Longitudes

Longitudes cuts across Latitudes’ projects and research with news, updates, and reportage.

Audio y videos conferencias 'Cuatro casos de estudio de educación artística', 28 y 30 junio, Espai Cultural Caja Madrid, Barcelona


Ya están disponibles en la página de CAMPUS (véase bajo 'Calendario') los cuatro archivos de audio y los dos videos de las conferencias "Cuatro casos de estudio para la educación artística" organizadas por Latitudes con motivo del inicio de Campus, la escuela/residencia de artistas que tiene lugar en el Espai Cultural Caja Madrid hasta el 29 de Julio.

Las presentaciones analizaron cuatro modelos educativos destinados a artistas que actualmente tienen lugar en Ámsterdam (Rijksakademie presentado por Bartomeu Marí,
Director, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), México D.F. (SOMA presentado por Jennifer Teets, Comisaria independiente y escritora, París), Los Ángeles (The Mountain School of Arts, presentado por Carles Guerra, Director, La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona) y Frankfurt (Städelschule presentado por el Prof. Nikolaus Hirsch, Rector, Städelschule).

Agradecemos una vez más la implicación de los cuatro conferenciantes en
Campus.

Síguenos en Twitter #campusespai
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Semana 0, Campus: Presentaciones trabajo participantes, tour Espai, 2 conferencias y artículo en 'El Cultural'

Visita del Espai Cultural Caja Madrid con los arquitectos Yoel Karaso y Cecilia Tham (Poliplicity/MOB), quienes hay diseñado las mesas de trabajo que servirán también como soporte de presentación para la fase de exposición documental (29 Julio–28 Agosto).
 

Hoy ha concluido la 'Semana 0' (27 Junio–1 Julio) de Campus, durante la cual los 15 participantes de Campus han realizado presentaciones de su trabajo en 30 minutos de duración – imágenes abajo.

Presentación de Claudia Claremi

Presentación de Diogo Evangelista

Presentación de Jordi Ferreiro

Presentación de Alia Farid

Presentación de José Joaquin Figueroa

Presentación de Lola Lasurt

Presentación de Federico Martelli

Presentación de Momu & No Es (Lucia Moreno/Eva Noguera)

Presentación de Quim Packard
Presentación de Ariadna ParreuPresentación de Antoine Renard
Presentación de Maria SalazarPresentación de Daniel SilvoPresentación de Carlos ValverdePresentación de Mónica Zamudio


Además, el 28 y 30 junio, tuvieron lugar dos conferencias analizando cuatro modelos educativos de postgraduado destinados a artistas: el director del MACBA Bartomeu Marí presentó la Rikjsakademie en Amsterdam, la comisaria independiente y escritora Jennifer Teets habló sobre SOMA, México D.F.; el director de La Virreina Centre de la Imatge Carles Guerra habló sobre The Mountain School of Arts en Los Ángeles y finalmente el Prof. Nikolaus Hirsch, Rector de la Städelschule en Frankfurt, habló sobre la misma.

Bartomeu Marí, director del MACBA, presenta al Rijksakademie, Amsterdam.

Jennifer Teets, comisaria independiente, presenta SOMA, México DF.

Ronda de preguntas con (izq. a dcha): Bartomeu Marí, Mariana Cánepa Luna (Latitudes) y Jennifer Teets.Carles Guerra, director, La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona presenta The Mountain School of Arts, Los Angeles.

Prof. Nikolaus Hirsch, Rector de la Städelschule, Frankfurt-am-Main, presenta la Städelschule, Frankfurt-am-Main.

Finalmente, el suplemento 'El Cultural' ha publicado (1 Julio 2011) el artículo 'Campus arty' analizando cursos y talleres que tienen lugar actualmente en España que intentan buscar nuevas pedagogías en el ámbito artístico. A continuación párrafos escritos por Bea Espejo que mencionan a 'Campus':


"(...) Esta misma semana, dentro del proyecto Campus, una escuela de arte gratuita, temporal y sin créditos instalada, desde el pasado lunes, en el Espacio Cultural Caja Madrid en Barcelona, Bartomeu Marí, director del MACBA, analizaba el modelo de la Rijks, paradigmático por el contacto internacional que ofrece, buscando nuevos modelos pedagógicos válidos para el arte en nuestro país. Es uno de los cuatro casos de estudio para la educación artística con los que arranca este proyecto piloto dirigido por Latitudes, la oficina curatorial independiente fundada en 2005 por Max Andrews y Mariana Cánepa Luna.En Campus no hay notas, ni títulos, ni costes por participar. Dura dos meses y se estructura en tres fases. La primera pasa por la presentación interna del trabajo de los 15 artistas participantes y el estudio de varios modelos educativos de primer orden internacional. La segunda son cuatro sesiones de trabajo de una semana de duración bajo la tutoría de los artistas Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson -que el próximo diciembre veremos en el CAAC de Sevilla-, Renata Lucas, Peter Piller y Adrià Julià. La tercera fase es una exposición de los proyectos realizados en esos talleres. “Para nosotros -explica Max Andrews- una de las cosas más importantes de modelos como la Städelschule de Frankfurt y la Rijksakademie de Ámsterdam es que no hablan de 'estudiantes', sino de artistas jóvenes. No son lugares en los que se convierten en artistas por arte de magia, por el mero hecho de graduarse. De la misma manera nos acercamos en Campus. No es un modelo escolar donde los artistas más jóvenes reciben de manera pasiva la información de una autoridad incuestionable, sino una situación en la que la participación esperamos que sea activa y genere algo nuevo, un ambiente proactivo, crítico”.
Basado en la relación estudiante-tutor, Campus pone todo el énfasis en la colaboración mutua. “Lo que nos interesa -añade Mariana Cánepa- es crear un 'círculo de confianza', una red de gente con la que se pueda colaborar en el futuro. Encontrar personas con las que hablar sin tapujos. En la facultad eres uno de 200 y tienes la sensación de que no te explican cosas prácticas de la profesión, por ejemplo cómo presentar tu trabajo a nivel más básico, cómo preparar un presupuesto o llevar tus cuentas. En España tenemos la universidad y las becas para que los artistas se vayan fuera, pero no suficientes puentes entre el lugar de aprendizaje y el mundo profesional real. El objetivo es que haya sinergias, momentos de aprendizaje, intercambio de experiencias".

