Longitudes
Longitudes cuts across Latitudes’ projects and research with news, updates, and reportage.
Jan Dibbets’ “6 Hours Tide Object with Correction of Perspective” in the catalogue “By The Sea. Land Art, Performance and Minimal Art”
Tue, Sep 13 2022
Cover of “By the Sea”. Photo: Latitudes
We just received a copy of the catalogue which features works by Milan Adamčiak/Jozef Revallo/Róbert Cyprich, Bas Jan Ader, Nikita Alexeev, Keith Arnatt, Artur Barrio, Bård Breivik, John Cage, Oddvar IN Daren, Ina Hagen, Lumír Hladík, Peter Hutchinson, Tadeusz Kantor, Inghild Karlsen, Alison Knowles, Jiří Kovanda, Milan Kozelka, Jeewi Lee, Cecylia Malik, Ana Mendieta, Fina Miralles, Jüri Okas, Ewa Partum, Zorka Ságlová, Gerry Schum, Mieko Shiomi, Robert Smithson, Gerd Tinglum, The Deadly Doris and Ben Vautier.
ISBN 978-3-9822977-2-9
228 Seiten I Deutsch I Englisch
Price: 25,00 € plus shipping
Jan Dibbets’s project consisted of a reenactment of his “12 Hours Tide Object with Correction of Perspective” (1969) commissioned by Latitudes forty years later to inaugurate the 2009 “Portscapes” commissions series of accumulative projects sited in and around the Port of Rotterdam, the largest seaport in Europe. Portscapes projects were displayed at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam in 2010. “Portscapes” was produced by the Port of Rotterdam Authority in collaboration with the sadly now-defunct internationally operating Dutch cultural organisation SKOR | Foundation Art and Public Space (1999–2012).
(Above and below) Pages with Jan Dibbets’ work “6 Hours Tide Object with Correction of Perspective” (2009) included in the catalogue “By the Sea”. Photo: Latitudes
RELATED CONTENT:
- Portscapes “Making of” videos
- Making of video of Jan Dibbets (part 1 and part 2)
- Press Release inaugurating Portscapes
- Portscapes exhibition at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen
- “6 Hours Tide Object with Correction of Perspective” by Jan Dibbets screened in Barcelona, 10 December 2019
Conversación en línea con Jorge Satorre, 22 de septiembre a las 19h UTC
Tue, Sep 14 2021
Jorge Satorre, “The Erratic. Measuring Compensation” (2009). Cortesía del artista.
El 22 de septiembre 2021 a las 19h (UTC -5) se transmitirá a través de Facebook Live del Museo Amparo una conversación que mantuvimos con el artista Jorge Satorre (Ciudad de México, 1979). La conversación quedará registrada en el canal Youtube del museo.
Programada dentro del ciclo ‘‘Diálogos con artistas de la Colección de Arte Contemporáneo”, la conversación se enmarca dentro de la programación de la exposición “El tiempo en las cosas” curada por Tatiana Cuevas en las Salas de Arte Contemporáneo del Museo Amparo en Puebla, México.
La conversación giró entorno al proceso de producción de “The Erratic. Measuring Compensation” (2010), actualmente incluída en la exposición “El tiempo en las cosas”, realizada por Satorre y comisionada por Latitudes como uno de los diez proyectos producidos a lo largo del 2009 en el espacio público del Puerto de Rotterdam, en los Países Bajos.
Durante el verano de 2009, Satorre buscó y localizó una de las gigantescas rocas que los glaciares llevaron a los Países Bajos desde Escandinavia durante la última Edad de Hielo. A raíz de la fascinación del artista por los proyectos de compensación medioambiental que se llevaron a cabo durante el proyecto de ampliación portuaria Maasvlakte 2 (2008–13), Satorre con la ayuda de un equipo de científicos identificó el lugar de origen de un bloque errático y lo devolvió a su lugar de origen, un acto de restitución sintética y compensación escultórica transnacional.
