Beyond the binaries of documenta 14? Opening the continuum between Greece and the South

Abstract

Can we imagine Greece and the South beyond the enduring binaries that have long defined them? In 2014, the art institution documenta publicly announced that its fourteenth edition (d14) would take place in both Kassel, Germany, and Athens, Greece. d14’s stated goal, from the onset, was to balance ‘the need to embody the palpable tension between the North and the South’ while avoiding ‘the traps of binary logic’. Yet d14’s critics focused on how the exhibition was conceived and structured by a series of binaries, failing to overcome the intense sociopolitical antagonism between Germany and Greece, North and South. This article argues that while these critiques were necessary, they overlooked examples of connective thinking that delicately threaded together the split event. The article revisits works by four artists that exemplify this non-binary approach: Jani Christou, Vlassis Caniaris, Andreas Lolis and Alexandra Bachzetsis. Using Christou’s idea of the ‘continuum’ as a paradigm, these artworks are offered as much-needed complements to the impasse of opposition, (a)symmetries and doubles left behind by d14. Ultimately, though, the article looks beyond the exhibition of d14 to consider how the continuum’s fragile capacity for softening hardened positions might be extended to opening potential forms of relation within and between Greece and the South.