In the two years leading up to the opening of the documenta 14 exhibition in 2017, South as a State of Mind, a magazine founded by Marina Fokidis in Athens in 2012, is publishing four special documenta 14 editions, edited by documenta 14 Editor-in-Chief of Publications Quinn Latimer and Artistic Director Adam Szymczyk.

Writing and publishing are an integral part of documenta 14, and its journal heralds that process. A forum for research, critique, art, and literature, South as a State of Mind parallels the preparatory work on the d14 exhibition and helps frame its concerns and aims with essays, conversations, poetry, fiction, and visual projects by some of the most singular writers, thinkers, and artists of our time.

While the first issue of the d14 South examined forms and figures of displacement and dispossession, and the modes of resistance found within them, the second issue explores the more enigmatic tropes of silence and masks as means of critical inquiry and aesthetic and political engagement.

Contributions by Mustapha Benfodil, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Barbara Casavecchia, Clémentine Deliss, Mahasweta Devi, Elsa Dorlin, Stathis Gourgouris, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Subcomandante Marcos, and others focus on issues of masking identity and silencing dissent, orality and recognition, indigeneity and exile, provenance and repatriation, and colonial and sexual violence. This visually rich and striking issue—which features newly commissioned artist projects by Mariana Castillo Deball and Regina José Galindo as well as photo essays by Andreas Angelidakis and Candice Hopkins—also includes portfolios of poems by Joan Naviyuk Kane and Alejandra Pizarnik.

The final two issues of the d14 South will be concerned with concepts of language and ecology, coloniality and neoclassicism, violence and repair, and the relationship between pedagogical, performative, and political processes.

To launch the second issue of the documenta 14 South as a State of Mind, three related public events will be held in Athens, Kassel, and Karasjok during the coming months, conceptualized within the framework of documenta 14’s Public Programs. More detailed information about these events will be available at the documenta 14 website soon.

And in addition to the print version of South as a State of Mind, redesigned for documenta 14 by Mevis & van Deursen, Amsterdam, the d14 South content is available in three languages—German, Greek, and English—in an online edition of the journal that you can find here: