Longitudes

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

Guest Faculty of the Thematic Residency ‘Blueprint for Happiness’ at The Banff Centre, Canada, 27 July–8 August 2015

(First) Views from the Vistas restaurant in the Sally Broden Building; (below) View from the Lloyd Hall building.

As Guest Faculty of the Visual + Digital Art thematic residencyBlueprint for Happiness’ – a five week programme starting July 13 led by British artists Heather and Ivan Morison – Latitudes will join the group in the middle two weeks of the programme (27 July–7 August). 

 Participants of the Blueprint for Happiness Thematic Residency.

 Some art-as-research tips for reference on one of the Glyde Hall fridges.

In Banff, Latitudes will lead a series of focused workshops bringing forward a series of case studies of (realised and unrealised) projects they have worked on as well as focusing on a number of artists whose practice has dealt with issues around public space in different geographical contexts. 

Latitudes will also undertake studio visits with each of the 11 resident artists, participate in field trips and organise a closed-door evening film programme with films by Spanish artist Emilio Moreno, Irish artist Sean Lynch and Australian artist Nicholas Mangan. The three films share a focus on public sculptures, monuments or buildings that have been displaced from their original context.


Ignasi Aballí, AM-4826 Digital Anemometer from Taking Measures (2009). Installation of 9 measuring devices. Courtesy of the artist and Galería Estrany–De la Mota, Barcelona.

Tuesday 28 July 2015, 16–17:30h: Public Lecture, Presentation of Latitudes’ curatorial practice as part of the Visual Art Lecture Series. Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Building, 204. Free event.
 
For the Public Lecture Latitudes will forgo a chronological account of its projects of the last decade, and instead attempt various transects through its curatorial projects determined by raw materials and their transformation. From the zinc which led to an Esperanto micro-nation, to the air of a Beijing shopping centre, or the dead trees of printed news, Latitudes will try and join some traits and ideas around extractive modernity, obsolescence and the carbon cycle.


 Music huts around campus.
 The creek around The Banff Centre.

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Locating Ancient Lights signs around London with Nicholas Mangan

Nicholas Mangan’s show “Ancient Lights” recently opened at London’s Chisenhale Gallery, where Latitudes had a conversation with the artist on 7 July. The title of the show refers to a long-established English planning law enshrining the “right to light” by restricting the construction of buildings that would block sunlight reaching the windows of neighboring properties. If the sun has shined through a window for more than twenty years, there is legal protection for it not to be blocked. 

In the spirit of our tour project Incidents of Travel (which has involved artist-led explorations of Mexico City, Hong Kong, and soon San Francisco) on 3 July we set out with Nick to track down some of these esoteric signs in central London.


We started with a set of signs that – thanks to Wikipedia’s entry on the Right to light – are probably the best-known examples. The back windows of houses on Albemarle Way are visible from the Memorial Garden of the Priory Church of the Order of Saint John just off the Clerkenwell Road. (Here is a map of some Ancient Lights signs in London, if you know of more let us know!). We made our way on foot to a spot at the south end of Hatton Gardens (an address now notorious for the April 2015 heist) but failed to find the rumored sign there. It was a little early in the day for a pint at the nearby Ye Olde Mitre.



Heading in to Chinatown, we found ourselves scouring the bizarrely-named Horse & Dolphin Yard, a dead-end alleyway with a pagoda-like construction where several restaurants from Gerrard Street and Shaftesbury Avenue have there back entrances. We eventually spotted the sign, which appears to have been moved from its original location as it doesn’t mark any window, just a bare brick wall.



Nearby there is a cute sign above the diminutive Rupert Court, at the back of The Blue Posts pub. (If we were going to stop for a drink it would have to be somewhere far more thematically appropriate – the Sun Tavern in Covent Garden, The Sun and 13 Cantons in Soho or the Rising Sun in Bloomsbury, would hit the spot). 

Later in the week we found the huge and typographically-distinguished Ancient Lights sign in Newman Passage, a little connecting street perhaps most famous for its starring role in the murderous opening scene of the film Peeping Tom (1960).


The more modest sign that can be seen next to the lamp of The Hope pub, just near Goodge Street tube station, is a palimpsest still bearing visible traces of an earlier sign underneath. Thus endeth the tour!


