Abstract
This paper critically addresses the signification of site-specificity in postmodern and contemporary art in relation to the curatorial politics of two quite different institutions, the private Foundation DESTE of the famous entrepreneur and collector Dakis Ioannou and documenta. In particular, the conceptualisation of the city of Athens is discussed in the context of the exhibition Cultural Geometry, curated by Jeffrey Deitch (DESTE, Athens 1988) and documenta 14: Learning from Athens, curated by Adam Szymczyk and Paul B. Preciado (Athens and Kassel, 2017). Athens is conceived as a pool for the selective retrieval of semantic references, as a kind of pastiche, for the composition of the contemporary.