Longitudes

Selección de reseñas, videos y entrevistas sobre el proyecto COLAPSO de Joan Morey

 15 Jan 2019

Natàlia Farré, ‘Sumisión y frío en la Modelo’, El Periódico, 15 de enero 2019.
Maria Palau, ‘Angoixats a la Model’, El Punt Avui, 13 de enero 2019, pág 23.

Conxita Oliver, ‘El món performatiu de Joan Morey, a revisió’, eltemps.cat, 13 desembre 2018 (Catalán).


Pía Cordero, "COL·LAPSE, o l’avenir il·limitat de l’obscenitat", núvol.com, 6 desembre 2018 (Catalán).



María Muñoz, ‘Sobre el poder, la performance y el deseo’, Metal magazine, 4 diciembre 2018 (Castellano).




"Joan Morey presenta "Col·lapse. Cos social", programa Taquilla Inversa, L'H digital Mitjans de Comunicació de L'Hospitalet, 29 novembre 2018 (4'57'', Catalán).


Entrevista ‘Joan Morey, artista i performer mallorquí’ con Tania Adam, programa ‘Terrícoles’, canal betevé, 13 novembre 2018 (27', Catalán).
Vanessa Graell, ‘Anatomía de la ‘performance’’, El Mundo, 27 septiembre 2018 (Castellano).
Maria Palau, ‘Contra l'abús de poder’, El Punt Avui, 23 setiembre 2018 (Catalán).
Núria Juanico, ‘L’entrada a l’univers sinistre de Joan Morey’, Ara.cat, 25 setiembre 2018 (Catalán).


CONTENIDO RELACIONADO:
  • Proceso de inscripción para asistir a la performance ‘Máquina esquizofrénica’ de Joan Morey 11 Diciembre 2018
  • December 13, 2018, 7 pm: Performance reenactment of "TOUR DE FORCE. El cos utòpic" (2017) by Joan Morey 10 December 2018
  • November 29, 2018, 5–8pm: Performance reenactment of "IL LINGUAGGIO DEL CORPO. Pròleg" (2015-16) by Joan Morey 26 November 2018
  • November 15, 2018, 7 pm: Performance reenactment of "BAREBACK. Fenomenología de la comunión" (2010) by Joan Morey 12 November 2018
  • October 25, 7pm: Performance reenactment of "GRITOS Y SUSURROS" (2009) by Joan Morey 22 October 2018
  • October 11, 2018, 7pm: Performance reenactment of ‘LLETANIA APÒRIMA’ [APORIC LITANY] (2009) by Joan Morey 8 October 2018
  • Wakelet archive of social media content
 2018, 2019, Barcelona, Centre d'Art Barcelona, Exhibition, Joan Morey, Latitudes-curated, performance, press coverage, Reviews, Tecla Sala

Inscripción para asistir a la performance ‘Máquina esquizofrénica’ de Joan Morey

 11 Dec 2018


Se abre el proceso de inscripción (¡hasta el 20 de diciembre 2018!) para asistir a ‘Máquina esquizofrénica’, una performance inédita de Joan Morey que tendrá lugar el 10 de enero de 2019 a las 19 h en una ubicación muy relevante de la ciudad de Barcelona pero que se mantiene expresamente en secreto.

‘Máquina esquizofrénica’ es la tercera y última parte del proyecto COLAPSO de Joan Morey y comisariado por Latitudes. La primera parte del proyecto, titulada Máquina deseante, máquina de trabajo se exhibe en el Centre d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona - Fabra i Coats. La segunda parte tiene lugar en el Centre d’Art Tecla Sala, en L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, y es la versión definitiva de la exposición itinerante ‘Cuerpo social’. Ambas pueden visitarse hasta el 13 de enero 2019.

Formulario de inscripción aquí.

