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(Part 1/3) The 55th Venice Biennale: "The Encyclopedic Palace" in pictures and as seen by the critics, 1 June–24 November 2013
Sun, Jun 9 2013
Poster announcing the biennale nearby the Accademia.
Following previous years reports (2009, 2011 biennale posts and 2007 photo album 1 and 2) we'd like to share our photo-documentation alongside some articles and interviews related to this year's biennale that we have been reading before, during and after our Venice trip.
Bit first a bit of recent history. Massimiliano Gioni (Busto Arsizio, 1973), currently Associate Director and Director of Exhibitions at the New Museum as well as Artistic Director of the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi in Milan, was appointed Director of the 55th International Exhibition of the Venice Biennale at the end of January 2012. In October 2012 he announced the title and overall concept of "The Encyclopedic Palace" (Il Palazzo Enciclopedico) and in March 2013, he announced his artist list (over 150 artists from 38 countries, map of the venues here). A real tour de force.
IL ENCICLOPEDICO PALAZZO DEL MONDO (The Encyclopedic Palace of the World) Marino Auriti (1891–1980), Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, c. 1950. Wood, plastic, glass, metal, hair combs, and model kit parts. American Folk Art Museum, gift of Colette Auriti Firmani in memory of Marino Auriti, 2002.35.1.
Both frieze magazine and Artforum had published interviews previous to the exhibition's opening. The former with Milan-based art critic Barbara Casavecchia and the latter with the Artistic Director of the 2003 Venice Biennale, Francesco Bonami. A third interesting article to give some background if you're planning a trip to Venice is by Carol Vogel in the New York Times, narrating the previous weeks to the opening.
In the above mentioned interview with Bonami, Gioni describes Il Palazzo Enciclopedico as an attempt "to conceive of the biennial as a temporary museum more than simply as a show that captures the supposed zeitgeist." (...) The title comes from the self-taught Italian- American artist Marino Auriti, who conceived of his own impossible, imaginary museum: a
building that would house all the knowledge in the world. Obviously his
was a dream that remains only a model, a failed project. By using this
title, and by looking at the figure of Auriti, I also hoped to connect
to the history of Venice, because it’s the oldest biennial; founded in
1895, it has its roots in the format of the world’s fair, going back to
the Great Exhibition of 1851. I wanted to acknowledge the link to the
tradition of the universal exposition but also to suggest the failure of
that model right from the beginning."
29 May 2013, 9.45am. VIPs and Press gather in front of the door.
On the spirit of the biennial, its zeitgeist and the oft-heard ‘It’s a museum show, not a
biennale’, Dan Fox of frieze writes: "During the opening week, I
wondered why I felt like giving little more than a shrug of the
shoulders whenever I heard the criticism that ‘It’s a museum show, not a
biennale’. Long gone are the days when a show such as this – or for
example the Sao Paulo Bienal, or the Whitney Biennial – would be the one
of the few opportunities one would have to be brought up to speed on
the latest art being made in various parts of the world."
With regards to the exhibition design and parcour, Paddy Johnson of Art F City rightly notes that "the grandeur of the Arsenale was greatly diminished through near-obsessive wall building. That decision kept the architecture from overwhelming the work, a godsend to the biennale, which has historically been burdened by relying on spectacle to compete with the architecture." New York-based architect Annabelle Selldorf reconfigured the space into a museum-like suite of white cube galleries projecting large walls that covered almost entirely the populated columns in the Arsenale, hidding its (rather charming) crumbling walls. This made the visitor focus on the many paintings, drawings and vitrines on display.
Room 1, Arsenale: Auriti's model welcomes visitors in the first room of the Arsenale. Behind one can observe the high walls built to 'block' the grandeur of the Corderie spaces.
Room 1, Arsenale: J. D. 'Okhai Ojeikere's black and white photos of Nigerian women's hairstyles and head wrappings accompanies Auriti's architectural model.
Room 13, Arsenale: Stan VanDerBeek’s 1968 Movie Mural closes the linear section in the Arsenale (though strictly speaking the show finishes with Walter de Maria's 'Apollo's Ecstasy' (below, Room 16) from 1990, a loan from the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam). More photos of De Maria's piece via Contemporary Art Daily.
