Longitudes
Longitudes cuts across Latitudes’ projects and research with news, updates, and reportage.
Cover Story, September 2022: The means of print production: Erick Beltrán and lumbung press
Thu, Sep 1 2022
September 2022 cover story on www.lttds.org
The September 2022 monthly Cover Story “The means of print production: Erick Beltrán and lumbung press” is now up on our homepage.
“One of the most consequential and ambitious initiatives at the sprawling and polyphonic documenta fifteen is lumbung press, one of several working groups conceived by the artistic directors ruangrupa that transverses the many invited artists, community-oriented collectives, organisations and institutions brought together in Kassel.”
→ After September 2022 this story will be archived here.
Cover Stories are published on a monthly basis on Latitudes’ homepage featuring past, present or forthcoming projects, research, texts, artworks, exhibitions, films, objects or field trips related to our curatorial projects and activities.
→ RELATED CONTENTS:
- Archive of Monthly Cover Stories
- Cover Story, July–August 2022: Incidents (of Travel) from Seoul, 1 Jul 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, April 2022: Mix and Match. Laia Estruch at PUBLICS, 1 April 2022
- Cover Story, March 2022: The passion of Gabriel Ventura, 1 March 2022
- Cover Story, February 2022: Rosa Tharrats’ Textile Alchemy, 1 Feb 2022
- Cover Story, January 2022: Rasmus’ Doubts, 2 Jan 2022
- Cover Story, December 2021: Between Meier and Meller: Toni and Pau at the Teatre Arnau, 1 Dec 2021
- Cover Story, November 2021: Notes for an Eye Fire, 2 Nov 2021
- Cover Story, October 2021: Fear and Loathing in Lebanon, 1 Oct 2021
- Cover Story, September 2021: Erratic behaviour—Latitudes in conversation with Jorge Satorre, 31 August 2021
Interview with Erick Beltrán & Jorge Satorre published in 'Atlántica' magazine #52
Mon, Feb 13 2012 |
| Installation view of 'Modelling Standard' at Galeria Joan Prats, Barcelona. Jorge Satorre and Erick Beltrán (Illustrations by Jorge Aviña), “Modelling Standard”, 2010. 58 photocopies pasted on the wall. Variable dimensions. Courtesy of the artists. |
In the current issue of the 'Atlántica' magazine #52 (to be launched on 16 February at 4pm, at the Sala de Amigos, Hall 8, ARCOmadrid), there is an interview between Erick Beltrán, Jorge Satorre, and Latitudes conducted in November 2011 during the installation week of the exhibition at Galeria Joan Prats, Barcelona. Below is an abstract of the 4,000 words on phantom limbs, microhistory, devil's drool, apophenia, collaboration, information systems, Sigmund Freud's dog Jo-Fi, collage, döppelgangers, Fantomas, mirror neurons, unorthodox research methods, validation...
– PART
I –
Latitudes
(L): Your exhibition at Galería Joan Prats in Barcelona is the latest installment of your Modelling
Standard
project, as well as being a group show which includes the work of
other artists. [1] Where should we begin the story, where does it start for you?
Jorge Satorre (JS): At the core of Modelling Standard is our interest in the methodology proposed by Italian microhistory during the seventies as well as its precedents. Specifically, the essay of Carlo Ginzburg ‘Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm’, which was published in 1979, functioned as one of the main pillars of our project. In the text, he tried to explain a new way of making history in which there are three basic methods to follow: first, reducing scale; second, in-depth investigations of the few sources at hand; and third, exploitation of hints and traces – working like a detective. [2] Ginzburg supported his theory by alluding to the fathers of this paradigm: Sigmund Freud, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Giovanni Morelli. These three people worked in very different fields, though they shared a medical background and operated in the manner of a detective: deciphering clues through symptoms and finding hidden meaning in details. From this trigger, Erick and I started opening up a web of relations.
L: It is now a fascinatingly complex project which involves a whole host of characters and has evolved through an exhibition at FormContent in London in 2010 and a comic book that you produced for Casa Vecina in Mexico City earlier this year. Integral to the project are the amazing drawings of Jorge Aviña, who we’ll come onto specifically in a moment, which you commissioned as illustrations of certain concepts. But as Charles Fort said, ‘one measures a circle, beginning anywhere’... so, let’s pick one drawing and one character – Vilayanur Ramachandran?
 |
| Erick Beltrán and Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran. Courtesy the artist. |
Erick
Beltrán (EB):
Ramachandran represents a really curious phenomenon that gets further
explored in the comic – the analyses of the phantom limb and mirror
neurons. He found out that there are cells in the brain that possess
a representative image of our body. If those cells are electrically
stimulated, one starts to feel different parts of the body. Via
Wilder Penfield’s understanding of the part of the brain called the
cortical homunculus, neuroscientists concluded that this
representation is distorted, it’s not to scale with how the body
really is. Some parts have more sensory neurons than others, hence
they appear bigger in the brain’s body image: for instance, the
hands of ‘Penfield’s homunculus’ are too big and the torso is
way too small.