A medio camino entre una escuela y una residencia, Campus surge, precisamente, como reacción a esa falta de plataformas formativas para artistas en Barcelona que hoy por hoy se suple con los cursos de Formació Contínua impulsados por la AAVC y llevados a cabo en Hangar, los premios Casablancas o la Sala d'Art Jove. Lejos de buscar un resultado final con obras de arte al uso, el proyecto prioriza el proceso de trabajo y la discusión en grupo, siempre bajo el parámetro internacional y bilingüe, otro de sus fuertes. "No sólo podemos hablar dentro de la ciudad o país, o dentro de un dominio lingüístico", añade Max Andrews. La mitad de los participantes no son de Barcelona, de modo que se fortalece el intercambio desde el principio. Este tipo de proyectos pueden ayudar a reflexionar sobre las herramientas y plataformas que son más adecuadas para la conversación, la comunicación y la colaboración, el modo en que artistas crean y comparten (entre colegas, un grupo de amigos, el público en general...)".

Del mismo modo tienen claros los modelos en qué mirarse, saben qué dinámicas suponen un retroceso: "Por supuesto -añade Max-, tenemos que presentarnos de manera ética, y con el deseo de hacer las cosas mejor y con más eficiencia junto a artistas, comisarios, críticos, periodistas... Si empezamos por obsesionarnos con la promoción, fabricación y el lanzamiento de carreras de arte y éxitos, esto fácilmente puede acabar en manos de los políticos (como vemos ahora en Reino Unido y Holanda) donde la educación de grado superior se utiliza con fines económicos para que sean rentables y productivos. Tiene que haber un lugar para la lentitud y la reflexión, por el propio bien del arte, así como para la inutilidad, el 'sin sentido', la experimentación y el juego".


(...)
En Campus, Carles Guerra analiza el modelo de The Mountain School of Arts de Los Ángeles, una escuela gratuita establecida en 2005 por los artistas Piero Golia y Eric Wesley en el bar 'The Mountain' en Chinatown. De enero a marzo, 15 alumnos asisten a clases dos veces por semana, 3 horas al día, con un programa que incluye discusiones y conferencias de artistas, cineastas y científicos."



Estudiantes admirando las ventanas a Plaça Catalunya del Espai Cultural Caja Madrid
con la imagen gráfica de Campus realizada por Ferran ElOtro Studio (detalle abajo).


Posters con la imagen gráfica del proyecto.

La semana próxima (4–8 Julio)
Campus contará con una semana de trabajo por los artistas Libia Castro y Ólafur Ólafsson, residentes en Berlin/Rotterdam.


'Campus' es un proyecto concebido y dirigido por Latitudes y producido por Obra Social Caja Madrid.

Síguenos en Twitter #campusespai
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Latitudes' 'The Last Newspaper' exhibition featured in the May issue of Shanghai-based magazine 'Art World Magazine'

In their May issue, Shanghai-based Art World Magazine featured 'The Last Newspaper' (New Museum, 6 October 2010–9 January 2011) exhibition focusing on Latitudes' 10-week-long editorial project and re-publishing and translating four articles originally published in issues: #2 The Last Gazette (focus article on Hans Haacke's "News" by Julienne Lorz), #5 The Last Monitor (an essay on paperweights and newsstands by Harley Spiller), #6 The Last Observer (interview with Wolfgang Tillmans by Lorena Muñoz-Alonso), #7 The Last Evening Sun (focus article on Luciano Fabro's 'Pavimento-Tautologia' by Simone Menegoi) and #8 The Last Journal (an interview with Rirkrit Tiravanija by Desiree B. Ramos).
  Thank you to Michelle Ding from Art World Magazine and to all the writers for giving permission to reprint in Chinese.

Photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org
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Inicio de 'Campus', Espai Cultural Caja Madrid, Barcelona, 27 Junio – 28 Agosto 2011



Campus” es una escuela de arte temporal, gratuita, sin créditos universitarios y bilingüe (castellano/inglés), un proyecto piloto enfocado al intercambio de ideas y de experiencias. Combinando los modelos de escuela y de residencia de artistas, “Campus” se plantea como un espacio para la experimentación y la reflexión crítica, un lugar en el que par ticipantes no reciben una enseñanza académica sino que se les inspira a partir de su participación práctica en actividades de grupo o tutorías personales, con el fin de potenciar la comunicación y la profesionalización del artista.

Destinado a artistas nacidos en o después de 1980 de cualquier nacionalidad, “
Campus” se estructura en tres fases: (27 de junio al 1 de julio) fase introductoria complementada por conferencias en las que presentan cuatro innovadores casos de programas artísticos internacionales; (4 de julio al 29 de julio) un intenso programa de cuatro sesiones de trabajo semanales lideradas por artistas-tutores y una fase final (29 de julio al 28 de agosto) de exposición documental y una publicación.