El gesto geológico inverso de Satorre además de reflejar la construcción monumental de Maasvlakte 2 como una escultura de la forma de la tierra que, como la acción del deshielo pero en un tiempo mucho más corto, está alterando para siempre la morfología de los Países Bajos. La acción también se refleja en el hecho de que gran parte de la defensa marítima existente y futura en la zona portuaria se hará con roca traída de Escandinavia. Satorre ofrece un relato del proceso de devolución a través de dibujos que incorporan detalles reales e imaginarios. Uno de estos detalles representa una protesta imaginada al comienzo del viaje de vuelta a casa de la roca y fue presentado a modo de prólogo del proyecto en una valla publicitaria en el Puerto de Rotterdam, el puerto más grande de Europa.
Portscapes fue un encargo de la Autoridad Portuaria de Rotterdam con el asesoramiento y apoyo de la desaparecida organización SKOR (Fundación Arte y Espacio Público, Ámsterdam), y fue curado por Latitudes. En este contexto se encargaron proyectos a Lara Almarcegui, Bik van der Pol, Jan Dibbets, Marjolijn Dijkman, Fucking Good Art, Ilana Halperin, Christina Hemauer & Roman Keller, Paulien Oltheten, Hans Schabus y a Jorge Satorre, quien realizó “The Erratic. Measuring Compensation” (2010).
Jorge Satorre, “The Erratic. Measuring Compensation” (2009). Cortesía del artista. Foto: B. Wind.
→ CONTENIDO RELACIONADO:
- Cover Story, September 2021: Erratic behaviour—Latitudes in conversation with Jorge Satorre, 31 August 2021
- Portscapes project page
- Portscapes photo documentation
- Web of the artist about ‘The Erratic. Measuring Compensation’
- Review of the exhibition "What cannot be used is forgotten" in the May issue of frieze 29 April 2015
- Publication "Robert Smithson: Art in Continual Movement" (Alauda Publications, 2012) includes essay by Max Andrews, 28 Mar 2012
- Lecture by Max Andrews "From Spiral to Spime: Robert Smithson, the ecological and the curatorial", 13 March, 2pm, Lecture Theatre 1, Royal College of Art, London, 12 March 2012
- Interview with Erick Beltrán & Jorge Satorre publ 'Atlántica' magazine #52, 13 Feb 2012
- Proyecto producido por Jorge Satorre para 'Portscapes' (2009) expuesto en la exposición colectiva 'Fat Chance to Dream', Maisterravalbuena, Madrid, 29 Mar 2011
- 2009 Video of the making of Jorge Satorre's project
- Portscapes news: Jorge Satorre's billboard on the A15 and Paulien Oltheten small exhibition at the visitor centre Futureland and surroundings, 2 October 2009
Cover Story, September 2021: Erratic behaviour—Latitudes in conversation with Jorge Satorre
Tue, Aug 31 2021
September 2021 cover story on www.lttds.org
The September 2021 monthly Cover Story “Erratic behaviour—Latitudes in conversation with Jorge Satorre” is now up on our homepage: www.lttds.org
“In 2008 the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, the largest in Europe, began a dramatic project to extending its land by 20% into the sea. Known as Maasvlakte 2, the construction involved bringing more than 5 million tons of rock from Scandinavia for the construction of dikes and dams, alongside a programme of ecological offsetting. ”
→ After September 2021 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.
→ RELATED CONTENTS:
- Archive of Monthly Cover Stories
- Cover Story–July-August 2021: Panorama: a wide view from a fixed point, 2 July 2021
- Cover Story–June 2021: ‘Fitness food: Salim Bayri’s Amsterdam’, 1 June 2021
- Cover Story–May 2021: RAF goes viral, 2 May 2021
- Cover Story—April 2021: Cover Story – April 2021: Lara Almarcegui at La Panera, 2 Apr 2021
- Cover Story—March 2021: Eulàlia Rovira's ‘A Knot Which is Not’ (2020–21), 1 mar 2021
- Cover Story—February 2021: ‘Straits Time: narrative smuggling in Singapore’, 1 Feb 2021
- Cover Story–January 2021: ‘Things Things Say’: VIP's Union’, 1 Jan 2021
‘6 Hours Tide Object with Correction of Perspective’ by Jan Dibbets screened in Barcelona
Tue, Dec 10 2019
Production of '6 Hours of Tide Object with Correction of Perspective' (2009) by Jan Dibbets. Photo: Paloma Polo / SKOR.