L:
What is the relation between the individual line drawings and the
comic?
JS:
For instance, the misperception Erick mentioned really became the
centre of the comic, which is titled El
Hallazgo del Miembro Fantasma (The
Discovery of the Phantom Limb). The 58
individual drawings were the first part of the project and are pasted
on the wall like posters here in Barcelona as they were similarly in
London. Their structure and relations are set out more like a draft.
The comic is basically a story talking about the power of the images
in which we incorporated some of the characters from the first part
of the project.
L:
The comic format must have posed a different challenge; rather than
jumping from drawing to drawing as with the talk-performances you
have done during the openings of the projects, a narrative has to be
set out and digested linearly?
EB:
We made a sort of ‘game of shadows’ with the comic by
encompassing the narrative and the visual part. A novel however is
something we are going to do at some point.
JS:
The whole project has also set out a new problem for us: we began
with the analysis of microhistory,
yet as we mentioned before, now we realise this has evolved into
considering the power of images. All the characters somehow tackle
this problem in one way or another, and with the comic, we created a
detective story where the characters are victims and perpetrators
of a crime related to images.
It
has been a ping-pong of ideas between us, but we have also let chance
be a part of the process. We have had to confront our decisions and
integrate characters. Jorge Aviña is the illustrator who, as you
said, has produced all the drawings for the project, and we realised
that he had a lot to do with Fantomas, a fictional character in a
Mexican comic series of the 1960s, based on the French character
Fantômas. One of the writers of Fantomas,
Gonzalo Martré, who is now 84, becomes the criminal in our comic and
also is the co-writer of El
Hallazgo del Miembro Fantasma.
EB:
By
then we had realised we had gathered a sort of ‘dream team’ of
what Fantomas could represent today.
 |
| Jorge
Satorre and Erick Beltrán (Illustrations
by Jorge Aviña), “Modelling
Standard”, 2010. 58 photocopies pasted on the wall. Variable dimensions. Courtesy of the artists. |
–
[1] Modelling
Standard,
an exhibition organized by Jorge Satorre and Erick Beltrán. With the participation of Christoph Keller, Raphaël Zarka, Paloma Polo,
Bernardo Ortiz, Efrén Álvarez, Meris Angioletti, Jose Antonio Vega
Macotela, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Jorge Aviña and Florian Göttke.
Galería Joan Prats, Barcelona, November–December 2011.
[2] Carlo
Ginzburg, ‘Clues:
Roots of an Evidential Paradigm’, in Clues,
Myths, and the Historical Method, translated by John Tedeschi and Anne C. Tedeschi (Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1989), p. 102. The Italian edition is ‘Spie:
Radici di un paradigma indizario’, in Aldo Gargani and Carlo
Ginzburg, Crisi
della ragione.
(Einaudi, 1979).
'Nice to Meet You – Erick Beltrán. Some Fundamental Postulates' by Max Andrews on Mousse Magazine #31
Wed, Nov 30 2011
Erick Beltrán and Jorge Satorre's 'Modelling Standard' evolving project and forthcoming interview with the artists for 'Atlántica' magazine
Tue, Nov 15 2011
Invitation card to the exhibition at Galeria Joan Prats.
Opening: 17 November 2011, 19.30h (the artist will do a talk at 20h)
Exhibition organised by: Jorge Satorre and Erick Beltrán
With works by: Christoph Keller, Raphaël Zarka, Paloma Polo, Bernardo Ortiz,
Efrén Álvarez, Meris Angioletti, Jose Antonio Vega Macotela, Vilayanur Ramachandran,
Jorge Aviña and Florian Göttke.
The presentation at Galeria Joan Prats is the third iteration of the project which began in September 2010 at FormContent, London and continued in March 2011 at Casa Vecina, México DF.
"Modelling Standard takes as a point of departure the radical historiographic turn introduced by Carlo Ginzburg in the 1970s who focused on localised, popular and disregarded micro-histories rather than universal, over-arching versions. The title Modelling Standard references the scientific concept of the Standard Model used in physics to explain the almost invisible interactions occurring between subatomic particles.
