Longitudes

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

Latitudes’ (extended) Environmental Policy Statement

 Mon, Apr 17 2023

“Postpetrolistic Internationale” choir performance by Christina Hemauer & Roman Keller on Maasvlakte, Rotterdam, 8 November 2009. Commissioned and produced by the Port of Rotterdam as part of “Portscapes”, with support and advice from SKOR and curated by Latitudes. Courtesy: SKOR / Photo: Paloma Polo.


Latitudes recently published an Environmental Policy Statement on the website, below is an extended version which we invite you to read:

Since its beginning in 2005, Latitudes’ curatorial practice has critically engaged with environmental concerns through contemporary art. This has included curating ambitious group exhibitions including “4.543 billion. The Matter of Matter” at the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux in 2017, and “Greenwashing” at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in 2008, or solo shows such as “Christina Hemauer & Roman Keller: United Alternative Energies” at Kunsthall Århus in 2011, as well as convening the three-day symposium “Art, Ecology and the Politics of Change” for the Sharjah Biennial 8 in 2007. 

Cover of “LAND, ART: A Cultural Ecology Handbook” edited by Max Andrews, and coordinated by Mariana Cánepa Luna. Published and commissioned by the Royal Society of Art in partnership with the Arts Council England, 2006. Photo: Robert Justamente.

Spread of UOVO magazine #14, a 500-page issue + two CDs guest edited by Latitudes, 2007. Photo: Alexis Zavialoff.

Cover and back cover of the exhibition catalogue “Greenwashing” (Archive Books, 2008), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino. The 192-page full-colour catalogue embraced environmentally-conscious design with a degree of irony, each of the book's thirteen sections was printed on a different 'eco-paper' such as Shiro Alga Carta (produced by harvesting algae from the Venetian lagoon), KeayKolour Recycled Honey or Shiro Tree Free Naturale, alongside their corresponding eco-credentials. Photo: Latitudes. 

Pages of Lara Almarcegui's first monograph “Lara Almarcegui. Projects 1995–2010” (Archive Books, 2011) covering 15 years of her artistic practice, with new texts by Cuauhtémoc Medina, Lars Bang Larsen and an introduction by Latitudes. Photo: Latitudes.

Latitudes edited the landmark publication “Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook” in 2006, the 500-page green issue of UOVO magazine in 2007, and Lara Almarcegui’s first monograph in 2011, as well as writing texts including a catalogue essay for TBA21’s exhibition “Abundant Futures” entitled “Soil for Future Art Histories” (2023), and presenting the lecture “Curating in the Web of Life” for Garage Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibition “The Coming World: Ecology as the New Politics 2030–2100” (2019). 

View of “Ocells perduts” (Stray Birds) (2021) by Laia Estruch in the exhibition “Panorama 21. Apunts per a un incendi dels ulls” (“Panorama 21: Notes for an Eye Fire”), MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 22 October 2021–27 February 2022. Curated by Hiuwai Chu and Latitudes. Produced by MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona with the support of PUBLICS, Helsinki. Research supported by a Premis Ciutat de Barcelona 2020 grant from the Barcelona City Council. Photo: Roberto Ruiz. 

In terms of related public-realm commissions, we worked with Danish artist Tue Greenfort for The Royal Society of Arts’ pioneering Arts & Ecology programme (2005–2008) and curated ten public art projects around Europe’s largest seaport, the Port of Rotterdam (“Portscapes” in 2009–2010). We have also organised thematic curatorial residencies around geological agency (“Geologic Time”, Banff Centre, 2017) and a touring film programme on the legacy of Land Art (“A Stake in the Mud a Hole in the Reel”, 2008–2009).

Last but not least, since 2008 we have been custodians of the website of RAF/Reduce Art Flights, a reference resource about the campaign initiated by the late Gustav Metzger (1926–2017).

RAF/Reduce Art Flights website reduceartflights.lttds.org

Latitudes’ environmental impact is small, yet we acknowledge that the largest impact comes from flights and the disproportionate mobility practices of the sector we work in. We believe that art and culture have a role to play in bringing about ambitious change, applying best practices and setting a positive example to position the climate crisis at the centre of the political and social debate.

In January 2023 we became individual members of the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC) and began to work with colleagues to set up the Spanish volunteer team, GCC España, that meets regularly to track progress on environmental targets and actions. 


