LONGITUDES

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

Latitudes’ “Out of office”: wrap up of the 2019–20 season

Seen in l'Hospitalet de Llobregat. Photo: @marianacanepaluna

In what has now become something of a Latitudes’ tradition we wrap up the season with a retrospective glance behind the scenes of some of our projects and activities of the previous twelve months (see the 2008-92009-102010-112011-122012–132013–142014–152015–16, 2016–172017–18 and 2018–19 posts). This last year has of course been unprecedented in so many ways. From mid-March, the Covid-19 pandemic meant that everything that had been in place was suddenly thrown into permanent doubt, delayed, or simply cancelled. As a healthcare crisis now precipitates an economic crisis, and with things we once took for granted (among them international travel, and visiting physical art exhibitions) completely changed for the foreseeable future, it is with more than a little trepidation that we even dare to look back at what once seemed normal. 

Keep well, keep safe.
#DistanciaManosMascarilla
#DistànciaMansMascareta


September 1, 2019: New season, new month, new cover story. ‘Polperro to Detroit’ tracked the improbable connection between Polperro, a small town Latitudes passed through on its summer sojourn, and an American Rust Belt metropolis we would be visiting later this September as participants of the Red Bull Arts Global Curatorial Initiative: Detroit.

September monthly Cover Story on https://www.lttds.org/coverstory

September 9–15, 2019: Beginning of the 2019–2020 season. This was our first trip to Helsinki where we were participating in two events. Firstly Latitudes was a partner organisation in the arts festival ‘Today Is Our Tomorrow’, a three-day event (12, 13 and 14 September) initiated by PUBLICS that presented a collaboratively curated program of temporary public art commissions, live performance, music, dance, theatre, literature and symposia. Latitudes invited Mercedes Azpilicueta to present her performance ‘Yegua-yeta-yuta’ (2015) at Club Kaiku, an underground music venue renowned for hosting an innovative lineup of DJs. 

We were also guests of Frame Contemporary Art Finland’s Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities’, a week composed of talks, performative dialogues, interventions and screenings developed in collaboration with a number of local partners.


‘Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities’ organised by Frame Contemporary Art Finland, hosted at the Museum of Impossible Forms.

 
September 12, 5:30h: Mercedes Azpilicueta during her talk in Helsinki.

 
Inga Lace’s Instagram Stories documenting the conversation between Mercedes and Latitudes on September 13, 2019.


Mercedes during her rehearsal at Club Kaiku. 

Mercedes and Max in the ferry to Suomenlinna Island to visit HIAP and a film installation by Marjolijn Dijkman and & Toril Johannessen. 

 

With Jussi Koitela (Head of Programme, Frame Contemporary Art Finland) and curators Anne-Sophie Springer and Sofia Lemos in HIAP's office space in Suomenlinna island. 

Listening to Wet Code, a sound piece by Myriagon at Suomenlinna Island. Photo by Ida Enegren / Frame Contemporary Art Finland.


On top of the Temppeliaukion Kirkko (A church built into rock) with Anne-Sophie Springer and Sofia Lemos.


Our October 2019 cover story featured Azpilicueta's performance programmed during TODAY IS OUR TOMORROW. 

PUBLICS' Library in Helsinki incorporated Latitudes-edited publications to their beautiful shelves in Vallila, Helsinki.



September 18–23, 2019: Joined the 2019 EXPO CHICAGO/Red Bull Arts Global Curatorial Initiative participating in a range of events and visits in Chicago (18–21 September) and Detroit (21–23 September).

→ Read the photo report here.

Caught purchasing books during our visit to ExpoChicago's section Index Art Book Fair. Photo: Casa Bosques. 

Morning session with the participating curators in the EXPO CHICAGO/Red Bull Arts Global Curatorial Initiative together with the Art Institute curatorial staff at the Art Institute Chicago. Photo: Expo Chicago.

The first stop in Detroit was visiting Dabls’ African Bead Gallery where we met its creator, Olayami Dabls led by our fantastic host Scott Campbell, Artist Liaison at Red Bull Arts Detroit, accompanied also by curator Maria Inés Rodríguez. 

Laura Mott (Senior Curator of Contemporary Art and Design) leading a tour of her curated exhibition ‘Landlord Colors: On Art, Economy, and Materiality’ at the Cranbrook Art Museum. Painting by Yoan Capote.

September 20, 2019: Meanwhile in Copenhagen, Rasmus Nilausen's solo exhibition ‘Bluetooth’ opened at Overgaden. Institut for Samtidskunst, Copenhagen, for which Max contributed an essay.

