LONGITUDES

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

Latitudes’ “out of office” 2023-24 season

 

Work by David Shrigley.

Time to put work-related activities on ice. Below is an account of some of the projects, texts, trips, exhibition preparations, talks, and research conducted by Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna of Latitudes this past season. 

Check earlier OUT OF THE OFFICE posts from 2008–92009–102010–112011–122012–132013–142014–152015–162016–172017–182018–19, 2019–20, 2020–21, 2021–22 and 2022–23. All photos are by Latitudes unless otherwise noted in the photo caption. For further notes, inspirations, and more, check out our Instagrams, here and here. See you in September!


23 August–3 September 2023: The second part of “The Pilgrim” research residency took us to Dublin, Sligo (including an excursion to Carrowkeel Megalithic Cemetery), Askeaton (with day trips to Foynes Flying Boat & Maritime Museum, the Rock of Cashel, Holycross Abbey, Philip Quinn’s stone-carving workshop, and the Ardnacrusha Power Station), and Limerick to attend the opening events of EVA International. See photos here.

As part of our thinking around relics, pilgrimage, and twinning, the team of Askeaton Contemporary Arts (ACA) asked Michael Holly to put together a video in part inspired by The Pilgrim. Tour guide maestro Anthony Sheehy not only appears giving his account of the Pilgrim’s story in the former Franciscan Friary, but also plays a song on his harmonica. It was through one of Anthony’s tours back in 2018 – he has led tours of the Friary and the Castle for 56 years! – that Latitudes first learned about the Barcelona pilgrim who is buried in Askeaton’s friary. 

Train from Dublin to Sligo.

Our host Ruth Clinton (right) playing the violin at Mc Lynn’s Bar, Sligo.

Photo: Eulàlia Rovira

(Left to right) Mariana, tour guide Anthony Sheehy, Eulàlia, and her son Nil and Max in front of Askeaton's former Franciscan Friary. Photo: Aníbal Parada.

Latitudes, filmmaker Michael Holly and Michelle Horrigan of ACA discussing locations around the Friary. Photo: Eulàlia Rovira.

Anthony Sheehy is being filmed. Photo: Eulàlia Rovira.

Anthony Sheehy playing his harmonica in the Abbey. Photo: Eulàlia Rovira.

Michelle Horrigan of ACA talking to Michael Holly's camera, and (below) Eulàlia Rovira discusses her artistic practice.



September 2023: Montse Badia writes about Gallery Climate Coalition and GCC Spain in Bonart magazine #198, September 2023–February 2024 issue. Read in Català, Español, English or in Français.

Photo: María Gracia de Pedro.


27 September 2023: Max travels to Bilbao to cover the exhibition “Picasso escultor. Materia y cuerpo” [Picasso Sculptor. Matter and Body] at the Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, for what will be a two-part Picasso review for frieze magazine. In line with Latitudes’ Environmental Policy to reduce our carbon footprint, and as a 2022 Active Members of the Gallery Climate Coalition, Max took the train to cover this 6h50min journey.


Exhibition curator Carmen Giménez was interviewed during the press tour.

(Above and below) Views of “Picasso escultor. Materia y cuerpo” [Picasso Sculptor. Matter and Body] at the Museo Guggenheim Bilbao. 




October 2023: The October 2023 issue (#238) of frieze magazine includes a printed version of Max Andrews’ review of Miralda’s exhibition at Bombas Gens Centre d'Art, València, published online on June 29. This turns out to be the last exhibition we'll see in this venue, as a few months later, their programme sadly took a radical change to become (yet another) digital centre programming virtual exhibitions – beginning with an immersive show dedicated to Dalí. 😖



9 October 2023: 6h15min train to Málaga to join the press trip organised by the Museo Picasso to celebrate its 20th anniversary and the exhibition “The Echo of Picasso”. The exhibition will be featured in an upcoming two-part review for frieze magazine by Max Andrews. Both the exhibition and the one seen a few days back in Bilbao, are organised within the framework of the international celebrations marking the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). 

For this trip, Latitudes used its 2022 Strategic Climate Fund (SCFs) of €190 to cover the journey costs to reduce our carbon emissions (a return train journey from Barcelona to Málaga emits 0.01 tCO2e, a return flight – although considerably cheaper – emits 0.21 tCO2e according to GCC’s Carbon Calculator). This made it possible for Mariana to visit the exhibition and other art spaces including Pompidou Málaga and CAC Málaga. 

