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

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…

Notes

Alvin Lucier

On one side of the stage, a performer ignites a small flame, which stands out against the darkness; on the other side, another performer appears and vocalizes a sustained tone that rises and resounds throughout…

Artists

Treaty and Protest: John Miller’s Photographs by Cassandra Barnett and Jon Bywater, with an introduction by Marina Fokidis

I visited photographer John Miller’s studio in 2015, on the recommendation of friends and colleagues who reside in New Zealand. I had just met with art writer Jon Bywater in Auckland, who confirmed the…

South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

#19 Attempt. Come.

by Georgia Sagri

Attempt.
Come.
Undefined.
Be the point of no-reference.
Constant,
and as a state of formation.
Play.
Continue to play with the beat.
Vibrate with me, so chaos can enter.
It is an invitation.
Come.
As water.
As the…

Calendar

Interview with Emeka Ogboh

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

Megaron, The Athens Concert Hall

Inaugurated in 1991, Megaron was the outcome of the long efforts of an association of eminent social figures, musicians, and music lovers. The hall was built and has since operated on corporate, private…

Venues

André du Colombier

“Since beginning to know his work a bit better, I’ve come to think that this tall, curiously blond boy perceived us by way of clues—clues capable of entering savant equations, according to linguistic…

Historical Positions

Public Radio

Glass Pavilions on Kurt-Schumacher-Strasse

One of the main traffic corridors in Kassel, Kurt-Schumacher-Strasse also designates a border. Geographically, it traces the line between Mitte at the center and Nordstadt in the north of the city; as…

Venues

Windless Path

by Synnøve Persen

South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #14: Elias Petropoulos: Enas kosmos ypogeios (Elias Petropoulos: An Underground World)

by Kalliopi Legaki

Elias Petropoulos, who died in 2003, was the first Greek folklore researcher, author, and historian to document underground cultures and figures shunned by official history. A restless, inquisitive spirit, he was the enemy of academicism and the establishment…

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]

#20 Transgressive Listening

by Stathis Gourgouris

Stathis Gourgouris is professor at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University, New York. He is the author of Synaesthetics of the Polity (forthcoming, 2018); The Perils…

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]