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Cover Story, September 2022: The means of print production: Erick Beltrán and lumbung press

September 2022 cover story on www.lttds.org

The September 2022 monthly Cover Story “The means of print production: Erick Beltrán and lumbung press” is now up on our homepage.

“One of the most consequential and ambitious initiatives at the sprawling and polyphonic documenta fifteen is lumbung press, one of several working groups conceived by the artistic directors ruangrupa that transverses the many invited artists, community-oriented collectives, organisations and institutions brought together in Kassel.

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    → After September 2022 this story will be archived here.

Cover Stories are published on a monthly basis on Latitudes’ homepage featuring past, present or forthcoming projects, research, texts, artworks, exhibitions, films, objects or field trips related to our curatorial projects and activities.


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  • Cover Story, June 2022: Cyber-Eco-Feminist Incidents in Attica, 1 June 2022
  • Cover Story, May 2022: Things Things Say in print, 2 May 2022
  • Cover Story, April 2022: Mix and Match. Laia Estruch at PUBLICS, 1 April 2022
  • Cover Story, March 2022: The passion of Gabriel Ventura, 1 March 2022
  • Cover Story, February 2022: Rosa Tharrats’ Textile Alchemy, 1 Feb 2022
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(Part 3/3) The 55th Biennale di Venezia: National Pavilions and Collateral Events in pictures and as seen by the critics, 1 June–24 November 2013

Browsing 'The Ideological Guide' on iPad.

If you haven't been to this year's Venice Biennale and plan to go soon, download 'The Ideological Guide', a free app developed by the Dutch artist Jonas Staal. As reported in artinfo.com "the smartphone app offers information about each participating country’s 2013 pavilion, from its commissioner and curator to the sources of its funding, while also providing historical information about past pavilions, and charting that nation’s economic and political alliances with other participating countries. The app, according to its creators, shows that the Venice Biennale’s distribution of national pavilions around the city is in many ways a more accurate reflection of nations’ geopolitical position than any geographical map.

Allora. So. Let's begin with the Spanish Pavilion, not only as it's the country where Latitudes is based, but also as it's the first pavilion one encounters when entering the Biennale area, walking towards the Padiglione Centrale. Quinn Latimer
 in Art Agenda wrote: "In her discreetly powerful Spanish Pavilion, meanwhile, Lara Almarcegui also tread some familiar contemporary-art modes and ideas, though they were insistently material. And the pavilion was a natural: streaked with sunrays from the skylights above, the piles of stone, wood, glass, and dirt—the exact same amounts that were used in the building of the pavilion itself—were immediately comprehensible, inevitable, lucidly effective." [Press Release and more photos here, video interview here]

  
'Raw' mountains of the various materials that compose the very building where they were presented: the 1922 Spanish Pavilion.

Continuing with Latimer
: 

"Surrounded by Massimiliano Gioni’s larger show, the somewhat airless “Encyclopedic Palace,” with its Documenta hangover of late, and serious crush on cleanly framed taxonomies, the national pavilions’ representatives of culture and country felt antique and obvious and a mess—but also a relief. Gioni’s turning of private cosmos and personal struggle into a stylized interior design aesthetic was definitively lacking in the disordered, disparate pavilions, where taste was usually the least concern. Yet lack of taste does not always equal distastefulness, which often arises instead from an excess of the stuff. If sometimes bad taste materializes as poeticized and/or politicized kitsch (see the pavilions of Canada, the US, Israel, and, at moments, the Netherlands), other pavilions broke through the visual chatter."

On the Netherlands' presentation, Adrian Searle of UK's The Guardian commented that Mark Manders' "Room with Broken Sentence" (...) "is a sensitively conceived and quietly dramatic tableau, like the interior of a mind as much as an actual space. The human presence emerges and disappears, conjoins with furniture or is sandwiched between stacks of timbers." 

Following on from our previous post on biennale tote bags, we'd like to add that the Dutch press package gets our bravo for the most beautiful, comprehensive and effectively-designed communication materials (and what a great pavilion catalogue too, with contributions by 37 international writers invited to reflect on individual works by Manders, published by Roma Publications). The press folder includes a full-coloured booklet with beautiful installation views of the pavilion; an 8-page booklet with an interview between the pavilion curator, Lorenzo Benedetti, and the artist alongside black and white photos of the works on show and a floorplan of the exhibition; two double-sided thick card A4 postcards of the artist's work; and a copy of Manders' "fake newspapers" which also covers the entrance to the pavilion. You can see images of the materials on the website of Amsterdam-based designer Roger Willems, or read more in the website of the pavilion. Gefeliciteerd!

  
 (Three above) Installation views of Mark Manders's "Room with a Broken Sentence" (2013) at the Dutch pavilion. More photos via Contemporary Art Daily.

Latimer laments the somehow shy presentation of Valentin Carron at the Swiss Pavilion which according to her "provoked nostalgia. Bruno Giacometti’s austere, 1952 modernist idyll is one of the finest pavilions in the Giardini. If two years ago Thomas Hirschhorn [see a few photos here onwards] obliterated Giacometti’s clean lines with his overwrought, über-hoarding installation, this year Valentin Carron erred on the side of caution, hewing too close and careful to those very same lines."

 View of Valentin Carron's presentation at the Swiss Pavilion.

Despite Latimer's comments on the "disordered, disparate pavilions", Jörg Heiser was amazed to find a common thread: "Even in the national pavilions of the Giardini – which are not under any over-arching curatorial supervision, but in each case are commissioned according to very different agendas – there are numerous signs that artists are groping in the dark of the unconscious and the (supposedly) ‘primordial’: grottoes and caves all over the place, clay sculptures, enigmatic allegories, prehistoric flintstones, (pseudo-)fossil findings. Is this parallel between the curated show and the national pavilions merely coincidental or does it tell us – as it steers art away from sober abstraction, calculated boutique chic, and more straightforward forms of realist social comment – something about the current state of things, the position of art in society (and economy) at large?"

And speaking of clay figures and rocks, according to Carol Vogel Sarah Sze's 'Triple Point' spread beyond the US Pavilion, with a few merchants in Castello displaying simulations of her pieces adorning rooftops, balcones and shop windows. "Ms. Sze is asking questions of her audience: “What objects in your life have value, and how is value created?” she explained. “I wanted to show objects that we know and have seen in our bag or on the shelf of a store which have the residue of emotion... Ms. Sze, who is known for creating site-specific environments from everyday objects like toothpicks, sponges, light bulbs and plastic bottles, arrived here in a snow storm on March 28 and has been hoarding, foraging and installing ever since." [Full article here, you can also read another review here, watch a video interview with the artist or have a 360 degree virtual tour of the Pavilion].

(Above) Sarah Sze's 'Triple Point', United States of America Pavilion.


The mentioned 'spiritual turn' is also shared by Corinna Kirsch in her review in Art F City, which reads: "It seems there’s something in the air about The Encyclopedic Palace’s “dream of a universal, all-embracing knowledge” (...) Science fiction and spirituality, in particular, are present in the pavilions as well as Gioni’s exhibition, though the way these themes play out are to entirely different stylistic ends... Overall, these works are less emotional than Gioni’s; even when they’re grounded in science fiction and spirituality, they’re grounded in the concerns of the here-and-now. Simply put, Gioni’s artists tend to live in their head, and the pavilions’ artists, in the world." 

According to Kirsch, examples of this are the British pavilion with Jeremy Deller's "English Magic" [see a video of Adrian Searle visiting the pavilion], where the artist has "the grandest presentation on view of epic creation and destruction myths, and on a national scale." [Watch the full-length of the video 'English Magic' here]. Paul Teasdale went on to say that Deller delves in the "antiquated, faintly ridiculous notion of the ‘national pavilion’ and the antiquated, faintly ridiculous notion of Englishness itself that Deller is exploring. And the almost magical way in which we so quickly forget the past."

(Above) Visitors queue to have their own prints of "William Morris returns from the dead to hurl Roman Abramovich's vast yacht Luna, which blighted the waterfront beside the Giardini at the 2011 Venice Biennale, into the waves." (Adrian Searle) and of a Hen Harrier grabbing a Range Rover.

 Above: A steel-drum orchestra played A Guy Called Gerald and Bowie's The Man Who Sold the World during the afternoon of the opening day.

