches, against French…

 More
South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #40: An Opera of the World

by Manthia Diawara

In An Opera of the World, Malian filmmaker Manthia Diawara uses opera to reflect upon the migration of people and culture, mainly between Europe and Africa…

 More
Public TV

Keeping Score: Notation, Embodiment, and Liveness

by Hendrik Folkerts

To approach a definition: the score is a notational device that connects the material of a ­discipline—ranging from music, dance, and performance to architecture, linguistics, mathematics, physics—and…

 More
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…

 More
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…

 More
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…

 More
South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]