The "documenta 12" magazines are a collective worldwide editorial project linking over eighty print and on-line periodicals, as well as other media. In advance of the exhibition in Kassel, "documenta 12" magazines have opened up a central site for reflection and visual contemplation. Since early 2006, influential journals in the realm of art, as well as specialist publications operating in discursive fields beyond the major art centres, have been publishing and discussing contributions - essays, interviews, photo reportages, features, interventions from artists and articles of fiction - in relation to "documenta 12's" three main themes: Is modernity our antiquity? What is bare life? What is to be done? The "documenta 12" magazine will subsequently assemble and summarize these debates and provide a selection of core texts and images. The "documenta 12" magazine aims to provide background knowledge prior to the exhibition, without restricting in any way the individual experience of viewing the artworks themselves. The broadly conceived themes of Modernity?, Life! and Education: are in fact intended to increase our appetite for images, because the significance of art lies within art itself - in its ambiguity, contrariness and stubborn independence.

This second issue groups the content under the title of Life!. This alludes to the question as to what is meant by "bare life", a question that froms a central intellectual trope in many current aesthetic and political discussions.

Some of the participating journals and magazines are: ART iT (Tokyo), Art World (Shanghai), CLiCK (Yogyakarta), Ctrl+P (Manila), diatxt (Kyoto), focas (Singapore), journal BOL (Seoul), Kakisen.com (Petaling Jaya), Pananaw (Paranaque), Sarai (Delhi), sentAp! (Ipoh, Perak), talawas (Hanoi) and Yishu (Vancouver).