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

In Memoriam: Ben Patterson (1934–2016)

by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung

This script is not a eulogy. Actually you can't write a eulogy about someone you loved dearly, but didn't really know. This script is for, on, of, about, and with Ben Patterson and the vacuum he leaves…

Notes

Rainer Oldendorf

Like a writer who places epigraphs at the beginning of his text—other voices—to give rise to an idea of the work as a whole, please find enclosed some elements and conditions for the work in production…

Artists

Memory, Image: On Rosa Luxemburg’s Prison Letters and Gender Violence

by Sean O’Toole

Among the things I inherited from grandmother when she died were her handwritten recipes and a hardcover edition of Roberts’ Birds of Southern Africa, an illustrated guidebook to the region’s winged…

South Issue #9 [documenta 14 #4]

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…

Calendar

Interview with Andreas Angelidakis

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

Romantso

Romantso translates to “novel.” It was also the title of the popular Greek magazine that featured novel-length stories in each of its issues. It first launched in 1934; when, in 1956, its price dropped…

Venues

Louis Kolitz

Louis Kolitz was a German genre painter active from the 1860s until his death shortly before the outbreak of the First World War; from 1879 until 1911 he was the director of the art academy, today’s…

Historical Positions

Public Radio

Giesshaus (University of Kassel)

The Giesshaus (foundry) was built as part of the Henschelei, a factory established in the nineteenth century by the industrialist family Henschel, which specialized in the construction of locomotives…

Venues

So Many Hungers

by Natasha Ginwala

It is believed the spotted hyenas of Harar came to roam the city during the Ethiopian famine of 1888, surviving on organic refuse and human remains.1 Traveling through Ireland preceding the Great Hunger…

South Issue #8 [documenta 14 #3]

Keimena #36: Golden Eighties and No Home Movie

by Chantal Akerman

Chantal Akerman, the director of No Home Movie and Golden Eighties among other classics of independent cinema, died in October 2015. Her uncompromising career culminated in the singularly radical testament of her final feature film, No Home Movie…

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…

South Issue #7 [documenta 14 #2]

The Parliament of Bodies: The Strategy of Joy

with Ross Birrell, Nita Deda, Hendrik Folkerts, Dimitris Ginosatis, Natasha Ginwala, Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Balitronica Gómez, Jack Halberstam, Trajal Harrell, Candice Hopkins, iQhiya, Élisabeth Lebovici, Catherine Malabou, Joar Nango, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Paul B. Preciado, Ibrahim Quraishi, Roee Rosen, Dim Sampaio, and Adam Szymczyk

A paradox lies at the heart of contemporary democratic societies concerning the center of the politics of representations of their parliaments: They have gradually turned into ensembles joined by fear…

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

“Elections Change Nothing”: On the Misery of the Democracy of Equivalence

by Angela Dimitrakaki

It has been suggested that we live in “momentous times”1—times, that is, of profound significance for the living history of humanity. I borrow this definition from a homonymous curatorial project…

South Issue #6 [documenta 14 #1]