→ Exhibition views and text (pdf).

(↑↓) Views from Nilausen's exhibition at Overgarden, Copenhagen. Photos: Anders Sune Berg. 



October 7, 2019: artfridge.de published the interview Helene Romakin conducted with us over the summer.

→ Read the interview.

artfridge.de



October 9, 2019: The artist Céline Mathieu (and former BAR TOOL #2 participant) published an article in the Belgian magazine HART on the Barcelona art scene mentioning Latitudes and our three closed-door sessions ‘Barcelona / Such a beautiful horizon: Critical social infrastructure to promote art scene health resilience’ Latitudes led with BAR Tool's 2018–19 participants.



October 17-19, 2019: Lecture ‘4.543 billion and abstract social nature’, Jornadas Eremuak, AzkunaZentroa, Bilbao. Taking as a reference point one of the ten galleries hosting the 2017 group exhibition ‘4,543 billion. The matter of matter’ at the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, we expanded on the notion of ‘abstract social nature’ coined by environmental historian and geographer Jason W. Moore through the work of four exhibiting artists: Lara Almarcegui, Pep Vidal, Lucas Ihlein and Amy Balkin.

→ Video presentation here (Spanish, 24'45'')
→ Q&A session here (Spanish, 19'52'').


Photo: Eremuak.

October 23, 2019: First meeting with Joan Morey to discuss the adaptation of his retrospective exhibition COLLAPSE for Casal Solleric in Palma de Mallorca, opening at the end of January. Time is of the essence.



November 1, 2019: Max Andrews’s feature-length article ‘The Rise, Fall and Reinvention of Spain’s First Modern Art Museum’ on Valencia’s IVAM was published in the November–December 2019 (issue 207) of frieze magazine. The article focuses on the city’s trailblazing Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM) through the cultural and (often notorious) political agents that have forged its institutional history since it opened in 1989.

→ Featured as our November 2019 Cover Story.

November 2019 Cover Story www.lttds.org/coverstory

November 7, 2019: Latitudes presents the lecture ‘Curating in the Web of Life’ as part of the public programme for the group exhibition ‘The Coming World: Ecology as the New Politics 2030–2100’, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 7 November 2019. This was our first trip to Russia.

→ Video of the lecture (1h 28min including Q&A).


(↑↓) Latitudes during the lecture ‘Curating in the Web of Life’. Photo: Anton Donikov. © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. 
 
Hello from Moscow's Red Square. 

The lobby of the heartbreaking zoological Museum in Moscow, the second largest zoological museum in Russia in Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street
(↑↓) The most beautiful, cleanest and ad-free metro network we've ever seen. 



November 20-25, 2019: Trip to Amsterdam Art Weekend (AAW). Mariana was writing a Roundup review on the event for art-agenda (published on December 13). Since we’ve already published a post in December 2020 about what we saw during the week, we’re now remembering on the always beautiful flower arrangements the Rijksakademie displays in their welcoming areas!

→ Earlier iterations of the AAW 2014, 2016 and 2018.





November 28, 2019: Inaugural screening of DART Festival of Contemporary Art Documentaries (28 November–1 December). Latitudes was a jury member this year together with film critic Quim Casas and visual artist Núria Güell, and awarded the film ‘Barbara Rubin & the Exploding NY Underground’ (USA, 2018, 78 min) by Chuck Smith as the best international documentary and ‘Elliott Erwitt – Silence Sounds Good’ (Spain-France, 2019, 61 min) by Adriana López Sanfeliu as the best national documentary.


The inaugural session of the 3rd edition of the festival took place at cinema Phenomena with the 1974 film ‘A bigger splash’ by Jack Hazan, and a welcome intro by TV host Laura Sangrà and DART Festival co-directors Enrichetta Cardinale and Marc Gomariz. Below one of the sessions at the always busy Cinemes Girona. Photo: DART Festival.





December 1, 2019: December gloom was compensated on our homepage by a feature on Edward Steichen’s 1936 exhibition ‘Delphiniums’, at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
September monthly Cover Story https://www.lttds.org/coverstory/

December 3, 2019: Press presentation of the 2019-20 season of Barcelona Producció coinciding with the opening of Martin Llavaneras’s solo show. 

 
(Left to right) Alexandra Laudo (Barcelona Producció 2019-20 jury member and tutor of Martin Llavaneras’ project), Oriol Gual (Capella director), David Armengol (Tutor coordination), and Jordi Ferreiro (artist in charge of the newly created mediation grant).