RELATED CONTENT:

Latitudes conversation with Nicholas Mangan on 7 July 2015 at Chisenhale Gallery, London;


Cover Story, July 2015: Nicholas Mangan’s ‘Ancient Lights’;

Max Andrews, Feature on Nicholas Mangan, 'Landscape Artist', Frieze, Issue 172, Summer 2015;

Mariana Cánepa Luna, 'What Lies Underneath', interview with Nicholas Mangan, Mousse Magazine #47, February–March 2015.


This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
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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Archive Cover Story (June): Ignasi Aballí sees nothing and something

  June 2015 Cover Story dedicated to Barcelona-based artist Ignasi Aballí, creator of one of Latitudes' commemorative tote bags.

Related Content:


Cover Story #3: Here's to horseshoes: Lawrence Weiner and Sergi Aguilar 1 June 2015


Cover Story #2: Beneath the Connaught Road West flyover, Hong Kong, 19 January 2013 4 May 2015

Cover Story #1: Wilfredo Prieto's work "Grease, Soap, Banana" 2 April 2015


Latitudes hosts the MA Curating Contemporary Art students of the Royal College of Art in Barcelona 7 October 2014

Ignasi Aballí at ARTIUM and Latitudes' text on 2009 project in Beijing and a 2010 interview 20 May 2012

Where to find the publications edited by Latitudes? 22 April 2012

'THE LAST STAR-LEDGER' AVAILABLE NOW! #4 issue of the 10 Latitudes-edited newspapers for 'The Last Newspaper' exhibition, New Museum 27 October 2010


Ignasi Aballí's exhibition catalogue 'Nothing, or Something' now available 26 October 2009

Slideshows of two projects: 'Provenances' at Umberto di Marino and 'Nothing, or Something' at SUITCASE Art Projects Beijing 25 May 2009



This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes

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Latitudes-nominee artist Annette Kelm shortlisted for the Aimia | AGO Photography Prize

'Today' invitation card in the back of our entrance door.

We are delighted with the news that one of our two nominations – Annette Kelm (Stuttgart, 1975) – has been shortlisted for the Canadian Aimia | AGO Photography Prize.

As one of this year's 15 selectors, we were invited to put forward two artists names for inclusion on the long list, one artist from our country/region and one international. We selected Xavier Ribas (Barcelona, 1960) and Kelm. 

Kelm and each of the shortlisted artist – Dave Jordano, Hito Steyerl and Owen Kyddis awarded $5,000 and six-week residencies organised in partnership with cultural institutions across Canada.

Exhibitions of each of the four finalists will be presented from September 9, 2015, at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), and the public will be invited to cast a vote for their choice to win the $50,000 CAD prize. The awardee, entirely chosen by public vote, will be announced on December 1, 2015.

Annette Kelm's large colour prints express a research-based interest in cultural history and the history of photography. In Kelm’s hands, photography is not just a documentary tool, but an active, agitating, productive force, wherein objects, textiles and people assume a sculptural identity. She is represented by Johann König (Berlin), Andrew Kreps Gallery (New York), Herald St (London), Marc Foxx (Los Angeles), Galerie Meyer Kainer (Vienna), Giò Marconi (Milan).


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In conversation with the artist Nicholas Mangan at Chisenhale Gallery, London, 7 July 2015, 19h.

  Nicholas Mangan, Still from 'Ancient Lights', 2014–5. Courtesy LABOR, Mexico City; Sutton Gallery, Melbourne; and Hopkinson Mossman, Auckland.

On July 7 at 19h Latitudes will lead a conversation with the Melbourne-based artist Nicholas Mangan on the occasion of his solo show 'Ancient Lights' (3 July–23 August 2015) at Chisenhale Gallery. They will discuss his ongoing investigations into the relationship between energy and social transformation as well as his latest film installation premiered in the exhibition and powered entirely by on-site solar panels placed on the roof of the gallery building.

'Ancient Lights' is produced in partnership with Artspace, Sydney, where it will be presented as part of his solo exhibition, Other Currents, in September 2015.  

Nicholas Mangan (1979) lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. Recent exhibitions include 'Art in the Age of…', Witte de With, Rotterdam; 'Anthropocene Moment', Les Abattoirs, Toulouse (both 2015); 'Octopus', Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne; 'Concrete', Monash Museum of Art, Melbourne; 'Melbourne Now', National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (all 2014). He participated in the '2015 New Museum Triennial: Surround Audience', New York; 9th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre; and the 13th Istanbul Biennial (both 2013).


