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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

Dignity has never been photographed

by Abounaddara

Dignity isn’t well regarded at the moment. It’s seen as a normative concept, difficult to gauge and even more difficult to reconcile with artistic practices that tend to strive for emancipation from norms. It’s also a political argument that has been made by reactionaries and enemies of artistic freedom. Finally, it is an ideal that goes against the tide of nihilism in this atmosphere of triumphant post-truth…

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Notes

Otobong Nkanga

There is no singular event. Everything is connected with everything.

Noting down any event is just catching a glimpse, a fragment of time.

What day is it today? Does it matter? The land has been there much…

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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…

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South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

#22 I Owe You Everything

by Clémentine Deliss and Chief Robert Joseph

I Owe You Everything is a project that chooses and follows a series of contemporary thinkers, poets, and activists who are invited to construct a public “act of giving,” a critical and poetic ritual…

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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

Gennadius Library

In 1922, diplomat and bibliophile Joannes Gennadius offered his 26,000-volume library to the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, on the conditions that the holdings be housed as a separate…

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Venues

Theodor Heuss

A figurehead of the European liberal movement since the 1920s and a notable art enthusiast, Theodor Heuss was the first president of the Federal Republic of Germany. After the end of a world war that…

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Historical Positions

Narrowcast House

Narrowcast House is an open radio studio and listening space initiated by artist Anton Kats for documenta 14’s aneducation. Located in a disused storefront in Kassel’s Nordstadt, Narrowcast House is…

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Venues

To Create the Sound of Hunger: Joaquín Orellana in Conversation with Stefan Benchoam, Julio Santos, and Alejandro Torún, with an introduction by Monika Szewczyk

The Guatemalan composer and sound artist Joaquín Orellana is among the most important living members of South America’s musical avant-garde. In a career spanning half a century, his practice has combined…

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South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #5: Verzió

by Miklós Erdély

Miklós Erdély’s Version gravitates around Tiszaeszlár, a small East Hungarian village where in 1882 a young maid went missing and was later found dead in the river. The local Jewish community was accused of ritually murdering her. The blood libel trial that followed ignited anti-Semitic propaganda, agitation, and later pogroms in Austria-Hungary that gained worldwide attention…

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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…

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South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

Initiativgruppe Griechenland – Erinnerung als Widerstand (Initiative Group Greece – Remembrance as Resistance)

with Skevos Papaioannou, Geert Platner, Erika Wittlinger, and other members of the Initiative Group

“The working title of this year’s documenta and the artistic director’s appeal for stories prompted us to form an initiative group which has made preparations for several events and activities under…

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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

Always Struggle with the Object, Always Rewrite the World

by Kaelen Wilson-Goldie

Early in the winter of 2015, the Archaeological Museum at the American University of Beirut quietly reopened its permanent display of Islamic art and architecture. Less a wing than a modest corner of a…

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South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]