documenta 14's magazine South as a State of Mind launches in Kassel and Berlin with talks, conversations, readings, and music

December 5, 2015, 7 p.m.
With Andreas Angelidakis, Marina Fokidis, Ayse Güleç, Quinn Latimer, Adam Szymczyk, and Margarita Tsomou

Kulturzentrum Schlachthof
Mombachstraße 10-12
34127 Kassel

and

December 6, 2015, 7 p.m.
With Akinbode Akinbiyi, Marina Fokidis, Peter Friedl, Bouchra Khalili, Quinn Latimer, Adam Szymczyk, and Françoise Vergès

Music by Ahmet Ögüt, Ali M. Demirel, Barbara Klein; Ange da Costa; Browden, Sholar, Sammons Group (Marlon Browden, Charles Sammons, Kelvin Sholar), and DJ Judex

SAVVY Contemporary im Silent Green
Gerichtstraße 35
13347 Berlin-Wedding

Seating is limited and early arrival is advised.

Possession and dispossession, displacement and debt—it seems that the stories that condition our present are inextricably born out of the stories that conditioned our past. The first of four special issues of South as a State of Mind, temporarily reconfigured as the documenta 14 journal, examines forms and figures of displacement and dispossession, and the modes of resistance—aesthetic, political, literary, biological—found within them. In essays, both literary and visual, as well as poems, speeches, diaries, conversations, and specially commissioned artist projects, the first issue of the d14 South considers dispossession as a historical and contemporary condition along with its connections to archaeology and the city, coloniality and performativity, debt and imperialism, provenance and repatriation, and feminism and protest.

To launch the inaugural issue of the d14 South, documenta 14 is organizing a series of public events—in Athens, Kassel, Berlin, Dhaka, and Kolkata—that bring the disparate voices of the journal, as well as those outside of it, into conversation in cities across the world. The launch events in Germany take place this month, on two consecutive evenings, December 5, in Kassel, and December 6, in Berlin.

For the Kassel launch at Kulturzentrum Schlachthof, documenta 14 Artistic Director Adam Szymczyk, as well as Editor-in-Chief of Publications Quinn Latimer and Head of Artistic Office, Athens, Marina Fokidis, are joined by artist and architect Andreas Angelidakis, writer and performer Margarita Tsomou, and educator and social worker Ayse Güleç for an evening of talks and conversation.

For the Berlin launch at SAVVY Contemporary, South contributors Peter Friedl and Françoise Vergès are joined by artists Bouchra Khalili and Akinbode Akinbiyi, as well as documenta 14’s Adam Szymczyk, Quinn Latimer, Marina Fokidis, and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, for an evening of talks, conversation, readings, and music. The evening program will be accompanied by musical interventions by Ahmet Ögüt, Ali M. Demirel, Barbara Klein; Ange da Costa; Browden, Sholar, Sammons Group (Marlon Browden, Charles Sammons, Kelvin Sholar), and an afterparty with DJ Judex.

South as a State of Mind is a magazine that was founded by Marina Fokidis in Athens in 2012. Beginning in 2015, the magazine temporarily becomes the documenta 14 journal, publishing four semiannual special issues until the opening of the exhibition in Athens and Kassel in 2017. These special issues are edited by Quinn Latimer, documenta 14’s Editor-in-Chief of Publications, and documenta 14 Artistic Director Adam Szymczyk. The documenta 14 South is conceived as a medium for research, critique, art, and literature that parallels the years of work on the d14 exhibition overall, one that helps define and frame its concerns and aims. As such, the journal is a manifestation of documenta 14 rather than a discursive lens through which to merely presage the topics to be addressed in the eventual exhibition. Writing and publishing, in all their forms, are an integral part of documenta 14, and the journal heralds that process.

Biographies

Akinbode Akinbiyi was born in Oxford, England, in 1946. Based in Berlin, he has been the recipient of a 1987 STERN Reportage Stipend and is the founder of the UMZANSI Cultural Center in Durban, South Africa. In 2003, he curated the German contribution to the Bamako Rencontres de la Photographie in Mali and was on the panel of judges for the World Press Photo Award.