The film was produced in 2009 for ‘Portscapes’, the year-long programme producing ten new commissions in and around the Port of Rotterdam, The Netherlands, curated by Latitudes.
Gerry Schum's 1969 'Land Art' series of films screened on German public TV.
Jan Dibbets’ (1941) film was ‘Portscapes’ inaugural project and was filmed on February 8, 2009. Originally filmed 40 years earlier, in February 1969, in black and white and in 16 mm, it was titled ‘12 Hours Tide Object...’. The film was originally presented in 1969 as part of Gerry Schum's seminal 'Land Art' series of artists' films screened that same year on German public TV (this programme was included in Latitudes-curated touring 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 April 2008.)
The film presents the drawing of an isosceles trapezoid in the sand using a bulldozer – the shape consequently appears as a rectangle in the resultant film due to the angle of perspective. The new 2009 realisation was filmed 40 years later to the month on the beach of the Maasvlakte, an area that was soon after forever transformed with the construction of Maasvlakte 2 – a land reclamation project, realised between 2008 and 2013, that extended Europe's largest seaport and industrial area by 2,000 hectares.
The resulting 8 minute-long film was premiered at the FutureLand Information Centre of the Port of Rotterdam in June 2009 and during Latitudes’ participation in the New York festival NO SOUL FOR SALE – A Festival of Independents (24–28 June 2009).
Dibbets’ film presented as part of Latitudes’ participation in the festival NO SOUL FOR SALE – A Festival of Independents, New York, 24–28 June 2009. Photo: Latitudes.
Projection of Dibbets' 1969 film as part of the itinerant film programme ‘A Stake in the Mud, A Hole in the Reel. Land Art’s Expanded Field 1968–2008’ on July 11, 2008, at the barn Hongersdijk Farmstead, Wilhelminapolder, Zeeland, The Netherlands, a programme hosted by SKOR (Foundation Art and Public Space, Amsterdam). Photo: Latitudes.
‘6 Hours Tide Object with Correction of Perspective’ was produced in collaboration with SKOR | Foundation Art and Public Space (1999–2012), an organisation which initiated, curated and developed art projects in relation to the public domain that no longer exists, realising over a thousand projects in public space in the Netherlands for over a decade. Portscapes was curated by Latitudes, culminating in a display of the projects at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam in 2010.
→ RELATED CONTENT:
- Portscapes commissions
- Portscapes exhibition at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen
- Making of '6 Hours of Tide Object with Correction of Perspective' (2009) by Jan Dibbets – part 1 here.
- Making of '6 Hours of Tide Object with Correction of Perspective' (2009) by Jan Dibbets – part 2 here.
Cover Story—Summer 2019: Francesc Ruiz’s Brexit Bristol sequel, ten years ago
Mon, Jul 1 2019
Latitudes' homepage www.lttds.org
The July 2019 monthly Cover Story ‘Francesc Ruiz’s Brexit Bristol sequel, ten years ago’ is now up on Latitudes' homepage: www.lttds.org
“The British political system has collapsed… Once the high streets merely declined with their pound shops, gold traders, and bargain basements… Then they slumped as the "major downturn" began to bite… Yet as the economy finally plunged into the devastating recession, countless properties and businesses across the city of Bristol already lay in ruins… Widespread rioting and looting… Shortages of food and medicines… Spiralling inflation rates and a currency crash… The troops now struggle to enforce the state of emergency… The traitors flock to the southern ports, desperately seeking safe passage to Brussels…”
→ Continue reading
→ After this month it 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 activities.
RELATED CONTENT:
- Archive of Monthly Cover Stories
- Cover Story—June 2019: Thinking like a drainage basin: Lara Almarcegui’s ‘Concrete’ 1 June 2019
- Cover Story—May 2019: Buenos Aires in Parallel 1 May 2019
- Cover Story—March-April 2019: "Icelandic refraction" 3 March 2019
- Cover Story—February 2019: Schizophrenic Machine (1 February 2019)
- Cover Story—January 2019: “Seesaw” (7 January 2019)
Latitudes' redesigned portfolio – projects since 2005
Wed, Feb 20 2019
After weeks and long hours facing the screen and mining hard disks, we've uploaded Latitudes' redesigned portfolio, at last! Go to download page and choose format:
For desktop/laptop/tablet view (83pp, 30.9 MB)
For mobile (164pp, 15.8 MB)
For print (164pp, 155.3 MB)
The pdf gathers a selection of projects produced since 2005 and includes a refreshed version of our biographies – which have also been updated on our website.
