Longitudes

Lecture ‘Curating in the web of life’ in Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 7 November 2019 at 7:30pm

 28 Oct 2019



Image: Dan Perjovschi.

On November 7, 2019, at 7:30pm Latitudes will present the lecture ‘Curating in the web of life’ in the context of the public programme related to the group exhibition ‘The Coming World: Ecology as the New Politics 2030–2100’ on view at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, until December 1, 2019. 

Curated by Snejana Krasteva and Ekaterina Lazareva, the exhibition ‘The Coming World: Ecology as the New Politics 2030–2100’ currently occupies the entire Museum and presents historical and new works by over 50 Russian and international artists—from a 16th-century tapestry to works using VR.


Roman Keller and Christina Hemauer, ‘A Road Not Taken. The Story of the Jimmy Carter White House Solar Installation’, film still, 66 min., 2010. Courtesy of the artists.


‘Curating in the web of life’
— A lecture by Latitudes

Modern art and modernist art history largely assented to the ontological and epistemological lie which imagined humanity and the humanities making their own history by themselves, while hiding the fact that their productions, relations, and economy were always teeming with biophysical processes. The increasing violence by which the limits of the planet, its feedback loops and tipping points, are forcing themselves into world events has profound consequences for how we narrate (art) history and curate exhibitions in the web of life. 

New disciplines are broaching the separation between human activities and Earth systems – environmental law, political ecology, ecological economics, and so on. Likewise, what is at issue when artists, curators, exhibitions, and museums venture into new formations and shared rather than adjacent perspectives? What is at stake in a curatorial ecology, an environmental art history, or in integrating socio-natural processes into an institution’s account of itself, and so on? Turning to a world-systems approach as well as the insights of micro-history, Max Andrews & Mariana Cánepa Luna will present a series of curatorial and artistic perspectives on such questions, drawing from “uncomfortable objects” and “dishonest research” [1] across their exhibitions “4.543 billion. The matter of matter” (2017–2018), “Greenwashing. Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities” (2008), and related projects.
 
[1] “Uncomfortable objects” is a notion borrowed from artist Mariana Castillo Deball, and “dishonest research” from artist Mercedes Azpilicueta.
 
→ RELATED CONTENTS:

 2019, Ecology, environmentalism, global trade, latitudes, Lecture, world ecology

Conferencia ‘4.543 miles de millones y la naturaleza social abstracta’, Jornadas Eremuak, Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao, 17–19 octubre 2019

 14 Oct 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.


→ CONTENIDO RELACIONADO:
 2019, 4543 billion, Bilbao, conference, Ecology, latitudes, talk, world ecology

11 de julio 2019, 19h: Conversación con Lara Almarcegui en el Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM)

 25 Jun 2019
‘Volcán de Agras. Derechos mineros’. Fotos: Lara Almarcegui.

El próximo 11 de julio a las 19h, la artista Lara Almarcegui y Mariana Cánepa Luna (comisaria, Latitudes) mantendrán una conversación abierta al público con motivo de la inauguración de exposición individual de Almarcegui ‘Volcán de Agras. Derechos mineros’ en el Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM), un proyecto coordinado por Sandra Moros, conservadora del museo valenciano. El evento es gratuito y tendrá lugar en el auditorio del museo.

A continuación de la charla, se podrá visitar la exposición en la que Almarcegui ha investigado sobre los derechos mineros del volcán de Agras en Cofrentes, lugar que fue explotado como cantera por la industria cementera desde mediados de los años setenta hasta los años ochenta. La exposición se podrá visitar hasta el 27 de octubre.  


Tapa del catálogo ‘Lara Almarcegui. Béton’ publicado por Silvana Editoriale (2019) con motivo de la exposición de Almarcegui en CAIRN Centre d'art en Digne-les-Bains, Francia.

Lara Almarcegui es seguramente la artista con la que Latitudes ha colaborado en más ocasiones. Han incluido su trabajo en la publicación ‘LAND, ART: A Cultural Ecology Handbook’ (2006) y en la revista UOVO #14 ‘Ecology, Luxury and Degradation’ (2007). Han escrito textos sobre su trabajo que han sido publicados en la revista Mousse Magazine, así como para los catálogos de los proyectos ‘Estratos’ en Murcia (2008) o ‘Sense and Sustainability’, Urdabai Arte (pdf aquí) (2012), y recientemente para el catálogo de su exposición monográfica en el CAIRN Centre d'art, France (2019). 
(Arriba y abajo) Conversación con Almarcegui y el crítico y comisario Cuauhtémoc Medina en TENT, Rotterdam, mayo 2011. Photos by Aad Hoogendoorn.