Centering on the much-discussed inclusion of "professional/insider" and "outsider" artists, Holland Cotter argues that the "The
outsider art concept is tired by now, even ethically suspect, the
equivalent of “primitive art” from decades ago. Mr. Gioni finesses the
problem without really addressing it by integrating outsider-ish-looking
inside art (there’s more and more of this around) so the two
designations get blurred."
Cotter continues "with a blend of insider-outsider and art-nonart components, it could have been stimulating. But the objects had little to say to one another. I feel a lack of surprise in Mr. Gioni’s show for the opposite reason: Its pairings — spiritualists paintings by af Klint and Emma Kunz, digital-printer abstractions by Alice Channer and Wade Guyton — are too neat and museumy. Yet at the same time, the show’s curatorial line is so firm, its choice of artists so strong and its pacing so expert that you are carried along, and ultimately rewarded."
In an interview with Francesco Bonami, artistic director of the 2003 biennale, wittily argues that "crossing the line between insiders and outsiders is a very dangerous one" (...) "a lot of these artist—outsiders—were presented in a standard label, describing their pathologies, but I think it would have been interesting going a little farther (...) if you want to describe art through the pathology, it should have been presented as all artists are freaks. Like, Bruce Nauman, this guy is a freak that lives in Galisteo, [New Mexico], or Walter De Maria is a freak that lives in a power station in Manhattan, in a small space with a space heater. I mean, that would be, maybe, a fair thing to do, but it would not have been allowed, probably, as an insider artist. So I think that is the only critique that I can bring, that the outsider artists at the end they are presented, but also taken advantage of."
Cotter continues "with a blend of insider-outsider and art-nonart components, it could have been stimulating. But the objects had little to say to one another. I feel a lack of surprise in Mr. Gioni’s show for the opposite reason: Its pairings — spiritualists paintings by af Klint and Emma Kunz, digital-printer abstractions by Alice Channer and Wade Guyton — are too neat and museumy. Yet at the same time, the show’s curatorial line is so firm, its choice of artists so strong and its pacing so expert that you are carried along, and ultimately rewarded."
In an interview with Francesco Bonami, artistic director of the 2003 biennale, wittily argues that "crossing the line between insiders and outsiders is a very dangerous one" (...) "a lot of these artist—outsiders—were presented in a standard label, describing their pathologies, but I think it would have been interesting going a little farther (...) if you want to describe art through the pathology, it should have been presented as all artists are freaks. Like, Bruce Nauman, this guy is a freak that lives in Galisteo, [New Mexico], or Walter De Maria is a freak that lives in a power station in Manhattan, in a small space with a space heater. I mean, that would be, maybe, a fair thing to do, but it would not have been allowed, probably, as an insider artist. So I think that is the only critique that I can bring, that the outsider artists at the end they are presented, but also taken advantage of."
Room 3, Central Pavilion: Hilma af Klint (wall) and Roger Hiorns (floor) "atomised" altar from and English church. [See profile of the artists]
Room 12, Arsenale: Alice Channer's digitally stretched images anchored at the floor by slabs of marble.
During a recent Q&A with Gioni at the ICA in London in March 2013, an interesting question arose from a member of the public about interpretative materials, and how the wonderful history that each work encapsulates was going to be received by the viewer. Gioni responed that he was inspired by a show he saw curated by Roger Buergel where the captions created a parallel narrative rather than utilising a more didactic tone, and he has since been writing "extended captions" in collaboration with artist and writer Chris Wiley.
The choice of the works by more contemporary artists often has a outsider "look" that is often played-up by these captions. Such is the case with Eva Kotátková (video here), whose rather beautiful "Asylum" (2013) installation is described as a piece in which she "collaborated with patients at the Bohnice pshychiatric hospital outside Prague, resulting in an installation based on the social hierarchies and modes of communication envisioned by the patients" (Exhibition Guide, text by Rachel Wetzler).