Observaciones:

Performance a puerta cerrada y de acceso restringido. Aforo limitado. La performance es exclusivamente para público adulto y, debido al entorno arquitectónico, no es apta para personas con movilidad o visibilidad reducida. El acceso a la performance está sujeto a normas de protocolo, entre ellas el código de vestimenta y la aceptación por escrito de condiciones para la asistencia. Aun habiendo recibido confirmación y cumplir de forma correcta el protocolo de asistencia indicado, el artista, el Fabra i Coats. Centre d'Art Contemporani y el Centre d'Art Tecla Sala se reservan el derecho de admisión. En la confirmación de asistencia se facilitarán todos los detalles organizativos.

+ info

Comparte: #JoanMoreyColapso

CONTENIDO RELACIONADO: 
  • December 13, 2018, 7pm: Performance reenactment of "TOUR DE FORCE. El cos utòpic" (2017) by Joan Morey 10 December 2018
  • "Joan Morey presenta "Col·lapse. Cos social", programa Taquilla Inversa, L'Hdigital Mitjans de Comunicació de L'Hospitalet, 29 Novembre 2018
  • Pía Cordero, "COL·LAPSE, o l’avenir il·limitat de l’obscenitat", www.nuvol.com, 6 Desembre 2018
  • November 29, 2018, 5–8pm: Performance reenactment of "IL LINGUAGGIO DEL CORPO. Pròleg" (2015-16) by Joan Morey 26 November 2018
  • November 15, 2018, 7 pm: Performance reenactment of "BAREBACK. Fenomenología de la comunión" (2010) by Joan Morey 12 November 2018
  • October 25, 7pm: Performance reenactment of "GRITOS Y SUSURROS" (2009) by Joan Morey 22 October 2018
  • October 11, 2018, 7pm: Performance reenactment of ‘LLETANIA APÒRIMA’ [APORIC LITANY] (2009) by Joan Morey 8 October 2018
  • Performance programme in the context of Joan Morey's exhibition ‘COLLAPSE. Desiring Machine, Working Machine’ 24 September 2018
  • Maria Palau, "Contra l'abús de poder", El Punt Avui, p. 32, 23 Setembre 2018 (Catalan) 
  • Full performance programme 
  • Wakelet archive of social media content
  • NOTA DE PRENSA: ‘Joan Morey. COLAPSO’, diversos espacios, Barcelona, 20 septiembre 2018–13 enero 2019, 19 September 2018
  • Save the date: 19 September at 7pm, opening of the solo show by Joan Morey ‘COLLAPSE. Desiring machine, working machine’, Centre d'Art Contemporani Barcelona - Fabra i Coats, 3 September 2018
 2018, 2019, Centre d'Art Barcelona, Exhibition, Joan Morey, Open Call, performance

Lawrence Weiner tote bag and sugar sachets at the McManus Museum and Galleries in Dundee

 26 Nov 2018
Following on our earlier post from October 26, 2018 announcing our donation of Lawrence Weiner's limited edition tote bag to Tate Archive, we now share some images of its presentation as part of Tate's "ARTIST ROOMS: Lawrence Weiner" currently on view at the McManus Museum and Galleries in Dundee, Scotland, until February 17, 2019.

Photo: Lawrence Weiner. ARTIST ROOMS. National Galleries of Scotland and Tate. ©Lawrence Weiner.

The Dundee presentation includes the limited edition tote bag and three sugar sachets with the striking typographic rendition of the statement "A CLOTH OF COTTON WRAPPED AROUND A HORSESHOE OF IRON TOSSED UPON THE CREST OF A WAVE" in Catalan, Spanish, and English, the latter first commissioned in 2008 as part of Weiner's solo exhibition at the Fundació Suñol, Barcelona.

Thank you Valentina Ravaglia (Assistant Curator, Exhibitions & Displays, Tate Modern) for facilitating the inclusion of these ephemera into Tate's collection, and to Lili Bartholomew (Curatorial Assistant, Leisure and Culture Dundee) for liaising from Dundee and sharing the images.