We have also included short individual biographies available for download as pdf – see below highlighted in yellow.
PDF designed and edited by Latitudes.
RELATED CONTENT:
RELATED CONTENT:
- About Latitudes
- Writing archive on Latitudes' website
- Receive our sporadic newsletters.
Cover Story–July 2018: No Burgers for Sale
Mon, Jul 2 2018
The July 2018 Monthly Cover Story "No Burgers for Sale" is now up on Latitudes' homepage: www.lttds.org
"In 1983, a Burger King opened on New York’s Governors Island, then a U.S. Coast Guard base. It was the first franchise to serve beer. After scoffing a Whopper combo, officers and enlisted men could enjoy a round of golf, play bingo, go to the movies, or throw balls at the adjacent bowling alley. In 1999, this Burger King featured in issue 615 of ‘The Amazing Spider-man’. After almost two centuries operating as a federal or military facility, the Island was vacated in 1996, and the Burger King shut up shop. The remnants were photographed in 2003 by Andrew Moore and Lisa Kereszi."
No burgers were on sale though, just wooden pretzels!
—> Continue reading
—> Project photo documentation
—> After July 2018 it 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 activities.
RELATED CONTENT:
- Archive of Monthly Cover Stories
- Cover Story—June 2018: Near-Future Artworlds Curatorial Disruption Foresight Group 4 June 2018
- Cover Story – May 2018: "Shadowing Roman Ondák" 7 May 2018
- Cover Story – April 2018: "Cover Story—April 2018: Dates, 700 BC to the present: Michael Rakowitz" 3 April 2018
- Cover Story – March 2018: "Armenia's ghost galleries" 6 March 2018
- Cover Story – February 2018: Paradise, promises and perplexities 5 February 2018
- Cover Story – January 2018: I'll be there for you, 2 January 2018
- Cover Story – December 2017: "Tabet's Tapline trajectory", 4 December 2017
- Cover Story – November 2017: "Mining negative monuments: Ângela Ferreira, Stone Free, and The Return of the Earth", 1 November 2017
- Cover Story – October 2017: Geologic Time at Stanley Glacier 11 October 2017
- Cover Story – September 2017: Dark Disruption. David Mutiloa's 'Synthesis' 1 September 2017
- Cover Story – August 2017: Walden 7; or, life in Sant Just Desvern 1 August 2017
- Cover Story – July 2017: 4.543 billion 3 July 2017
- Cover Story – June 2017: Month Light–Absent Forms 1 June 2017
- Cover Story – May 2017: S is for Shale, or Stuart; W is for Waterfall, or Whipps 1 May 2017
- Cover Story – April 2017: Banff Geologic Time 3 April 2017
- Cover Story – March 2017: Time travel with Jordan Wolfson 1 March 2017
Two 'Portscapes' films presented in 'Scenographies', an exhibition at SMBA in Amsterdam
Tue, Oct 1 2013
Still from Marjolijn Dijkman's "Surviving New Land" (2009).
Courtesy of the artist and SKOR | Foundation for Art in Public Space.
Two of the films produced for 'Portscapes', the year-long programme of public art projects in the Port of Rotterdam curated by Latitudes back in 2009, are currently screened as part of the exhibition 'Scenographies'. The show, curated by Clare Butcher for SMBA Amsterdam, is "a dynamic exhibition programme based around the archive of SKOR | Foundation for Art in Public Space." On view until 16 November 2013, artists and artists' collectives will approach the legacy of SKOR, the former institution that realized more than a thousand projects in public space
in the Netherlands over the past three decades.
The selected films are those by Dutch artists Jan Dibbets ("6 Hours Tide Object with Correction of Perspective", watch the making of part 1 and part 2), and Marjolijn Dijkman's "Surviving New Land" (watch a low res view here), and are screened between 3-16 October as part of the larger film programme "Constructed Sceneries" curated by High& Low Bureau (Yael Messer and Gilad Reich).