En el 2011 moderaron una conversación con la artista y el crítico y comisario Cuauhtémoc Medina en TENT, Rotterdam, y editaron su primera monografía ‘Lara Almarcegui. Projects 2005–2010’ publicada por Archive Books (2011). Asímismo le han encargado proyectos para proyectos en el espacio público como ‘Portscapes’ en el puerto de Róterdam (2009–10), el puerto más grande de Europa, y presentado su trabajo en exposiciones colectivas como ‘Greenwashing. Percoli, promesse e perplessità’ [Greenwashing. Peligros, promesas y perplejidades] en la Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo en Torino (2008) y ‘4.543 milliard. La question de la matière’ [4.543 billones. La cuestión de la materia], en el CAPC Musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux (2017–2018).


Monografía ‘Lara Almarcegui. Projects 2005–2010’ editada por Latitudes (Archive Books, 2011).

(Arriba y abajo) Febrero-mayo 2008: Obras de Almarcegui presentadas en la exposición colectiva ‘Greenwashing. Perils, promises and perplexities’, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino. Fotos: Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.

(Arriba y abajo) 8 Noviembre 2009: 80 personas se sumaron a la visita guiada a cuatro de los diecisiete terrenos baldíos documentados por Almarcegui para el proyecto Portscapes en el Puerto de Rotterdam. Fotos: Paloma Polo/SKOR. Más fotos aquí.

(Arriba, pared) Junio 2017–Enero 2018: Materiales de construcción realizadas por la artista entre el 2005 y el 2008 incluidas en la exposición colectiva ‘4.543 billion. The matter of matter’, comisariada por Latitudes en el CAPC Musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, Francia. Foto: Latitudes/RK.


→ CONTENIDO RELACIONADO:
  • ‘Thinking like a drainage basin’ essay in the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Lara Almarcegui. Béton’(8 April 2019)
  • Report from Urdaibai: commission series 'Sense and Sustainability', Urdaibai Arte 2012 22 July 2012
  • Launch of the monograph 'Lara Almarcegui. Projects 1995–2010', edited by Latitudes at 'The Dutch Assembly', ARCOmadrid, 15 February, 19-20h 14 February 2012
  • Monograph ‘Lara Almarcegui. Projects 1995–2010’, Archive Books, 2011
  • Photos 'In conversation with Lara Almarcegui', 19 May 2011, TENT, Rotterdam 6 June 2011
  • Editing the forthcoming publication 'Lara Almarcegui. Projects 1995–2010' 18 March 2011
  • Portscapes bus tour: Lara Almarcegui wasteland tour and Christina Hemauer & Roman Keller's 'Postpetrolistic Internationale' choir performance 10 November 2009
  • Text on Lara Almarcegui's project for Expo Zaragoza 2008 and exhibition at Pepe Cobo, Madrid 28 October 2008
  • Catálogo 'Estratos', texto sobre Lara Almarcegui, PAC Murcia 2008 28 Mayo 2008
  • Lara Almarcegui in Frieze Art Fair 19 Octubre 2006
 2019, conversations, Ecology, IVAM, Lara Almarcegui, Mariana Cánepa Luna, talk, Valencia

Cover Story—June 2019: ‘Thinking like a drainage basin: Lara Almarcegui’s ‘Concrete’

 01 Jun 2019
Latitudes' homepage www.lttds.org

The May 2019 Monthly Cover Story ‘Thinking like a drainage basin: Lara Almarcegui’s ‘Concrete’’ is now up on Latitudes' homepage: www.lttds.org

“Lara Almarcegui’s current exhibition at the CAIRN art centre in Digne-les-Bains, southern France, focuses on the nearby Bléone river, its geology, and its exploitation. Latitudes has written an essay entitled ‘Thinking like a drainage basin’ for the accompanying catalogue. Lara’s project Béton (Concrete) has two parts. The first, seen here, involves the floor of the art centre being covered with crushed cement, gravel and sand. This raw material is the remains of several concrete structures — weirs — that were placed in the river in a failed attempt to stabilise a riverbed that had been extensively dug out over the preceding decades to produce gravel for the construction industry. The watercourse and its ecology is now being restored, and the weirs were recently removed.”