We-fie with the three artists Latitudes tutored this season (left to right): Lola Lasurt, Consol Llupià, Agustín Ortiz (and Lola's baby Margot).

December 13, 2019: art-agenda publishes Mariana's Amsterdam Roundup, expanded with more photos on this Longitudes' post.

Read the review.


December 20, 2019: Mariana attends the last (official) meeting as secretary and board member of the Fundació Privada AAVC, the organisation governing HANGAR Centre de Producció i Recerca d'Arts Visuals. The board has met on a regular basis between December 2015 and December 2019 in order to discuss all aspects regarding its daily running—overseeing expenditure, approving financial forecasts or more philosophical yet pressing issues over its daily governance. A new board begins the next four-year term 2020–24.

Christmas 2019: Slow inbox days dedicated to writing and editing artwork captions, finalising an essay and the press release for the new iteration of Joan Morey's retrospective adapted to Casal Solleric in Palma de Mallorca.

Max editing Joan Morey's texts for its new iteration at Casal Solleric

January 2, 2020: New Year, New Decade, New Month, New Cover Story. Featuring Adrián Villar Rojas’s ‘Poems for Earthlings’ transformative installation at Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, and featured in Mariana’s recent art-agenda Roundup.

January 2020 Monthly Cover Story on www.lttds.org, archived here

January 21, 2020: Publish a refreshed Reduce Art Flights website (first published in 2008!) now including an exhibition history and a transcript of the interview with RAF’s instigator, the late Gustav Metzger.

https://reduceartflights.lttds.org


January 22, 2020: First meeting with Clara Renau, Miriam Soms and Joana Hurtado, the team of the Fabra i Coats: Centre of Contemporary Art of Barcelona to begin work on a group exhibition for the Autumn 2020...


January 28, 2020: Launch of the 10th dispatch of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ with contributions from Catalina Lozano and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

http://incidents.kadist.org




January 31, 2020: Opening of the solo exhibition by Joan Morey ‘COLLAPSE. Bachelor Machine’ at Casal Solleric, Palma de Mallorca. The exhibition is an adaptation of the first two parts of the project COLLAPSE presented in three concurrent venues in Barcelona between September 2018 and January 2019.


Bringing one of the seven vitrine-coffins exhibiting materials related to Morey's performances. Photo: @joanmorey via Instagram. 

Exhibition vinyl placed at the entrance of the exhibition. 


Installing ‘COS SOCIAL’ (2017) film. Photo: Joan Morey. 

Joan Morey guided tour on the opening night.

 
Celebratory coques i espinagades with Joan at the unbeatable Fornet de la Soca. 

February 21, 2020: Max joins Agustín Ortiz Herrera (whose research ‘Naming, Possessing. Critique of Taxonomic Practice’ is mentored by Latitudes as part of the Barcelona Producció 2019–20 season) the Cabinet of Curiosities of Francesc Bolós in Olot.

→ Featured in Latitudes' March cover story.


Agustín browsing through one of the copies of Linnaeus' "Species plantarum".



February 24, 2020: Ahead of ARCOmadrid art fair, Max (Contributor Editor, frieze magazine) selected some institutional and gallery shows to see in Madrid this week.


Frieze magazine organised evening drinks during ARCOmadrid at the legendary Bar Cock near Gran Via.

March 10, 2020: Attended the opening of Pere Llobera's solo show at La Capella, the second of the Barcelona Producció 2019-20 season. This became the last opening before the state of alarm was declared in Spain (eventually extended until June 21) triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and we had to remain at home until June.


View of Pere Llobera's exhibition ‘Faula Rodona. Sols i embogits. Entre la precisió total i una cancó de Sau’ (Circular Fable. Alone and Maddened; Between Total Accuracy and a Song by Sau). Photo: Pep Herrero / La Capella. 

March 13, 2020: Confinement. Projects on hold, conversations postponed. One of them was the three-day seminar Agustín Ortiz Herrera was preparing in the context of his ongoing research project ‘To name, to own. Critique of taxonomic practice’. Agustín’s research is one of the three projects mentored by Latitudes as part of the Barcelona Producció 2019–20 production grant. More on this and other ‘frozen’ projects, hopefully soon.

Photo: Agustín Ortiz Herrera, 2019.

April 2020: This month marks Latitudes’ 15 anniversary, celebrated during a strict lockdown.