Moving on. The almost bare Romanian Pavilion presented a "retrospective history of Venice, with actors as breathing archives of the Biennale itself" as Kaelen Wilson-Goldie has described in her Artforum diary review. Adrian Searle went on to recommend everyone to visit "the Pavilion, where Alexandra Pirici, Manuel Pelmuş and a small group of performers restage dozens of works from the previous 54 Biennales: using nothing more than their own bodies, they act out and mime Picasso's Guernica, Hans Haacke's famous destruction of the German pavilion's floor in 1993, paintings by Modigliani, sculptures by Rodin, performances by Marina Abramović and photographs by Nan Goldin. Both homage and parody, these quick-change charades in the otherwise empty pavilion take place all day, every day. Marvellous, funny and affecting, An Immaterial Retrospective of the Venice Biennale is much more than a parlour game. It is about history and memory – and it shows that the real encyclopedic palace is not to be found in a collection of objects, but in people themselves." [see a video of Searle visiting the Romanian Pavilion, starting at min. 2.30 while the 'living sculptures' are performing a reenactment of Allora and Calzadilla's 2011 piece presented in the US Pavilion].


(Above) An Immaterial Retrospective of the Venice Biennale, Romanian Pavilion.


Above: 'Bang', a so-so installation assembled by 886 three-legged wooden stols by Ai Weiwei, at the entrance of the German Pavilion (this year housed in the French Pavilion).

More Giardini. For the Austrian Pavilion, Mathias Poledna takes us to the movies. "... to a very short movie, that is. At just over three minutes long, “Imitation of Life” should feel like a slap in the face to the hulking structure in which it sits (both literally and figuratively). But the single animated scene, which reproduces to exacting detail the process used by film studios in the late 1930s and early 1940s, is a joy. It’s simple, light (at least on the surface), heartwarming even, and then it ends leaving one wishing for more." Jörg Heiser of frieze adds: "Poledna shows a four-minute musical animation in the style of Disney’s Bambi or Snow White – realized, in Los Angeles, with specialists able to do it the classical way. It’s not an original found object, but a kind of new reconstruction. Poledna does not rely on readymade or parody, thus generating a kind of double perception: I see the film projection and am inevitably reminded of childhood experiences – don’t I know this cute donkey with drooping ears in sailor outfit? – that I never could have had. He taps into our real-existing, pop-cultural affect reservoir, while diverting it into perfect fiction."


Still from Poledna's “Imitation of Life”.

Adrian Searle also mentioned Anri Sala's "Ravel Raval Unravel": "... Albanian artist Anri Sala, representing France, is in the German Pavilion. He drew big queues last week for his three-part film installation, based on performances of Maurice Ravel's 1930 composition Concerto in D for the Left Hand. Impeccably staged though it is, Sala's is a minor work on a major scale." [Watch video here]

 A (poor) photo of Anri Sala's video installation.


Midwaythrough a 2-hour queue under the rain to enter Anri Sala's exhibition on Friday 31 May.
  
Other National Pavilions in the Giardini not very much mentioned by the press, but worth visiting: Czech Republic & Slovak Republic, exhibiting work by Petra Feriancová (first room) and Zbyněk Baladrán (with the film "Liberation or Alternatively", at the back). Feriancová's project takes "Venice as a starting point and theme disappears in a return to intimate history: although pigeons, shells, masks and cityscapes are universal figures with a specific information value right here in Venice, their photographs or their collections were taken for purely personal reasons (the artist and her family) and have in fact nothing in common with Venice." [More images and text via Mousse].
the exhibition project Still the Same Place by Petra Feriancová and Zbyněk Baladrán curated by Marek Pokorný. - See more at: http://moussemagazine.it/55vb-czechoslovak-pavilion/#sthash.hhxgS6c4.dpuf


Also, Lebanon was represented by a wonderful new film, "Letter To A Refusing Pilot", by Akram Zaatari. The story is centered on a powerful real-life account of an Israeli Air Force fighter who was sent to destroy a school outside of Saida, the artist hometown, in the early 1980s but refused to do so, and instead dropped the bombs in the sea. As a kid, Zaatari would hear the story from his father, director of the very same school. Years later Zaatari discovered the story wasn't a rumor and that the pilot was real. 

Nina Siegal includes a quote by the artist on her New York Times article: “The importance of the story is that it gives the pilot a human face,” Mr. Zaatari said. “It gives what he is about to bomb, which is considered terrorist ground; it also gives that a human face. I think it’s important to remember in times of war that everyone is a human being. Taking it to this level humanizes it completely, and we’re not used to this at all.” 

"The film was shot in the neighborhood around the school, which has been rebuilt and incorporates aerial photographs, drawings, computer imaging and some personal documents from Mr. Zaatari’s own life to tell the story from the perspective of a teenage boy. In the Lebanese Pavilion at the Biennale, it is part of an installation that includes a reel film projector, a single movie theater chair and a number of cylindrical stools."

Zaatari's film in the Lebanese Pavilion in the Corderie.

Holland Cotter of the New York Times wrote on Alfredo Jaar’s show at the Chilean pavilion [two photos below], which is "centered around a sculpture that moves, an exact model of the Giardini campus that emerges from and sinks back into a vat of fetid-looking water. Mr. Jaar is telling a story about the alignment of art and power: Many of the older, pre-World War II pavilions are relics of a murderous nationalism were built as cultural trophies by economically competitive nations that created colonial empires and eventually led Europe into war."
 

Elsewhere in Venice, a number of Pavilions bid for our attention. Not least Angola, which won the Golden Lion for the Best National Participation. The question here was, as rightly stated by Filipa Ramos in her Art Agenda review, "How much of the Golden Lion for the best National Participation was due to Edson Chagas's "Luanda, Encyclopedic City" and how much of it was due to the gallery of Palazzo Cini, which hosts the Angolan Pavilion?" The impressive Cini collection of Renaissance works (Piero della Francesca, Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Pontormo...see photos below) is rarely open to the public. Chagas's low pillars of twenty-three off-set takeaway posters à la Felix González-Torres (though displayed on pallets), marked a contrast between classical products of Western culture and the photographed images of the streets of Luanda.

"The images consisted mostly of depictions of large pieces of junk (the seat of a broken office chair, a tattered soccer ball) that were displaced and then photographed by the artist in Luanda. Visitors were invited to collect the different images, thus producing a supersized album of all the gathered prints. Despite the naïve dualism generated by the blatant contrast between the two worlds (the location of production and location of display), the project presented an almost magical and secretive discovery to its visitors that was much in harmony with Massimiliano Gioni's exhibition's focus on parallel and lesser-known art histories."




Do check out – and leave plenty of time for – the Cyprus-Lithuania in Palasport "Giobatta Gianquinto" nearby the Arsenale entrance. The sports centre building alone is worth a visit. You'll be surprised to see such a large venue in what is seemingly such a small island. As Dan Fox of frieze writes "The Pavilion of Lithuania and Cyprus, held in a building one would never expect to find in Venice. An almost Brutalist-looking edifice, tucked next to the Arsenale, housed a huge, modern school gymnasium, where curator Raimundas Malasauskas had organized a show of performances, sculpture, painting, and dance in an environment that was about as un-Venetian as one could get ... What on earth was going on? What was the work and what wasn’t? For once it was nice to simply enjoy the mystery." 

Back to Quinn Latimer: "Maria Hassabi performed her intricate movement-based work on the steep, cinematic steps of the gymnasium, while far below, an installation of temporary walls made up of recycled walls from previous pavilions (by Gabriel Lester) and works by various artists—Jason Dodge, Elena Narbutaitė, and Dexter Sinister, among twelve others—looked, from above, as small and distant as a diorama." [Watch a video with interviews and images of the exhibition]


(Above) New York-based performance artist Maria Hassabi during Intermission (2013), surrounded with works by Phanos Kyriacou.


Another one to not miss is Richard Mosse's 'The Enclave' in the Irish Pavilion. The photo below doesn't do justice if you want a better idea to watch this wonderful 7min. video 'The Impossible Image' produced by frieze (and Vimeo staff pick!) in which you can hear the artist talking about the process of making the works. 

(Above) Multi-screen installation of Richard Moss' The Enclave in the Irish Pavilion in the Fondaco Marcello. 

Not to forget the Scottish Pavilion in the Palazzo Pisani which has one of the most solid shows in town, composed of three artists – Hayley Tompkins, Duncan Campbell and Corin Sworn. Filipa Ramos noted that "Hayley Tompkins’s floor installation of photographs and paintings puts together different scales of familiar, commonplace scenes and objects (from the depiction of a traffic jam to an electric plug or to the proliferation of plastic bottles) in such a way that they all become part of a set of recognizable, familiar presences."