Making of Jan Dibbets’ film “6 Hours Tide Object with Correction of Perspective” (1969–2009). Commissioned and produced by the Port of Rotterdam as part of “Portscapes”, with support and advice from SKOR, curated by Latitudes. Documentation included in the “Portscapes” multi-part publication box designed by Ben Laloua / Didier Pascal, launched to coincide with the “Portscapes” exhibition at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, 2010. Photo: Latitudes.

Editors of Rotterdam-based magazine Fucking Good Art were ‘embedded’ in the port's Yangtzehaven for a month in the summer of 2009 from where they produced ‘Portscapes_ON AIR Station Maasvlakte’, a series of audio walks, field recordings and conversations with guests from different disciplines for the “Portscapes” website. Photo courtesy: FGA.


We will measure and publish our carbon footprint every year to comply with the GCC targets and commitments of reducing carbon emissions by 50% by 2030 (when compared to a 2019 baseline). Rather than purchasing carbon offsets, and following GCC guidelines on this matter, we are also setting aside a fund (€50 per tonne of emitted CO2 per year) to be spent on low-carbon purchasing options that would otherwise be unaffordable. Our intention is to eliminate unwarranted air travel, and we do not take flights when there is an alternative rail or sea route that takes less than 7 hours. The latter policy follows one adopted by the Ajuntament de Barcelona (the City Council) in 2020.

Latitudes requests external collaborators opt for train or alternative low-carbon transit and freight options in line with GCC’s guidelines (as well as Gustav Metzger’s RAF/Reduce Art Flights campaign) and this is reflected in work contracts. We hope to lead by example in implementing a sustainability strategy in the planning of exhibitions from an early stage, and whenever curating projects we always try to build the minimum necessary temporary architecture and ensure that any exhibition-related production is entirely locally tuned. We ask that collaborators use no plastic or other single-use materials when transporting works or for events.

Hike with “Geologic Time” participants to Stanley Glacier in Kootenay National Park, as part of the residency programme curated by Latitudes at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Banff, Canada, 11 September–6 October 2017. Photo: Latitudes.

Latitudes’ website runs on sustainable energy. According to websitecarbon.com (see stats below), LTTDS.org produces 16.76kg of C02 equivalent per year, roughly the amount of carbon that one tree would absorb in the same time, and it consumes 44kWh of energy (equivalent to 280km in an electric car). 


In our personal lives, we prioritise the 5 Rs: Refusing, Reducing, Reusing, Repurposing and Recycling. We do not own a car and use public transport networks. Other practical actions we undertake include periodically donating household or clothing items to charity organisations that offer support to vulnerable communities in our neighbourhood (including Fundació Roure and El Trampolí). And last but not least, since 2013 Latitudes banks with an ethical bank which finances initiatives that contribute to ecological, social and cultural change.

Left-sided entrance to the exhibition “4.543 billion. The Matter of Matter” with the participation of over thirty artists and the presentation of over a hundred works, CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, June 2017–January 2018. Photos: Latitudes / RK. 


RELATED CONTENT:


 2023, art and ecology, carbon cycle, Ecology, energy use, environmental compensation, environmental responsability, Gallery Climate Coalition, geologic time, Land Art, Reduce Art Flights
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Cover Story, March 2023: Art, Climate, and New Coalitions

 Wed, Mar 1 2023

  March 2023 cover story on www.lttds.org


The March 2023 monthly Cover Story “Art, Climate and New Coalitions” is now up on our homepage www.lttds.org

“The terminology of environmental consciousness and carbon emissions has shifted significantly in recent decades, from talk of the greenhouse effect to global warming and sustainable development, and now from climate change to the climate emergency. ” → Continue reading (after March 2023 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, February 2023: Soil for Future Art Histories, 2 Feb 2023
  • Cover Story, January 2023: Claudia Pagès’ ‘Gerundi Circular’, 2 Jan 2023
  • Cover Story, December 2022: “The Melt Goes On Forever. David Hammons and DART Festival, 1 December 2022
  • Cover Story, November 2022: Jorge Satorre’s Barcelona, 1 Nov 2022
  • Cover Story, October 2022: Stray Ornithologies—Laia Estruch, 3 Oct 2022
  • Cover Story, September 2021: Erratic behaviour—Latitudes in conversation with Jorge Satorre, 31 August 2021
  • Cover Story, July–August 2022:  Incidents (of Travel) from Seoul, 1 July 2022
  • Cover Story, June 2022: Cyber-Eco-Feminist Incidents in Attica, 1 June 2022
  • Cover Story, May 2022: Things Things Say in print, 2 May 2022
  • Cover Story, March 2022: The passion of Gabriel Ventura, 1 March 2022
 2023, climate change, climate emergency, cover story, Ecology, environmentalism, Gallery Climate Coalition, Land Art, RSA
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Cover Story, February 2023: Soil for Future Art Histories