Erick Beltrán and Jorge Satorre use both micro-historical methods and
the metaphor borrowed from physics to create connections between small,
insignificant hints and traces. These are taken from their
heterogeneous references to build seemingly unlikely connections between
literary references, personal experiences, historical data, trivia and
scientific facts through the construction of a diagram. The result is a
series of caricatures and texts through which the artists will construct
a detective plot where Sigmund Freud, Carlo Ginzburg, Giovanni Morelli,
Aby Warburg, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Joe Orton are the protagonists." (taken from FormContent's press release)
In Casa Vecina, Modelling Standard expanded with the inclusion of a comic also with drawings by illustrator and project collaborator Jorge Aviña, which will also be presented in Galeria Joan Prats alongside, as the artists have stated, the "input from a number of artists, illustrators and guest researchers, whose personal research work adds new links to the chain that stretches and lengthens ... like the devil's drool".
Installation process of the exhibition. Photo taken the day we began the interview for 'Atlántica' magazine.
In relation to 'Modelling Standard' Latitudes is currently working on an interview with Satorre and Beltrán for the Spanish magazine 'Atlántica' (to be published in February 2012), where there will be an opportunity to read more about their thread of ideas for this project as well as the process of their collaborative work – the latter being one of the focus of Latitudes' interests developed in exhibition projects such as 'Amikejo' (four exhibitions at MUSAC, León, 2011) or 'The Garden of Forking Paths' (Maisterravalbuena, Madrid, 2009). More news to follow...
–
Related posts:
Portscapes
news: Jorge Satorre's billboard on the A15 and Paulien Oltheten small
exhibition at the visitor centre Futureland and surroundings (18 October 2009)
Portscapes: Jorge Satorre returns an ice-age boulder back to Sweden (18 January 2010)
'Banquete sinestésico' de Erick Beltrán en Halfhouse (30 octubre 2011)
Galeria Joan Prats
Rambla de Catalunya, 54
08007 Barcelona, Spain
'Banquete sinestésico' de Erick Beltrán en Halfhouse
Sun, Oct 30 2011
Erick Beltrán realizará una cena-performance transformando con la ayuda
de un chef el espacio Halfhouse en el comedor para un banquete,
utilizando los platos como base de su discurso. La performance es un
estudio del fenómeno de sinetésia como metáfora para la práctica de la traslación. Erick nos presentará una variedad de platos llevando al
invitado a una exploración culinaria y histórica.
Beltrán ha realizado este tipo de evento analizando el concepto de sinestesia en dos ocasiones anteriores: la primera fue en la Kadist Art Foundation ('A
dinner with...', 2008) y recientemente en Villa Arson (2010), en el
contexto de la exposición 'Double Bind/Stop trying to understand me!'.
3 mesas, 30+/- invitados.
Inspeccionando la cocina para obtener pistas acerca del misterioso menú...
Ingredientes revelatorios...
Nos dicen que el segundo plato está descansando...
más pistas... parece que en el medievo cuando no se tenía pescado a mano, se preparaba este plato a base de hígado
el tedioso trabajo de pelar huevos de codorniz
Primer plato casi listo...
Erick ultimando su presentación
Invitados empiezan a llegar y a degustar el aperitivo especial de la noche, el cocktail Snake in the grass
Empieza la cena-performance
Entrante: Aspic de huevo de gallina y huevo de codorniz, acompañada de anguilas y cilantro
Sigue la charla...
Presentación oficial del primer plato: codorniz dentro de una perdiz, dentro de una gallina de Guinea, dentro de un pato, dentro de un pavo, o algo así...el 'campo expandido' de una matrioska/Turducken. Se acompaña con una salsa de higos y/o garo
Por cierto exquisito...
Siguen los diagramas...los ourobouros...la patafísica...el yo y el super-yo...
Segundo plato: boquerones dentro de una lubina dentro de un bacalao. Buen provecho. 
Sobre cómo leer el futuro observando las partes de un hígado...
Tercer plato: conejo con chocolate...
Sirviendo vino con hinojo como acompañante del postre (no comestible): música futurista
Muchos cocktail, muchas Estrella...
Apocalíptica cocina post-cena...