Following GCC’s revised 2021 SCFs guidelines and adapting to the financial possibilities of our modest freelance operation, financing effective lower-carbon options is a direct way to achieve real and short-term changeGoing forward, instead of tying the calculation of our SCF to our previous emissions, we will follow GCC's 2023 revised recommendation and set aside a percentage of our year's revenue to be allocated to our 2024 needs. 


Sunset over Málaga from the 14th floor of the hotel.

Museo Picasso Málaga from the roof terrace. At the top is the 11th-century Muslim Palace-fortress Alcazaba.

Views from the terrace of Palacio de Buenavista (Museo Picasso Málaga), towards the Iglesia de San Agustín and the Cathedral de la Encarnación de Málaga. 

Sharing the great knowledge of an excited librarian who has worked in the museum for +20 years. 

Browsing publications found these shots of Picasso’s paintings and sculptures being shipped in the 1960s, a much more relaxed era of art handling and insurance protocols.

(Above and below) “The Echo of Picasso” exhibition curated by Éric Troncy had delightful moments such as the above pairing of Louise Bourgeois’ “Woman in a Shape of a Shuttle” (1947–49) and a 1928 ”Couple of the Seaside” by Picasso, and great works such as Francis Bacon's “Portrait of Michel Leiris” by and a Philip Guston drawing. Yet, on the ground floor, the gear changes (for the worse) starting with an overhang display of sculptures and paintings by (all by men) Markus Lüpertz, Martin Kippenberger, Jeff Koons, Rashid Johnson, Markus Jahmal, Miquel Barceló, Georg Baselitz and the puzzling inclusion of a “Downton Abbey” (2022) family portrait by Genevieve Figgis.



25 October 2023: Launch at Onomatopee, Amsterdam, of the publication “Sketches of Transition. An Atlas on Growth and Decay”, edited by Italian-born, Amsterdam-based artist Michele Bazzoli. The book includes a reprint of Latitudes’ text on Lara Almarcegui’s project “Graves” originally commissioned to accompany Almarcegui's solo exhibition at Centre d’Art la Panera, Lleida, curated by Cèlia del Diego and on view between February and June 2021. More here.



Reprint scans courtesy of Michele Bazzoli.


27 October 2023: Max Andrews’ reviewCelebrating Five Decades of the Picasso-Industrial Complex” goes live on frieze website. The review focuses on the two concurrent shows at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Museo Picasso Málaga appraising the artist’s legacy, although taking a troubling tour through an ethical minefield.

“What else is there to know about Pablo Picasso 50 years after his death? Something, evidently. With the support of the French and Spanish governments, the Musée Picasso–Paris and the artist’s grandson and heir, Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, are marking the anniversary with a programme of some 50 exhibitions and events worldwide. ‘Picasso Sculptor. Matter and Body’ at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and ‘The Echo of Picasso’ at the Museo Picasso Málaga are two of the more prominent exhibitions of this “Picasso Celebration 1973–2023” series. But what exactly is being celebrated?” Continue reading


Read the review here.


11 November 2023: Visual artist Laia Ventayol presented in Palma, Mallorca, a lecture on Eulàlia Rovira’s video “A knot which is not” (2020-21) in the framework of the LXVIII Anglo-Catalan Society Conference at the Universitat de les Illes Balears. Rovira’s video was commissioned for the exhibition “Things Things Say” (October 2020-January 2021 – watch the trailer with the artist as the narrator of the exhibition) at Fabra i Coats: Centre d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, and was premièred online once the exhibition ended, and the exhibition spaces were once again empty. 

Read more here (in Spanish).

Photo: @laia_ventayol

20 November 2023: Heath Lowndes, Managing Director and co-founder of Gallery Climate Coalition, gives a short presentation of GCC during his participation in the “II Jornadas de Instituciones Artísticas y Sostenibilidad”, organised by Fundació MACBA in Madrid. During his presentation, Lowndes talked about the (so far) six International Chapters, one of which (GCC Spain) we have the pleasure of being part of. On Heath’s long train journey from London to and back from Madrid, he stopped over in Barcelona where we had the chance to finally meet in person. Fundació MACBA’s Jornadas continued on November 20 in Barcelona.