Detail of  Hayley Tompkins's "Digital Light Pool (Orange)" (2013), composed of Acrylic on plastic trays, stock photographs, wooden boxes, glass, plastic bottles, watercolour.

Elsewhere in the city, dozens of Eventi Collaterali and other exhibitions piled up. Christy Lange wrote about one of the most talked-about events (particularly as queues became a real 'trending topic' in any conversation). Lange writes: "organized by the Fondazione Prada, the exhibition ‘When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969 / Venice 2013’ at Ca’ Corner della Regina ambitiously sets out to reconstruct Harald Szeemann’s seminal exhibition ‘Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form. Works – Concepts – Processes – Situations – Information’, originally staged at the Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland in 1969." (...) "The show also recreates the tile and wooden floors of Bern, and even imported and installed authentic radiators. The effect is not seamless; nor is meant to be. Instead, there are visible gaps where the white walls had to be cut to fit around the classical Venetian moldings, and the intricately painted wooden beams of the palazzo remain exposed overhead." (...) "Along with Szeemann’s preliminary sketches for the show’s poster, we also get to see evidence of the harsh reception the show received in the Swiss press: illustrated by several ridiculing cartoons in national newspapers, like one in which a cleaning woman forgets her mop bucket in the gallery, only to have it interpreted as a work of art by a museum guide."

Carol Vogel of the New York Times puts the exhibition into historical perspective: "Originally organized by Harald Szeemann, the Kunsthalle’s director at the time, the show is considered the first major exhibition of what was then regarded as radical art. It included little from outside the  Western Hemisphere and little by women, but it was the first big show to acknowledge a broad range of mixed-media work that fell under freshly coined terms like Arte Povera, Process Art, Anti-Form, Conceptual art and performance art. Its nearly 70 artists included Claes Oldenburg, Joseph Beuys, Eva Hesse and Bruce Nauman." (...) "Featured in the show, which ends on Nov. 3, are works from artists who were then emerging, including Carl Andre, Richard Artschwager, Alighiero Boetti, Sol LeWitt and Keith Sonnier. And when the curators were unable to locate a work of art, they just left a dotted outline of where the piece should have been placed — a ghost of what once was."

Ramos reminded readers of "Celant’s ongoing inquiry upon the possibilities of reproducibility—a line of research he has pursued since his early years as an exhibition maker—a step further, as he attempts to reproduce the unrepeatable, indeed to repeat the irreproducible."

Jannis Kounellis' "Untitled" (1969) was originally installed in the lower floor of the Kunsthalle Bern. Here it's on the second mezzanine floor of Ca' Corner della Regina. 

 Walter de Maria's "Art by Telephone" (1967). Reenacted.


 Richard Serra works from 1969.
 General view of the Schulwarte (third floor in the Fondazione Prada) which displayed works by Pino Pascali (floor), Marinus Boezem (left), Frank Lincoln Viner, Thomas Bang, Michael Buthe, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Paul Cotton, Ger van Elk, Rafael Ferrer, Hans Haacke, Roelof Louw, Emilio Prini, Allen Ruppersberg, Frank Lincoln Viner and William T. Wiley.

 Giovanni Anselmo's "Untitled" (floor, right); "Il cotone bagnato viene buttato sul vetro e ci resta" (left, wall) both from 1969; and the 1968 "Untitled" in the corner. (Displacement)

Szeemans' (pre-excell!) spreadsheet listing the artist's names, place of residence, title, technique, and measurements of the work to be displayed, and a projected travel and production budget.

Another interesting exhibition was the Future Generation Art Prize housed in the incredible  Palazzo Contarini Polignac nearby the Accademia. More photos here.

 Entrance to the exhibition. 

 Emily Roysdon, "Our Short Century", 2012. 

 Eva Kotátková, "Theatre of speaking objects (Becoming objects)", 2013.

Detail of Rayyane Tabet, "Architecture Lessons", 2012. From the series "Five Distant Memories: The Suitcase, The Room, The Toys, The Boat and Maradona". 

 Aurelien Froment, "Pulmo Marina", 2010.

And last but not least, the Palazzo Grassi's inauguration of Tadao Ando's Teatrino (or rather "Teatrone" as it's 1,000 square-meters and holds 225 seats), as stated by Ramos "a truly remarkable event for a country known for its epidemic of closing-down cinemas." During the opening days, the Teatrino screened Anri Sala’s "1395 Days Without Red" (2011), Philippe Parreno’s "Marilyn" (2012), and Loris Gréaud’s "The Snorks: A Concert for Creatures" (2012). This was undoubtedly the best contribution Pinault brought to this year's biennale. We agree with Christy Lange on that the exhibition "Prima Materia", curated by Caroline Bourgeois and Michael Govan at the Punta della Dogana "managed to reduce even good works of art to macho collections of ‘things’". The only room that was somehow 'saved' was the space mixing Japanese Mono-ha and Arte Povera with works by Merz, Paolini, Boetti, Penone, Sekine, Suga, Ufan, Koshimizu, Enokura (photo below). Adel Abdessemed's 2011 four life-sized sculptures of Christ modeled after the Crucifixion made of razor wire was one of the low points in Venice.
 
All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)
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Haegue Yang "Der Öffentlichkeit" commission and 'Ends of the Earth – Land Art to 1974' at Haus der Kunst, Munich

Haegue Yang has been the first artist to be commissioned for the DER ÖFFENTLICHKEIT – VON DEN FREUNDEN HAUS DER KUNST [To the Public – from the friends of Haus der Kunst] series, which will take place on a yearly basis in the 800 square-metre Middle Hall of Münich's Haus der Kunst

Her installation 'Accommodating the Epic Dispersion – On Non-cathartic Volume of Dispersion', organised by Haus der Kunst curator Julienne Lorz, and related to her dOCUMENTA 13 contribution, "consists of Venetian blinds suspended from the ceiling. These elements are structured in three autonomous, yet united parts: A massive towering structure, which is confrontationally located at the hall's entrance; a flat vertical grid wall, and a voluminous rectangle on top, which is gradually fragmented toward the floor. Depending on the angle of approach, the blinds overlap in a varying number of layers, and the interplay of light and shadow changes depending on the location. At times, the installation appears completely opaque, and at others, completely translucent." (text from the website). 


On view until 22 September 2013. More info and photos here.



Also on view at Haus der Kunst is the much awaited 'Ends of the Earth – Land Art to 1974' (until 20 January 2013) organised in collaboration with The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA – see website of the exhibition). The show is notable for its careful and thoroughly-researched reconsideration of the idea of Land art, and the way in which it incorporates many artists outside of the usual American white male practicioners associated with the term. (And also through its inclusion of three part-reconstructions of seminal exhibitions/projects: "Earthworks" at Virginia Dwan Gallery, Willoughby Sharp's "Earth Art" as well as Gerry Schum's "Fernsehgalerie Land Art" ). Unfortunately, this is its only iteration on its European tour.


Exhibition poster with an image of the 1967-74 film "Athmospheres: Duration Performances" by Judy Chicago.


  Hans Haacke's "Grass Grows" (1969–2012) at the entrance to the museum.


Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" (1970) film projected in the background and "A Nonsite (Pine Barrens)" from 1968 in the foreground.


Robert Morris' "Earthwork aka Untitled (Dirt)" (1968–2012) a 2000-pound pile of earth, grease, peat moss, brick, steel, copper, aluminum, brass, zinc and felt – urban debris gathered from the surrounding New York environs, originally made for the 1968 exhibition at Virginia Dwan Gallery.


Two views (above and below) of Joshua Neustein's 1970 "Road Piece", originally presented in the Tel Aviv Art Museum and remade for the first time for 'Ends of the Earth' exhibition.



All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

"Der Öffentlichkeit – Von den Freunden Haus der Kunst", begins on November 9

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=58839#.UJ6Z7YVe6kI[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org
"Der Öffentlichkeit – Von den Freunden Haus der Kunst",

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=58839#.UJ6Z7YVe6kI[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org
"Der Öffentlichkeit – Von den Freunden Haus der Kunst",

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=58839#.UJ6Z7YVe6kI[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org
"Der Öffentlichkeit – Von den Freunden Haus der Kunst",

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=58839#.UJ6Z7YVe6kI[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org
"Der Öffentlichkeit – Von den Freunden Haus der Kunst",

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=58839#.UJ6Z7YVe6kI[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org
As announced in May, this installation is the first in a series of commissioned work that will be exhibited in the museum's 800 square-meter Middle Hall over a period of one year. The series, "Der Öffentlichkeit – Von den Freunden Haus der Kunst", begins on November 9.