 Thu, Feb 2 2023

February 2023 cover story on www.lttds.org


The February 2023 monthly Cover Story “Soil for Future Art Histories” is now up on our homepage: www.lttds.org

“Latitudes’ essay ‘Un suelo para las historias del arte del futuro’ (Soil for Future Art Histories) is included in the newly-released catalogue of Futuros Abundantes (Abundant Futures), an exhibition of works from the TBA21 Collection curated by Daniela Zyman that took place at the C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía in Córdoba last year.” → Continue reading (after February 2023 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, January 2023: Claudia Pagès’ ‘Gerundi Circular’, 2 Jan 2023
  • Cover Story, December 2022: “The Melt Goes On Forever. David Hammons and DART Festival, 1 December 2022
  • Cover Story, November 2022: Jorge Satorre’s Barcelona, 1 Nov 2022
  • Cover Story, October 2022: Stray Ornithologies—Laia Estruch, 3 Oct 2022
  • Cover Story, September 2021: Erratic behaviour—Latitudes in conversation with Jorge Satorre, 31 August 2021
  • Cover Story, July–August 2022:  Incidents (of Travel) from Seoul, 1 July 2022
  • Cover Story, June 2022: Cyber-Eco-Feminist Incidents in Attica, 1 June 2022
  • Cover Story, May 2022: Things Things Say in print, 2 May 2022
  • Cover Story, March 2022: The passion of Gabriel Ventura, 1 March 2022
  • Cover Story, February 2022: Rosa Tharrats’ Textile Alchemy, 1 Feb 2022
 2023, catalogue, cover story, Ecology, miguel Covarrubias, modernity, soil, TBA21, text by Latitudes, trees, writing
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Latitudes’ essay “Un suelo para las historias del arte del futuro” [Soil for Future Art Histories] in TBA21’s catalogue “Futuros Abundantes”

 Sun, Jan 22 2023

"Futuros abundantes" / "Abundant Futures" is co-published by TBA21 and Turner, 2023. Photos by Enrico Fiorese.

The exhibition catalogue “Futuros Abundantes / Abundant Futures” is now available. The book will be launched in ARCOmadrid’s section of ArtsLibris, on February 23rd, 2023, at 5pm. 

With contributions from Rosemary-Claire Collard, Jessica Dempsey and Juanita Sundberg; Beatrice Forchini; Macarena Gómez-Barris; Berta Gutiérrez Casaos; Soledad Gutiérrez Rodríguez; Latitudes; Regina de Miguel; Plata; Matthew Ritchie; Jess Saxby; and Daniela Zyman. Poems by Ibn Zaydun and an artistic intervention by Abraham Cruzvillegas.

Futuros abundantes / Abundant Futures
Hardcover, 16,5 x 24 cm
Spanish / English, 336 pages
Edited by Daniela Zyman and Eva Ebersberger
Book design by Matteo Guarnaccia
Publisher Editorial Turner
ISBN 978-84-18895-65-4
EUR 25
Miguel Covarrubias, “The Tree of Modern Art planted 60 Years Ago” [El árbol del arte moderno plantado hace 60 años], plantado hace 60 años], in Vanity Fair, vol. XL, n.º 3, New York, May 1933, pp. 36-37.

Edited by Daniela Zyman and Eva Ebersberger, and co-published with Editorial Turner in the context of the exhibition “Abundant Futures. Works from the TBA21 Collection” curated by Zyman, the show was co-organised by TBA21 and C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía in Córdoba. 

The 336-page book includes Latitudes’ newly commissioned essay titled “Un suelo para las historias del arte del futuro” [Soil for Future Art Histories], which delves into how we might turn the page on the pseudo-organic root-and-branch diagrams that have underpinned the cultural narratives of the archetypical institutions of twentieth-century art, and instead consider an entity that has been largely neglected in its capacity to connect human and natural relations: soil.

The essay is published in Spanish. Below is an excerpt in English: 

“Thinking and building a new logic outside of the dualism of humanity on the one hand and nature on the other necessitates new narratives, new grammar, new relational strategies, and such new explanatory figurations. History in this alternative perspective is a history where human activity has always been meshed and mulched in the web of life. Following a sense of both humanity-in-nature and nature-in-humanity, we could imagine an art history and way of making exhibitions that is both outside in and inside out.