Room 21, Central Pavilion: Eva Kotátková's "Asylum" (2013), shares room with Anna Zemánková's drawings (wall).
Room 7, Central Pavilion: Oliver Croy and Oliver Elser's The 387 Houses of Peter Fritz (1976–1992).
Adrian Searle writes humourously about the exhibition's megalomaniac ambitions: "You expect Gioni to leap out of Auriti's tiered architectural cake of a building yelling: "Today we curate the biennale! Tomorrow, the world!"" He then continues, "throughout Gioni's exhibition, we are asked where meaning lies. So many artists here seem to be speaking private languages only they can understand: here is a Theosophist, there is a Shaker, and over there are some horrible occult tarot drawings by Aleister Crowley, the satanist once described as the most evil man in the world... What unites this vast rag-bag of sculptures, tantric blobs, errant modernists with esoteric beliefs, and outsiders who fill drawing after drawing with lurching interior worlds, is a sense that everyone here is trying to make sense of the incomprehensible. Much of the time, they just add to it."
Room 10, Central Pavilion: Enrico David's recent work with distended figures, totemic sculptures and patterned tapestries. More views via Contemporary Art Daily.
An important question is raised by Bonami in the interview: "How to avoid geographic flattening, in which everything from everywhere is
thrown in? But then how do you avoid that kind of flattening with
respect to history? How do you achieve historical specificity? That is
the challenge if you are adopting a Wunderkammer, or encyclopedic, approach." To which Gioni responds "well, it might resemble digital Wunderkammer, or computer desktops." Something to keep in mind...
Room 5, Central Pavilion: (Vitrine) Ron Nagle's moon-rock formations and coral-like spires; (Walls) Anonymous Tantric Paintings produced between the 1960s-2004.
Starting with the Central Pavilion (previously called the "Padiglione Italia"), Vincenzo Latronico
writes in Art Agenda that "one of the Giardini’s most delicate rooms, for instance, displayed French Surrealist Roger Caillois’s collection of over a hundred rare geodes—their flamboyantly colored geometrical patterns and crystalline structures arranged in progressions, suggesting both a museum of natural history and the visionary maps of an alien landscape."
Room 14, Central Pavilion: Collection of Roger Caillois rocks from the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Caillois shares room with Guo Fengyi, whose ballpoint pen, pencil and ink drawings she created to alleviate her acute arthritis.
Room 13 (upper level), Central Pavilion: Peter Fischli & David Weiss, 'Suddenly This Overview' (1981–2012).
Another absorbing piece in the Central Pavilion is Kohei Yoshiyuki series of black-and-white infrared film photographs “The Park” (1971–1979) in which the artist photographed unaware couples having sex in parks at night. An interesting piece of context is that the pictures where originally presented in a dark gallery, offering the possibility of recreating the gloom depicted and making viewers complicit in the act.
Writing about this years's Golden Lion awardees, Amy Sherlock points out that music features heavily in the encyclopedic video Grosse Fatigue (2013) by French artist Camille Henrot in which "computer windows showing photographs, video clips and morphing Wikipedia pages flicker and accumulate to a pulsing baseline whose steady tempo links a primitive, cardiac rhythm with the heady erotic charge of the dancefloor."
Room 3, Arsenale: Still of Grosse Fatigue (2013) by Camille Henrot.
"Tino Seghal picked up a Golden Lion as best participant in the main pavilion for his piece in which performers sit on the floor, beatboxing, singing and humming in a shifting melody of voice and rhythm."
Room 2, Central Pavilion: Tino Sehgal shared room with Rudolf Steiner's blackboards filled with coloured chalk (background).
Also in the Central Pavilion, Italian Marisa Merz and Austrian Maria Lassnig, Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement of the 55th International Art Exhibition, share room 24. See video of the award cerimony. [More photos of Marisa Merz via Contemporary Art Daily.]