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=58839#.UJ6Z7YVe6kI[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org
"Accommodating the Epic Dispersion – On Non-cathartic Volume of Dispersion", 2012.

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Latitudes to facilitate the Nature Addicts Fund Travelling Academy, 11–15 September 2012, organised within the Maybe Education and Public Programs of dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel

 Photo: Latitudes

[English]

Latitudes has been invited to facilitate the working sessions of the first Nature Addicts Fund Travelling Academy to be held between 11–15 September 2012, coinciding with the last week of dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel.

Fifteen European artists have been selected by the fund to discuss their work, participate in performances and guided tours by dOCUMENTA (13) artists Maria Thereza Alves, Toril Johannessen and Claire Pentecost, and attend the two-day conference On Seeds and Multispecies Intra-Action: Disowning Life on September 10 and September 15, organised within the Maybe Education and Public Programs of dOCUMENTA (13).

The artists participating in this iteration of the Nature Addicts Fund Travelling Academy are (in alphabetical order): Ackroyd/Harvey, UK; Geir Backe Altern, N; Linus Ersson, SW; Aurélien Gamboni, FR/CH; Fernando Garcia Dory, ES; Mustafa Kaplan, TU; Zissis Kotionis, GR; Julia Mandle, USA/NL; Clare Patey, UK; Erik Samakh, FR; Asa Sonjasdotter, SW/D; Elisa Strinna, IT; Mette Ingvarsten, DK.

 
 Friedrichsplatz, Kassel. Photo: Latitudes.
[Español]

Latitudes ha sido invitada a facilitar los encuentros de la primera Nature Addict Fund Traveling Academy que tendrá lugar entre el 11 y 15 de septiembre 2012, coincidiendo con la clausura de dOCUMENTA (13) en Kassel.

Quince artistas han sido seleccionados por la fundación para presentar su trabajo, participar en performances y visitas guiadas por las artistas participantes en dOCUMENTA (13) Maria Thereza Alves, Toril Johannessen y Claire Pentecost, así como asistir a los dos días de la conferencia On Seeds and Multispecies Intra-Action: Disowning Life que tendrá lugar el 10 septiembre y 15 septiembre, organizada por el Maybe Education and Public Programs de dOCUMENTA (13).

Lxs artistas participantes en esta edición de la Nature Addicts Fund Travelling Academy son (en orden alfabético): Ackroyd/Harvey, UK; Geir Backe Altern, N; Linus Ersson, SW; Aurélien Gamboni, FR/CH; Fernando Garcia Dory, ES; Mustafa Kaplan, TU; Zissis Kotionis, GR; Julia Mandle, USA/NL; Clare Patey, UK; Erik Samakh, FR; Asa Sonjasdotter, SW/D; Elisa Strinna, IT; Mette Ingvarsten, DK.


All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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Latitudes participates in the "Readers Circle: 100 Notes–100 Thoughts" programme organised by the Maybe Education and Public Programs of dOCUMENTA (13)


| UK |

On September 9th at 19h, Latitudes will be participating in the "Readers Circle: 100 Notes - 100 Thoughts" programme organised within the Maybe Education and Public Programs of dOCUMENTA (13), for which they will be reading the publication "No. 008: Lawrence Weiner – IF IN FACT THERE IS A CONTEXT" (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011).


| ES |

El domingo 9 septiembre a las 19h, Latitudes participará en el "Readers Circle: 100 Notes - 100 Thoughts" programme organizado como parte del Maybe Education and Public Programs de dOCUMENTA (13), durante el cual leerán la publicación "No. 008: Lawrence Weiner – IF IN FACT THERE IS A CONTEXT" (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011).

"Lawrence Weiner – If in Fact There Is a Context" (2011)
by Lawrence Weiner
Series: dOCUMENTA (13): 100 Notizen - 100 Gedanken No. 008
English, 24 pp., 10.60 x 14.90 cm, softcover
ISBN 978-3-7757-2857-7
Buy here

All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)

Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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dOCUMENTA (13) artists and Latitudes

dOCUMENTA (13) continues in Kassel until 16 September 2012. Over the years we've had the pleasure to work with many of the featured artists in various ways, from commissions to symposia, to interviews. Here's a partial view of dOCUMENTA (13) through the projects of Latitudes.

Amy Balkin's work in the Friedericianum documents her attempt to have the world's atmosphere added to the UNESCO World Heritage List. Latitudes presented an earlier iteration of this work, Public Smog (2004-ongoing), in Greenwashing. Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin in 2008. She also contributed to Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook with her This is the Public Domain Project (2003–ongoing).



Amy Balkin's 'The is the Public Domain', in Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook. Photo: Robert Justamante. Courtesy: Latitudes.


Both Greenwashing and Land, Art also included the work of Maria Thereza Alves (whose work about Lake Chalco in Mexico City is included in the Ottoneum), the latter with the text 'No Brazil Without Us' by Alves, together with another dOCUMENTA (13) artist, Jimmie Durham. Latitudes also presented Alves' work 'The Sun' (2006, 5'03") in the 2008 film programme ‘A Stake in the Mud, A Hole in the Reel. Land Art's Expanded Field 1968–2008', which began at the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City and toured to eight more venues between April and October 2008. The film features the story of Viganella in the Italian Alps, a small village surrounded by a steep valley that does not allow any direct sunlight during the winter months. Viganella's 200 inhabitants decided to place a large computer-operated mirror at a strategic angle on the south-facing slope on the mountainside in order to reflect the sun on the village’s main piazza.

Mariana Castillo Deball – as uqbar, with Irene Kopelman – was one of the four exhibitions in Latitudes' 2009 series Amikejo at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC), León, Spain: "a psychedelic chiral ecosystem, featuring hanging papier-mâché epiphyte sculptures and ... fables among non-humans and drawings of hybrid creatures”. Castillo Deball was also part of our film programme What are we going to do after we’ve done what we’re going to do next?, for The Uncertainty Principle, at MACBA, Barcelona in June 2009, a project which functioned as a 'trailer' for Sequelism Part 3: Possible, Probable, or Preferable Futures, the exhibition we curated with Nav Haq at Arnolfini, Bristol, 18 July–20 September 2009. Both the latter projects featured Castillo Deball's Nowhere was Tomorrow (2007) her film which weaves the stories of a defunct accelerating ageing machine, a sprawling fig tree and the remains of a Roman bath in Serbia. 


Mariana Castillo Deball, 'It rises or falls depending on whether you're coming or going. If you are leaving, it's uphill; but as you arrive it's downhill', 2006. 'Extraordinary Rendition', NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona, 22 March – 19 May 2007. Photo: Robert Justamante. Courtesy: Latitudes.

Extraordinary Rendition, which took place at NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona, 22 March–19 May 2007, included Castillo Deball's installation It rises or falls... (2006) in which she revisited a popular legend around the looting and transportation of the colossal stone statue of Tláloc to the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City in a series of lithographs. These were presented in parallel with a selection of audio interviews with antique dealers in Amsterdam and Barcelona, who discussed their profession's role in the creation of value, and the uncertainties of the market. Roman Ondák, whose work appears in the Neue Galerie at dOCUMENTA (13) was also part of Extraordinary Rendition with the work Untitled (Traffic), 2001, as was Natascha Sadr Haghighian (whose work in Kassel can be found on a slope of the Karlsaue park), here with the short video Embargo Embargo (2003) and the sound installation Elsewhere 3 (2005/7).

Mario Garcia Torres's film Abandoned and Forgotten Land Works That Are Not Necessarily Meant To Be Seen As Art (2004) was – alongside Francis Alÿs – a part of the Latitudes' film programme A Stake in the Mud, A Hole in the Reel. Land Art's Expanded Field 1968–2008, which premiered at the Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico, in April 2008, before a seven-venue tour in Europe. Judith Hopf & Deborah Schamoni's Hospital Bone Dance (2005) was part of X, Y, etc.! a video programme made for Artissima 15 in 2008 which was motivated by the methodological project of Charles Fort, while an article about Emily Jacir by Greg Barton featured in The Last Newspaper (The Last Express).

Renata Lucas's work at dOCUMENTA (13) imagines a fictional monument underneath Kassel. She was one of the four artist tutors who led a week-long workshop during Campus, the unaccredited art school directed by Latitudes for the Espai Cultural Caja Madrid Barcelona in summer 2011.