—> Continue reading
—> After May 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:
 2019, catalogue, conversations, cover story, curatorial writing, Ecology, Essay, France, IVAM, Lara Almarcegui, Mariana Cánepa Luna, raw materials, talk, text, Valencia

‘Thinking like a drainage basin’ essay in the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Lara Almarcegui. Béton’

 08 Apr 2019

(Above and below) Installation views of the exhibition ‘Béton’ by Lara Almarcegui at the CAIRN centre d'art, Digne-les-Bains, 2019. All photos: François-Xavier Emery.

Lara Almarcegui's exhibition ‘Béton’ opened on April 5 at CAIRN Centre d'art, in Digne-les-Bains, France, and will be on view until June 30th, 2019.

 Latitudes has collaborated in the bilingual catalogue ‘Lara Almarcegui. Béton’ (French/English) recently published by Silvana Editoriale on the occasion the exhibition, with the new essay ‘Thinking like a drainage basin’. The publication includes an introduction by Giulia Pagnetti (curator of the exhibition and director of CAIRN Centre d'art), a second essay titled ‘Lara Almarcegui's building sites’ by Natacha Pugnet, and a conversation between the artist and Winfried Dallmann (Associate Professor, Department of Geosciences, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø) titled ‘Earth Calculation’.



As Latitudes' writes in the essay (...) ‘As part of her most recent project for CAIRN Centre d’art, Almarcegui has produced ‘Roches et Materiaux du Bassin de la Bléone’ (2019), an inventory of the different types of geological matter comprising the entire drainage basin of the Bléone river from its source near Prads-Haute-Bléone to its confluence with the Durance at Chateau-Arnaux, a terrain of some 906 km2.

In discussing how storytelling might integrate with environmental science, anthropologist Julie Cruikshank poses the rhetorical question, “are glaciers ‘good to think with’?”[1] She suggests that glaciers and glacial stories be allowed to disrupt and exceed conceptual fields and dominant frameworks of knowledge. Ecologist Aldo Leopold coined the term “to think like a mountain” in his 1949 book ‘A Sand County Almanac’, proposing that history could be narrated, or indeed art could be made, from the point of view of non-human actors. Are drainage basins good to think with? What might it entail to think like the rocks and topological forms that funnel water into a river in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence département in southeastern France?’



‘Lara Almarcegui. Béton’
April 2019, 48 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Texts by Natacha Pugnet, Latitudes and an interview between the artist and Winfried Dallmann. 
French/English 
Published by Silvana Editoriale
March 2019
Edited by CAIRN centre d'art
ISBN 9788836640904
Purchase here for 10 Euros.

RELATED CONTENT:
  • Writing archive on Latitudes' website;
  • Review – ‘Domènec. Y la tierra será el paraíso', adn galería, Barcelona, frieze.com, 13 March 2019
  • Opinion – ‘Frank Zappa’s Genre-Defying ‘Civilization Phaze III’’, frieze, January-February 2019, Issue 200, and frieze.com, 14 January 2019
  • Review – ‘Te toca a tí’ [It's your turn], Espai d'art contemporani de Castelló, art-agenda, 7 January 2019
  • art-agenda review of Frieze week 2018 15 October 2018. 
  • Catalogue essay – ‘The Kørner Problem’, in the monograph ‘John Kørner', ed. by Maria Nipper. Published by Roulette Russe, 2017. 19 February 2018
 2019, catalogue, curatorial writing, Ecology, Essay, France, Geology, Lara Almarcegui, latitudes, writing

Cover Story—April 2018: Dates, 700 BC to the present: Michael Rakowitz

 03 Apr 2018
Latitudes' home page www.lttds.org


The April 2018 monthly Cover Story "Dates, 700 BC to the present: Michael Rakowitz" is now up on Latitudes' homepage: www.lttds.org

"As Michael Rakowitz’s fourth plinth commission is unveiled in London’s Trafalgar Square, this month’s cover story image revisits Return (2004-ongoing) a related project by the artist that also speaks about the turbulent history of Iraq. And dates. In London, Michael has deployed thousands of date syrup cans to make a 1:1 scale recreation of Lamassu, the fantastic winged bull that graced the gates of the city of Nineveh from 700 BC until it was destroyed by Isis in 2015."