We could better imagine a shared vocabulary—terms that easily move back and forth between aesthetic and non-aesthetic uses. And we could give more attention to categories that, like soil, already seem to refuse a distinction between cultural forms and other forms of lived experience. The present and the future likewise require reconstructing and refreshing the theoretical model of the whole genre of the exhibition, its possibilities, and conditions. Allowing a wider and deeper sense of image- and object-making lineages could create new conditions for abundance, tackling the damaging split still left between the humanities and the natural world, and the imprint that this rift has left on the institutions of knowledge which allowed art history and artistic practices to be considered an alternative order to the forces and objects of the web of life. What we then might find is not a universal and singular structure, not a unitary tree of modernity, but countless very specific perspectives, practices, systems, temporalities, and imaginations in varying states of composition as well as decomposition, active as well as lying fallow.”


Essay keywords: Ecology, Daniel D. Richter, environmental art histories, Art History, abundance, temporalities of soil, “human forcing”, Environmental collapse, exhibition-making, Dipesh Chakrabarty, diagrams, Earth system, Miguel Covarrubias, Alfred H. Barr Jr., MoMA, tree genealogy, Porphyrian trees, environmental history, rewilding art history, María Puig de la Bellacasa, Jason W. Moore, Web of Life, soil, landscape, farming, agricultural intensification, Aldo Leopold, “to think like a mountain”, Julie Cruikshank, soil-attentive ethos, humanity-in-nature, nature-in-humanity, Caroline Levine, overlapping rhythms of art institutions.


→ RELATED CONTENT:



 2022, Alfred Barr, catalogue, Ecology, Essay, María Puig de la Bellacasa, miguel Covarrubias, MOMA, research, soil, TBA21, trees, web of life, world ecology, writing
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Cover Story – April 2021: Lara Almarcegui at La Panera

 Fri, Apr 2 2021

 April 2021 cover story on www.lttds.org


The April 2021 monthly Cover Story ‘Lara Almarcegui at La Panera’ is now up on our homepage: www.lttds.org

“Latitudes participated in a roundtable and wrote the exhibition text for Lara Almarcegui’s ‘Graves’ (Gravels), currently on view at the Centre d'art la Panera, Lleida, until 30 May. “What possibilities begin to emerge when the excavation at a quarry is stopped?”, the text wonders.”

→ Continue reading

→ After April 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
  • 18 marzo 2021, 18:30h: Mesa redonda “Transformación geológica y construcción artificial” con Lara Almarcegui y Juan Guardiola, 8 Mar 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
  • 11 de julio 2019, 19h: Conversación con Lara Almarcegui en el Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM), 25 June 2019
  • ‘Thinking like a drainage basin’ essay in the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Lara Almarcegui. Béton’, 8 April 2019
  • Works by Lara Almarcegui included in the exhibition “4.543 billion. A Matter of Matter”, CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, 2017
  • 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
  • Photos 'In conversation with Lara Almarcegui', 19 May 2011, TENT, Rotterdam 6 June 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, “Wastelands” in “LAND, ART: A Cultural Ecology Handbook”, Royal Society of Arts and Arts Council England, 2006
 2021, conversations, cover story, deep time, Ecology, Essay, Juan Guardiola, La Panera, Lara Almarcegui, latitudes
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18 marzo 2021, 18:30h: Mesa redonda “Transformación geológica y construcción artificial” con Lara Almarcegui y Juan Guardiola

 Mon, Mar 8 2021

Lara Almarcegui, ‘Rocas y materiales de la Cordillera de los Pirineos’ (2021). Cálculo realizado por Javier Ramajo y Carlos Galé, IDEYA RED PROFESIONAL S. L. L. con el apoyo de Alejandro Robador del Instituto Geológico y Minero de España. Una producción del Centre d'Art la Panera con la colaboración de Centro de Arte y Naturaleza, Huesca, y Espacio Portalet, Sallent de Gallego. Foto: Jordi V. Pou. Cortesía de la artista.

Programada en el marco de la exposición individual de Lara Almarcegui “Graves” comisariada por Cèlia del Diego en el Centre d'Art la Panera (19 marzo–30 mayo 2021), la mesa redonda “Transformación geológica y construcción artificial” reunirá a la artista, el comisario Juan Guardiola y a Latitudes en una conversación online el próximo 18 de marzo a las 18:30h.