'Emergencies and Risk' seminar at the Sharjah Biennial 8 symposium. Michael Rakowitz with Susi Platt (Architecture for Humanity's leading post-Tsunami reconstruction designer, Sri Lanka) and Mehdi Sabet (Associate Professor, Architecture & Interior Design, School of Architecture and Design, AUS). Photo: Latitudes.

Michael Rakowitz
led a seminar on 'Emergencies and Risk' as part of the three-day symposium Latitudes organized for the 8th Sharjah Biennial, the United Arab Emirates in April 2007. An interview with Rakowitz by MoMA Ps1 curator Peter Eleey – entitled 'We Sell Iraqi Dates' – featured in UOVO/14 Ecology, Luxury & Degradation, which Latitudes guest edited in summer 2007. (UOVO/14 also includes an article by dOCUMENTA (13) Core Agent Chus Martínez on Arturas Raila).


Lawrence Weiner's work for dOCUMENTA (13) is inscribed on the glass wall in the Rotunda of the Fridericianum "brain". In 2008, Latitudes presented a new project with Weiner in Barcelona's Fundació Suñol entitled THE CREST OF A WAVE. On 9 September 2012, 7pm, Latitudes will be reading Weiner's "008: Lawrence Weiner: IF IN FACT THERE IS A CONTEXT" as part of dOCUMENTA (13) "Readers’ Circle: 100 Notes–100 Thoughts".


  Gustav Metzger's RAF/ Reduce Art Flights. Photo: Latitudes.

Gustav Metzger's RAF/ Reduce Art Flights project was implemented and presented as part of Greenwashing. Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin in 2008, and later included in the 2009 exhibition 'Gustav Metzger, Decades 1959–2009' at the Serpentine Gallery in London. Serpentine Gallery curator Sophie O'Brien wrote this feature on Metzger for Latitudes' project The Last Newspaper (The Last Monitor). 

During The Dutch Assembly at ARCOmadrid 2012, Kunstverein Amsterdam's 'KV Auction' event was hosted by Gabriel Lester, whose Music for Department Stores (2012) can be found (or rather listened to) in Kassel's Kaufhaus. Lester has a further work in the vast Karlsaue Park – Transition 2012 (2012) – which also hosts the work of Maria Loboda. Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes & des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, at Meessen De Clercq, Brussels, Belgium, 25 February–16 April 2011 included Loboda as one of its five artists. She presented two works which incorporated printed fabric patterns inspired by the designs of Sonia Delaunay, Lotte Frömmel-Fochler and Mitzi Friedmann-Otten. Furthermore, The Dutch Assembly at ARCOmadrid 2012 also featured Rabih Mroué as the guest of BAK, Utrecht.


Tue Greenfort, Untitled, installation of 3 transparent-sided Eurobins outside the exit ramp of Frieze Art Fair, Regents Park, London, October 2008. Photo: Latitudes

Also in the Karlsaue Park is The Worldly House, a multispecies archive project put together by Tue Greenfort. Latitudes collaborated with Greenfort on several occasions, notably for a public-realm commission in London in conjunction with the Royal Society of Arts, and through contributions to the magazine UOVO/14, the exhibition Greenwashing, and the publication Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook. The latter two projects also included works by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. (And in addition, dOCUMENTA (13) artists Francis Alÿs, Brian Jungen and Natascha Sadr Haghighian also featured in Land, Art.)

Haris Epaminonda and Daniel Gustav Cramer's work at dOCUMENTA (13) take over two floors and the attic of an office building behind the Hauptbahnhof. 'The Garden of Forking Paths', which Latitudes presented at Maisterravalbuena, Madrid, 28 May–31 July 2009, featured the duo's The Infinite Library (2007–ongoing), a seemingly arbitrary archive of spliced publications. Elsewhere in the Hauptbahnhof 'constellation' Lara Favaretto's Momentary Monument IV (2012) comprised a dramatic mass of scrap metal. Mariana Cánepa Luna's interview with Favaretto was published in UOVO 16, January 2008 (pdf here). Haegue Yang was the subject of an interview by Doryun Chong in UOVO/14, Ecology, Luxury & Degradation.


Haegue Yang on the cover of 'The Last Star-Ledger' as part of 'The Last Newspaper', New Museum, New York, 2010. Photo: Latitudes
Yang was also our cover star for The Last Newspaper's The Last Star-Ledger, as well as presenting a major installation as part of Sequelism Part 3: Possible, Probable, or Preferable Futures, Arnolfini, Bristol. (You can download a pdf of Max Andrews's 2009 essay for 'Towards Haegue Yang’s Blind Rooms', published in Haegue Yang. Symmetric Inequality / Desigualdad Simétrica, Sala Rekalde, in English or Español. Sticking with writings, you can check out Andrews's essay on Dora García for Frieze here).


Ines Schaber, Picture Mining. In The Last Newspaper's The Last Gazette, 2010. Photo: Joel Stillman.

Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri – as eXplo – spoke at the symposium Latitudes put together for 'Art, Ecology and the Politics of Change', Sharjah Biennial 8, United Arab Emirates, in April 2007. Last but not least, Ines Schaber's work at dOCUMENTA (13) explores the history of the former monastery, workhouse, and correctional facility at Breitenau. For The Last Newspaper's The Last Gazette, Schaber presented Picture Mining, her research into Lewis Hine in the context of the Corbis archive, housed in a former mine in Pennsylvania.

Read our report dOCUMENTA (13), with photos and critics' comments. Full photo tour here.



All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (unless credited otherwise in the caption)

Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Newsletter #45 – Summer 2012


Newsletter #45
http://mad.ly/c60ad2 (in English) 
http://mad.ly/32fed2 (en Español)

Latitudes' current and forthcoming projects:

#OpenCurating, BCN Producció 2012 Research Grant, throughout 2012 + info...

Facilitators of the second Nature Addicts Fund Travelling Academy, 11–15 September, Kassel. Organised within the Maybe Education and Public Programs of dOCUMENTA (13). + info...

'Projects 2005–2012 / Incidents of Travel', in La Sucursal, Casa del Lago, Mexico City, Mexico, 27 September–5 November 2012. + info...

2005–12 Newsletters here.
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dOCUMENTA (13) in pictures & as seen by the critics, 9 June–16 September 2012

 View of Kassel's Friedrichsplatz.

How can we begin to unpack the complex, multilayered, plural and expansive dOCUMENTA (13)? As the paranormal researcher Charles Fort wrote 'One measures a circle, beginning anywhere'. We photodocumented some of the works on view, and read (and still reading, therefore this blog will evolve over time by incorporating quotations from newly published commentary) several reviews by art writers and critics throughout the past few days which deserve re-reading and further sharing. Here are some highlights of the 2013 iteration.

The New York Times' review by Robert Smith sets the tone: "Ms. Christov-Bakargiev has assembled an immense, unruly organism of a show. It is alternately inspiring — almost visionary — and insufferable, innovative and predictable, meticulous and sentimentally precious. I would not have missed this seething, shape-shifting extravaganza for the world, and I’d rather not see its like again, at least not on this dwarfing, imperious, self-canceling scale."


Filipa Ramos' review on Art Agenda "Postcard from Kassel", begins unraveling the Kunsthalle Fridericianum where we started our tour.


(...) the total bareness of the first rooms of the canonical core, the Kunsthalle Fridericianum, is broken by the display of Kai Althoff’s letter to Christov-Bakargiev explaining his decision not to take part in the exhibition (“life” was more important)—although a work of Althoff’s is, despite this, still featured in the Rotunda [not in the catalogue].


Kay Altoff's letter on display in a vitrine occupies the first empty room of the Fridericianum only accompanied by Ryan Gander's light breeze titled "I Need Some Meaning I can Memorise [The Invisible Pull], 2012. More images of Altoff's letter here via Contemporary Art Daily.

(...) "Before getting there, Ryan Gander’s breeze, I Need Some Meaning I Can Memorise (The Invisible Pull) (2012)—a light wind that caresses one’s skin and hair—and Ceal Floyer’s audio piece, a melodious promise, repeated to exhaustion, of “So I’ll just keep on… till I get it right” (‘Til I Get It Right, 2005), hail the most attentive spectators.