—> Continue reading
—> After April it will be archived here.

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

RELATED CONTENT:
  • Archive of Monthly Cover Stories
  • 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

     2007, 2018, archive, cover story, curatorial writing, Ecology, interview, London, Michael Rakowitz, Sharjah Biennial 8, UOVO

    Cover Story—February 2018: Paradise, Promises and Perplexities

     05 Feb 2018

    Latitudes' home page www.lttds.org 

    The February 2018 Monthly Cover Story "Paradise, Promises and Perplexities" is now up on www.lttds.org – after this month it will be archived here.

    "This month marks ten years since the opening of Greenwashing, curated by Latitudes and Ilaria Bonacossa. Subtitled Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities, this exhibition at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, addressed the melding of corporate agendas and individual ethics in the wake of the exhaustion of traditional environmentalism." Continue reading

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

    RELATED CONTENT:

    Archive of Monthly Cover Stories
    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
    Cover Story — February 2017: The Dutch Assembly, five years on 1 February 2017
    Cover Story – January 2017: How open are open calls? 4 January 2017
       10th anniversary, 2008, 2018, archive, cover story, Ecology, Greenwashing, interview, Mariana Cánepa Luna, report, Sergio Vega, UOVO

      15 November 2017, 4:30–8pm: 'The Return of the Earth. Ecologising art history in the Anthropocene' study day at the CAPC musée, Bordeaux

       24 Oct 2017
      Xavier Ribas, detail of diptych num 7 'Caliche Fields' (2010), 22 Pigment prints on Harman Baryta paper 33 x 50 cm. Courtesy the artist and ProjecteSD, Barcelona.

      'The Return of the Earth. Ecologising art history in the Anthropocene'
      Study day
      Wednesday, 15 November 2017  
      4:30—8:00pm
      Auditorium
      CAPC musée d’art contemporain Bordeaux 
      7, rue Ferrère, 33000 Bordeaux, France 


      PROGRAMME

      4:30—5:30 pm
      Keynote by science historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz (Paris) 
      5:30—5:45 pm
      Break
      5:45—6:45       pm
      Conversation between artists Xavier Ribas (London) and Ângela Ferreira (Lisbon)
      6:45—7:45       pm
      Roundtable discussion moderated by Latitudes (Barcelona)


      Free event. Simultaneous translation French/English. 

      Conference programmed in the context of the exhibition '4.543 billion. The matter of matter', CAPC musée d’art contemporain Bordeaux, 29 June 2017–7 January 2018. Curated by Latitudes.

       –

      The work of many of the artists in the exhibition '4.543 billion. The matter of matter' explores the shared history of human activities and Earth systems. Yet this comes with a critical and political inflexion of the universalizing notion of the Anthropocene, the proposed geological ‘epoch of humanity’ that would cast all of the mankind as being responsible for the alarming damage caused by modernizing and capitalizing nature.

      With a keynote by science historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, and a conversation between artists       Xavier Ribas and Ângela Ferreira—the latter both featured in the exhibition—this event hosted by Latitudes ('4.543 billion' curators Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna), sees art practice and historical research intertwining with environmental and geological narratives, and vice versa. Both Ribas and Ferreira make art that resists the generalising story of the Anthropocene that Fressoz unmasks in his book 'The Shock of the Anthropocene. The Earth, History and Us' (co-authored with Christophe Bonneuil, Verso Books, 2016). Echoing the meticulous historical approach of Fressoz, both Ribas’s and Ferreira’s projects in the exhibition deal with case studies with a very specific place and politics. Addressing mineral agency and colonial extraction, the artists will discuss their approaches to work that has sprung from diamonds in South Africa (Ferreira) to nitrate in Chile (Ribas).

      As Fressoz & Bonneuil have written, the Anthropocene “signals the return of the Earth into a world that Western industrial modernity, on the whole, represented to itself as above earthly foundation … Environmental history, natural anthropology, environmental law and ethics, human ecology, environmental sociology, political ecology, green political theory, ecological economics, etc., are among the new disciplines that have recently begun to renew the human and social sciences, in a dialogue with the sciences of nature.” The dialogue during the event will seek to discover what might happen when artists, curators, exhibitions and museums come into the mix of such emerging practices. What is at stake when artists venture beyond the conventional separation of humanities from sciences, and into environmental art history, cultural ecology, decolonial activism, and so on?

