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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

In Memoriam: Beau Dick (1955–2017)

by Candice Hopkins

Beau Dick was given the name “Walis Gwy Um,” which means “big, great whale” in the Kwak’wala language. His carvings tap into the supernatural, as though everything he made is invested with spirit…

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Notes

Olu Oguibe

The mirror is a window.
It offers a glimpse
Of where we are from
But cannot return.
We are all travelers
On this endless road
Condemned to roam
Without repose.

Olu Oguibe’s poem “Conversation,” excerpted…

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Artists

They Will Be Coming for Us Tonight: Letters by James Baldwin and Angela Y. Davis, with an introduction by Laura Preston

Angela Y. Davis, the African-American activist, feminist, academic, and writer, was born in 1944 in the southern city of Birmingham, Alabama. A student of Herbert Marcuse at Brandeis University, she also…

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South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

#25 An Evening with Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens and Wet Dreams Water Ritual

An invitation to partake of the pleasures and perils of water. In collaborating with local artists, activists, musicians, sex workers, refugees, and other humans and non-humans.

Note: Please bring some…

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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

Elpidos

Elpidos Street is the site of a performance by Regina José Galindo, in which the artist wears a dress kept by the family of a woman murdered in her native Guatemala. While the Victoria Square area is…

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Venues

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…

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Venues

Enfleshment of Memory

by Neni Panourgiá

Hunger, Thomas Malthus and Adam Smith tell us, independently from each other and with completely different concerns, is a man-made condition, the result of the ecosystems of societies—society drives…

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South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #21: Bamako

by Abderrahmane Sissako

Directed by the Mauritanian Abderrahmane Sissako and set in the capital of Mali, Bamako examines the links between global economic policies and everyday life. It follows a singer and her unemployed husband. In the yard of the house they share with other families, a court is in session. On trial are the global institutions accused of impoverishing Africa…

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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]

Word-of-Mouth: On the Early Reception of Ulises Carrión

with Magalí Arriola

Reflecting on some of the inventive and resourceful methods developed by Ulises Carrión in later life, Magalí Arriola’s presentation will revisit his practice in order to analyze the reception of his work within the burgeoning Mexican art scene of the late 1990s…

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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

Representing Misery: Courbet’s Beggar Woman

by Linda Nochlin

Within the complex allegorical structure of Gustave Courbet’s L’Atelier du peintre (Painter’s Studio, 1854–55), the Irish beggar woman constitutes not merely a dark note of negativity calling into…

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South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]