A continuación un fragmento del texto de la exposición escrito por Latitudes (descargar pdf):

A través del ejercicio un tanto inverosímil de medir una cordillera, Almarcegui aborda la paradoja que las prácticas de estandarización, cuantificación y matematización que han dado lugar a un extraordinario valor y conocimiento a lo largo de los últimos siglos también representan el avance de una perspectiva que ha permitido la mercantilización y la gestión de la naturaleza. Durante los siglos XVIII y XIX se volvió a imaginar el planeta cartografiando, midiendo y haciendo prospecciones. Estos procesos métricos revolucionarios aceleraron la apropiación de la riqueza de la naturaleza, poniéndola bajo un control sistemático y facilitando su rentabilidad.

(...)

La exposición de Almarcegui busca nada menos que una convergencia de estos marcos temporales rotos a través de la fuerza del arte y un vaivén de escalas y temporalidades entre grava y edificios, el aparente “reloj detenido” de la extracción durante todo un día y la masa absoluta de un macizo montañoso “intemporal” de millones de años. Tanto la industria de La Plana del Corb como la que se ocupa de calcular la masa de los Pirineos, pretenden extraer valor y de alguna manera computar fenómenos que son, significativamente, inconmensurables e inexplicables y que van más allá de la falsa creencia que tenemos suficiente conocimiento.

Lara Almarcegui, ‘Gravera’ (2021), vídeo, 10 min. Cámara: Daniel Lacasa. Editor Pablo Gil Rituerto. Una producción del Centre d'Art la Panera con la colaboración de la Fundación Sorigué. Foto: Jordi V. Pou. Cortesía de la artista.


Imágenes de la exposición “Graves” en el Centre d'art la panera y de la visita a la planta Sorigué, realizadas por Jordi V. Pou. 

“Graves” es una producción del Centre d'Art la Panera, con la colaboración de la Fundació Sorigué y el Centro de Arte y Naturaleza de Huesca.


→ CONTENIDO RELACIONADO: 

  • 11 de julio 2019, 19h: Conversación con Lara Almarcegui en el Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM), 25 June 2019
  • ‘Thinking like a drainage basin’ essay in the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Lara Almarcegui. Béton’, 8 April 2019
  • Works by Lara Almarcegui included in the exhibition “4.543 billion. A Matter of Matter”, CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, 2017
  • 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
  • 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 interviewed by Florence Grivel in UOVO magazine, 2007


 2021, conversations, Ecology, Geology, Juan Guardiola, La Panera, Lara Almarcegui, Lleida, online
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Research project ‘Naming, possessing Critique of taxonomic practice’ by Agustín Ortiz Herrera, Barcelona Producció 2019–2020

 Wed, Oct 21 2020
Photo: Agustín Ortiz Herrera

Naming nature and taxonomizing it effectively was a priority for the emerging modern science emanating from the Age of Enlightenment. In its global epistemological conception, plant species from colonial explorations were catalogued in honour of white men of Western culture. At the same time, the cultivation of many of these plants was introduced into the streets and gardens of European cities, while the first botanical institutions were created.

As part of Agustín Ortiz Herrera's research project ‘Naming, possessing Critique of taxonomic practice’, awarded the grant Barcelona Producció 2019-2020 from La Capella (and one of the three projects mentored by Latitudes throughout the 2019–20 season), and organised in collaboration with Hangar's Fictions of Dis-order programme, Ortiz Herrera presents a series of guided tours and reading sessions where queer strategies will be questioning the narratives agreed upon by the modern scientific construct, introducing a decolonial narrative, and thus unveiling the secrets of plant species such as Sparrmannia, Washingtonia or Tulbaghia.


‘The colonial garden. Deconstructing the narratives of modern taxonomy’

Activity: Urban Route around the streets of Poblenou
Date: Friday 23 October 2020, 6–7:30 pm
Ortiz Herrera invites us to join him on a tour that aims to bring to light forgotten episodes in the development of botanical knowledge during the modern project while experimenting with queer/cuir confrontation strategies.
Meeting place to be confirmed. Participants will be notified.
Capacity: 20 people. 
Booking essential: [email protected]

Activity: Guided tour of the Barcelona Botanical Gardens
Date: Saturday 24 October 2020,11.30–13:30 am
During this second dérive, historical events will be explained using a methodology of situated knowledge that exposes the scale of the strategy of the cabinet of curiosities in botanical gardens.
Meeting place to be confirmed. Participants will be notified.
Capacity: 20 people. 
Booking essential: [email protected]

Activity: Modern Nature: a tribute to Derek Jarman
Date: Thursday 5 November 2020, 6–8 pm
Location: Hangar (Sala Ricson)
Reading group and discussion around Derek Jarman’s book Modern Nature. We will also be talking about Jarman’s film The Garden (1990) and his design for his garden at Prospect Cottage in the south-east of England.
Capacity: 40 people. 
Booking essential: https://forms.gle/4MQQXy72SwBxpV6V7
Organised by Hangar. With the support of Caja Negra Editorial.