      Entrance to the exhibition at the CAPC. Photo: Latitudes/RK.

      GUESTS

      Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, formerly a lecturer at Imperial College, London, is a historian of science, technology and environment. He is based at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris, the largest governmental research organisation in France and the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. He is the author, with Christophe Bonneuil, of 'The Shock of the Anthropocene' (Verso, 2016). “This bold, brilliantly argued history of the Anthropocene epoch is a corrective to cosy thinking about humanity’s grave disruptions to Earth systems. Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz draw on climate science, economics and technological history to reveal how, starting in eighteenth-century France, imperial narratives that saw people and planet as a ‘totality to be governed’ laid the conceptual basis for the crisis. They call for a ‘new environmental humanities’, and a shift away from market-based approaches that feed the beast.” – Barbara Kiser, Nature.

      Ângela Ferreira’s works in the exhibition form part of a series titled “Stone Free” (2012) in reference to the 1966 hit song performed by Jimi Hendrix (1942–70). “Stone Free” creates correspondences between two voids below the ground, two ‘negative monuments’ as the artist has termed them: Chislehurst Caves, in southeast London, and Cullinan Diamond Mine in Gauteng Province, South Africa. 

      Chislehurst Caves is a man-made network of underground tunnels mainly worked in the late 1700s yet dating back to as early as 1250. The tunnels were excavated in order to mine chalk and flint. Following their use as an air-raid shelter during the second world war, the tunnels were transformed into a venue for rock concerts in the 1960s and 1970s. The Jimi Hendrix Experience played there in 1966 and again the following year, bringing Hendrix’s unique countercultural synthesis of social realism and psychedelic spiritualism based on African and indigenous-American imagery into the literal underground.

      Cullinan Diamond Mine (known as Premier Mine from its establishment in 1902 until 2003) is famed for being the source of the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever discovered, in 1905. Most of the gems cut-and-polished from this stone were used to adorn the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom. The recent history of the diamond industry is inextricable from that of settler colonialism in southern Africa and a commodity cartel established by the De Beers corporation founded in 1888 by British imperialist Cecil Rhodes (1853–1902), two years before he became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. De Beers owned all of the major mines in South Africa, as well as controlling global distribution until it began a recent sell-off of its less productive mines to the Petra Diamonds group, including divesting itself of Cullinan in 2008. 

      Ferreira was born in Maputo, Mozambique, in 1958, and lives in Lisbon, where she teaches Fine Art at the Lisbon University.
      http://angelaferreira.info

      “A History of Detonations” (2014) is a glimpse at an extensive body of work by Xavier Ribas devoted to exploring the legacy of the mining of sodium nitrate in northern Chile, which boomed from the 1870s until the early-twentieth century when it was discovered how to make the compound synthetically. Comprised of photographs taken by the artist during research visits, alongside vintage postcards and press prints bought on the internet, Ribas’s poster sequence takes us from Chile to London to the surface of Mars. The mining and trade of Chilean sodium nitrate was led by a class of British ‘gentleman capitalists’—aristocrats, bankers and merchants. The extraction of the resource not only industrialized the arid Atacama Desert at one end of the commodity chain, and enriched country estates at the other, but through its use as a chemical fertilizer and a component of explosives, it would radically alter a whole series of seemingly disparate geographies, bodies and institutions.

      Ribas was born in Barcelona, 1960, and lives in London.  He is a lecturer at the University of Brighton and associate lecturer at the Universitat Politècnica de València. http://www.xavierribas.com/

       Latitudes is a Barcelona-based curatorial office initiated in 2005 by Max Andrews (1975, Bath, United Kingdom) and Mariana Cánepa Luna (1977, Montevideo, Uruguay). They are the curators of the CAPC exhibition ‘4.543 billion. The matter of matter’, and led the related month-long residency programme ‘Geologic Time’ that took place in September 2017 at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. During 2009 Latitudes developed ‘Portscapes’, a series of ten public commissions in the Port of Rotterdam, the Netherlands (2009); in 2010–11 it was a partner organisation in the exhibition ‘The Last Newspaper’ (New Museum, New York) and in 2011 was the guest curator of the project space of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC) in León, Spain. More recent curatorial projects include the solo exhibition ‘José Antonio Hernández-Díez. I will fear no evil’, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona (2016); ‘Compositions’, site-specific commissions for two editions of the Barcelona Gallery Weekend (2015 & 2016); and editing the online curatorial reportage initiative ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ developed in partnership with Kadist (initiated in 2016).  
      www.LTTDS.org

      Share:
      #4543billion
      #4543milliards
      @LTTDS 
      @CAPCmusee 
      #CAPCmusee

      ‘4.543 billion’ is the contribution of the CAPC musée to the cultural season Paysages Bordeaux 2017. 

