Longitudes
Longitudes cuts across Latitudes’ projects and research with news, updates, and reportage.
Research project ‘Naming, possessing Critique of taxonomic practice’ by Agustín Ortiz Herrera, Barcelona Producció 2019–2020
21 Oct 2020
Photo: Agustín Ortiz Herrera
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’
Agustín Ortiz Herrera
To Name, To Own. Critique of Taxonomic Practice
Research Project
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.
‘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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
→ RELATED CONTENTS:
Proyecto deslocalizado ‘La Ballena de El Prat a El Prat / Retorno: Vibraera’ de Consol Llupià
19 May 2020
Barcelona Producció 2019-2020. Proyecto deslocalizado
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:
Reduce Art Flights website refreshed
05 Feb 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.
Video of Latitudes' lecture "Curating in the Web of Life" at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow
04 Dec 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.
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.
→ RELATED CONTENTS:
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:
- Conferencia ‘4.543 miles de millones y la naturaleza social abstracta’, Jornadas Eremuak, Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao, 17–19 octubre 2019, 14 octubre 2019
- Conversación con Lara Almarcegui en el Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM), 11 de julio 2019, 19h
- Parallel Rooms, Art Basel Cities: Buenos Aires talks, hosted in collaboration with arteBA, Buenos Aires, 13 April 2019.
- Convenor, 'The Return of the Earth. Ecologising art history in the Anthropocene’, CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, 15 November 2017.
- In conversation with Haegue Yang, Fundació Tàpies, Barcelona, 3 May 2017.
- Lecture, ‘You're such a curator!’, De Appel Curatorial Programme Summit, Amsterdam, 23–24 November 2016.
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.
— 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” (2017–18), “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 “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.
→ RELATED CONTENTS:
- Conferencia ‘4.543 miles de millones y la naturaleza social abstracta’, Jornadas Eremuak, Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao, 17–19 octubre 2019, 14 octubre 2019
- Conversación con Lara Almarcegui en el Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM), 11 de julio 2019, 19h
- Parallel Rooms, Art Basel Cities: Buenos Aires talks, hosted in collaboration with arteBA, Buenos Aires, 13 April 2019.
- Convenor, 'The Return of the Earth. Ecologising art history in the Anthropocene’, CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, 15 November 2017.
- In conversation with Haegue Yang, Fundació Tàpies, Barcelona, 3 May 2017.
- Lecture, ‘You're such a curator!’, De Appel Curatorial Programme Summit, Amsterdam, 23–24 November 2016.
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.
Actualización:
Jornadas Eremuak 2019 en vimeo.
Video de la presentación y turno de preguntas.
→ CONTENIDO RELACIONADO:
- 11 de julio 2019, 19h: Conversación con Lara Almarcegui en el Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM)
- Parallel Rooms, Art Basel Cities: Buenos Aires talks, hosted in collaboration with arteBA, Buenos Aires, 13 April 2019.
- Convenor, 'The Return of the Earth. Ecologising art history in the Anthropocene’, CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, 15 November 2017.
- In conversation with Haegue Yang, Fundació Tàpies, Barcelona, 3 May 2017.
- Lecture, ‘You're such a curator!’, De Appel Curatorial Programme Summit, Amsterdam, 23–24 November 2016.
- Interview with Nicholas Mangan in the exhibition catalogue "Limits to Growth" (Sternberg Press, 2016) 31 October 2016
- In conversation with Lucas Ihlein for Artlink Magazine 5 September 2016
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’. Foto: 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.
(Arriba y abajo) Conversación con Almarcegui y el crítico y comisario Cuauhtémoc Medina en TENT, Rotterdam, mayo 2011. Photos by Aad Hoogendoorn.
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
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:
- Archive of Monthly Cover Stories
- Cover Story—May 2019: Buenos Aires in Parallel 1 May 2019
- Report from Buenos Aires during Art Basel Cities: Buenos Aires, Semana del Arte and arteBA fair 22 April 2019
- Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna in Art Basel Cities: Buenos Aires' Parallel Rooms programme on 13 April 2019
- Cover Story—March-April 2019: "Icelandic refraction" 3 March 2019
- Cover Story—February 2019: Schizophrenic Machine (1 February 2019)
- Cover Story—January 2019: “Seesaw” (7 January 2019)
- Cover Story—December 2018: "Treasures! exhibitionism! showmanship!" 1 December 201
Essay: ‘Thinking like a drainage basin’ 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.
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’.
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
Cover Story—April 2018: Dates, 700 BC to the present: Michael Rakowitz
03 Apr 2018
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