Photo: @max.andrews

Photo: mlopezambrana

Photo: @galerialuciamendoza


24–28 November 2023: Trip to Madrid to see some shows at Fundación March, Fundación Mapfre, Museo Reina Sofía, La Casa Encendida, Museo Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo, CentroCentro, Sala Alcalá 31, Museo Nacional del Prado and TBA21, as well as in commercial galleries such as NoguerasBlanchard, Travesía Cuatro, Galería Ehrhardt Flórez, Elba Benítez, Mira1 and Maisterravalbuena. One of the highlights was attending the preview of the long-awaited solo show of Ibon Aranberri at the Museo Reina Sofía, titled “Vista Parcial” (Partial view) which featured as our December 2023 cover story.

Press presentation of Ibon Aranberri’s exhibition (with microphone).


Aranberri and (back) Bea Herráez (curator of the exhibition with Manuel B. Villel, and director of ARTIUM, Vitoria)

16 January 2024: First general assembly of GCC Spain members and non-members to present the activities carried out by the Committee in 2023 and forthcoming plans for 2024, resolved questions about membership and carbon reporting.


31 January 2024: #TrainToARCOmadrid Instagram campaign is shared between the ARCOmadrid, Gallery Climate Coalition, and GCC Spain, as part of GCC’s ongoing campaign promoting #ClimateConsciousTravel choices. The initiative encourages visitors to address their travel habits, particularly those in Spain and mainland Europe. Changing long-held norms together can have a transformative impact.


16 February 2024: Exhibition preview & publication launch of “Betwixt 2024”, an exhibition and book showcasing the work of 20 emerging artistic practices from Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, and Sheffield taking place across four sites in central and north London between 17–23 February 2024. One of the participants is the artist, writer, and researcher Crystal BennesLatitudes wrote the text on her latest work “O (Copper, cotton, cobalt, crude, naphtha, bauxite, palm)” (2024) for the publication accompanying this Freelands Foundation initiative. 

On 16 March 2024, following the London presentation, Bennes participated in a group show at Talbot Rice Gallery, the public art gallery of the University of Edinburgh, in a survey featuring ten Scotland-based artists from the last two cohorts of the Freelands Artist Programme, the nationwide initiative launched in 2018 that has supported 80 artists across the UK. Involving tapestry, sculptural installation, video, and live performance, Bennes’ new project addresses the rapaciousness and sophistry of commodities trading, an arena in which financial instruments are used to bet on the future value of raw materials and natural resources including crude oil, metals, coffee, and cotton. 


Betwixt 2024. Courtesy Freelands Foundation.




(Above and two below) Installation view of Crystal Bennes’s “O (copper, cotton, cobalt, crude, naphtha, bauxite, palm)”, 2024. Including a bespoke table, conservation boxes, constructed archive, Financial Times pink paint and divination robe – with scheduled performances. Three photos by Sally Jubb, courtesy of the artist and Talbot Rice Gallery.



6 March 2024: Max Andrews writes “What to See During This Year’s ARCOmadrid” for frieze.com. This year there are prominent solo shows and projects dedicated to women – most notably in the Museo CA2M dedicating exhibitions to Ana Gallardo, Asunción Molinos Gordo and Teresa Solar Abboud. Another highlight is Precious Okoyomon's intervention in la Montaña Artificial de El Retiro de Madrid and TBA21’s solo show of Filipino-Canadian artist Stephanie Comilang. And of course, Ibon Aranberri's solo show before it tours to ARTIUM, Vitoria.

6–8 March 2024
: Trip to ARCOmadrid. This year we are proud of Gallery Climate Coalition’s presence at the fair with two walls providing information about the coalition and some infographics on travel to/from Madrid. Additionally, in the ARCOmadrid 2024 Special / “Focus (eco)systems”, the magazine Exibart features an interview with one of GCC Spain's founding members, Carolina Grau, and a dedicated second section on GCC’s activities including highlights on some of its Effective Actions guidelines. 


Walls in pavilions 7 and 9 of ARCOmadrid. 


Article in Exibart magazine (issue #5, March 2024) on Gallery Climate Coalition.


21 March 2024: Starting today and until April 14, the Fundación Díaz-Caneja is screening Jan Dibbets’ film “6 Hours Tide Object with Correction of Perspective” (2009). The Fundación is a contemporary art museum in Palencia dedicated to landscape, the environment and rurality.

The production of the 8-minute-long film was the inaugural project of Portscapes, a series of commissions taking place throughout 2009 in and around Maasvlakte 2, the 2,000-hectare expansion of the Port of Rotterdam. The film premiered at the FutureLand information centre of the Port of Rotterdam in June 2009 and during Latitudes’ participation in the New York festival No Soul For Sale – A Festival of Independents (24–28 June 2009). Portscapes was produced by the Port of Rotterdam Authority in collaboration with the sadly now-defunct internationally operating Dutch cultural organisation SKOR | Foundation Art and Public Space (1999–2012).