      Views of the exhibition at the CAPC musée. Photos: Latitudes / RK.

      RELATED CONTENT:
      • CAPC website (French, English, Spanish) http://www.capc-bordeaux.fr/programme/4543-milliards
      • Sediments of the Geologic Time 4-week residency at the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity 10 October 2017
      • SAVE THE DATE: 29 June, 19h. Private view of the exhibition "4.543 billion. The matter of matter" at the CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux 30 May 2017
      • Cover Story – May 2017: "S is for Shale or Stuart; W is for Waterfall, or Whipps" May 2017
      • Cover Story – May 2016: Material histories – spilling the beans at the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux 10 May 2016.
      • Second research trip to Bordeaux 16 July 2016
       2017, 4543 billion, Angela Ferreira, CAPC Bordeaux, colonialmism, conversations, deep time, Ecology, Exhibition, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, mining, modernity, symposium, Xavier Ribas

      Cover Story – July 2017: "4.543 billion"

       03 Jul 2017
      www.lttds.org

      The July 2017 Monthly Cover Story "4.543 billion" is now up on www.lttds.org – after July it will be archived here. 

      "4.543 billion. The matter of matter recently opened at the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, and features the work of more than thirty artists. Curated by Latitudes, the exhibition looks at histories of art as fragments in geological time. The portentous mood of this gallery hinges on combustion and history violently formed through the fundamental reordering of the relations between humans and the rest of nature." Continue reading

      Social media archive related to the exhibition.
      Photo gallery of the exhibition.

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

      RELATED CONTENT:
       2017, 4543 billion, CAPC Bordeaux, cover story, deep time, Ecology, Exhibition, Geology, Lucy Skaer, website, Xavier Ribas

      SAVE THE DATE: 29 June, 19h. Private view of the exhibition "4.543 billion. The matter of matter" at the CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux

       30 May 2017
      Xavier Ribas, Chilean Nitrate publicity postcard, c. 1920 from "A History of Detonations", 2013. Courtesy the artist and ProjecteSD, Barcelona; and Lucas Ihlein, "Under Ground", 2010. Courtesy of the artist.


      SAVE THE DATE

      Exhibition ‘4.543 billion. The matter of matter’, CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, June 29, 2017–January 7, 2018.  

      Opening: June 29, 2017 (6 pm)

      With: A.J. Aalders, Lara Almarcegui, Maria Thereza Alves, Félix Arnaudin, Amy Balkin, Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck in collaboration with Media Farzin, Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher, Étienne Denisse, Hubert Duprat, Giulio Ferrario, Ângela Ferreira, Anne Garde, Ambroise-Louis Garneray, Terence Gower, Rodney Graham, Ilana Halperin (also at the Université de Bordeaux’s zoology department), Marianne Heier, Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller, Lucas Ihlein and Louise Kate Anderson, Jannis Kounellis, Martín Llavaneras, Erlea Maneros Zabala, Nicholas Mangan, Fiona Marron, Alexandra Navratil, Xavier Ribas, Alfred Roll, Amie Siegel, Lucy Skaer, Alfred Smith, Rayyane Tabet, Pierre Théron, Pep Vidal, Alexander Whalley Light, Stuart Whipps (also at the Musée des Beaux-Arts) as well as documents and objects lent by the archives of the CAPC, the Archives Bordeaux Métropole, the Archives départementales de la Gironde, and the geology collection of the UFR Sciences de la Terre et de la Mer, Université de Bordeaux.

      Curated by Latitudes

      With contributions from more than 30 artists, “4.543 billion. The matter of matter” is a major exhibition that addresses works of art, collections and cultural histories in relation to ecological processes and a geological scale of time. It presents a continuum of materials and temporal landscapes – films, works on paper, photographs, sculptures, documents, and other meaningful things – and springs from the CAPC building’s former life as a warehouse for colonial commodities whose limestone walls were once deep in the ground and whose wooden beams were once part of a forest.