Erick Beltrán (México DF, 1974. Vive y trabaja entre Barcelona y
México DF) estudió Artes Visuales en la Universidad Nacional de México
(ENAP-UNAM), entre 1993 y 1997. Posteriormente, participó en residencias
artísticas como ENSAD, París (2000-2001) y Rijksakademie, Amsterdam,
(2002-2004). Ha realizado diversas exposiciones individuales incluyendo
Enciclopedia, Galería OMR (Ciudad de México, 2005); Punchdrunk, SMAK
(Gent, Bélgica, 2005); Analphabet, Stedelijk Museum Bureau (Amsterdam,
2005); Réplica (con Jorge Macchi), Muca Roma (Ciudad de México, 2004).
Además, ha participado en exposiciones colectivas como la Bienal del
Mercosur (Porto Alegre, 2005); Algunos libros de artistas, Proyectes SD
(Barcelona, 2005); Prague Biennale 2 (Praga, 2005); Circuitos/Circuits,
Matucana100 (Santiago de Chile, 2005), Bienal de Sao Paulo (2008),
Manifesta 8 (Murcia, 2010) y más recientemente la actual 11ª Bienal de Lyon.
All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
LAST CHANCE: 'Provenances', Umberto di Marino, Naples & 'Sequelism Part 3: Possible, Probable or Preferable Futures', Arnolfini, Bristol, UK
Mon, Sep 7 2009
Jordi Mitjà 'Floating Lines' (2009). Photo: Danilo Donzelli.
Simon Fujiwara, 'The Museum of Incest', 2008-ongoing, hexagonal table, chairs, projection screen, wood veneer paneling, vinyl mural, map, framed portraits, six framed book pages (“The Incest Museum Cast of Actors”), slide projection loop, Museum orientation video (25 min.), Museum guidebooks, various objects, and artifacts. Photo: Danilo Donzelli.
'Provenances'
Erick Beltrán, Jordi Mitjà and Simon Fujiwara
Umberto di Marino Arte Contemporanea, Naples, Italy
until 14 September 2009
EXHIBITION PHOTO TOUR HERE.
'Provenances' reflects on the heritage industry and the museumification of history, as well as the creation, transmission, and fidelity of cultural worth. The artists share an aesthetic and pragmatic concern with the principle of the personal archive or the pre-museal wunderkammer – the categorization and veracity of objects, images, and words are always provisional. + info...
Erick Beltrán presents four works each focussed around a relic-like artifact made of a particular natural substance. Each object is accompanied by a text diagram, and together they elicit a dense proliferation of references, narratives, contexts, and interconnections. In 'Floating Lines' (2009) Jordi Mitjà reflects on practices of information retrieval, falsification, and accumulation. In his seemingly sparse installation, clusters of photocollages are hidden from immediate view by a string curtain which protects them from light while necessitating the visitor’s gesture to reveal them. Simon Fujiwara's 'The Museum of Incest' (2009) is a multipart project that unearths an implicit myth of human origins and an explicit sexual archeology. Fujiwara realised the performance-lecture 'The Museum of Incest. A Guided Tour' during the opening night.
A guide of the museum has been published by Archive Books (Softcover / 21 x 15cm / 52pp / ISBN 978-88-95702-09-4).
Press links here.
UMBERTO DI MARINO
Via Alabardieri 1, Piazza dei Martiri
80121 Napoli, ITALIA
Opening hours: Mon-Sat 15–20h
Opening hours: Mon-Sat 15–20h
'Provenances' has been kindly supported by the Institut Ramon Llull.
(Above and below) Haegue Yang, 'Holiday for Tomorrow', 2007. Painted wooden screens with metal feet (Yes-I-Know-Screen); PVC, shells (Shell Sculpture); 10 coloured Venetian blinds, steel cable (Blind Department); wooden platform with monitor showing 13 min DVD (Holiday Story). Courtesy of the artist and Barbara Wien, Berlin. Photo: Carl Newland.
Arnolfini, Bristol, United Kingdom
until 20 September 2009
Free admission
EXHIBITION PHOTO TOUR HERE.
Artists: Mariana Castillo Deball (1975, Mexico City. Lives in Berlin/Amsterdam), Heman Chong (1977, Malaysia. Lives in Berlin/Singapore), Graham Gussin (1960, London. Lives in London), Victor Man (1974, Cluj–Napoca. Lives in Cluj), Francesc Ruiz (1971 Barcelona. Lives in Barcelona/Berlin), Jordan Wolfson (1980, New York. Lives New York/Berlin) and Haegue Yang (1977, Malaysia. Lives in Berlin/Singapore), (1971 Seoul. Lives in Berlin/Seoul)
Curated by: Nav Haq (Curator, Arnolfini) and Latitudes
'Sequelism...' is an exhibition reflecting on the future and that which is yet to happen. It looks at the political, social, and ecological implications of the inexact arena of futurology: the science and interdisciplinary practice of postulating possible, probable, and preferable futures from the present. This is the first in a trilogy of Sequelism exhibitions, with Part 2 in 2010. + info...