Agustín Ortiz Herrera (Barcelona, 1970) works between moving image and performance. He studied Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona (1998), film-making in New York (2003) and obtained an MA in Fine Arts at the Konstfack College of Arts, Stockholm (2016). Recent exhibitions include Oblivion at K.R.O.P.P., Uppsala Konsert & Kongress, Uppsala (2019), Konst tar plats at Österbybruk, Sweden (2018), Potenciación a largo plazo at Paratext 24, Hangar, Barcelona (2017) and El umbral de primavera, Madrid (2018). He is currently resident at Hangar – Visual Arts Production and Research Centre in Barcelona.

Co-produced in the context of the “Fictions of Dis-order” programme of Hangar's  Research and Transfer of Knowledges activities.


Agustín Ortiz Herrera, Laboratori de Natura, Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona, Video Still, 2020.


Agustín Ortiz Herrera
To Name, To Own. Critique of Taxonomic Practice
Research Project
Barcelona Producció 2019–2020

→ Download this text as a pdf

Agustín Ortiz Herrera’s research project To Name, To Own. Critique of Taxonomic Practice focuses on taxonomy and the modern classification system for natural species developed by Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778). Linnaeus’s most notable contribution to science was his invention of a system of binomial nomenclature for naming organisms. For example, the two-term name Homo sapiens describes the only living species of the genus Homo: humans. This convention became universally accepted and the nested hierarchy became quickly consolidated as the dominant cognitive basis of the Western worldview of nature.[1] Linnaeus’s 1735 volume Systema Naturae not only classified the natural world, it also gendered it and thereby conditioned an understanding of natural history as a highly patriarchal structure. This condition has transcended science and come to dominate other fields of culture and knowledge.[2]

Ortiz has carried out his research in botanical collections, academic centres, and libraries specialising in Linnaeus’s scientific work located in Uppsala, Sweden (where Linnaeus ultimately became rector of the city’s university) and London (where the world’s oldest active biological society, The Linnean Society of London, was established in 1788).[3] Honouring the Society’s motto “Naturae Discere Mores” (To Learn the Ways of Nature), Ortiz furthermore connects Linnaeus’s legacy with two key nodes of research in Spain: the Gabinet Salvador at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona and the former Museum of Zoology in Barcelona’s Ciutadella Park.[4] In doing so he aims to bring taxonomic paradigms into the present and to critique them against recent and emerging post-human, queer, feminist and decolonial theories.[5]

Taking up Teresa Castro’s call for “queering nature” and “queering botanics”, Ortiz’s research refuses the anthropocentric and dualistic conception that has separated humans from non-humans in order to go beyond the constraints of Western exceptionalism and its colonising grip.[6] Castro has identified a “plant turn” in current fields of knowledge and creation, where philosophers including Emanuele Coccia are inviting us to think about and with vegetation or fungi and to consider herbivorous or fungal relations and non-hierarchical modes of being. Such an approach chimes with the Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s call for “decolonising thought” and to contest the hierarchical relationships between “our” thoughts and those of others.[7]

Another important point of Ortiz’s research has been foregrounding the scientific work of Lynn Margulis (1938–2011), the unorthodox scientist whose theories around evolution and symbiosis were often mocked and ignored by the male establishment for appearing to contradict Charles Darwin’s dogma of natural selection. As a proponent of the endosymbiotic theory, Margulis posited that simple life forms merged, forming cell organelles, like mitochondria. Life, she believed, is a symbiotic and cooperative union that allows those who associate to succeed, a theory that later has been widely accepted and substantiated.

Ortiz’s research introduces queer epistemologies through a series of gatherings, an urban walking tour and a collective reading. The first will be a two-hour guided tour around Poblenou to identify and discuss plant taxonomy and its colonial provenance. A similar tour will take place the following day in Montjuïc’s Botanical Garden, where Agustín will lead a discussion within the framework of a man-made “natural” environment.