On Saturday 3 October at 8pm, High& Low Bureau will talk about their practice in relation to the subjects in the film programme. They will be joint by 'Scenographies' curator, Clare Butcher.
On Saturday 3 October at 8pm, High& Low Bureau will talk about their practice in relation to the subjects in the film programme. They will be joint by 'Scenographies' curator, Clare Butcher.
+ info:
Photos of Jan Dibbets' film here.
Photos of Marjolijn Dijkman film here.
Info on the exhibition 'Scenographies', here (as a pdf)
Portscapes website.
Production of '6 Hours of Tide Object with Correction of
Perspective' (2009) by Jan Dibbets. Photo: Paloma Polo / SKOR.
This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos: Latitudes (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
All photos: Latitudes (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Ignasi Aballí at ARTIUM and Latitudes' text on 2009 project in Beijing and a 2010 interview
Sun, May 20 2012
Ignasi Aballí "This is not the end". Courtesy of the artist.
On the occasion of Ignasi Aballí (Barcelona, 1958) exhibition 'This is not the end' at ARTIUM, Vitoria-Gasteiz (curated by François Piron, on view until 2 September 2011), we wanted to share two projects in which Latitudes collaborated with the Catalan artist.
Firstly, the interview “Rank & File” between the artist and Latitudes for which we discussed his ongoing List series. The text was originally published in 'The Last Star Ledger' (Issue #4 of 'The Last Newspaper' catalogue edited by Latitudes, New Museum, New York, 2010).
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| Read here: https://issuu.com/latitudes/docs/4_the_last_star-ledger/2 |
ARTIUM's 'This is not the end' includes the work "Tomar medidas" (Taking Measures, 2009), in which nine instruments are displayed measuring things we cannot see: dust particles, time, electrical fields, noise, temperature, the intensity of light, radiation, etc. The first version of "Tomar medidas" was produced for 'Nothing, or Something' (22 May–22 July 2009), an exhibition curated by Latitudes for Suitcase Art Projects, the project space of the Today Art Museum, located on three floors of the Yintai retail centre in Beijing – see images of the exhibition.
Following is the essay included in the small publication 'Nothing, or Something' produced to accompany the exhibition – see images of the publication.
'Ignasi Aballí: Nothing, Or Something'Following is the essay included in the small publication 'Nothing, or Something' produced to accompany the exhibition – see images of the publication.
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| Detail of the publication "Nothing, or Something" published by Today Art Museum and edited by Latitudes. |
The morning before Ignasi Aballí’s ‘Nothing, Or Something’ opened, we couldn’t help but overhear an American businesswoman having a breakfast meeting at our hotel. “We’re working very much with intangibles”, she declared – and, we had to concur, so were we. Aballí’s works for Suitcase Art Projects address immateriality, residues and traces. He prompts us to consider things that we cannot perceive directly or are too ordinary to be properly noticed. What is perhaps philosophy’s central and most enduring question – ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ – is simultaneously approached as a precise existential experiment and as if with the shrug of a silent comedian.
Despite drawing on the formal language of modernism’s impulse towards reduction and the ‘white cube’ of the museum as much as commonplace materials and unremarkable elements of daily existence, ‘Nothing, or Something’ has nevertheless been created for a situation that is neither fully ‘art’ (though presented under the auspices of the Today Art Museum), nor ‘life’, nor public space – but for a shopping centre. Walter Benjamin’s vast The Arcades Project (1927–1940) located the bustling arcades of nineteenth-century Paris – early versions of the contemporary mall – as heralding a decisive shift to the speed and commodification of things which signalled the emergence of the modern age. Following Benjamin’s concerns, Aballí’s project is preoccupied by the parameters of display while being experienced through a collision and confusion with its surroundings. The windows in which it takes place are located throughout three floors of the Beijing Yintai Centre, a recently opened retail destination hosting high-end fashion, jewellery and watch manufacturers in the heart of Beijing's Central Business District, in one of the tallest buildings in the city. In the context of an excess of brand visibility, signage and luxury product presentation strategies, the eight conceptually interlinked works which comprise ‘Nothing, or Something’ seek a counterpoint and temporarily make room for a different kind of looking, a slower revelation and, to borrow from Marcel Duchamp – to whom we will return – a ‘delay in glass’. The constraints and techniques of making something visible, and the very expectation of having something to see, become the projects’ points of articulation.