Photo: Creative Learning Team McManus.

RELATED CONTENT:
 10th anniversary, 2008, 2019, donation, Exhibition, Fundació Suñol, Lawrence Weiner, Tote Bags

Cover Story—November 2017: "Mining negative monuments: Ângela Ferreira, Stone Free, and The Return of the Earth"

 01 Nov 2017
Monthly Cover Story on http://www.lttds.org/blog/


The November 2017 Monthly Cover Story "Mining negative monuments: Ângela Ferreira, Stone Free, and The Return of the Earth" is now up on www.lttds.org – after this month it will be archived here. 

"On 15 November the study day The Return of the Earth: Ecologising art history in the Anthropocene takes place at the CAPC musée d’art contemporain Bordeaux in conjunction with the Latitudes-curated exhibition 4.543 billion. The matter of matter. With a keynote by science historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, and a conversation between artists Xavier Ribas and Ângela Ferreira—the latter both featured in the exhibition—the event will intertwine discussions of art practice and historical research, with environmental and geological narratives, and vice versa." Continue reading
 
Cover Stories' are published on a monthly basis on Latitudes' homepage and feature past, present or forthcoming projects, research, writing, artworks, exhibitions, films, objects or field trips related to our curatorial activities. 

 RELATED CONTENT:
  • Archive of Monthly Cover Stories
  • 15 November 2017, 4:30–8pm: 'The Return of the Earth. Ecologising art history in the Anthropocene' study day at the CAPC musée, Bordeaux 24 October 2017
  • Cover Story – October 2017: Geologic Time at Stanley Glacier 11 October 2017
  • Cover Story – September 2017: Dark Disruption. David Mutiloa's 'Synthesis' 1 September 2017
  • Cover Story – August 2017: Walden 7; or, life in Sant Just Desvern 1 August 2017
  • Cover Story – July 2017: 4.543 billion 3 July 2017
  • Cover Story – June 2017: Month Light–Absent Forms 1 June 2017
  • Cover Story – May 2017: S is for Shale, or Stuart; W is for Waterfall, or Whipps 1 May 2017
  • Cover Story – April 2017: Banff Geologic Time 3 April 2017
  • Cover Story – March 2017: Time travel with Jordan Wolfson 1 March 2017
  • Cover Story — February 2017: The Dutch Assembly, five years on 1 February 2017
  • Cover Story – January 2017: How open are open calls? 4 January 2017
 2017, Angela Ferreira, CAPC Bordeaux, conversations, cover story, curatorial writing, Exhibition, report, talks programme, Xavier Ribas

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

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

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


PROGRAMME

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


Free event. Simultaneous translation French/English. 

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

 –

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

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

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

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

GUESTS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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#4543milliards
@LTTDS 
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‘4.543 billion’ is the contribution of the CAPC musée to the cultural season Paysages Bordeaux 2017. 

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

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

Cover Story – July 2017: "4.543 billion"

 03 Jul 2017
www.lttds.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


SAVE THE DATE

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

Opening: June 29, 2017 (6 pm)

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

Curated by Latitudes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Share:
#4543billion 
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@paysagesbx17

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


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

Antoni Hervàs's exhibition "El Misterio de Caviria" awarded the Visual Arts prize of the Premis Ciutat de Barcelona 2016

 01 Feb 2017

Antoni Hervàs receiving the award from Ada Colau, Mayor of Barcelona, at the Saló de Cent of the Ajuntament de Barcelona, 16 February. Photos: Latitudes.

We are delighted to announce that Antoni Hervàs's exhibition "El Misterio de Caviria" (The Mystery of Caviria) has been awarded the Visual Arts prize of the Premis Ciutat de Barcelona 2016 (City of Barcelona Award). The award has been organised on a yearly basis since 1949 by the Ajuntament de Barcelona (Barcelona City Council), "to award the creation, research and production of quality produced in Barcelona by creators or collectives working for institutions and organizations in Barcelona that promote or produce projects".  