ARTISTAS/PARTICIPANTES


Claudia Claremi (Madrid–Madrid), Diogo Evangelista (Lisboa–Lisboa), Alia Farid (Kuwait–Barcelona), Jordi Ferreiro (Barcelona–Barcelona), José Joaquin Figueroa (Caracas–Nueva York), Lola Lasurt (Barcelona–Barcelona), Federico Martelli (Santiago de Chile–Londres), Momu & No Es (Lucia Moreno/Eva Noguera, Basilea/Barcelona–Madrid), Quim Packard (Reus–Barcelona), Ariadna Parreu (Reus–Barcelona), Antoine Renard (Paris–Berlín), Maria Salazar (Logroño–Bilbao), Daniel Silvo (Cádiz–Madrid), Carlos Valverde (Cáceres–Barcelona) y Mónica Zamudio (Bogotá–Bogotá).


Martes 28 de junio de 2011, a las 19.00 h.

Auditorio, Espai Cultural Caja Madrid
Bartomeu Marí presentará la Rijksakademie (Ámsterdam) y Jennifer Teets presentará SOMA (México D.F.).

Jueves 30 de junio de 2011, a las 19.00 h.
Sala de exposiciones, Espai Cultural Caja Madrid
Carles Guerra presentará The Mountain School of Arts (Los Ángeles) y Nikolaus Hirsch presentará la Städelschule, (Frankfurt-am-Main).


4 al 8 de julio de 2011, de 11.00 - 18.00 h.
Salas de exposiciones, Espai Cultural Caja Madrid

Sesión de trabajo #1 con Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson.


11 al 15 de julio de 2011, de 11.00 - 18.00 h.
Salas de exposiciones, Espai Cultural Caja Madrid

Sesión de trabajo #2 con Renata Lucas con la visita del artista Luis Bisbe (13 de julio).


18 al 22 de julio de 2011, de 11.00 - 18.00 h.
Salas de exposiciones, Espai Cultural Caja Madrid

Sesión de trabajo #3 con Peter Piller con la visita del artista Francesc Ruiz (20 de julio).

25 al 29 de julio de 2011, de 11.00 - 18.00 h.
Salas de exposiciones, Espai Cultural Caja Madrid

Sesión de trabajo #4 con Adrià Julià con la visita de un invitado a determinar (27 de julio).

Viernes 29 de julio de 2011, a las 19.30 h.
Salas de exposiciones, Espai Cultural Caja Madrid
Finissage de 'Campus'.

29 de julio al 29 de agosto
Salas de exposiciones, Espai Cultural Caja Madrid
Presentación documental de los proyectos e ideas desarrollados durante “Campus” por los participantes.




Síguenos en Twitter #campusespai

Campus es un proyecto concebido y dirigido por Latitudes y producido por Obra Social Caja Madrid.
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Opening 25 June, 17h: 'Amikejo: uqbar (Irene Kopelman & Mariana Castillo Deball)', exhibition cycle 'Amikejo', Laboratorio 987, MUSAC, León


Calipso, 2011. Courtesy: uqbar.

Opening: Saturday 25 June, 17h.

For
Amikejo, uqbar (Irene Kopelman & Mariana Castillo Deball) will explore the idea of working together as a subject in itself. The “interchanges, mutations, transmutations, metamorphosis and contaminations that working together entails ... the hybrids we create together, not belonging to one or the other but rather creating an in between zone”, as the artists have described. 


The exhibition at the Laboratorio 987 will be based on the principal of chirality or ‘handedness’. Chirality is a property of an object that is not superimposable on its mirror image. Human hands are perhaps the most recognizable example of chirality: the left hand is a non-superimposable mirror image of the right hand. Cases of chirality can be found in many different organisms in nature, such as in the twisted petals of certain orchids, shells and fish scales. 

The exhibition will be composed of a spiral staircase, which will serve as a viewpoint for other artifacts and objects. Uqbar will create a psychedelic chiral ecosystem, featuring hanging papier-mâché epiphyte sculptures and enlarged stone microfossils, as well as “Banyan tree drawings, a video of a chemical reaction, fables among non-humans and drawings of hybrid creatures”.


Zeno Reminder, Cabinet Magazine Space / Performa 09, New York (2009). Courtesy the artists.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Uqbar is an occasional collaboration between artists Mariana Castillo Deball & Irene Kopelman initiated in 2005. Its practice has led to sculptural installations, seminars and publications, and frequently involves the cooperation of individuals outside the artistic field, including scientists and writers. Uqbar’s projects are often sparked by an oblique investigation into a particular repository of knowledge, and following Jorge Luis Borges (whose fictional place Uqbar lends its name to the foundation) they approach a world through an abundance of possible of meanings and possible histories. Fuga di Un Piano (2009) for Manifesta 7, Rovereto, Italy, for example, took the International Center for the study of Futurism as its point of departure, by presenting in part a future archive of some imagined sculptural creations of a speculative creative automaton.

Uqbar projects include Principle of Hope, Manifesta 7, Rovereto, Italy; Zeno Reminder, Cabinet Magazine Space / Performa 09, New York (2009); Principle of Hope, Manifesta 7, Rovereto, Italia (2008); Transacciones Filosóficas, Museo Astronómico de Córdoba, Argentina (2007); Blackmarket for Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge, 10th International Istanbul Biennial (2007); A for Alibi, Utrecht University Museum, Utrecht & De Appel, Amsterdam (2006–8).
Forthcoming and final 'Amikejo' exhibition: Fermín Jiménez Landa & Lee Welch (24 September 2011–15 January 2012).