More on the public programme related to the exhibition on http://futurologyprogramme.org
Arnolfini 16 Narrow Quay
Bristol BS1 4QA
UNITED KINGDOM
Opens: 10am-6pm Tues-Sun & Bank Holiday Mondays. Closed Mondays. Free entrance
'Sequelism' is generously supported by the Institut Ramon Llull and the Sociedad Estatal para la Acción Cultural en el Exterior (SEACEX), IFA, the National Arts Council Singapore and The Ratiu Family.
2024 update: Images of Victor Man's works have been removed at the request of the artist.
(Above and below) Francesc Ruiz, 'Untitled' (Bristol) (2009). Self-adhesive digital prints. Courtesy of the artist, Maribel López Gallery, Berlin, and Galeria Estrany-De la Mota, Barcelona. Photo: Carl Newland.
Slideshows of two projects: 'Provenances' at Umberto di Marino and 'Nothing, or Something' at SUITCASE Art Projects Beijing
Mon, May 25 2009
We have updated our web and uploaded images of two recent projects: 'Provenances' an exhibition at Umberto di Marino, Naples, and 'Nothing or Something', SUITCASE Art Projects, Beijing:
'Provenances' [PHOTO GALLERY] opened on May 14th at Umberto di Marino, Naples, and is composed of three specially-commissioned solo presentations by Erick Beltrán, Simon Fujiwara and Jordi Mitjà. The exhibition reflects on the heritage industry and the museumification of history, as well as the creation, transmission and fidelity of cultural worth. On view until 14 September. + info
UMBERTO DI MARINO
Via Alabardieri 1
Piazza dei Martiri
80121 Napoli, ITALY
Opening hours: Mon-Sat 15–20h
Ignasi Aballí's new project [photo gallery here] for the eight windows of SUITCASE Art Projects responds to the retail context of the Yintai Centre as well as an artistic history of absence, nothingness and invisibility. + info
Suitcase Art Projects,
Opening hours: Mon-Sat 15–20h
Ignasi Aballí's new project [photo gallery here] for the eight windows of SUITCASE Art Projects responds to the retail context of the Yintai Centre as well as an artistic history of absence, nothingness and invisibility. + info
Suitcase Art Projects,
Park Life, Beijing Yintai Centre, No. 2 Jianwai Dajie,
Chaoyang District, Beijing, CHINA
Opening Hours: 10am–10pm, Monday–Sunday
Please join us on Thursday 28th May 20h, at the opening of 'The Garden of Forking Paths', a group exhibition at Maisterravalbuena, Madrid. The exhibition brings together the work of Eric Bell & Kristoffer Frick; The Infinite Library (Daniel Gustav Cramer & Haris Epaminonda); huber.huber; Leslie Hewitt & Matt Keegan and Nashashibi/Skaer, five artist-duos to consider duality, simultaneity, saturation and proliferation. On view until 18 July 2009. + info
MAISTERRAVALBUENA
Please join us on Thursday 28th May 20h, at the opening of 'The Garden of Forking Paths', a group exhibition at Maisterravalbuena, Madrid. The exhibition brings together the work of Eric Bell & Kristoffer Frick; The Infinite Library (Daniel Gustav Cramer & Haris Epaminonda); huber.huber; Leslie Hewitt & Matt Keegan and Nashashibi/Skaer, five artist-duos to consider duality, simultaneity, saturation and proliferation. On view until 18 July 2009. + info
MAISTERRAVALBUENA
Doctor Fourquet 1
28012 Madrid
Opening: Mon-Fri 10-14;15.30-19.30; Sat 10-18pm
Opening: Mon-Fri 10-14;15.30-19.30; Sat 10-18pm
[Photos: Simon Fujiwara, 'The Museum of Incest', installation at 'Provenances', Courtesy of teh artist. Photo: Simon Fujiwara; Visitors seeing 'Scenic Views' by Ignasi Aballí and Daniel Gustav Gramer & Haris Epaminonda 'Book #7: Walther Haage, 'Das praktische Kakteenbuch in Farben', Neumann Verlag, Radebeul, 1966 & Tibor Déry, 'Der Balaton', Druckerei Kosuth, Budapest, 1968' Courtesy the artists. Below: huber.huber, 'Mikrouniversum und andere kleine Systeme IV', 2009. Courtesy the artists.]