In the above-mentioned interview with Bonami, Gioni described that "a few artists in the show will use theatrical stagings or, simply, live actors. But I think of these less as performances than as living sculptures. Tino Sehgal is making a new piece, comprising a mise-en-scène with other works in the main pavilion. It’s on a smaller scale than his most recent works, but it is going to be quite intense. (...) John Bock is creating an installation that will include actors speaking in imaginary languages and what he calls a “house of maggots."
Sam Thorne: "The Arsenale – the stronger half of the exhibition, I think – is episodic, even insistently narrativizing in its form. It tracks a kind of evolutionary process. The beginning, for example, is pointedly about beginnings of different kinds – Stefan Bertalan’s drawings of the life cycle of a sunflower or the whole of R. Crumb’s illustrated Book of Genesis. Indeed, the refrain of a great new film by Camille Henrot is ‘In the beginning…’ These early stages are also filled with animals and evocations of the natural world: Eliot Porter’s exquisite 1950s photos of birds in flight, Christopher Williams’ forensic photos of Harvard’s collection of glass flowers (1989)."
Room 2, Arsenale: Christopher Williams, Angola to Vietnam* (1989). A suite of 28 gelatin silver prints of glass flowers from Harvard's Ware Collection portraying the hyperrrealistic glass specimens made by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka.
Room 6, Arsenale: R. Crumb's 207 pages of 'The Book of Genesis' (2009).
Having not seen Gioni's much-celebrated '10,000 Lives', 8th Gwangju Biennial (2010), we asked to those who had seen it for their impressions. Back then, Gioni also described it as an exhibition that dealt with ‘our obsession with images’ and has referred to 'The Encyclopedic Palace' as a continuation of this exhibition model proposed in 2010. In Gwangju, Gioni also included several of the works also exhibited in Venice: Shinro Ohtake's scrapbooks (1983); Paul McCarthy’s Children’s Anatomical Educational Figure (1980); Eliot Porter’s colour dye-transfer prints of birds caught in flight; and repeated numerous participating artists such as Dahn Vo, Bruce Nauman, Carl Andre, Stan VanDerBeek, Fischli & Weiss, Aurélien Froment, Morton Bartlett, Dieter Roth, Ryan Trecartin, Christopher Williams, James Lee Byars, Matt Mullican, João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva, Henrik Olesen, Hito Steyerl, Maria Lassnig, Emma Kunz, Mark Leckey, Pawel Althamer, Tino Sehgal and Cindy Sherman, amongst others (see Gwangju images here).
Room 13 (lower level), Central pavilion: Shinro Ohtake's obsessive scrapbooks produced since 1977.
Room 8, Arsenale: Aurélien Froment's new work "Camillo's Idea" (2013), a film featuring a mnemonist in the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza who demonstrates her own feats of memory and recites the history of mnemonics from teh system devised by Greek lyric poet Simonides of Ceos to Giulio Camillo's Fifteenth-century "Theater of Memory". (Exhibition guide, Text by Chris Wiley)
Room 5, Arsenale: Danh Vo installation with an imported colonial-era Catholic Church from Vietnam. [More photos of his installation via Contemporary Art Daily.]
Room 9, Arsenale: Pawel Althamer's 90 "sci-fi" sculptures with masks of Venetian citizens and plastic bodies are one of the downers of the Arsenale. As Adrian Searle warned "watch out for Pawel Althamer's room of flayed figures, and avoid them if you can."
Vitrines with Shermans' collection of photo albums.
Other highlights (unfortunately not all with photo-documentation to accompany): Tamar Guimarães and Kasper Akhøj's 16mm film examining a map created by a member of Brazil's Spiritists community, one of the few intimate moments in the Arsenale; João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva's immersive room with 16mm projectors presenting a new repertoire of films shot in Mozambique; Eduard Spelterini's black and white 1890s photographs of his ballooning expeditions; Sharon Hayes' video [see interview here] inspired by Pier Paolo Passolini's 1965 documentary Comizi D'amore, in which the artist interviews American women students, executives, artists, poets about their sexuality; Rossella Biscotti's minimal sculptures produced in compost created in collaboration with the inmates of the women's prison in the Guidecca island, accompanied by an hour-long sound piece where the women describe their dreams [see interview here]; and Michael Schmidt's Lebensmitten [Food] (2006–10) photo series for which the artist spent four years documenting all aspects of industrial food production in Europe.