This event is free. Reserve a place via Chisenhale's Eventbrite.

   
RELATED CONTENT:

Interview 'What Lies Beneath' between Nicholas Mangan and Mariana Cánepa Luna of Latitudes, Mousse Magazine #47, February–March 2015.  

Max Andrews' of Latitudes feature article 'Landscape Artist', Frieze #172, June–August 2015.


This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos:
Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption).
Work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Archive Cover Story (May): Here’s to horseshoes: Lawrence Weiner and Sergi Aguilar

May 2015 Cover Story dedicated to Lawrence Weiner and Sergi Aguilar.


Related Content:

Cover Story #2: Beneath the Connaught Road West flyover, Hong Kong, 19 January 2013 (4 May 2015)

Cover Story #1: Wilfredo Prieto's work "Grease, Soap, Banana" (2 April 2015)

Latitudes participates in the "Readers Circle: 100 Notes–100 Thoughts" programme organised by the Maybe Education and Public Programs of dOCUMENTA (13) (31 August 2012)

dOCUMENTA (13) artists and Latitudes (24 August 2012)

Lawrence Weiner, 'Under the Sun', Espai d'Art Contemporani de Castelló (25 October 2009)

Latitudes' "out of office" photo album 2008-9 (30 July 2009)

SAVE THE DATE: 8 October, Lawrence Weiner, Fundació Suñol, Barcelona (29 August 2008)

'UN PAÑO DE ALGODÓN ...' de Lawrence Weiner (22 September 2008)




This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos:
Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption).
Work is licensed under a
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Limited Edition Tote Bags Commemorating Latitudes' 10th Anniversary

As announced on an earlier post, this Spring we celebrate our 10th Anniversary! 

Many of you know of our love for tote bags – as we made it clear on one of our 2013 Venice biennale posts! Well, this time we have produced our very own totes: we are delighted to mark the special occasion by presenting limited editions of four specially commissioned silkscreened tote bags featuring designs by four artists with whom Latitudes has collaborated over the past decade: Lawrence Weiner (New York, 1942), Haegue Yang (Seoul, 1971), Ignasi Aballí (Barcelona, 1958) and Mariana Castillo Deball (Mexico City, 1975).



With the summer art calendar in mind, the bags are made from natural durable cotton canvas with a reinforced base. They feature a press-stud closure, an internal pocket with a zip (never loose your biennale pass again!), an adjustable shoulder strap, as well as smaller handles for carrying like a briefcase. Versatility from vaporetto to vernissage

Each bag have been hand silkscreened in Print Workers, Barcelona; this is an artisanal process and each printing results in slight variations.
 
Place your order(s) from our website.

Launch Price: 45 Euros + delivery. After 1 June 2015: 50 Euros + delivery.
Edition: 35 + 5 A.P. (Haegue Yang's tote is ed. 20 + 10 AP)
Measurements: 38 high × 40 width × 14 base (in cm)
Fabric: 475 gsm natural chlorine-free cotton canvas
Strap: Adjustable  

Capacity: 15 litres
Weight: 420 gr aprox.



Related content:

Latitudes' 4th anniversary (April 2009)
Newsletter #22 – April 2010  
It's our 10th anniversary! (22 May 2015)
Latitudes' Limited Edition Totes


This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos:
Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption).
Work is licensed under a
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It's our 10th anniversary!

We find it hard to believe, but April 2015 marked our 10th anniversary!

In October last year, we started working on our new website so that it would be ready to mark the decade of our two-person self-organisation. We submerged ourselves in the exercise of looking back and consolidating our physical and digital archives. The last decade has certainly been marked by the transition towards the latter, and hence files and hard drives now hold the most voluminous evidence of our activity, with all manner of USB-sticks and obsolescent CDs (remember those?) having fallen by the wayside.

We devised a plan for what we wanted to improve with a website conceived as a place for reportage as well as a publicly-accessible archive. This process included developing more extensive, and larger-format, photo galleries, cross-referencing to previously "buried" texts, making descriptions more concise, adding a related content section to cross-reference project information with blog posts, and consolidating locations as well as events. After six months of work, and some down-the-rabbit-hole endless weekends with the intricacies of CSS, we had re-edited ten years of our professional life online. Ta-da!