The Guardian's critic Adrian Searle, also highlighted one of wonderful treats in the Fridericianum, the "(...) 400 beautiful, modest postcard-sized paintings of different varieties of apple, by Bavarian pastor and artist Korbinian Aigner. Imprisoned for his anti-Nazi sermons, Aigner worked as a gardener in Dachau and Sachsenhausen, where he cultivated several new varieties, one for each year of his internment. There's pathos here, among these rows of painted apples." [3D view of the room here]




Korbinian Aigner's 372 gouache and pencil drawings of "Apples" made between 1912-60s.

Making way up the Kunsthalle Fridericianum frieze magazine's assistant editor Christy Lange relates her highlights of the venue:

(...) The rest of the proved somewhat uneven in tone: lurching from Goshka Macuga’s large-scale digitally-printed black and white tapestry of a tableaux at a dOCUMENTA-related event in Kabul (featuring an oversized cobra front and centre), to the delicate and haunting hand-woven tapestries of Hannah Ryggen (1894–1970), who reproduced violent scenes of wars and conflicts in a medium that few in the 1930s and 40s would have thought to use to do so. [Here a great set of detailed photographs of Ryggen's work here via Contemporary Art Daily and a 3D view here]


Goshka Macuga's tapestry "Of what is, that it is; of what is not, that is not 1", 2012. 5.2 x 17,4m.

"Both of these works – Lange continues – focusing on weaving dovetailed nicely (if not a bit obviously) with one of the venue’s highlights: Mario García Torres’s installation, which documented his search for the One Hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, a lodging house run by and resided in by Alighiero Boetti from 1971 until 1977, where Boetti worked to produce his famous series of tapestries made by Afghan weavers (which were supposed to appear in documenta 5, but never did)." [3D view of this piece here]



Mario García Torres at the Fridericianum's first floor.

(...) In the Fridericianum’s cramped Rotunda space, the exhibition displayed the kinds of curatorial flourishes that often seem to accompany a certain kind of anthropological curating that capriciously mixes anthropological artefacts and found objects with artworks. This kind of museological, cabinet-of-curiosities approach, having already been a trope of contemporary artists for a while now, seems especially dated in the hands of a curator. In this darkened space crammed with spot-lit vitrines, I had trouble making the connections between Giorgio Morandi’s paintings, displayed along with actual objects from his studio, and the neighbouring vitrines containing ‘Bactrian Princesses’ – a series of small sculptures of seated women created in the late 3rd and early 2nd century BC in what is now modern-day Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan. While these artworks and artefacts are no doubt fascinating, there is no apparent justification for their inclusion together, other than their need to be housed in vitrines, and the fact they probably couldn’t have been procured for any contemporary art exhibition other than this one.


Rotunda in the Fridericianum: the brain. As written in the Guidebook: "an associative space of research where a number of artworks, objects and documents are brought together in lieu of a concept". 

Filipa Ramos rightly observed the "(...) large amount of micro-museums, from Pedro Reyes’s Museum of Hypothetical Lifetimes (2011), an ode to human nature and social structure, to Kader Attia’s The Repair from Occident to Extra-Occidental Cultures (2012)—a horrifying yet astonishing research project on the impact and effects of francophone colonialism; to Michael Rakowitz’s cabinets of destroyed or lost books, and many, many others."

  Kader Attia's "The Repair", 2012. Slideshow projection and artefacts from Africa.


Attia’s 'Repair From Occident to Extra-Occidental Cultures', "[is ] a daunting installation that reflects on art, colonialism and body scarification in Africa but draws its main force from a set of large carved-wood busts depicting the horrific face wounds suffered by European soldiers in World War I. Gripping yet also illustrational, the piece exemplifies several archive-like works here. It also reflects the continuing hegemony of late-late Conceptualism — now extravagantly materialized and labour-intensive — over the international exhibition circuit." (Roberta Smith in The New York Times). [3D view of this room here].

Mariana Castillo Deball's "Uncomfortable Objects. Finding Oneself Outside", 2012. 
Many more pictures of this wonderful work here, by Contemporary Art Daily. Otherwise a 3D view here.

Christy Lange continued to the Ottoneum, which in her opinion "(...) yielded some predictable ‘eco-related’ contributions scattered among the natural history museum displays of taxidermied animals and animal skeletons. (...) it’s worth the trip upstairs to see Mark Dion’s specially commissioned installation. Here he designed an elaborate wooden display case to house the Ottoneum’s unique ‘Schildbach Xylotheque’ – a ‘wood library’ made in 1771–79 of several hundred books carved out of different species of trees. The books are actually boxes that house dioramas inside. Dion’s installation and Schildbach’s library is a felicitous match made in nerd heaven." [360º panoramic view here]



Mark Dion, recuperates Carl Schildbach's 18th Century 'Schildbach Xylotheque' (a wood library) with a new hexagonal display chamber.

"Nearby in the Neue Galerie, several visitors were fawning in unabashed awe and wonder over Geoffrey Farmer’s impressive installation, which evokes that same sort instantaneous reaction that Christian Marclay’s The Clock recently did, perhaps because of its sheer scale, meticulous detail and the obvious time and manual labour it took to create it." [See panoramic view here]



 Geoffrey Farmer's "Leaves of Grass", with thousands of pictures cut from five decades of Life magazine, in the Neue Galerie.

 Adriana Lara's "Purpose", 2012, also at the Neue Galerie, accompanied by sculptures by Brazilian Maria Martins.


Rossella Biscotti, The Trial, 2010-12, in the Neue Gallerie. Concrete sculptures made from casts from the architectural features of the courtroom where members of the extra-parliamentary left-wing Autonomia Operaia (including Antonio Negri and other intellectuals), were accused of being ideologically and morally responsible for Italian terrorism in the 1970s.

(...) On a side street near the Rathaus, in a dark hall in a backyard of a house, was Tino Sehgal’s installation, in which, as it only became clear once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, are about 20 young men and women in a circle chanting, singing, marching, and slouching against the wall. At a certain point, still in the dark, they start conversing about ‘income’ and ‘output’ and ‘satisfaction’ – I guess the point at which it starts to feel like a Tino Sehgal performance? But the performance still captivates for two main reasons: though it takes place in darkness, it unexpectedly becomes about our vision, or the limits thereof, more than any of our other senses. And because it still has that skilful Sehgal twist, which all his best piece have, by which you, the audience member, suddenly and unexpectedly find yourself centre stage, playing the somewhat sheepish performer. 

Adrian Searle also favourited Sehgal's "(...) magnificent performance piece behind a decaying Huguenot house. Performers stamp and sing, whisper, holler and dance. They go through little routines as I stumble between them. Sehgal's exhilarating 'This Variation' is among the best things in Documenta, as is choreographer Jérôme Bel's Disabled Theatre, a confrontational performance made in collaboration with actors with learning difficulties. Both Bel's and Sehgal's work concern presence and presentness, what it means to be a spectator." [In depth text on Sehgal's 'This variation' art-dance-music piece also by Adrian Searle here].



Façade of Kunsthalle Fridericianum.

Dan Fox, Senior Editor of frieze magazine, analisis went on describing the "punch-drunk with politically hectoring or ‘we are the world’ approaches to large-scale exhibition making that would make even Bono seem modest in his outlook, I expected more of the same, yet dOCUMENTA (13) is an exhibition of subtlety and imagination, if somewhat over-optimistic in its attempts to get audiences to engage with other areas of intellectual activity, such as quantum physicists (as could be found in the Fridericianum, next to Mario García Torres’ work about Alighiero Boetti’s One Hotel in Kabul)." Fox ends his report reflecting on this year's title: "(...) However, one crucial question remains. Does the overlaboured spelling ‘dOCUMENTA (13)’ herald a return of the early 1990s exhibition title? ‘Site/[in–]Sight’, ‘(in–)TERRA–gating Gender’…"

Sam Thorne's overview of Karlsaue's park: "Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev offered artists a prefab house to work with. Responses range from Pedro Reyes’s ‘sanatorium’ (offering art-themed counselling) and Raimundas Malašauskas and Marcos Lutyens’s hypnosis sessions to mini solo presentations, by artists including Rosemarie Trockel and Joan Jonas. Elsewhere, there are various takes on public sculpture, from gimmicky pieces like Massimo Bartolini’s wave pool and Anri Sala’s perspectivally-skewed clock [Latitudes' note: it seems to us that many failed to understand that the clock was 'frontly' visible from one of the telescopes (the Refraktor Linsenteleskop, 1976) placed on the top floor of the Orangerie] to a characteristically elegant collection of works by Carol Bove." 


