Newsletter #29 – January 2011

Partner organisation in 'The Last Newspaper', 3, 4 and 5 gallery floors, New Museum, New York, 6 October 2010 – 9 January 2011.

Exhibition curated by Richard Flood, Director of Special Projects and Curator at Large, and Benjamin Godsill, Curatorial Associate.

Documentation Archive | Photo Gallery Exhibition | Photo Gallery Newspaper

Produced by Latitudes during 10 weeks from a micro-newsroom installed in the exhibition space of the New Museum, 'The Last Post' (issue 1); The Last Gazette (issue 2); The Last Register (issue 3); The Last Star-Ledger (issue 4); The Last Monitor (issue 5); The Last Observer (issue 6); The Last Evening Sun (issue 7); The Last Journal (issue 8); The Last Times (issue 9) and The Last Express (issue 10) form the catalogue of the exhibition 'The Last Newspaper' that continues at the New Museum until 9 January.

Featuring over 100 contributors, including essays and interviews with participating artists, the publication also brings together articles and special features around an expanded selection of work that addresses the news, the newspaper, and its evolving form and function. (+ info...)

Editor: Latitudes
Publisher: New Museum & Latitudes;
Design: Chad Kloepfer with Joel Stillman
Print run: 1,000 (of which 400 are the final compilation)
Format: 11.5" x 14"; 10 newspapers + supplement
Printing: Linco Printing, Long Island
Price: $15 ($12 museum members)

Latitudes's participation kindly supported by SEACEX.

Exhibition 'Christina Hemauer & Roman Keller: United Alternative Energies', Århus Art Building, Denmark, 22 January–3 April 2011.

'Christina Hemauer & Roman Keller: United Alternative Energies' will be the most comprehensive presentation of the duo's work to date, and include 10 works, 4 of which will be new productions. Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller have investigated the concept of energy for several years. One of their main areas of interest is the history of oil and its competing alternatives, notably solar energy.

'Christina Hemauer & Roman Keller: United Alternative Energies' will exhibit works such as 'No.1 Sun Engine' (2008), which focuses on the world’s first commercial solar-thermal plant built in 1913 in a Cairo suburb; the choir performance 'Globalising the Internationale' (2006–ongoing) recently presented in the context of the Latitudes-curated commission series 'Portscapes'; and the documentary 'A Road not Taken' (HD film, 66 min., 2010), which follows the story of the solar panels installed on the roof of the White House in 1979 by the then President Jimmy Carter and removed by Ronald Reagan in 1986.

The exhibition is one of five exhibition proposals selected from approximately 600 submissions received in response to the Aarhus Art Building's open call for their 2011 programme, entitled 'Imagine: Towards an Eco-Aesthetic'. (+ info...)

Exhibition possible thanks to the generous support of Pro Helvetia and the Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation.

Curators, 'Laboratorio 987' 2011 exhibition season: 'Amikejo', Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC), Spain.

Inaugural exhibition: 'Amikejo: Pennacchio Argentato, 29 January–27 March.

For the inaugural show of the Amikejo series, the Neapolitan duo Pennacchio Argentato will present a new installation based on expectations about performativity and interactivity in exhibition spaces. By transforming the Laboratorio 987 space into an interior akin to an abstract fitness gymnasium, the artists frame their own activity as young artists alongside that of Amikejo by addressing the ideas of leisure and overproduction, work and non-work. Presenting a series of rough concrete “muscular” sculptures resembling prototypes for exercise machines, they seemingly promise engagement though, as the artists describe, “all without seeing or offering any end result”.

Amikejo was an anomalous in-between state which never entirely existed, and was founded on a desire to foster more effective international communication through the synthetic language Esperanto. A 3½ km2 wedge of land between the Netherlands, Belgium and Prussia was established as a neutral area because of an important zinc mine. In 1908 the 2,500 identity-less citizens of Neutral Moresnet, as it was known, declared it to be the world’s first Esperanto state: Amikejo (‘place of great friendship’ in Esperanto). This episode-place, between pragmatic and conceptual borders of cartography, language, nationhood, and subjectivity, is entreated as a twin site to MUSAC's Laboratorio 987 and lends its name and symbolic implications to the exhibition series.

Forthcoming exhibitions: Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum (9 April–12 June); Uqbar Foundation (25 June–11 September) and Fermín Jiménez Landa & Lee Welch (24 September–15 January 2012)

Visit Latitudes' web, blog, facebook, twitter, flickr and YouTube channel for updates and more info!