But we also hold on to physical archives and printer matter and they continue to delight! They also bear witness to something of what has been lost. The decline of the post as a means for distributing video (VHS! DVDs!) with the rise of Dropbox, or Vimeo, for example, has meant no more of those sweet hand-written notes that used to accompany artists' packages. Exhibition invitations are frankly a rarity now too, and these are filed alongside various postcards, discarded fragments of artists' work and other amusing ephemera. 

Since we commissioned our mail-and-stamp graphic identity from More Associates back in April 2005, we have seeped more-and-more online to document and communicate: our first newsletter (November 2005), our first website, our early blog posts (starting in September 2006!), our Facebook page in early 2009 started with the presentation of Jan Dibbets' filming for Portscapes, our Flickr photo archive (also in 2009, now with nearly 4,000 photos online), followed by our first tweets in 2010, and sporadically YouTube, Issuu, Storify, Soundcloud followed.


 Presentation of 7 years of practice as part of the programme "La Sucursal" at Casa del Lago, Mexico City, September 2012. This invitation gave us the opportunity to begin the series 'Incidents of Travel' commissioning artists tours in Mexico and Hong Kong. Photo: Latitudes.

This "ecstasy of communication" as Dieter Roelstraete has ironically put it, a day-to-day reality, has certainly defined our practice and how we have come to produce, document and disseminate our projects. We always stress this rapid digital transition when presenting our practice, as adapting to it has certainly been crucial as a two-person spaceless self-organisation. Not running a regular programme of exhibitions or events has meant we have found the need to communicate the duration of what we are working on while being seemingly offline. Sometimes the standard drop-in question "What are you working on?", is not so straightforward to answer. Back to Roelstraete – "getting organised" could often be the most suitable answer. "Getting organised" for the next project, reflecting on a recently concluded activity, anticipating the one after that, sorting out finances, seeing how we might put together the next research trip, finding it a challenge to find the time to read a book from beginning to end, watching life and work go by in 'likes' and 'retweets' and 'regrams'... Yet far than being nostalgic, this transition has itself given us great food for thought. For example, we dedicated over a year to discussing the consequences of online presence for art practice and curating with colleagues from Hong Kong to Minneapolis in the #OpenCurating interview series. 


 In 2010 we were awarded the inaugural Curatorial Prize given by the Catalan Gallery Association, recognising our "curatorial work and especially for their involvement in the local context and their efforts to disseminate national art in an international context." Photo: Latitudes.

We are thankful to the many artists and other creative people who have supported us throughout this past decade. Some projects started with innocuous conversations that eventually led to ongoing collaborations and friendships, and we are also grateful to colleagues willing to offer critical feedback and words of encouragement in those moments in which we most needed to regain trust. A huge thanks too to the institutions and organisations for financing our projects

Very soon more news on a commemorative project we've been cooking up...
 
Related content:

Latitudes' 4th anniversary (April 2009)
Newsletter #22 – April 2010 


This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos:
Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption).
Work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Tutors of the 2015 International Curatorial Retreat, 9–13 May, Bari (Italy)

Introduction to the four-day workshop by Tara McDowell, director of the Curatorial Practice PhD. Program at MADA (Monash School of Art Design and Architecture), Melbourne.

Organised by Vessel in collaboration with the Curatorial Practice PhD Program at MADA (Monash School of Art Design and Architecture) in Melbourne – which a year ago co-hosted our Melbourne residency as part of Gertrude Contemporary's Visiting Curatorial Program – the retreat brings together participants and tutors in an intense mobile four-day format. 


The 2015 International Curatorial Retreat (9–13 May) focused on issues which have gained urgency within contemporary curatorial practice under the conditions of globalization, in particular, the process of writing when related to the ‘epistemologies of the South’ – a term adopted from Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos. 

As a member of the team of tutors of the retreat, Latitudes presented two of its recent editorial projects (The Last Newspaper and Incidents of Travel in Mexico and Hong Kong) and led an afternoon workshop titled “Near Future Artworlds Curatorial Foresight Disruption Group” that operated in the realm of "art-fiction", of desirable or dystopian prototypes, speculative objects and art world services, as well as imminent and real (to use the startup term) disruptions. A kind of near-future think tank and foresight group, the workshop imagined curatorial-editorial prototypes and use-case scenarios.