 Pedro Reyes, Sanatorium, at Karlsaue Park, (as described in D13's website) "an ongoing performative project that involves eight types of therapy sessions offered to visitors of dOCUMENTA (13) “to treat urban ills.” The content and procedures for these sessions are prepared by the artist and carried out by art students who are trained by Reyes as therapists, analysts, and tutors to the visitors."
 
 Anri Sala, Clocked Perspective, 2012, at the far end of the Hirschgraben, one of the two canals in the Karlsaue park. More images here via Contemporary Art Daily.


 Carol Bove's tableau of elements in the Flora garden of the Karlsaue Park.

Thorne continues "Highlights for me included Pierre Huyghe’s beehive-headed (Maillol?) sculpture, installed in a swampy copse and invigilated by a pink-legged dog, in earshot of an immersive, atavistic sound piece by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. [See 3D view here] More difficult to locate is a shaded house crammed full of new and old work by the Brazilian septuagenarian Anna Maria Maiolino – though it’s well worth finding."

Pierre Huyghe's "Untilled. Live things and inanimate things, made and not made" (2011–12) photographed during the opening week. An entropic gesamtkunstwerk of plants, bees, concrete, mud, plants, tree branches, bacteria, dogs, construction materials... 3D view of the piece here


 Huyghe's piece photographed 100 days after during the last week of documenta (13). 


Jerry Saltz on Huyghe's work: "If anything here will put you in a mind to give up on definitions, though, it’s Pierre Huyghe’s craterlike ruins patrolled by two dogs at the far end of the park. (...) This is a place of no-narrative, an incubation chamber of new orders." 

 Anna Maria Maiolino, "Here & there" (2012) different coloured modeled clay cover the rooms of the former gardener's house in Karlsaue park.

 Brian Jungen's "Dog Run", 2012, a play zone only permitted for dogs and their owners at Karlsaue park. [3D view here]

Also at the Karlsaue park, behind the Orangerie was one of the contributions by US artist-activists collective Critical Art Ensemble's helicopter rides, a work titled “A Public Misery Project: A Temporary Message to Global Economic Inequality”, which as described by Rachel Corbett from artnet involves:

(...) erecting a crane-sized bar graph depicting wealth disparity in America, with every 1cm representing $100 and, when it got too tall, using a helicopter to soar 225 meters up in the sky to represent, hyperbolically, the top 1%. (...) On opening day, a red carpet stretched along the grass leading the 50 people who had bought tickets for a flight. The 99%, meanwhile, could pay a coin of their choice in any currency for a lottery ticket and the chance to win a ride. Between 10 am and 8 pm, the Critical Art Ensemble planned to give about 300 rides.

Jerry Saltz wasn't at all convinced about their contribution, and labelled the work 'immoral': (...) "viewers ride in a helicopter to heights corresponding to their net worth. The work is supposedly about wealth accumulation and is an anti-market gesture. Surely it cost more to stage for a day than many museums and galleries can spend or generate in a year, or than most artists earn in a lifetime."

 
Critical Art Ensemble's “A Public Misery Project: A Temporary Message to Global Economic Inequality”.

Natascha Sadr Haghighian's "Greening the rubble of Kassel: construction work on the war debris heaped up along the Karsaue for the Federal Horticulture Show". Picture of the staircase that connects Schöne Aussicht with the Karlsaue park via an 'alternative' route on a slope. "Onomatopoeic animal sounds in different languages emanate from the bushes and trees as the visitor descends to the park. The web-based trail d(13)pfad.de is a collaboration with Pola Sieverding and accompanies the physical trail. It contains materials connecting to the rubble, the plants, the animals, the people and the languages Natascha and Pola encountered on the trail." (from D13's web)

 Jimmie Durham's "The History of Europe" (2011) in a (hot) greenhouse at Karlsaue park. 
Additional images here by Contemporary Art Daily.


 Maria Loboda's moving forest of potted cypress trees "The Work is Dedicated to an Emperor" (2012). The army of trees is being moved through the landscape during the exhibition period following different military positions, progressively conquering the Orangerie. 

Jörg Heiser's reviewed Kassel's off-the-main-site venues on frieze blog, starting with a 'heads up' around their number and distance:

Given that there are 30 documenta sites in Kassel – one of which, the vast Karlsaue park, features 53 projects alone – you might be tempted to skip these off-the-main-sites ones. Especially if you also planned to take a few weeks off and devote a lot of time and money to also visit the official documenta events scheduled to take place in Egypt, Afghanistan, and rural Canada. (There seems to be a logic of overbidding in place: not only more, but evermore remote and difficult sites; in 2002, there were documenta ‘platforms’ in Lagos or the Caribbean; in 2007, ElBulli restaurant in Spain was declared a site; so how could the director of the next documenta in 2017 top that – Antarctica? Waziristan? Chernobyl? The moon?)

(...) A few houses down the street is an elegantly modest presentation by Francis Alÿs of postcard-size paintings juxtaposing fragmented scenes from Kabul with abstract colour studies reminiscent of television test screens, testifying to doubts about the possibilities of ‘appropriately’ representing a war-torn nation but the need to still do so (while a simple note pinned to a board read, line after line, ’1943, I think about Morandi painting on top of a hill surrounded by fascism, I think about Picabia finding inspiration in soft porn magazines on the Côte d’Azur… I think about Leni Riefenstahl filming Tiefland with extras from concentration camps… I think about Blinky Palermo born in the rubbles of Leipzig…’). 

 Francis Alÿs in a former bakery in Obere Karlsstr. 4

Heiser also highlights Tacita Dean, whose "film project involving a cameraman commissioned to film in various locations in Kabul didn’t come through because the footage turned out to be flawed, but Dean made the best of it by realizing a whole set of large-scale chalk on blackboard ‘murals’ filling most walls in a former tax office space [in Spohrstr.7] dominated by a beautiful brass-railed staircase and balustrade."

Adrian Searle went on describing Dean's blackboard drawings: "(...) some are near-empty, just turbid blackness; others are filled with moiling rapids and rushing rivers. There are sunlit mountaintops, dusty avalanches, chalky wipe-outs. The six panels are a sort of storyboard, an evocation of an elsewhere. Dean's drawings are, I think, about time: geological time, the flash of a life, a passing thought."

Tacita Dean, Fatigues (2012). Blackboard-drawings in a former tax office. 
More detailed photos via Contemporary Art Daily.

Back to Heiser's words – he made his way to the vaults of a bunker underneath Kassel's vineyard terrace: "(...) Here, Allora & Calzadilla’s film Raptor’s Rapture (2012) was congenially placed: its point of departure is the unearthing, in 2009 in a cave in Southern Germany, of a flute that was carved 35000 years ago from a griffon vulture’s bone. The artists asked a flautist to try playing the flute in a studio setting confronting her with the presence of a living griffon vulture. The animal reacted rather stoically to the flautist’s systematic probing of different techniques of blowing, suggesting a time capsule being opened for the first time (the equivalent of archaeologists in the distant future retrieving data from an ancient computer hard drive). Given that the griffon vulture itself is a highly endangered species, the staging of the animal listening to an eery tune whistled on a bone of its one species nevertheless had an intentionally perverse and tautological undertone, emphasized by the slow and painstakingly precise camera work."

Christodoulos Panayiotou' "Independence Street", 2012: electricity poles and cables removed from Odos Anexartisias street in Limassol, Cyprus. "The Sea", 2012: ceramic tiles from Cyprus lined up in the exhibition space using water from the Mediterranean Sea. [3D view of this room here.]

And then concludes with a long description of his experience when seeing Jérome Bêl’s 'Disabled Theatre' (2012) performance piece which "carried all the way through 90 minutes of uneasy, preconception-probing estrangement and empathy."

The curtain opens and a stoically calm ‘instructor’ seated at the side of the stage, operating a simple p.a. system and also doubling as a translator from German into English, announces that the actors of the piece have been asked by Bel to first appear, one at a time, on stage to stand still for about a minute. The eleven protagonists do so, and after a short while it becomes clear that the title of the piece is to be taken literally: a majority of them appear to be handicapped given the physical attributes of Down Syndrome. This creates obvious unease on the part of a self-assumingly ‘intelligent’ audience in terms of staring at a supposedly ‘handicapped’ person in such a way as if subjected to enforced voyeurism. But this was only the first of five stages that gradually unravelled that very unease, however never giving in to simple comic relief, cynicism, or sentimentality. The second part again announced and explained in simple terms just as the following ones, involved a microphone stand being put up at the same spot at the centre of the stage, this time involving the protagonists giving their name, age, and profession. As for profession, all of them said “actor” – which is indeed the case, since they are members of the Zurich-based theatre group HORA. The third part involved the question of them being asked what their disability was – and they simply stated it on a spectrum from learning disability to the different terminologies of ‘Down Syndrome’, ‘Trisomy 21’, or, as one protagonist said of herself in a proud retort to medicinal as well as derogative terminology, ‘I’m a fucking mongoloid’.