Hito Steyerl's tucked-away video in the Giardini delle Vergini, was certainly one of the best pieces in Gioni's exhibition. Michael Connor of Rhizome has written about the 14 min. video, describing it as an "instructional video informing viewers how to remain invisible in an age of image proliferation". (...) "In the context of the Venice Biennale, which explores the theme of human knowledge and its limits, this discussion brings up fundamental questions about how much of our knowledge is derived through representations of the world, through images and data, and the limits of such knowledge." [Read full text here]
Room 3, Arsenale: Eduard Spelterini's black and white 1890s photographs of his ballooning expeditions.
Room 8, Arsenale: Michael Schidt's Lebensmitten [Food] (2006–10).
Room 8, Arsenale: Sharon Hayes, 'Richerche: three', 2013. 23'
Hito Steyerl's tucked-away video in the Giardini delle Vergini, was certainly one of the best pieces in Gioni's exhibition. Michael Connor of Rhizome has written about the 14 min. video, describing it as an "instructional video informing viewers how to remain invisible in an age of image proliferation". (...) "In the context of the Venice Biennale, which explores the theme of human knowledge and its limits, this discussion brings up fundamental questions about how much of our knowledge is derived through representations of the world, through images and data, and the limits of such knowledge." [Read full text here]
Hito Steyerl, How Not to be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File (2013).
Erik van Lieshout's new work Healing (2013), an outdoor drive-in movie installation with a 5 meter LED screen, involves the artist' micro-cosmos: the work and ideals of his family members.
Related posts:
(Post 3/3) The 55th Biennale di Venezia: National Pavilions and Collateral Events in pictures and as seen by the critics, 1 June–24 November 2013
Slideshow of 121 photos via Latitudes' flickr:
Slideshow of 121 photos via Latitudes' flickr:
This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos: Latitudes (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)
All photos: Latitudes (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Selection of press coverage of Latitudes' weekly newspaper for 'The Last Newspaper' exhibition at the New Museum
Wed, Dec 22 2010Following is a selection of press reviews that have appeared in relation to 'The Last Newspaper' exhibition (New Museum, 6 October 2010–9 January 2011), in particular, those who focused on Latitudes' edition of a weekly newspaper as catalogue-in-formation:
Holland Cotter, 'Art and News, Intersecting in the Digital Age', The New York Times, 7 October 2010:
"And at the behest of the New Museum a print-savvy group called Latitudes from Barcelona is issuing another tabloid, this one weekly and edited from the third-floor gallery, that will double as an exhibition catalog. That publication would, of course, be the ideal place for the curators and participating artists to go on the record, at un-Twitterish length and polemical breadth, about the viability of analog journalism — and analog art — in the digital age. (...) Meanwhile, the Latitudes news team — Max Andrews and Mariana Canepa Luna are the editors — has invited everybody and anybody, meaning you and me, to submit editorial suggestions and pitch stories, either in person or by e-mail ([email protected]). In the loosey-goosey spirit of the show, their paper will change names weekly, from the “The Last Post” to “The Last Gazette” to “The Last Register,” etc. But a genuinely “last newspaper” is still nowhere in sight. And you read that here."
Danielle Aronowitz, 'New Museum exhibit is black and white and read all over', Columbia Spectator, 8 October 2010:
(...) "A second group, Latitudes—a curatorial organization based in Barcelona, Spain—will compile, edit, and publish a weekly newspaper that will catalogue information about the exhibit and the contributing artist groups over the next 10 weeks. To emphasize its importance, [exhibition curator Richard] Flood referred to this publication as “the journal of the exhibition.”