Tirdad Zolghadr during his workshop.

 Alexandra Ross presented http://www.continuous-curatorial-conversations.org/, a "compilation of supplementary histories which appropriately emphasizes the oral nature of curatorial practice".

Photo: Piero Percoco.

Participants (via the open call): Rachel Dedman (1989, London, lives and works in Beirut; Curator-in-Residence, 98weeks, Beirut); Maya Mikelstone (1982, Latvia, lives and works in Paris/Latvia, independent curator); Jesse van Oosten (1986, Rotterdam, lives and works in Rotterdam, Associate Curator, TENT Rotterdam); Heidi Rabben (1982, Laguna Beach, California, lives and works in San Francisco; Assistant Director, Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco); Maayan Sheleff (1976, Tel-Aviv, lives and works in Tel-Aviv, independent curator); Eszter Szakács (1983, Mór, Hungary, lives and works in Budapest; curator and researcher at tranzit.hu, Budapest); Christel Vesters (1972, Oldebroek, The Netherlands, lives and works in Amsterdam; PhD candidate, School of Humanities, Royal College of Art in London). 

Participants from the Curatorial Practice PhD at MADA, Melbourne: Léuli Eshraghi, Sarah Ann Farrar, Rosemary Forde, Melanie Oliver, Joel Stern and Holly Williams. 

Tutors: Tara McDowell (Associate Professor and Director of Curatorial Practice at MADA); Dr Alexandra Ross (Postdoctoral fellow, Centre for Curating the Archive at Michaelis Art School, University of Cape Town); Tirdad Zolghadr (Curator and writer currently affiliated with Al Quds Bard College and the International Academy of Art, Ramallah); Fucking Good Art (travelling artists’ magazine or editorial project for research in-and-through art); Vít Havránek (theoretician and organizer based in Prague, co-founder of Tranzitdisplay and Latitudes (independent Barcelona-based curatorial office). 

Light display at the Piazza del Ferrarese during the Feste di San Nicola.

View from the Doppelgaenger Gallery in the old town area, the venue that hosted the seminars.

 Part of the group visited Monopoli for a workshop led by Rob and Nienke of Fucking Good Art.

 Monopoli seafront.

 Walking through the old city centre of Bari on the way to lunch.

 Food shopping at the Mercato ex Manifattura Bari (former tobacco factory) in the Quartiere Libertà.

 Dinner cooked by the International Curatorial Retreat's chef-in-residence Boris Portnoy.

 Photo: Piero Percoco

(Above and below) 'Notes and Quotes' session led by Rob and Nienke of Fucking Good Art, a 'de-briefing'  session that wrapped up the discussions by exchanging notes and quotes drawn from the previous few days.


Final remarks and feedback session. Photo: Piero Percoco.
 
RELATED CONTENT:



This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos:
Latitudes | www.lttds.org
Work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Archive of Cover Story (April): "Beneath the Connaught Road West flyover, Hong Kong, 19 January 2013"

This past March we launched our re-designed website, which includes improved features as well as new sections such as "cover story" on our home page: a monthly focus on one artwork, artist, book, site or trip we've experienced in our recent past, accompanied by a short text.

Our April Cover Story titled "Beneath the Connaught Road West flyover, Hong Kong, 19 January 2013" looked back at the first 'Incidents of Travel' tour led by artist Nadim Abbas, part of our month residency at Spring Workshop. 

We recommend reading the text while listening to this field recording we made on the very same spot!


Related content:

Cover Story #1: Wilfredo Prieto's work "Grease, Soap, Banana" (2 April 2015)
New re-designed website now online! (25 February 2015) 
Witte de With and Spring Workshop's 'Moderation(s)' publication 'End Note(s)' is out! (5 March 2015).
Nadim Abbas' "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" public tour (19 January 2013)
Archive of social media posts related to "Incidents of Travel" tours and photo-documentation.
Interview between Christina Li and Latitudes on 'Incidents of Travel' for Witte de With's 'Witness to Moderation(s)' blog (7 May 2013)

13 field recordings from 'Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong'


This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos:
Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption).
Work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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