The fourth and fifth part followed essentially the classic logic of climax and denouement: the fourth involved seven of the actors doing short dance performances according to their individual musical choreographical choices. (...). ‘Dancing Queen’ by Abba is a song that moves me even if it is played in a Muzak version in a hotel lobby; here the same performer who had described herself as ‘mongoloid’ danced to it with Heavy Metal dedication – the applause was roaring, and mixed feelings gave way to a momentary rush of shared enthusiasm. But the fifth and last act involved the simple question put to the performers what they thought of Bel’s piece: some simply said ‘great’ or ‘good’, while others went into detail and told little stories. One of them quoted his mother saying she thought it was a freakshow but that she liked it anyway. Another said his sister cried in the car, saying he had been put on display like in a circus. This was not just a tired exercise of deconstructive self-reflection (as is so often the case with contemporary work) but a gradual shift from the authoritative, absent voice of Bel (...) to the autonomous voices of the protagonists themselves, who elegantly frustrate precisely the freak show tendency by taking the opportunity to voice their observations or, simply, performing their very own dance. 

There is a number of artists who could learn a lesson or two from Jérôme Bel’s piece, in terms of how it doesn’t shy away from difficult confrontations and yet steers clear of simplistic demonstrations of ‘taboo-breaking’ or – equally annoying – moralist complacency. I’m glad I didn’t miss it.

When describing the effect of seeing this piece, New York Magazine Jerry Saltz wrote he "was shaken to the core by the formal and emotional pathos in Jérôme Bel’s “dance” involving people with Down syndrome who simply stood onstage, danced for two minutes, then spoke about their perceptions of us watching them. A fourth wall shattered here into a fifth dimension."



 Paul Chan's "Wht is Wht? Why the Why?", 2012, at Friedrichstrasse 28.

Afghanistan was certainly present in many of participating artists' projects. In her review 'Kabul in Kassel, Kassel in Kabul', Emily Nathan from Artnet Magazine unpacks the lingering question of “Why Afghanistan?”:

"In answer to the question, [Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev] drew a parallel between Documenta’s original founding in 1955 amidst the rubble of World War II, and Afghanistan’s current state of reconstruction, such as it is. By inserting contemporary art from the west into the mix, she said, she wanted to create a bridge between Kabul’s vibrant international past and her own present -- “to act as if the situation was not what it is, as if the barriers, the conflict, the occupation in Kabul did not exist...continuing the daily life required by and inevitable while living in a militarized zone.” 


While this act of “radical imagination” is well-intentioned, it is nonetheless problematic, and the issues it brings up about art’s instrumentalization in places of violence and injustice were the subject for the panel, which featured the likes of Chus Martinez, Giuseppe Penone, Mario Garcia Torres, Francis Alÿs, Adrian Villar Rojas and a handful of young Afghan artists who participated in the seminars. In a gesture of cultural exchange, the work they created during the workshops is on view in Kassel’s various exhibition venues for Documenta, and will also be part of a final presentation in Kabul that opens this month. 


Adrián Villar Rojas field of sculptures around Kassel's Weinberg terrassen.

 Francis Alÿs small-sized paintings exhibited in a former bakery in Obere Karlsstr. 4.

(...) Most speakers followed suit, describing how grateful they were for the resources Documenta had provided and what they had learned. But one Afghan student spoke directly. “In the past few years,” he said, “Afghanistan has been entirely shaped by an infrastructure of ‘development.’ Documenta had no such pre-conceived program in mind for us; it made no claims for success or reconstruction. I found that liberating.”

Michael Rakowitz, an artist who led a stone-carving seminar in Bamiyan near the site of the stone Buddhas destroyed in 2001, was equally frank. “To ask how art might be enlisted in the service of rebuilding the culture of a devastated land and people,” he said, is “an incredibly problematic gesture, and that is what makes it good and important.” He sourced his decision to participate in the program to the realization that not participating would be a submission to his own sense of guilt, “which is related to political correctness,” which he sees as a sort of reverse-racism.
[3D tour of his contribution here]

Michael Rakowitz space in the ground floor of the Fridericianum.
More detailed images here via Contemporary Art Daily. 


 Detail of Rakowitz's installation.

(...) Indeed, the idea of context is one of the more salient issues in Bakargiev’s exchange program, since the works were made in Afghanistan during a particular period but have been displaced to Kassel for the exhibition. How can their significance be translated?

Another Afghan artist involved with the “Archive Practicum” project (...) took the mic. (...)“It’s hard, if not impossible,” he said, “to stay out of the mess of politics and war when involved in the cultural realm; one is translated onto and into the other. But what I discovered through these seminars,” the artist said -- lapsing into the kind of vague academic jargon that is all too popular on the international art circuit -- “is that it’s not about finding the ‘appropriate’ translation for an idea or a context, but rather problematizing the translation process and making space for its contradictions and limitations.”
 
“For me,” [Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev] concluded, “the image of Morandi sitting in his studio painting vases, one after the other, with Fascism all around him -- that is what art can do.

Back to Filipa Ramos' remarks on the Hauptbahnhof:

"Into the north wing of the train station, one happens upon an installation in a house by Haris Epaminonda and Daniel Gustav Cramer offering up an equally inebriating experience through arrangements of images, texts, letters, and found objects, mostly from domestic contexts, combined with multiple projections in a chiaroscuro labyrinth of rooms. This is surely one of Epaminonda’s most complex projects up until now, and it presents itself as one of the many museum-like configurations to be seen in Kassel."

 Haris Epaminonda & Daniel Gustav Kramer in the two floors and attic of a former office building behind Kassel's Hauptbahnhof.

More Hauptbahnhof highlights, and back to Dan Fox's words:

(...) A three-channel film by Clemens von Wedemeyer (Muster (Rushes), 2012) was a sophisticated and beautifully directed look at how historical meaning is established and grows across generations; its first chapter looks at Nazi atrocities committed in an old building in Kassel, then looks at a group of young actors attempting to make radical work in that venue, followed by a group of teenagers being taken on a tour of the grounds as an audio guide tells them of the horrors that had occurred there. Also of note was Javier Téllez’s film Artaud’s Cave (2012), elaborately installed in an imitation cave-cum-Aztec temple, and made in collaboration with residents of a psychiatric hospital in Mexico City; a film that excavated Antonin Artaud’s experiences in Mexico. [Great 3D view of the cave entrance here]
  
 Still from Javier Téllez's "Artaud's Cave", 2012.

And still some more highlights:

(above and below)  Lara Favaretto's "Momentary Monument IV (Kassel)", 2012.
More detailed images of her two-part presentation here via Contemporary Art Daily. 
A great 360º panoramic view here.


 Haegue Yang's motorised Venetian blinds in Kassel's former central station. 
A lot more detailed images here by Contemporary Art Daily.

 And off-site, at the Ständehaus:

 Dora Garcia's weekly TV show 'Klau Mich' (die Kalu Mich Show) studio. 
Fully comprehensive website here (with videos, agenda, blog...).

 Xabier Salaberria (although not listed as D13 participant) design for the Absolute bar at the foyer of the Ständehaus. [Panoramic view here]

One final observation from Quinn Latimer's review on Art Agenda:


"(...) despite the attention fostered by both Christov-Bakargiev herself and her critics on her vaunted interest in the nonhuman world, what I found most startling about Documenta 13 was how entirely human it was, and how engaged with the world that we (joyfully, sorrowfully, weirdly) inhabit. If that sounds lamely human-centric and passé, so be it. It’s a deeply intelligent, stringent, surprising, and entirely committed (yes, that word again) showing of the potentiality of private lives accorded the most public of stages."


And, more final statements by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev when interviewed by Rotterdam artists Bik Van der Pol: (...) "In order for democracy to move forward, we have to constitute the subject as a subject and give up any pretension of ownership and exclusivity that we might have about subjectivity. It is about empowering, and the right to determine the environment in which we all live."


More photo reports via Contemporary Art Daily and Flash Art online and Universes in Universe and preview videos via Vernissage TV and b
elow our slideshow with over 200 pictures:



All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org

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