The jury recognised "the artist's research in linking Greek mythology with the Barcelona cabaret scene from the 1960s–80s and for the recuperation of its vitality." The jury also acklowledged the "formalisation of the project into a scenographic and immersive installation and the range of public programmes it generated". Huge congratulations Toni, a very well-deserved recognition for your Herculian efforts!

The prize comes hot-on-the-heels of Hervàs's exhibition winning the public vote for the best show of 2016 given by the Tria 33 programme of the Catalan TV3 channel. 

"El Misterio de Caviria" (The Mystery of Caviria) took place at La Capella between September and November 2016. It was part of the BCN Producció'16 season and was one of the three projects mentored this year by Latitudes.  

View of "El Misterio de Caviria" exhibition by Antoni Hervàs at La Capella.  
This and following photos: Pep Herrero / La Capella–BCN Producció'16.

Antoni Hervàs’ artistic project revolves around the legend of Jason and the Argonauts’ expedition in search of the Golden Fleece. The exhibition "El Misterio de Caviria" (The Mystery of Cabeiria), divided into eight chapters (exhibition guide (pdf) and description of each chapter (pdf)), took as its point of origin the section of the tale in which the expedition led by Jason stops for a few months in Lemnos, the island of fire, in the northern part of the Aegean Sea. Here live a kind of tribe of Amazons organized under the gynaecocracy of Queen Hypsipyle who are keeping a grisly secret. Taking this fragment, Hervàs explores the transformist and genre-bending possibilities of drawing, a medium that enables him to unite two mythologies: the Cabeirian rites of Classical Greece and figures from Barcelona’s dwindling cabaret scene. 

Video of the exhibition (Spanish subtitles).

 
Exhibition layout. Space design: Goig.
 
Publication of the project edited by Ajuntament de Barcelona and The Flames. Photos: Latitudes.

RELATED CONTENT:
 2016, Antoni Hervàs, Award, Barcelona, BCN Producció, Exhibition, latitudes, mentoring, premio, research, tutoría

The story behind José Antonio Hernández-Díez's 'San Guinefort' (1991)

 29 Mar 2016
 Pages with the story behind Plaça dels Àngels.

When giving a presentation or tour of an exhibition or project we have worked on, we are often asked how the project emerged – if there was a particular trigger or point of origin. In the case of José Antonio Hernández-Díez’s exhibition currently on view at MACBA (until June 26, 2016), our approach was a familiar one to us – we started by both delving in-depth in researching the artists previous works while at the same time looking into the history of the venue where the exhibition was going to take place. 

We are very fond of a book that has been in our library for many years – 'Histories and legends of Barcelona' by Joan Amades (Edicions 62). This two-volume tome gathers some of the myths behind Barcelona place names and includes the tales behind both familiar and obscure buildings, streets and monuments in the city. The story that most captivated us concerned the chapel of the Convent dels Àngels, and it is recounted in the essay we wrote to accompany the exhibition (published as the Quaderns Portàtils #32 – pdfs available in Spanish and English and epub in Spanish only). It goes as follows:

(...) "Outside the doorway of the deconsecrated sixteenth-century church that formed part of Barcelona’s Convent dels Àngels there once stood the stone figure of a dog, standing upright on its hind legs. Two separate legends account for its existence, as recorded by ethnologist and folklorist Joan Amades in the 1950s. A boorish man would routinely interrupt the services and torment the church congregation, it is said. He was punished by being turned into a dog. The other version states that the canine figure commemorates the thwarting of a robbery. The church once displayed an image of Saint Roch, the patron saint of dogs, accompanied by a hound. It is said that the prospective thieves were frightened away as the image miraculously began to bark. (The supernatural mythology of the chapel does not cease there – in 1627 an image of Christ began to sweat blood profusely.) 

Sculpture of a dog once stood in front of La Capella dels Àngels, church of the Convent dels Àngels.
 