'Amikejo' is an exhibition cycle of four exhibitions guest curated by Latitudes, taking place in January, April, June and September 2011 at the Laboratorio 987, MUSAC.







Exhibition supported by the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam.


PRESS

Read press release from MUSAC or download press images.

For further information please contact Izaskun Sebastián at [email protected]
MUSAC
Avenida de los Reyes Leoneses, 24
24008 León, ES
Tue–Fri: 10–15 / 17–20h; Sat–Sun: 11–15/ 17–21h. Monday closed.
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Christodoulos Panayiotou production in Barcelona

Today was the last day of Christodoulos Panayiotou's (1978 Limassol, Cyprus) temporary event in Estudios Gala, a film studio in Barcelona that has remained opened this past week while Panayiotou's production for the forthcoming show at Fundació Miró, 'You are not alone', was taking place.

Panayiotou proposed to produce a theatre backdrop of a sky which has been painted by professional scenographers over this past week. As with pieces such as The End (2009) or a series of works with existing historical theatre backdrops, the piece will be shown lying on the floor and folded, presenting 'the absence by its negative presence'. It is accompanied by a silkscreened poster that reads 'N O W H E R E' and below the dates and the place of production (11–16 June, Estudios Gala).

(From the press release) "In 'You are not alone', 14 artists help to fight stigmatisation by reappraising the causes, consequences and current context of Aids as well as the ways of fighting it." The exhibition is produced by the ArtAids Foundation, founded and presided by Dutch-born Barcelona-based philanthropist Han Nefkens who, besides this new work by Panayiotou has facilitated the production of the work of eight more artists whose work does not generally address the subject of Aids: Deimantas Narkevicius (Lithuanis), Latifa Echakhck (Morocco), Danh Vo (Denmark/Vietnam), Lorena Zilleruelo (Chile), Lucy & Jorge Orta (UK and Argentina), Antoni Miralda (Spain) and Elmgreen & Dragset (Denmark and Norway).

The exhibibition will travel to
the Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo (MARCO) from October 21. 'You are not alone' is curated by Hilde Teerlinck, director of FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais/Dunkerque with Irene Aristizábal as assistant curator.

Photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org
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Los recortes en Holanda también afectan a los artistas españoles

Artistas españoles como Lara Almarcegui, Alicia Framis, Dora Garcia, Rubén Grilo, Pere Llobera, Cristina Lucas, Asier Mendizabal, Paloma Polo o Fernando Sánchez Castillo, entre otros, han disfrutado del apoyo que el gobierno Holandés ha ofrecido a programas de postgraduado como la Rijksakademie o de Ateliers, sin mencionar aquellos que han participado en la Jan van Eyck Akademie (actualmente Adrià Julià es investigador invitado), el Piet Zwart Institute (Fran Meana está cursando el primer año e Iratxe Jaio se graduó en el 2002) o el Dutch Art Institute (Ana Fernández es alumna y David Maroto pronto empezará un MFA).

El gobierno Holandés pretende terminar su apoyo a partir de Abril 2013, poniendo la existencia de estos programas, entre muchas otras instituciones, en peligro. Por favor, firmad la petición para apoyar el futuro de de Ateliers y Rijksakademie (si alguien sabe el link para firmar la petición de la Jan van Eyck, que nos la envíe!):

http://www.de-ateliers-must-stay.com/index.php
http://www.change.org/petitions/support-the-rijsakademie-secure-the-art-of-the-future

Leer más información (en inglés) aquí y el texto 'Slash and Burn'.
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Programación 'CAMPUS', 27 Junio–28 Agosto 2011, Espai Cultural Caja Madrid, Barcelona

Imagen gráfica de Campus por ferranElOtro Studio.

CAMPUS
27 Junio–28 Agosto 2011
Espai Cultural Caja Madrid, Barcelona

Artistas tutores: Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson, Renata Lucas, Peter Piller y Adrià Julià.

Artistas participantes: Claudia Claremi (Madrid–Madrid), Diogo Evangelista (Lisboa–Lisboa), Alia Farid (Kuwait–Barcelona), Jordi Ferreiro (Barcelona–Barcelona), José Joaquin Figueroa (Caracas–Nueva York), Lola Lasurt (Barcelona–Barcelona), Federico Martelli (Santiago de Chile–Londres), Momu & No Es (Lucia Moreno/Eva Noguera, Basilea/Barcelona–Madrid), Quim Packard (Reus–Barcelona), Ariadna Parreu (Reus–Barcelona), Antoine Renard (Paris–Berlin), Maria Salazar (Logroño–Bilbao), Daniel Silvo (Cádiz–Madrid), Carlos Valverde (Cáceres–Barcelona) y Mónica Zamudio (Bogotá–Bogotá).

Ponentes conferencias: Bartomeu Marí, Jennifer Teets, Carles Guerra y Nikolaus Hirsch.

Combinando modelos de educación experimental y de residencia de artistas, 'Campus' es una escuela temporal, gratuita, y sin créditos universitarios, un proyecto piloto enfocado hacia la reflexión y el intercambio de ideas, de experiencias y conocimiento. Durante Julio, el Espai Cultural Caja Madrid de Barcelona, se convertirá en una escuela híbrida y bilingüe (inglés/castellano) en la que tendrán lugar cuatro sesiones de trabajo semanales dirigidas por cinco artistas internacionales: Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson, Renata Lucas, Peter Piller y Adrià Julià. 'Campus' será un punto de encuentro para artistas nacidos en o después de 1980 trabajando en una variedad de disciplinas artísticas. (+ info...)