      A central proposal of the exhibition is that works of art are part of geophysical history as much as art history. “4.543 billion” attempts to take into account both a micro-local and a planetary perspective, and to rethink some of the histories of art as fragments of broader narratives about the Earth and how our place in it has been represented. What is at stake when art and museums take on greater temporal and material awareness? How might they move beyond a spatial framework of “think globally, act locally”, to “think historically, act geologically”? 

      Collections are accumulations of real physical matter in time as well as of ideas, decisions, fashions, knowledge, and use. Likewise minerals and organic matter might be regarded as both cultural evidence and archival storage media. This exhibition takes a situated view of the past that resists an undifferentiated narrative in which modernity in general is at fault for global ecological disarray, or humanity in an invariably abstract sense must take responsibility.

      Accordingly, the artists included instead often address the specific roles and purposeful effects of individuals, practices, states or corporations in an account of how mineral agents and organic processes have intertwined with and underpinned culture. Marianne Heier’s contribution, for example, documents a project addressing the decisive roll North Sea oil has played in shaping art and culture in Norway. Rayyane Tabet’s works deal sculpturally with the legacy of the Trans-Arabian Pipe Line, a joint venture by three American oil companies that came together in 1946 to construct an pipeline from Saudi Arabia to the Mediterranean. Incorporating a fragment of Breccia Pernice marble from the lobby of Trump Tower, Dynasty (2017) by Amie Siegel weaves Italian geology into the political turmoil of the present. 

      Several of the more documentary projects on display (including those by Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck and Terence Gower) trace the relationships between Modern art, the museum, and wealth created through extractive industry, combining approaches framed by Earth sciences with colonial history, sociology and political reportage. Yet other works take a more atmospheric, filmic, sculptural or graphic approach to extraction, economy, energy and global exchange, whether orbiting around sunlight, forests, synthetic materials derived from fossil fuels (a subject addressed by Alexandra Navratil), or the services and substances entailed in buildings that display art (as seen through the work of Lucas Ihlein and Lara Almarcegui).
      In addition to two new projects in development for the occasion (by Christina Hemauer & Roman Keller and Ilana Halperin), the exhibition will include many works kindly lent by the artists and international galleries, as well as those from the CAPC collection and its archives. Loans from Bordeaux institutions include those from the Archives Bordeaux Métropole, the Archives départementales de la Gironde, the Musée des Beaux-Arts, the Musée d’Aquitaine and the geology collection of the UFR Sciences de la Terre et de la Mer, Université de Bordeaux.

      Located at opposite ends of the galleries will be two imposing works that bookend the exhibition conceptually as well as physically. Originally made for CAPC in 1985, Jannis Kounellis’s nine-metre-long Sans titre is a slab of steel draped with coffee sacks that spits flames. On the other side, Ancient Lights (2015) is a two-screen video installation by Nicholas Mangan that is powered by an off-grid solar system with panels on the roof of the CAPC building. With sections filmed at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona, and a salt-storage solar plant near Seville, Mangan’s looped videos speculates on the ideology and politics of energy. 

      Several works by Ângela Ferreira also link diverse histories: those of the Cullinan Diamond Mine in South Africa, the source of one of the largest gems ever found, and the Chislehurst Caves in South East London, a crucible of counter-culture in the 1960s. In terms of an exploration of the underground – in this case with a sociological dimension – one could also mention All surface expectations disappear with depth (2010) a three-screen video work by Fiona Marron that juxtaposes text from a 1954 field report on working conditions in an American gypsum mine with footage from present-day excavation in Ireland.

      Share:
      #4543billion 
      @LTTDS 
      @CAPCmusee 
      @paysagesbx17

      ‘4.543 billion’ is the contribution of the CAPC musée to the cultural season Paysages Bordeaux 2017. Within the exhibition framework, Latitudes will lead the month-long residency programme ‘Geologic Time’ at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Alberta, Canada, in September–October 2017.


      RELATED CONTENT:
       2017, 2018, 4543 billion, Bordeaux, CAPC Bordeaux, Ecology, Exhibition, Lucas Ihlein, research, save the date, Xavier Ribas

      Founded in 2005 by Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna, Latitudes is a curatorial office based in Barcelona, Spain, that works internationally across contemporary art practices.

      More about us. Browse projects. Read Longitudes. Receive newsletters.

      Contact us. 
      All content
      Latitudes
      2005—2019