April 9, 2020: . Launch of the 11th dispatch of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ with an itinerary by the artist duo Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker and report and photos by curator Sandino Scheidegger (Random Institute) from Panamá City, Panama. 

incidents.kadist.org


May 2, 2020: After more hours than we'd like to know or admit (and one of the few good side effects confinement allowed) we finally launched our rebuilt and redesigned website.

https://www.lttds.org 



May 22, 2020: Consol Llupià, one of the three artists we have been tutoring this year as part of the visual arts grant scheme Barcelona Producció, launched her online initiative ‘Vibraera’, part of her long-term ongoing project ‘La Balena de El Prat a El Prat’ [The El Prat Whale to El Prat]. On this day, during the migratory season of Whales around the Mediterranean coast and coinciding with a new moon, Llupià invited collaborators to join her in “an energetic rebellion, a call for collective immaterial action”, as she described it. This unfolding chapter was conceived as a symbolic communicative dialogue between humans and whales and consisted of an energetic global gathering intended to activate the vibrational capacity of humans to generate interspecies connections.


June 1, 2020: Jitsi catching up with the tutors of Barcelona Producció (Antònia Folguera missing) to discuss the results of the co-signed Open Letter (in Catalan) requesting the Barcelona Institute of Culture to immediately launch the 2021 Open Call, a petition that thankfully became effective a week later.

Photo: David Armengol. 

June 24, 2020: The of our contributions to Questions and Appearances, an initiative by Kadist, is Fermín Jiménez Landa’s response to our question “What is your advice, or warning, to the government?”, followed on the 8th by a second one (“What is importantly non-essential?”) which we posed to Arash Fayez.

https://www.instagram.com/questionsandappearances/


 

June 29, 2020: Technical meeting in preparation of Lola Lasurt’s forthcoming show at La Capella. David Armengol (Barcelona Producció 2019-20 coordinator, affectionally known as the ‘Tutor of tutors’) picked up an old-fashioned drawing table from Massana art school.


July 1, 2020: New cover story and a new episode of Incidents (of Travel) from Tbilisi, Georgia. A spring itinerary through the city’s former silk industry and the heart of Nino Kvrivishvili’s practice, the tour took place via a screen in Australia as Georgia emerged from the Spring lockdown.

→ incidents.kadist.org

Latitudes’ July 2020 homepage. 

July 21, 2020: After a month's of postponement, Lola Lasurt’s exhibition ‘Children’s Game’ opens at La Capella. It’s been a long process since it was announced as one of the three selected shows to be produced and presented at La Capella.

Lasurt’s exhibition looks back at the 1968 retrospective exhibition ‘Miró. Barcelona 1968-69’ with which La Capella was inaugurated as a venue dedicated to contemporary art. Through a new series of paintings, photos, videos, and ceramics, Lasurt addresses the socio-political turmoil at the end of the 1960s. She depicts imagery related to childhood published in the national press during the two-month state of exception declared in Spain just a few days after the Miró exhibition had ended.

Exhibition sheet (pdf)
Exhibition publication (pdf)



August 2019 meeting discussing layout and production calendar. 

(↑↓) During the Spring lockdown, we continued to check on each other and share the work-in-process. Lola was working on her ceramics and paintings in a garage-turned-studio nearby her house in Manresa and we were writing the text for the exhibition sheet. 

(↑↓) 14–16 July 2020: Lotema team during the installation. 




Due to the pandemic health measures, there was no opening event and visitors RSVPd in groups of 10. Photo: Pep Herrero/La Capella.

Lola Lasurt during one of the guided visits. Photo: Pep Herrero/La Capella.

Publication designed by Carles Murillo. 

July 23, 2020: Joan Morey presented the performance “COLLAPSE. Possible Machine” at the house museum Can Balaguer as part of his retrospective exhibition ‘COLLAPSE. Bachelor Machine’ at Casal Solleric (now extended until 6 September 2020). The performance took his 2017 performance ‘TOUR DE FORCE’ as a departing point but situated it in the present SARS-CoV-2 global pandemic.

(↑↓) July 9, 2020: Rehearsals with the actresses Anna Sabaté and Candela Capitán, protagonists in ‘COLAPSO. Máquina posible’ alongside Nadal Roig. Photo: @joanmorey 


(↑↓) Poster produced for the performance with an essay by Latitudes. Photos: Joan Morey. 

Latitudes’ August 2020 Cover Story.

Looking forward to (hopefully) attending some Autumn activities for Lasurt’s recently opened exhibition at La Capella, to publicly present Agustín Ortiz’s ongoing research and publication in October, as well as Consol Llupià’s publication. And, most importantly, to open on October 17, the group show ‘Things Things Say’ we have been working on since January, to be presented at Fabra i Coats: Contemporary Art Center of Barcelona’s ground floor. Things will be revealed in due course.