A third activity, developed in collaboration with Hangar – Visual Arts Production and Research Centre in Barcelona as part of its Fictions of Dis-order programme, will consist of a collective reading of Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature. Published in 1991, this biography is a diary of the British film-maker, artist and activist on his late years at Prospect Cottage, on the arid Kent coast in south-east England. Jarman purchased this fisherman’s house in Dungeness in 1986 shortly after being diagnosed as HIV positive, with the aim of withdrawing in the years before his death (in 1994). The now-iconic black timber cottage with yolk yellow window frames is overlooked by the imposing Dungeness nuclear power station and surrounded by a vast shingle beach and a noteworthy garden, the boundaries of which he described as the horizon.

— Latitudes

1 Linnaeus was the first to use it consistently throughout his book, although the system now known as binomial nomenclature was partially developed by the brothers Gaspard and Johann Bauhin 200 years earlier.

2 Linnaeus published 12 editions of Systema Naturae during his lifetime. The 10th edition from 1758 is considered the starting point of zoological nomenclature.

3 Sir James Edward Smith purchased Linnaeus’s botanical, zoological and library collections for 1,000 guineas to found The Linnean Society of London in 1788. It was at a meeting of the Society in 1858 that papers from Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace outlining the theory of evolution by natural selection were first presented. https://www.linnean.org

4 The Salvador family were a dynasty of apothecaries and naturalists from Barcelona that between the 17th and 19th centuries collected over 14,000 specimens. The Gabinet Salvador is the most important example of a Cabinet of Curiosities or wunderkammer in the country, a presentation format which predates the invention of the modern museum and the separation between the sciences and the humanities. https://museuciencies.cat/es/area-cientifica/colecciones/coleccion-salvador/

5 With its origins in the 17th century, the Gabinet Salvador includes the oldest known herbarium in Spain, as well as books, documents, collections of molluscs, fossils, and stuffed animals. The Zoology Museum of Barcelona was located in the Modernista building known as the ‘Castle of the Three Dragons’ between 1920 and 2010 when it was relocated and changed its name to Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona (Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona, aka the ‘Museu Blau’).

6 Teresa Castro, The Mediated Plant, e-flux Journal #102, September 2019, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/102/283819/the-mediated-plant/

7 Emanuele Coccia, The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture, Polity Press, 2018.

 2020, Agustín Ortiz, Barcelona Producció, Botanical gardens, decolonise institutions, Derek Jarman, Ecology, guided tour, Hangar, research, screening, seminario, tutorizado por Latitudes
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Proyecto deslocalizado ‘La Ballena de El Prat a El Prat / Retorno: Vibraera’ de Consol Llupià

 Tue, May 19 2020

Consol Llupià
22 de mayo de 2020 a las 16 h

El próximo 22 de mayo a las 16 horas, coincidiendo con la luna nueva de primavera y el 37 aniversario del hallazgo de una ballena de diecinueve metros en la playa de El Prat de Llobregat, la artista Consol Llupià te invita a ‘Vibraera’ [1], una acción energética de sincronización colectiva de vibraciones en sintonía con la red de conciencia cetácea a partir de los principios de amor, alegría, unidad y cooperación.

En la web www.vibraera.net encontrarás algunas indicaciones de como iniciar tu participación, aunque cada cual es libre de formularla de una forma personal e íntima. Tu aportación será publicada en el web y progresivamente complementada con la contribución de colaboradores de la artista procedentes de instituciones y entidades multisectoriales del ámbito energético, medioambiental, científico, jurídico, social, deportivo, humanístico y artístico, así como una red afectiva de individuos vinculados a los cetáceos que han ido sumando su entusiasmo y compromiso a lo largo del proyecto, que empezó en mayo de 2018, cuando Llupià preguntó a la ballena si quería regresar al mar.

Comparte tu experiencia a través de las redes sociales usando las etiquetas #labalenadelpratalprat y #Vibraera

Consol Llupià (Barcelona, 1983) es licenciada en Bellas Artes por la Universidad de Barcelona (2001-2006) y obtuvo una beca Erasmus para estudiar en la Academia Nacional de Artes de Sofía (Bulgaria) en 2006. Entre 2015 y 2017, Llupià realizó el proyecto ‘Performance oficial’ al amparo del Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam de La Habana (Cuba). En 2016, desarrolló la mediación artística para el ciclo ‘Xarxa Zande’ en el Centre d’Art Santa Mònica de Barcelona, y entre 2007 y 2017 organizó ‘Campo de desconcentración polivalente’, un proyecto artístico multidisciplinar colectivo y autogestionado en Alcóntar (Almería).