Parallel to this, we started looking at Hernández-Díez’s earliest works and investigating his pieces in MACBA’s collection. We found that the museum had his 1991 work San Guinefort on long-term loan in their collection, but it had never been exhibited. As narrated in our essay: 

(...) "that José Antonio Hernández-Díez (Caracas, Venezuela, 1964) had already been dealing with Catholic belief and superstition in his art – and moreover, specifically addressing canine veneration – is much more than an uncanny coincidence for his exhibition at MACBA’s Convent dels Àngels in 2016."  

The legend behind Saint Guinefort is one of the more obscure intersections of Catholic history and folk tradition:

(...) "Writing around 1260, the Inquisitor and Dominican friar Étienne de Bourbon related his investigation into the veneration of Saint Guinefort in the Dombes region of France. He discovered that this supposed Saint was, in fact, a dog. The account he disclosed was that a knight and his wife had one day left their greyhound Guinefort to guard their baby. When they returned to the castle they found the cradle empty and Guinefort covered in blood. Assuming it had murdered the baby, the knight hastily killed the dog, only later realising his error. Guinefort had in fact fought off a snake in order to save the child, who was found unharmed. Guinefort was buried unceremoniously in the forest outside the castle walls. Hearing of the martyred dog, local people began to believe in its power to protect children and began to bring their sick infants to the grave. Étienne de Bourbon was horrified to discover the strength of the superstition that had taken root. Children were being left overnight by Guinefort’s grave in the belief that he would rid them of spirits, and several babies had died as a consequence. Defending the orthodoxy of the church, the friar had the heretical remains of the greyhound dug up and destroyed, razed the forest and outlawed the canine cult, yet there is evidence of its persistence into the nineteenth century. The episode is worth recounting in detail, as previous accounts of it in relation to Hernández-Díez’s work have been misleading."


Coinciding with our research period, in August 2014 we happened to be travelling near Lyon, France, and took the opportunity to visit to the Bois de Saint Guinefort in the Dombes region, where the story of Saint Guinefort emerged (and where the dog-saint may still be venerated every 22nd August, despite the regional tourism office assuring us the festival day was no longer celebrated). 

Somewhere on the road between Villars-les-Dombes and Châtillon-sur-Chalaronne one can, with the help of a tagged flickr photo and GPS, find a sign, as seen below, which briefly narrates these peculiar events from the 13th Century. 



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 2016, behind the scenes, e-books, Exhibition, José Antonio Hernández-Díez, latitudes, looking back, MACBA, microhistory, Publication, research

Cover Story, March 2016: José Antonio Hernández-Díez: The sacred heart of the matter

 03 Mar 2016
March 2016 cover story. This and previous stories are archived here.

The March 2016 cover story marks the twelve of the series. This section published monthly on our home page, focuses on an artwork or moment related to our past, current or future practice – "close ups" of what we do, see and are thinking about. (When the next Cover Story is published, the March one will be archived here.)

'José Antonio Hernández-Díez. I will fear no evil' opens at MACBA’s Convent dels Àngels on 18 March 2016 (and runs until 26 June). Guest curated by Latitudes, the exhibition focuses on the Barcelona-based Venezuelan artist’s first experimental works from the late 1980s and early 1990s. 

The presence of ghosts and bodily organs in this phase of José Antonio’s out-of-joint art – videographic spectres, disembodied voices, preserved creatures, hearts and skin – is only enhanced by the somewhat necromantic aspect of the fact that several of his works are being reconstructed. Dealing with the symbology and spiritual practices of Catholicism, 'Sagrado Corazón Activo' (Active Sacred Heart, 1991) is one of the pieces which will be brought back to life. In a workshop in Barcelona’s Gràcia, sculptor Fernando Romeo is making its heart. Continue reading...


Related Content:
 2016, behind the scenes, Exhibition, José Antonio Hernández-Díez, MACBA, making of, production, Solo show

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

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2005—2019