El programa se divide en 3 partes: 

Fase 1, 27 junio–1 julio: Presentaciones del trabajo de los 15 participantes seleccionados (a puerta cerrada) y dos conferencias gratuitas y abiertas al público (28 y 30 junio, 19–21h) en las que se presentarán cuatro casos de estudio de educación artística autónoma con el objetivo de analizar diversos modelos pedagógicos internacionales – + info programa, casos estudio y ponentes.

Fase 2, 4–29 julio: Cuatro sesiones de trabajo de una semana de duración bajo la tutoría de cinco artistas con una consolidada trayectoria internacional: Libia Castro y Ólafur Ólafsson, Renata Lucas, Peter Piller y Adrià Julià – + info contenido sesiones de trabajo.

Fase 3, 29 julio–28 Agosto: Finissage: 29 Julio, 19.30–21h. Presentación de los proyectos e ideas desarrollados.


'Campus' es un proyecto concebido y dirigido por Latitudes y producido por Obra Social Caja Madrid.
Coordinación: Julieta Manzano
Diseño espacio: Yoel Karaso y Cecilia Tham (Collective Intelligence/Polyplicity)
Diseño gráfico y publicación: ferranElOtro Studio


Contacto: [email protected]
Síguenos en Twitter #campusespai


Espai Cultural Caja Madrid
Plaça Catalunya 9 (esquina Rambla de Catalunya)
08002 Barcelona, ES
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DVD/Book of 'A Road Not Taken', a film by Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller


We received the beautiful DVD/Book of 'A Road not Taken', the film by Swiss artists Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller – see trailer here – narrating the story of President Jimmy Carter's solar panels installed on the roof of the the White House in 1979. Latitudes collaborated with the duo during Portscapes, Rotterdam (2009) and most recently in February this year, curated their solo exhibition 'United Alternative Energies' in Arhus, Denmark – see images.

"This symbolic installation was taken down in 1986 during the Reagan presidency. In 1991, Unity College, an environmentally-minded centre of learning in Maine acquired the panels and later installed them on their cafeteria roof. In 'A Road not Taken', the artists travel back in time and, following the route the solar panels took, interview those involved in the decisions regarding these panels as well as those involved in the oil crisis of the time. They also look closely at the way this initial installation presaged our own era." (from the website http://www.roadnottaken.info)

The documentary just won the Golden Sun Award Best Documentary at The International Environmental Film Festival (FICMA), Barcelona. Congratulations Roman and Christina!

The DVD/Book is now available worldwide through their web and other bookstores. Some data:

UPC: 6 34479 99963 5
ISBN: 978-3-033-02868-5
Genre: Documentary
DVD Region Code: No Zone
Running Time: 66 min.
Rating: no rating
Package Type: Hardcover book in slim DVD case size (192 x 135 x 10 mm, 7.4 x 5.3 x 0.4 “), cellophane wrapped
Pages: 64
Number of discs: 1 DVD-5
Directors: Christina Hemauer | Roman Keller
Original Language: English
Closed Captioned: yes
Subtitles: German, French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese and English
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Audio Format: Dolby stereo
Bonus: 24 min.

All photos of the pages: Latitudes | www.lttds.org

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Photo & review tour: 'ILLUMInations/ILLUMInazioni', 54th Biennale di Venezia 2011

ILLUMInations / ILLUMInazioni
54th Biennale di Venezia
4 June–27 November 2011

Much has already been written about this year's biennale which officially opened last Saturday, 4 June (professional previews 1–3 June). We have selected some excerpts of reviews that have appeared so far to accompany our photo-tours.
We'll begin with the main exhibition 'ILLUMInations / ILLUMInazioni' curated by Bice Curiger at the Padiglione Centrale in the Giardini and at the Arsenale.

On the
inclusion of three Tintoretto paintings in the Padiglione Centrale, Giardini:
Adam Kleinman, “ILLUMInazioni – ILLUMInations”, Art-Agenda, 5 June 2011: At first reading, it seems that we might be in for a show on the artistic play of light and shadow. (…) Normally the suffix –tion alerts the reader that some process has affected the host word it is tagged to, i.e., illumination is the condition of being lit. But at the Biennale, curator Bice Curiger instead turns a homophonic pun by tying –nations to nations, as in states, in the exhibition literature. (...) "Why they [three Tintoretto's paintings 'The Last Supper' (1592–1594), 'The Stealing of the Body of St. Mark' (1562–1566), and 'The Creation of the Animals', (ca. 1550)] were there, exactly, is a bit hard to ascertain, especially since all three of these paintings have been on view to the public in Venice for some time now." (…) In addition, the ahistorical juxtaposition of trusting the work in the center of a contemporary exhibition could blur some notion of antiquarian historicism."
Adrian Searle, 'The Venice Biennale's balance of power', The Guardian, 6 June 2011: (…) Shuttling the canvases across Venice from the Accademia and the church of St Giorgio Maggiore to the Giardini was the perilous bit. But they don't belong here, and add nothing but a frisson of High Art, an intimation of the certainties of the past. In the climate-controlled half-light, they just look big, excessive and out of place.
On Maurizio Cattelan's 'Others' (2011) a re-creation of his 1997 piece 'Turisti' (also presented in the Biennale) with 200 stuffed pigeons and pigeon shit on the floor – also by Adrian Searle: Excess in one way or another marks this biennale more than most. Cattelan's pigeons are everywhere in the central pavilion. He had them here before, in 1997, but they have bred. It's a running gag. [this time 2,000 stuffed pigeons are placed in every room's roof except in Gabriel Kuri's space].