Please excuse our appearance, for example, wryly offers the visitor an explanation for the apparent lack of anything in the display case beyond the out-of-place presence of pages from the Spanish newspaper El País (which has often been used by Aballí as the basis for his art) which are laid on the floor as if anticipating some messy activity. Summoning an in-between temporality of perpetual waiting, the vinyl text on the window requests pardon for an apparent hiatus in the rhythm of seasonal trends. Aballí’s work from 2005 entitled Próxima aparición / Próximamente / Coming Soon – a one hour film showing the text of its title – similarly places the audience in an irrational situation of viewing where the main event is declaredly taking place at another time. Coming Soon is also the title of the vacated shop scenario of ‘Nothing, Or Something’. Only traces are left on the premises. An inventory of products on sale is detailed in half-removed words on the glass. Torn posters hang from the side walls; dirty marks have been left by shelves at the back; the dusty outline of objects in a forgotten display case. Each is a reminder of what purports to have been a unit dedicated to photographic equipment. The awkwardly appended ‘coming soon’ vinyl text on the window creates some confusion, however, as to what has left and what has yet to appear. Dust has regularly featured as a material in Aballí’s work, bringing to mind not only Dust Breeding (1920) – Man Ray’s celebrated photograph of Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (1915–23) partially covered in a thick dusty layer – but less specifically a concern with entropy and the threshold of perception, where something is only readily perceivable through gradual accumulation or through its removal. Dust is “a very complex material ... a terminal, annoying, residual material that we don’t want” as the artist has described – particularly when it comes to photography.1 As he addressed in his recent exhibition ‘Without activity’, so many of the gestures and routines of (especially pre-digital) photography are concerned with cleaning, brushing and wiping away.2 The depositing of dust also becomes an analogue for the exposure of light on photographic paper and in essence the inevitable passage of time.
Dust is, unsurprisingly, present in the atmosphere of Beijing. In the work Beijing Air, Aballí takes the small volume of the city’s air present in a window display as the subject of what seems to be an encyclopedic annotated diagram cataloguing its actual and speculative, or feared, components. Text fixed to the glass and indicating lines describe the common gases present in air as well as a host of industrial pollutants, various airborne viruses and environmental particulate matter such as pollen. Many artists have commemorated the notion of blankness or explored the radically empty and each different reasons – the void can represent the wiping away of content and yet the preparation for something new. Aballí echoes this legacy – alongside Duchamp once more, whose Paris Air (1919) consists of a small vial of air from the French capital – yet his pseudo-scientific indications that nothingness is in fact not so easily achievable, at least for an earth-bound artist, brings humorous bathos to one of the central myths of the avant-garde.
Taking measures similarly adopts the language of objective inquiry with an absurd twist. Eight identical plinths occupy a vitrine and present scientific instruments which detect and measure invisible forces for the duration of the project – a stopwatch counts time, a digital barometer records the atmosphere pressure, a compass shows the magnetic orientation, a thermometer-hydrometer measures temperature and humidity, while a lux meter detects light. A sound meter measures in decibels alongside an instrument for sensing radiation. It is no surprise that an anemometer reveals that it is not windy in the vitrine. Contrary to immediate, decorative, or pictorial appeals to vision, Aballí proposes an ongoing sensitization to perceptions that escape direct representation. Yet evidently, we are still looking at something and instead, our aesthetic attention is displaced onto the design and the presentational mode of these instruments.
