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

A letter from the documenta 14 team, following the attacks in Beirut on November 12 and Paris on November 13, 2015

We arrived in Beirut last Thursday morning, November 12. On that day, two blasts hit the southern suburb of the city, leaving 43 people dead and 239 wounded. On Friday, November 13, a series of coordinated…

Notes

Olaf Holzapfel

As an artist born in a country that no longer exists, and whose coming-of-age involved crossing a border between the East-West divide of the Cold War era that is fast becoming a distant memory, Olaf Holzapfel…

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]

#17 Red Star, Crescent Moon / after Sohail Daulatzai

by Naeem Mohaiemen

In Black Star, Crescent Moon (2012), scholar Sohail Daulatzai charts post-1950s Black internationalism as an intersecting history of black Muslims, black radicals, and the Muslim third world. In response…

Calendar

Interview with Maria Hassabi

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

Fylasion 42

In close proximity to the Mentis Center for the preservation of traditional textile techniques at Polyfimou 6, Aboubakar Fofana has taken occupancy of a former microbrewery, installing indigo vats as part…

Venues

Oskar Hansen

Historical Positions

Public Radio

BALi-Kinos

BALi-Kinos is located in Kassel’s former central train station. In 1995 it became part of the complex developed as the KulturBahnhof, and since 1997 it has been the home of the documenta film program…

Venues

YSL / New Waves

by Nairy Baghramian

South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #32: Le Président (The President)

by Jean-Pierre Bekolo

The President, by Jean-Pierre Bekolo, is a witty, poetic, and humorous take on the ugly reality of power in postcolonial Africa. States ruled by men who cling to power, craving immortality. Men like Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Angola’s José Eduardo dos Santos, or Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. Under their omnipotent rule, even to imagine a state after them is a crime…

Public TV

Fair Trade Heads: A Conversation on Repatriation and Indigenous Peoples with Maria Thereza Alves, Candice Hopkins, and Jolene Rickard

The first documenta 14 edition of South as a State of Mind featured a roundtable discussion titled “The Indelible Presence of the Gurlitt Estate,” in which Adam Szymczyk spoke with a number of artists…

South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

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…

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

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…

South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]