Luc Sante, 'Disappearing Ink', The New York Review of Books' blog, 1 November 2010:
(...) and a tabloid, edited by the Barcelona-based curatorial office Latitudes, that has been variously called The Last Post, The Last Gazette, and The Last Register. (...) The tabloid, which focuses on newspapers, as well as on the show itself, is rather puckish. The Last Gazette includes, for example, a record of a quixotic attempt by Ines Schaber to approach the underground facility in western Pennsylvania where the photo agency Corbis keeps its archive of some 70 million pictures. The story evokes the cold-war espionage genre—an unremarkable setting masks a culture of such militant secrecy that the best the author could manage is a murkily distant photo of the facility’s parking lot. Its meandering text and bland snapshots, on the other hand, evoke the whimsical record-keeping of 1970s conceptual art, which is rather more in keeping with the spirit of the show.
Valerie Seckler, 'Hyper-local Newspaper as Museum Piece? Not exactly', The Urban Times, November 2010:
“How is a museum, such as New Museum, no longer (just) in the artwork display business?” asks an editorial in The Last Post. “Is it a producer, a publisher, or a distributor? Should a museum or a newspaper be a community, a platform or a network, for example?” The newspapers themselves are hybrids: actual publications and art object. (...) “The Last…” newspaper series comprises “final” editions with names like “The Last Observer,” “The Last Monitor,” and (the first edition) “The Last Post.” They are dedicated to illuminating “The Last Newspaper” fine art on exhibit. Some of the reportage ranges beyond it. (...) “The Last Post” itself is an arch reference to the never-ending practice of posting 21st-century news online. “The Last Post’s” Oct. 6th edition’s screaming front page headline makes the humorous proposition: “Ink vs Link.” Smaller decks stacked below it read: “Lippmann vs Dewey, Fact vs Interpretation, Editor vs Curator,” and conclude with the query: “How do you get your information?”
2010, 2011, editor, latitudes, New Museum, New York, New York Times, newspapers, press coverage, The Last Newspaper, Wall Street Journal
Holland Cotter, 'Art and News, Intersecting in the Digital Age', The New York Times, 7 October 2010:"And at the behest of the New Museum a print-savvy group called Latitudes from Barcelona is issuing another tabloid, this one weekly and edited from the third-floor gallery, that will double as an exhibition catalog. That publication would, of course, be the ideal place for the curators and participating artists to go on the record, at un-Twitterish length and polemical breadth, about the viability of analog journalism — and analog art — in the digital age. (...) Meanwhile, the Latitudes news team — Max Andrews and Mariana Canepa Luna are the editors — has invited everybody and anybody, meaning you and me, to submit editorial suggestions and pitch stories, either in person or by e-mail ([email protected]). In the loosey-goosey spirit of the show, their paper will change names weekly, from the “The Last Post” to “The Last Gazette” to “The Last Register,” etc. But a genuinely “last newspaper” is still nowhere in sight. And you read that here."
Danielle Aronowitz, 'New Museum exhibit is black and white and read all over', Columbia Spectator, 8 October 2010:(...) "A second group, Latitudes—a curatorial organization based in Barcelona, Spain—will compile, edit, and publish a weekly newspaper that will catalogue information about the exhibit and the contributing artist groups over the next 10 weeks. To emphasize its importance, [exhibition curator Richard] Flood referred to this publication as “the journal of the exhibition.”
Luc Sante, 'Disappearing Ink', The New York Review of Books' blog, 1 November 2010:(...) and a tabloid, edited by the Barcelona-based curatorial office Latitudes, that has been variously called The Last Post, The Last Gazette, and The Last Register. (...) The tabloid, which focuses on newspapers, as well as on the show itself, is rather puckish. The Last Gazette includes, for example, a record of a quixotic attempt by Ines Schaber to approach the underground facility in western Pennsylvania where the photo agency Corbis keeps its archive of some 70 million pictures. The story evokes the cold-war espionage genre—an unremarkable setting masks a culture of such militant secrecy that the best the author could manage is a murkily distant photo of the facility’s parking lot. Its meandering text and bland snapshots, on the other hand, evoke the whimsical record-keeping of 1970s conceptual art, which is rather more in keeping with the spirit of the show.