[1] ‘Vibraera’ es una expresión coloquial usada en la sierra de los Filabres (Almería) para describir una situación o acción que crea una gran cantidad de energía o que invita o alienta a la participación. A la artista le gusta el hecho de que, al separar los componentes del vocablo –‘vibra’ y ‘era’– y alterar su orden, surge otro posible significado: ‘era de vibraciones’.


→ CONTENIDO RELACIONADO:

 2020, Barcelona Producció, BCN Producció, Consol Llupià, Ecology, event, La Capella, offsite, performance, tutorizado por Latitudes
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Reduce Art Flights website refreshed

 Wed, Feb 5 2020
https://reduceartflights.lttds.org/

The Reduce Art Flights website has had a long-overdue refresh (the first version is from 2008 and originally at reduceartflights.com): it now features a new exhibition history, bibliography and a transcription of the interview with RAF's instigator, the late artist Gustav Metzger (1926–2017).

RAF / Reduce Art Flights is a campaign which upholds that the art world—artists, curators, critics, gallerists, collectors, museum directors, etc.—could or should diminish its use of aeroplanes.

“...it’s a nudge in the ribs as it were to remind people there is a problem and let’s talk about this problem of endless flights here and there. What particularly annoyed me originally was the statement by the organisers of the [2006] Basel art fair that when it comes to taking the fair to Miami, which was planned, everybody could get a 50% reduction on the aeroplane flight. I thought that is just over the top, pumping up the possibility of aeroplane use. So for me, this has very much to do with a rejection of mass transport through the air of course, and through cars and buses, and also a criticism of the art world where everything is out for maximizing everything and in every direction.” — Gustav Metzger

The site is maintained by Latitudes as a resource for the initiative and as a location for future elaborations of its aims.

The website in 2008.
Pages of the exhibition catalogue ‘Greenwashing. Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities’, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, edited by Latitudes & Ilaria Bonacossa, published by The Bookmakers Ed., Turin, 2008, ISBN: 978-88-95702-01-8.

 → RELATED CONTENT:
  • 'THE LAST MONITOR' AVAILABLE NOW! #5 issue of the 10 Latitudes-edited newspapers for 'The Last Newspaper' exhibition, New Museum 30 October 2010 
  • Reduce Art Flights leafleting campaign by Gustav Metzger at the Serpentine Gallery, London 21 October 2009
  • Gustav Metzger's RAF / Reduce Art Flights campaign initiative changes URL to www.reduceartflights.lttds.org 28 January 2009
  • “Greenwashing update: RAF / Reduce Art Flights. Gustav Metzger interview”, Latitudes blog post, 6 March 2008 
  • Exhibition ‘Greenwashing. Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities’, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, 2008. 
 2008, 2020, archive, Ecology, Greenwashing, Gustav Metzger, Reduce Art Flights, website
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Video of Latitudes' lecture "Curating in the Web of Life" at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow

 Wed, Dec 4 2019

‘Curating in the Web of Life’ is in a 1-hour-long lecture presented on November 7, 2019, at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, in the context of their group exhibition ‘The Coming World: Ecology as the New Politics 2030–2100’. It is in English and a Q+A follows. You can also watch it with Russian translation (voice-over). 

 Latitudes during the lecture ‘Curating in the Web of Life’. Photo: Anton Donikov. © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.

In the lecture, Latitudes discuss how 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.


Max Andrews of Latitudes during the lecture ‘Curating in the Web of Life’. Photo: Anton Donikov. © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.
Mariana Cánepa Luna of Latitudes during the lecture ‘Curating in the Web of Life’. Photo: Anton Donikov. © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.
 
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 presented 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” ( CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux 2017–18), ‘Hemauer Keller: United Alternative Energies’ (Kunsthal Aarhus, 2011), “Greenwashing. Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities” (Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, 2008) and related projects such as the residency programme “Geologic Time” (Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, 2017).

[1] “Uncomfortable objects” is a notion borrowed from artist Mariana Castillo Deball, and “dishonest research” from artist Mercedes Azpilicueta.

Latitudes during the lecture ‘Curating in the Web of Life’. Photo: Anton Donikov. © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

 → RELATED CONTENTS:
 2019, 4543 billion, Anthropocene, Capitalocene, decolonise institutions, deep time, Ecology, latitudes, Lecture, microhistory, Moscow, online, research, Youtube
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