RELATED CONTENTS:
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2019 in 10 monthly Cover Stories

Since our 10th anniversary in Spring 2015, Latitudes has published a monthly cover story on its website (www.lttds.org) featuring past, present or forthcoming projects, as well as research, texts, artworks, exhibitions, films, objects or travel related to our curatorial work.  

2019 has been an active year of field trips. We have been lucky to visit ARCOmadrid, Buenos Aires (May 2019), Valencia (to research for an article and to participate in a conversation), Devon and Cornwall (September 2019), to Chicago and Detroit (hinted at in the September 2019 Cover Story), Helsinki (October 2019), Bilbao, Moscow (December 2019) and Amsterdam (and Reykjavík from the screen as featured in the April-May cover story).

Happy holidays and a joyful 2020!

Cover Story—December 2019: Curating and the Web of Life.
Cover Story—November 2019: ‘Fighting fires in Valencia: the 30-year story of the IVAM’.
Cover Story—October 2019: Mercedes Azpilicueta in Helsinki.
 Cover Story—September 2019: ‘Polperro to Detroit’
Cover Story—Summer 2019: Francesc Ruiz’s Brexit Bristol sequel, ten years ago.
Cover Story—June 2019: ‘Thinking like a drainage basin: Lara Almarcegui’s ‘Concrete’.
Cover Story—May 2019: Buenos Aires in Parallel.
Cover StoryMarch-April 2019: Icelandic refraction.
Cover StoryFebruary 2019: Schizophrenic Machine.
Cover Story—January 2019: "Seesaw".


RELATED CONTENT:
  • Cover Story—December 2018: "Treasures! exhibitionism! showmanship!" 1 December 2018
  • Cover Story—November 2018: "Joan Morey—postmortem judgement reenactment" 1 November 2018
  • Cover Story–October 2018: "I can’t take my eyes off you: Eulàlia Rovira and Adrian Schindler" 1 October 2018
  • Cover Story–September 2018: Harald Szeemann’s travel sculpture, 10 September 2018
  • Cover Story–August 2018: Askeaton Joyride, 2 August 2018
  • Cover Story–July 2018: No Burgers for Sale 2 July 2018
  • 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 
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Conferencia ‘4.543 miles de millones y la naturaleza social abstracta’, Jornadas Eremuak, Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao, 17–19 octubre 2019

Imagen gráfica de las jornadas. Cortesía eremuak.

Latitudes ha sido invitada a participar en las jornadas 2019 de eremuak, que tendrán lugar en la primera planta de Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao, entre el 17 y el 19 de octubre del 2019. 

Tituladas ‘-K/-S naturak / naturalezas’, el comité de eremuak (formado por Maider Lopez, Aimar Arriola e Iñaki Imaz), pretende hacerse eco de los ‘variados aspectos de lo que tradicionalmente se ha denominado naturaleza. Desde el abandono de los espacios institucionales en busca de un afuera comprometido y renovador, hasta la inclusión de procesos u organismos vivos en esos mismos espacios, el deseo de exterioridad parece evidente.’

Evitando recurrentes simplificaciones o la reducción del eje temático a binomios humano/no- humano, los organizadores aportan al término el matiz de la pluralidad (la –k de naturak, o la –s de naturalezas) con la intención de ‘atender a una diversidad más acorde a la realidad del mundo del arte y todas las naturalezas que genera o con las que se enfrenta.’

El programa incluye la participación de una docena de conferenciantes, así como la presentación de la revista eremuak#6, Cuaderno de artista, y a modo de clausura, un concierto de Hidrogenesse (entrada libre con invitación, recoger en Azkuna Zentroa). Las jornadas son de libre acceso hasta completar aforo.


Sala de la exposición colectiva ‘4.543 billion. The matter of matter’, CAPC musée d'art contemporain, 2017–18. Photo: Latitudes/RK.

Tomando como referencia una de las diez salas de la exposición colectiva ‘4.543 milliards. La question de la matière’ (CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, 2017–18), Latitudes analiza la noción de "naturaleza social abstracta" acuñada por el historiador ambiental e historiador geógrafo Jason W. Moore mediante la obra de cuatro de los artistas participantes: Lara Almarcegui, Pep Vidal, Lucas Ihlein y Amy Balkin.


Actualización
Jornadas Eremuak 2019 en vimeo.
Video de la presentación y turno de preguntas.


→ CONTENIDO RELACIONADO:
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