On the German, the Swiss and the Polish pavilions:
Adrian Searle, 'The Venice Biennale's balance of power', The Guardian, 6 June 2011.
(…) Schlingensief was still planning his work when he died, and the final show is an over-the-top mixture of theatre sets and artistic works, film and documentation from his project to build a school and opera house in Burkina Faso. The whole thing is a mock-cathedral of disquiet and rage, loud with recorded voices, fragments of filmed performances and archival footage, copies of Joseph Beuys drawings and diagrams – as well as x-ray images of Schlingensief's own ravaged lungs. I felt hectored. An extraordinary man though Schlingensief undoubtedly was – as much a social critic as an artist – at what point does the artist's work end and curatorial surmise begin?
Germany seemed excessive, but Thomas Hirschhorn filled the Swiss pavilion with a wonderland of gaffer-tape, cardboard and Bacofoil, bevvies of Barbie dolls and other uncountable props. It's great, in a rackety Doctor-Who-set way, but one might say that Hirschhorn is doing what he always does. (This was also Mike Nelson's problem, as I wrote last week.) – Great photos of the pavilion here by Contemporary Art Daily.
(…) More pointed and focused was Israeli-Dutch artist Yael Bartana trilogy of films '... And Europe Will Be Stunned', in the Polish pavilion. This felt right. Bartana's idea is a call for over three million Jews to return to Poland, and her film follows the setting up of a Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland. The whole thing is both real and unreal, heartfelt and parodic. Perhaps such a movement may now become a reality. Bartana's final film ends with the funeral of the assassinated leader of the movement; there is an implicit critique of Israeli politics, and of xenophobia and nationalism everywhere.
Adam Kleinman, “ILLUMInazioni – ILLUMInations”, Art-Agenda, 5 June 2011: (…) Yet, these cross-pollinations become even more laughable and glib in the exhibition ephemera as the curator rambles, in one of many examples, that the Tintoretto works somehow have a relation to Urs Fischer’s 'Untitled' (2011), in which a giant modeled souvenir candle of Giambologna’s 'Rape of the Sabine Women' (1574–82), is melted away because they both share some connection to “art history”, or likewise, that James Turrell’s sci-fi light “echoes” Tintoretto’s palette.
Adam Kleinman, “ILLUMInazioni – ILLUMInations”, Art-Agenda, 5 June 2011: (…) Within the context of the show’s half-formed pairing of light, or let’s say, vision & power, Amalia Pica’s Venn Diagram (Under the spotlight) (2011), is the only work that truly brought notoriety to this coupling, while also touching on ideas of togetherness, socio-political history and the like. Here two lights, each with their own colored gels, shot two beams onto a wall in the Central Pavilion. (…) one beam produced a red circle of light on the wall, and the other a blue light completed by a slight overlap between the two. Underneath these blinkers was a handwritten wall caption on an irrational prohibition by the dictatorship of Argentina in the 1970s. This censorship banned Venn diagrams (…) due to the subversive implications of these models of heterogeneity. As such, these fundamental pedagogical devices were removed from primary school textbooks and overt public usage. (…) Blended in the center of the red and blue surveying alarms was a bright, clear spotlight, which pointed to a need to watch all political and nationalistic colorings.
On the overall focus, the four 'para-pavilions' and, again, the inclusion of Tintoretto:

Franz West's para-pavilion at the Arsenale.

Monika Sosnowska's para-pavilion at the Padiglione Centrale, Giardini.
Oscar Tuazon's para-pavilion in the Giardini, with works by Asier Mendizabal and Ida Ekblad.

Article by Georgina Adam and Jane Morris, 'First impressions of “Illuminazioni” exhibition at Venice Biennale. Elegant, intelligent and well paced, but its curator Bice Curiger takes few risks', 3 Jun 2011, The Art Newspaper (web only): (…) Curiger has organised a show that despite its conceptual underpinnings also focuses on the classic themes of form, composition and materials. (…) The critical reaction generally favoured Curiger’s other innovation: the creation of four “para-pavilions”, in which Franz West, Song Dong, Monika Sosnowska and Oscar Tuazon were invited to create individual spaces that could also house works by other artists. West is showing a “reproduction” of his kitchen in Vienna with works that usually hang there by his artist friends. The works are displayed on the outside of the structure. Inside is projected Dream Villa, a work by Dayanita Singh. (…) Ossian Ward, the art critic and art editor of London’s Time Out magazine, said: “The Arsenale is the stronger of the two venues, but overall 'Illuminazioni' fails to take any real risks. Besides, that is, the parachuting of three Tintorettos into its midst, which neither steal nor cement the show.”On the Italian Pavilion, “L'Arte non è Cosa Nostra” in the Arsenale curated by Italian polemicist, politician and art historian Vittorio Sgarbi:

Cristina Ruiz, 'Italian Pavilion: Vittorio Sgarbi’s sprawling, sexed-up show', The Art Newspaper, 3 June 2011: (…) When he announced his decision to include 200 artists selected by 200 intellectuals, the pundits said it couldn't be done. In fact, Scarbi has displayed the 200 he said he would, and then added another 60 for good measure. (…) The resulting display has the sprawling randomness of a flea market. There are works featuring sex, religion, violence, nudity, as well as a giant pomegranate and a polar bear.

