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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
„Als Ludwig I. von Bayern in seiner philhellenischen Begeisterung seinen Sohn Otto samt der bayrischen Bürokratie auf den Thron des neuen, befreiten Griechenland setzte, schiffte sich sein Minister Rudhard, ein Sohn Passaus, von seiner Heimatstadt aus direkt nach Athen ein; er trank während der Reise aus einem eigens mitgeführten Bierfaß und sang dabei bajuwarische Lieder, in denen ein Hans Jörgl hinter seiner Liesl herläuft. Die in Griechenland eingesetzte Bavarokratie sorgte in Athen sogleich für die Eröffnung einer großen Brauerei sowie von Lokalen, die — wie von Wastlhuber, der geheime Ministerial-Kanzlei-Konzipist, sagte — ,Athen in eine Vorstadt Münchens’ verwandelten.“
—Claudio Magris
Notes

Ross Birrell

Things tend to get personal, at times: I owe my acquaintance with Ross Birrell to Gustav Metzger, whose exhibition In Memoriam, dedicated to Walter Benjamin, I organized at Kunsthalle Basel in 2006. As…

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Artists

Signals from Another World: Proletarian Theater as a Site for Education
Texts by Asja Lācis and Walter Benjamin, with an introduction by Andris Brinkmanis

What are the forms of culture still capable of assuming the shape of a chorus, an assembly? Which cultural forms might help build communities in which a multitude of diversities might be expressed as a…

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South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

#11 Torture and Freedom Tour of Athens

by Vangelis Karamanolakis, Tasos Sakellaropoulos, Kostis Karpozilos, and Katerina Labrinou

Collective walk through the city of Athens, in collaboration with ASKI archives, exploring the historical traces of oppression, violence, and the quest for freedom during the military dictatorship of 1967–74.

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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

Parko Eleftherias, Athens Municipality Arts Center and Museum of Anti-dictatorial and Democratic Resistance

The Athens Municipality Arts Center at Parko Eleftherias (Freedom Park) and the Museum of Anti-dictatorial and Democratic Resistance belong to a nineteenth-century complex of military quarters. Indeed…

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Venues

Władysław Strzemiński

“The movement of the eye, the trace of the sliding glances, the muscles that contract and distend link the shapes seen in nature and form a uniform rhythm … The rhythm is mostly the rhythm of autonomous…

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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

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…

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South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #28: Don Giovanni

Carmelo Bene’s 1971 film Don Giovanni is not an adaptation of a famous Don Juan story. Instead, the film critically investigates the multifaceted legend of the wealthy male sinner who seduces one woman after another. This is a film about Don Juanism…

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Public TV

Outlawed Social Life

by Candice Hopkins

U’mista and Nuyumbalees. Kwak’wala words. Names bestowed on two new cultural centers in Alert Bay, British Columbia, founded to house masks and dance regalia repatriated after the potlatch ban (1885–1951)…

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South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

#13 Epitafios II

by Angela Brouskou – Theatro Domatiou and MiniMaximum ImproVision

Epitafios II is a collaboration between professional actors, musicians, students, performers, and the audience. A blanket of human bodies and objects covers the floor of the former headquarters of the…

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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

Mare Nostrum

by Miriam Cahn

COINCIDENCES

 

i would not be

i would not be had i not not i i too but not even at all if. 
i would not be only not i i too i would not be. i am because. i am i too i because if.

i would not be if my…

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South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]