Valerie Seckler, 'Hyper-local Newspaper as Museum Piece? Not exactly', The Urban Times, November 2010:“How is a museum, such as New Museum, no longer (just) in the artwork display business?” asks an editorial in The Last Post. “Is it a producer, a publisher, or a distributor? Should a museum or a newspaper be a community, a platform or a network, for example?” The newspapers themselves are hybrids: actual publications and art object. (...) “The Last…” newspaper series comprises “final” editions with names like “The Last Observer,” “The Last Monitor,” and (the first edition) “The Last Post.” They are dedicated to illuminating “The Last Newspaper” fine art on exhibit. Some of the reportage ranges beyond it. (...) “The Last Post” itself is an arch reference to the never-ending practice of posting 21st-century news online. “The Last Post’s” Oct. 6th edition’s screaming front page headline makes the humorous proposition: “Ink vs Link.” Smaller decks stacked below it read: “Lippmann vs Dewey, Fact vs Interpretation, Editor vs Curator,” and conclude with the query: “How do you get your information?”
Adam Chadwick, 'Art and journalism …sometimes a fine line…', http://fittoprintfilm.wordpress.com, 1 December 2010:
This past Saturday members of the group Latitudes – an independent Barcelona-based curatorial office – hosted an event for the “Fit to Print” production team at the New Museum in the Bowery neighborhood of lower Manhattan. (...) I was too intrigued by the wall-to-wall displays of vintage newspaper front pages in one of the rooms. It was hard not to examine the way in which newspapers implemented multiple sub-headlines back in the early part of the twentieth century. In a way, many start-up news websites are creating similar sub-heads to draw reader attention in the vast wild west of search engine optimization. This would be a topic our guest speaker, Jason Fry, would speak about during our panel discussion.
[Read an edited transcription of the event here.]
This is tomorrow, 'The Last Newspaper', 5 December 2010:
Latitudes, the Barcelona-based curatorial office, and a diverse team led by Joseph Grima and Kazys Varnelis/Netlab, are on-site producing weekly newspapers.
'THE LAST POST' / 'THE LAST GAZETTE' / 'THE LAST REGISTER'... is the evolving-titled 12-page free weekly newspaper and an incremental exhibition catalogue edited during a 10-week editorial residency by Latitudes. Produced from a micro-newsroom placed on the third floor of the museum the tabloids will be an archive in formation companioning The Last Newspaper’s exhibition, artworks, and events, as well as being a platform for critical reflection on the wider agency of art and artists with respect to concerns about how information is produced, managed, recorded, re-ordered, and disseminated.
With kind permission from Latitudes we are reproducing two selected texts from their catalogue/newspapers, written by The Last Newspaper London correspondent and 'this is tomorrow' features editor Lorena Muñoz-Alonso (continue reading...)
Kristin M. Jones, 'Chronicles of a Medium in Crisis', The Wall Street Journal, 16 December 2010:
(...) Via a micro-newsroom, Latitudes, a Barcelona-based curatorial team, produced a tabloid whose name changed each week. The spirited articles include stories on artists, filmmakers, and topics ranging from ProPublica to the history of cast-iron newsstand paperweights; its issues will be bound together after the show ends in lieu of a catalog. The editors commissioned profiles and interviews related to the show but also solicited story ideas, headlines inspired by personal events, and other information from the public.
Read more articles and reviews here.Newsletter #24 – Summer 2010/Verano 2010
Sun, Jul 4 2010
Newsletter in English | Newsletter en EspañolTHIS MONTH
Vena (por la) and Latitudes present: Talk and catalogue launch by curator Direlia Lazo, 'I'm not here. An exhibition without Francis Alÿs', Wednesday 14 July, 7pm, La Central c/ Elisabets, 6, Barcelona (talk will be in Spanish)
FORTHCOMING
Participating in the exhibition 'The Last Newspaper', New Museum, New York, (3 October 2010 – 9 January 2011) and organising 'Vic Cambrils Barcelona...A Library Project' for Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (October 2010) and joining Hangar's Programming Committee 2010-12
RECENTLY
Latitudes on the press: 'The creative landscape of independent curators', The New York Times, 15 June and 'Palabra de comisario', El Cultural, 29 June
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