The vitrine opposite this, Scenic Viewpoints, presents the visitor with an arrangement of what appears to be blank white sheets of paper taped to the inside of the glass. As with several of the other works, in this shopping centre context, it could well seem like an unfortunate-looking temporary situation. Something is changed, remedied, covered over and hopefully overlooked: nothing to see here! Yet the attentive are rewarded with an altogether different vision – looking through the gaps in the white ‘tiles’ through to the reflection in the mirrored back surface of the narrow space, one can piece together an exuberant compilation of sights. Each sheet is an enlarged colour postcard depicting views, events and landmarks from the artist’s home of Barcelona, a city whose popularity as a tourist destination lies in no small part to its presentation as a readily consumable and legible visual ‘brand’. Blankly monochromatic on the outside, Scenic Viewpoints refuses such a generalised overview. Its ecstatic orchestration of wide vistas and saturated spectacles is only visible to a peeping, prying viewer who then can only see a small part at one time while linking “the abundance of images around us with the scarcity of meaning we can attach to them”, as Bartomeu Marí has described of another of Aballí’s works Revelations (2005).3
The vitrines titled Illuminating and White Cube are sited facing each other. Illuminating consists only of the application of light. Very bright light. The installation of professional film lights which shine out from the vitrine creates a level of luminescence that is evidently excessive. With a seeming lack of anything in particular to illuminate, one is reflected in the mirrored vitrine in the looped process of beholding oneself beholding the work. A counterpoint to the tastefully spotlighted products in the neighbouring shops, the wastefully ‘incorrect’ situation highlights a stark condition of energetic consumption while literally highlighting its context. White Cube provides the backdrop to this intense reflexivity. It cancels the transparency of its vitrine through the application of whitewash on the glass, a technique commonly adopted by empty premises after going out of business. (Not coincidentally, some of the pages of the newspapers of Please excuse our appearance carry stories related to the recession, which are illustrated by closed-up shops.) As with Aballí’s Big Mistake (1998-2005) and other works using Tipp-Ex correction fluid (used to cover errors on writing or typing paper), the artist creates a quotidian monochrome, through a melancholic painting-like blanking-out activity that nevertheless is never properly a painting. If White Cube refers to a spectre of painting, Vitrines for a Vitrine seems to orientate around some missing sculpture or precious object. Yet as if the artist has been perpetually unconvinced by the plausibility of displaying something, nothing is on show – rather it is the condition of display which is demonstrated in a mise en abyme, itself within the regime of visibility of the shopping centre. Three clear acrylic display cases like those used in museums or in chic stores occupy the glass vitrine. Each contains one small photograph of different empty vitrines which the artist has encountered in various cities.
‘Nothing, or Something’ undoubtedly triggers perplexing situations for the shopping public and the workers of the centre who were more-or-less familiar with the art project’s presence or witnesses to its installation. For many, the works may well go completely unnoticed. Are we seeing what we are supposed to be seeing? Where is the work? When is the work? Yet it is not the intention of Aballí’s project to be disingenuous or confrontational. On the contrary, it operates through orchestrating and modifying simple possibilities for observation, deduction and reflection. Something or nothing is happening, is not happening, is not happening anymore, or is yet to happen. Enhanced by memory and hindsight the project allows a disarmingly humble visual retirement – the kind of complexity that emerges through ceasing or waiting. How and why are things added and subtracted from the world, or from sight? What is worth looking at, having or keeping, and what is to be doubted or erased? What does it mean to be more aware of the things we cannot see? Perhaps we are all working with intangibles?
– © Latitudes (Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna)
1 Ignasi Aballí, 0-24 h., Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2005, p.25
2 Sem Actividade / Without Activity, Museu de Portimão, 2008
3 Ignasi Aballí, 0-24 h., Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2005, p.11
Text originally published in 'Nothing, or Something', the publication accompanying the exhibition that took place in the Suitcase Art Projects, Beijing, China, 22 May–22 July 2009.
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This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Twitter.
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This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Twitter.
All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)
Photographic documentation of 'Portscapes' projects on flickr and youtube
Thu, Mar 18 2010
You can see photographic documentation of 'Portscapes', the ten newly produced commissions that were produced and presented throughout 2009 alongside the Port of Rotterdam, The Netherlands, in the photo collection in flickr.From there you can select individual albums for each artist project (Lara Almarcegui, Bik van der Pol, Jan Dibbets, Marjolijn Dijkman, Fucking Good Art, Ilana Halperin, Christina Hemauer & Roman Keller, Paulien Oltheten, Jorge Satorre and Hans Schabus), see installation shots of the exhibition at the Museum Boijmans (opened until 25 April) as well as the multi-part publication and a few images of Latitudes' site visits to the port area in May and July 2008.
You can also watch the 'behind the scenes' videos produced of each project on Latitudes YouTube Channel.