23 March 2024: Three-hour online session for the third module on “The Curatorial Imagination”, part of the postgraduate diploma on EXHIBITIONS. Curatorship, Design and Spaces, a course organised by EINA Centre Universitari de Disseny i Art de Barcelona, and led by Manuel Cirauqui, director of EINAidea.  


9 April 2024: We are pleased to be on the second cohort of 125 Active Members announced by Gallery Climate Coalition. As part of Latitudes’ ongoing environmental commitment, and as Committee members of GCC Spain, we submitted our individual 2023 carbon footprint calculations to Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC) to renew our status for the second year running. We are committed to reducing our carbon footprint in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 13 “Climate Action”, as well as the Paris Agreement to reduce global carbon emissions by 50% by 2030 and as custodians of the Reduce Art Flights website, a campaign devised by artist Gustav Metzger in 2007.

Latitudes’ carbon emissions were 17.4tCo2e (2019), 3.8tCo2e (2022), and 1.5tCo2e (2023). We reduced our emissions by 78% in the first year of the calculations, and over 60% in the second year. The calculation of our carbon footprint considers emissions across various work-related activities: travel (train, air, coach, taxi, car, and ferry), hotel accommodation, and energy consumption (water usage in 2019 and 2022, and gas usage from 2023 onwards). We use the GCC Carbon Calculator (primary calculator) and DEFRA conversion factors to ensure consistent and accurate reporting.

Our 2024 Strategic Climate Fund is €75 (calculated at €50 per tonne emitted in 2023). We set these funds aside to spend on low-carbon purchasing options that would otherwise be unaffordable.




April 2024: Max contributed artwork descriptions and other texts alongside Sofia Lemos, for the publication “Meandering: Art, Ecology, and Metaphysics”, edited by Lemos and copublished by TBA21–Academy and Sternberg Press. The book is part of the namesake art and ecology research programme curated by Lemos at TBA21–Academy “exploring social and environmental justice through the lens of community-oriented practice, presenting a case for the role of artistic research and public programs in revealing our interbeing and shaping new convergences between interdisciplinary and interfaith studies.” 


10 April 2024: Max was commissioned to contribute a text for Secundino Hernández’s catalogue published by This Side Up as part of accompanying his solo exhibition “Problematic Corners”, at Victoria Miro Gallery opening today in London, and on view until 18 May 2024. The gallery is also an Active Member of the Gallery Climate Coalition.

Titled “The Problematic Corners in Question? Or, Fleeing Forward?”, the essay ends “Let’s end with a question? Would it be problematic to conclude that each series of paintings is a way of going beyond your duty as an artist? In other words, are you not keenly aware of wanting to do more than is strictly necessary when something else would still be acceptable? Precisely not cutting corners, then? A method of fuga hacia adelante, fleeing forward? Painting in other words?”


Secundino Hernández's work “Myrtle Beach” (2024), acrylic, vinylic emulsion and dye-transfer print on canvas, 370 x 278cm) in his studio in Madrid.


10 April 2024: Launch of the report Radiography of the Profession of Art Criticism and Curating at the Fundació Miró. The study analyses the professional, economic and social conditions under which Catalunya-based Art Critics and Curators work, and was promoted by the National Council for Culture and Arts (CONCA). The study was supported by an independent expert committee formed by representatives of several organisations and profiles such as ACCA (the Catalan Art Criticism Association, amongst them Mariana of Latitudes who joined as a member last year), the Platform of Catalan Artists (PAAC), and the Association of Cultural Management Professionals of Catalunya (APGCC). 

The report can be downloaded here (pdf, 71 pages, in Catalan), and the recording of the event here (in Catalan).


25–27 April 2024: Trip to Bilbao to visit Jorge Satorre's studio and to continue preparations for his solo exhibition at Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M), scheduled for February 2025. We had the chance to see exhibitions by Armando Andrade Tudela at CarrerasMugica, June Crespo and Giovanni Anselmo at the Museo Guggenheim in Bilbao, as well as the wonderful rooms of the Museo de Bellas Artes filled with Sergio Prego’s pneumatic sculptures. From there we take an hour-long bus to attend the double opening of Ibon Aranberri and Patricia Dauder at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo del País Vasco-Artium Museoa in Vitoria-Gasteiz. Max will review Aranberri’s “Entresaka” for frieze magazine.