Adrian Searle, 'The Venice Biennale's balance of power', The Guardian, 6 June 2011: (…) Sgarbi, a maverick critic and TV personality who hates most contemporary art, has invited leading Italian writers and intellectuals, Dario Fo and Giorgio Agamben among them, to select the works. Boorishly provocative, the resulting show is full of horrible, kitschy things, appallingly installed; with its cliched sentiments and rubbishy populism, it is like a tour of Silvio Berlusconi's brain.
Roberta Smith, 'Venice Biennale: The Enormity of the Beast', The New York Times, 2 June 2011: (…) A new and historic Biennale low is reached in the vast Italian Pavilion where Vittorio Sgarbi, an Italian art historian, television personality and former under-secretary of culture, has overseen a ludicrously dense installation of work by some 260 Italian artists, almost all of it unredeemable still-born schlock. Bristling with an unbelievably venomous hatred of art, the exhibition would be a national scandal, if Italy weren’t already plagued by so many.


Jerry Saltz, 'The Ugly American', Artnet.com: “This makes me embarrassed to be an American,” the mega-curator of an extremely well-known U.S. art museum groaned to me. (…) Artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla have placed a 60-ton army tank. It’s a real one, shipped from England at who knows what expense, turned upside-fucking-down, turret and gun barrel on the ground, steel treads to the sky. Atop this warlord wedding cake, they’ve installed a treadmill where a world-class runner works out for 15 minutes of every hour. It’s the health club from Hell, Afghanistan in Venice, and it makes a humongous racket that can be heard all around the Giardini. I looked back at the curator and said, “I think being embarrassed to be an American is partly what this is about.”

Adrian Searle, 'The Venice Biennale's balance of power', The Guardian, 6 June 2011: America, of course, has been flexing its muscles and telling the world to screw itself for years. I heard that Obama personally approved the US pavilion's show Gloria, by Jennifer Allora and Cuban-born Guillermo Calzadilla. Their work really depends on the Olympic athletes who run on their tank-track-powered running machine, and who perform amazing gymnastics on American Airlines first class seats. They leap, fling themselves about, defying both gravity and the imaginary confinement of air travel, slumped on the beds. Extraordinary rendition was never like this. Was this all about American power and choreographed, muscle-bound might? Allora and Calzadilla pirouette on the line between politics and entertainment. The runners go nowhere, and the upside-down tank looks impotent and vulnerable, though it makes a lot of noise – a roaring excess. (video on the US Pavilion, UK Pavilion, Swiss Pavilion, Tintoretto and Maurizio Cattelan at the Central Pavilion, Urs Fischer at the Arsenal)

Carol Vogel, 'Venice Biennale: Money Talks, Make That Sings', The New York Times, 3 June 2011: (…) There is only one A.T.M. machine in the whole of the Giardini, the gardens at the tip of the city that is home to the national pavilions. It’s in a space of its own at the back of the American pavilion. But this is no run-of-the-mill A.T.M. The brainchild of the artist duo Allora & Calzadilla, it is a pipe organ with an A.T.M. embedded in its belly that is computer-programmed to play a tune when a person puts in their pin number. (…) During the first three days of the Biennale’s V.I.P. preview earlier this week, more than 100,000 euros were withdrawn from the machine. That amount, Lisa Freiman, commissioner of the pavilion said, is three or four times the normal activity of an A.T.M. in Italy, according to BNL, the bank that operates it. When it gets low on cash, gun-toting guards can be seen coming to replenish it.

Roberta Smith, 'Venice Biennale: An Installation Art Contest', 1 June 2011: At that pavilion [Czech Republic], a little-known artist named Dominik Lang, barely 30 years old, has mounted a strangely affecting time-capsule-like installation featuring a great deal of generic postwar figurative sculpture by his father, Jiri Lang (1927-1996), who stopped making art years before his son was born. It serves as a sobering reminder of the obscurity that awaits most of the art produced at any given point in time, as well as the ability of art objects, being objects, to wait out different phases of neglect.


Rachel Withers, 'Mike Nelson at the Venice Biennale', The Guardian, 3 June 2011: Nelson's concept for Venice is to test out ideas of repetition and duplication on a giant scale. He tells me he's going to "build a biennial within another biennial" by reconstructing his 2003 Istanbul piece. But he's not stopping there. The Istanbul work was housed in a remarkable building: the Büyük Valide Han, a vast, once-palatial 17th-century travellers' inn that survived, in 2003 at least, as a crumbling warren of artisans' workshops. (…) His goal, he insists, is not to produce a replica of the Han but to realise a memory of it, in all its cobbled-together confusion and curious beauty. (…) "Making the pavilion disappear" means three months of intense work for the artist and his small team of technicians. In the present age of artistic fabrication and delegation, this hands-on approach is relatively uncommon.