Andreas Angelidakis lives and works in Athens. Trained as an architect, Angelidakis works as an artist, curator, architect, and teacher. He produces models, films, ruins, installations, and alternative histories, which often revolve around the Internet, desire, and the city. Recent exhibitions include “Crash Pad, A preliminary statement for the 8th Berlin Biennial” (2014); “Every End is A Beginning,” the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (2014); and “Alexandro Jodorowsky,” CAPC Bordeaux, (2015).

Marina Fokidis is the founding and artistic director of the Kunsthalle Athena and the founding director of South as a State of Mind. She was a curator of the 3rd Thessaloniki Biennale for Contemporary Art (2011) and the curator of the Greek Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale (2003). She is Head of the Artistic Office, Athens, for documenta 14.

Peter Friedl is an artist. Since the 1980s he has published numerous essays and books projects such as Four of Five Roses (2004), Working at Copan/Trabalhando no Copan (2007), Playgrounds (2008), and Secret Modernity: Selected Writings and Interviews 1981–2009 (2009). He participated in documenta X (1997) and documenta 12 (2007), and in 2006 the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) organized a comprehensive retrospective of his work.

Ayse Güleç grew up in the Ruhr region and studied social pedagogy and social work at the Universität Kassel. She did freelance work with youth and adults in the field of (inter)cultural education, with a special focus on educational programs for women in local urban communities. A staff member of the Kulturzentrum Schlachthof since 1998, she is responsible for the development, supervision, and implementation of (inter)cultural activities and education programs devoted to transcultural and social issues, among them migration, diversity, and European networking. She served as spokeswoman for the documenta 12 Advisory Council.

Bouchra Khalili was born in Casablanca and lives and works in Berlin. Her moving-image work explores transience, language, identity, and transnationality. Among her recent shows: Foreign Office, solo show at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2015); the 8th Göteborg Biennale (2015); Here and Elsewhere, New Museum, New York (2014); Living Labour, solo show at PAMM, Miami (2013-2014); and The Encyclopedic Palace, 55th Venice Biennale (2013).

Quinn Latimer was born in California and lives in Basel and Athens. A poet and critic, she is the author of Rumored Animals (Dream Horse Press, 2012), which won the American Poetry Journal Book Prize; Sarah Lucas: Describe This Distance (Mousse Publishing, 2013); and Film as a Form of Writing: Quinn Latimer Talks to Akram Zaatari (Weils, 2014). She is Editor-in-Chief of Publications for documenta 14.

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, PhD, was born in Yaoundé, Cameroon, and lives and works in Berlin. He is a biotechnologist, curator, and founder of SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, as well as editor-in-chief of the journal SAVVY|art. contemporary.african. He is Curator-at-Large of documenta 14.

Adam Szymczyk is the Artistic Director of documenta 14. He was the director and chief curator of the Kunsthalle Basel from 2003 to 2014, and co-curator of the 5th Berlin Biennale in 2008. He was a founder of Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw, and in 2011 he was the recipient of the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement from the Menil Foundation, Houston.

Margarita Tsomou is a Greek journalist and performer based in Berlin. She is the editor of the pop-feminist Missy Magazine and writes for print and German radio. In April 2012 she showed a theater piece on the European crisis, titled “Wir sind ein Bild aus der Zukunft,” at the Hebbel am Ufer, in Berlin. She obtained a PhD from the Hafencity Universität, Hamburg, on "Assemblies and Participation in Public Space.”

Françoise Vergès was born in Paris and grew up in Réunion and Algeria. She is the Chair of Global South(s) at the College d’Etudes Mondiales, Paris. She received a PhD in political theory at University of California, Berkeley, and was president of the French Committee for the Memory and History of Slavery from 2009 to 2012. For the 2013 Paris Triennial, she curated the program “The Slave in Le Louvre.”