On the Spanish Pavilion, 'The Inadequate / Lo inadecuado / L'Inadeguato' a project by Dora García:


Javier Hontoria, 'Dora García, inadecuadamente oportuna', 31/05/2011: Tras varias ediciones frustradas, el pabellón español de la Bienal de Venecia alberga a partir de hoy un proyecto de altura, acorde con las exigencias y expectativas de la cita que mayor visibilidad concentra en el calendario del arte contemporáneo internacional. (…) La artista vallisoletana presenta desde hoy en el pabellón español de los Giardini venecianos un proyecto titulado Lo Inadecuado. Es un concepto que implica, como le dijo a Paula Achiaga en una reciente entrevista “un sentimiento de malestar, de desajuste, de torpeza”. (…) El proyecto que ahora presenta en Venecia es también inadecuado en su forma. Esta no es una exposición al uso. Aunque tiene su emplazamiento en el interior del pabellón español de los Giardini, no está pensado para ser instalado en un lugar sino para que se extienda en el tiempo. (…) Diseminados en el interior del pabellón vemos diversos elementos que no constituyen obras de arte en sí mismas sino apoyos, atrezzo para situaciones que tienen su curso a lo largo de la Bienal. (…) Es un proyecto, digámoslo sin paliativos, de una enorme complejidad pero en el que la artista se reconoce plenamente. Toda su obra, toda su trayectoria, toda inquietud se concentran en estos meses de Bienal. La necesidad de empujar los límites de todo aquello a lo que se enfrenta es visible en cada situación. Lo inadecuado lo es a todos los niveles, formal, conceptual. (…) Durante la Bienal se sucederán las situaciones en forma de performance, charlas y encuentros en los que participan diferentes actores, fundamentalmente italianos, muchos de ellos profesionales del arte contemporáneo.

Ángela Molina, 'Dora García, entre un gato y un ratón', El País, 04 Junio 2011: "De repente entendí la no adecuación de la bienal y de su público como algo interesante. Decidí que mi intervención tendría que hacerse de espaldas al público, en un espacio de precariedad. No se tocan las paredes del pabellón, ni apareceré como autora del proyecto. Se trata de prescindir de la platea, pasar por allí sin mancharse. Tampoco es un proyecto colectivo, sino algo iniciado" (…) "El artista es algo incidental que cede su voz a los marginados. Trato de investigar la idea de exclusión, el autismo, lo que no se entiende o no tiene sentido."

Catalonia and the Balearic Islands also had a pavilion at the
Magazzini del Sale, in Dorsoduro, with new works by Mabel Palacín:
Natàlia Farré, 'Mabel Palacín revisa el papel de la imagen en la era digital', El Periódico, 2 Junio: [180º] El propio título de la obra ya remite al séptimo arte, puesto que la regla de los 180º es aquella que asegura que la relación entre imagen y espectador es la correcta, es decir, que la cámara siempre esta en el mismo lado de un eje ficticio para no desconcertar al público. Y lo que hace Palacín es evidenciar que en un mundo en el que cada día se cuelgan 100 millones de fotos en Facebook y se visiona el equivalente a 150 siglos de vídeos en Youtube, el estatus de la imagen ha cambiado y las normas se han roto. «No hay diferencia entre emisario y receptor», apunta Torres. Y añade: «La imagen ha pasado a calificar la realidad». Pero aún hay más: fotografía y vídeo confluyen y se confunden. «Todo es lo mismo» – Better images here and a video tour of the exhibition.


Klara Lidén's garbage cans collected from the streets of various cities, view in the Arsenale.

On the
54th Venice Biennale awards announced 4 June, Artforum.com: "The Golden Lion for best national participation went to Germany, represented this year by the artist Christoph Schlingensief, who died last August. The Golden Lion for best artist went to Christian Marclay for his piece The Clock, 2010, on display at the Arsenale, while the Silver Lion for a promising young artist went to Haroon Mirza. The jury—comprising Hassan Khan (Egypt), Carol Yinghua Lu (China), Letizia Ragaglia (Italy), Christine Macel (France), and John Waters—also assigned two special mentions, one to the Lithuanian pavilion, which was represented by Darius Miksys, and one to Klara Lidén’s work Untitled (Trashcan), 2011, on display in the Arsenale. Additionally, according to Curiger’s proposal, the artists Sturtevant and Franz West were awarded Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement."In case you are thirsty for more, here other recommended sources to read/see: for the next two weeks Roberta Smith will discuss one of the 'pieces that stuck with her for good or for bad' on the The New York Time's under the title 'Everyone's a Critic' - you can contribute with your impressions writing 6 words; sweet storytelling NYTimes blog with illustrations by Christoph Niemann, or the ever useful and always growing Center for the Aesthetic Revolution blog by cultural agent, independent curator, exhibition organizer, amateur researcher, public editor, occasional writer, museum-art fairs-collections adviser, retired architect, and aesthetic dilettante Pablo León de la Barra.

And finally, before ending with full slideshows of the Biennale, an interesting article titled
'The Venice Effect' by Olav Velthuis (The Art Newspaper, 3 June 2011) to read on your way to Basel focusing on the dealers’ credo: “See it in Venice, buy it in Basel.”

Slideshow of the Giardini:



Slideshow of the Arsenale:


Slideshow of the Eventi Collaterali:




Some numbers on the 54th Venice Biennale:

  • 83 artists
  • 28 country pavilions in Giardini, used by the 30 official countries considered permanent participants.
  • 89 participating countries this year(77 in the 2009 Biennale)
  • 37 Collateral Events
Bice Curiger portrayed by Thomas Kilpper, Danish Pavilion.

2011 Venice Biennale director Bice Curiger, is an art historian, critic and curator. Her curatorial activity at Kunsthaus Zurich parallels her important work in the publishing sector. In 1984, she co-founded the prestigious art magazine “Parkett”, of which she is editor-in-chief. She has been publishing director of London Tate Gallery’s magazine “Tate etc” since 2004. She is the author of a number of publications on contemporary art, among which “The Collected Writings” (Lindinger+Schmid, Regensburg, 2002), “Looks and tenebrae” (Peter Blum Editions, New York and Zurich, 1983), and a monograph on Meret Oppenheim, “Spuren durchstandener Freiheit” (ABC Publisher, Zurich, 1982, English translation 1990, MIT Press, Boston).

All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org
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