Read the review here.

(Above and below) Sergio Prego at the Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao.


(Above and below) June Crespo’s solo exhibition “Vascular”, Museo Guggenheim Bilbao.


(Above) Armando Andrade Tudela at galería CarrerasMugica, Bilbao.

(Above and below) View of Ibon Aranberri’s Entresaka, ARTIUM Museoa, Vitoria. 


(Above and below) View of Patricia Dauder “Unform”, ARTIUM Museoa, Vitoria. 


1–5 May 2024: +72K steps visiting the 2024 Venice Biennale curated by Adriano Pedrosa. Beyond the art circuit of the biennial and collateral events, we also visited the Palazzo Grassi, Punta della Dogana, Fondazione In Between Art Film, TBA21, Fondazione Prada, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Also, we had time to visit the stunning Palazzo Grimani and a delightful vaporetto ride with a lightning storm on the horizon.

A much-needed Spritz and cicchetti after long art days.

6 May 2024: Mariana concludes her involvement as a member of the 2024 Acquisition Committee of the Col·lecció Nacional d'Art Contemporani of the Government of Catalunya. This year’s acquisition fund rose to €850,000 (from €599.399,51 in 2023). Once the Committee selects the artworks, they undergo review by a qualification board. From there, they proceed through legal departments for draft contracting, finance, and shipping for their final journey to museums around the region. This process spans the entire year.

A press conference in early 2025 will announce the 2024 acquisitions—including works of contemporary art, photography, cultural artefacts, comics and illustration, postwar art, and the second avant-garde—publicly. Behind this forthcoming announcement are long days reviewing the 434 applications received, followed by 8 online sessions lasting 3 to 4 hours each debating proposals alongside the members of this year’s Committee.



30 May 2024: Private screening of the documentary “Artefacto 71 –¿Qué hace un artista?” (What does an artist do?), directed by Argentinian-born, Mataró-based artist Carlos Essmann. The film synopsis states “One thing is clear: the contemporary artist can dispense with his or her manual skills and give as much or more importance to intellectual work than to the artistic object. So what does an artist do? Artefacto 71 attempts to answer this question by reviewing the activity of a working-class artist like the Catalan Martí Anson, establishing a dialogue between artist and filmmaker as equals.” 

The film includes footage of “Mataró Chauffeur Service” (2010), a project Latitudes with the artist in the context of their participation in the “NO SOUL FOR SALE–A festival of independents” organised in the context of Tate Modern’s 10th-anniversary. In response to the need to travel to London, Martí Anson set up the Mataró Chauffeur Service company in honour of his hometown and drove the curators from Barcelona to London and back. Designing the livery of the single-vehicle fleet, his uniform, and the journey to Tate Modern and back (including the ferry journey from Santander to Portsmouth) all formed a part of the project. The car formed the basis of Latitudes’ temporary office encampment in Tate's Turbine Hall and was parked up for the weekend alongside a picnic scenario of camping chairs, a folding table, and a parasol as well as a slideshow of images of the journey. The car interior became a comfortable space to watch films and “making of” videos produced as part of ‘Portscapes’, the Latitudes-curated commissions series produced for the Port of Rotterdam in the context of Maasvlakte 2: a five-year construction of 2,000 hectares of new land in the North Sea, which extended by 20% the largest seaport and industrial area in Europe. 

Artefacto 71 –¿Qué hace un artista?” was selected to participate in the Official Competition Documentary Section at the 27th Malaga Festival, where it had its world premiere, and won the Biznaga de Plata Ex aequo for Best Director.

Watch a trailer of the doc here.


The artist and the curators on their way to Tate Modern, May 2010.

The car was parked on the bridge of Tate Modern in May 2010. Below is a screening of the commissioned films and making of videos produced for “Portscapes” (2009-10).


(Above and two below) Views of Turbine Hall. Photos: Tom Medwell/NSFS.




3 June 2024: Max Andrews’ first contribution to Artforum magazine is out. It reviews “Refugia”, the first solo exhibition of Rosa Tharrats at Bombon Projects in Barcelona, which opened on March 20. 

Read the review here

View of Rosa Tharrats exhibition “Refugia” at Bombon Projects. 





June 2024: 20 years of Max contributing to frieze magazine! Max’s first review featured an exhibition of Danish artist Jesper Just at Midway Contemporary, written while he was living in Minneapolis as a Curatorial Intern at the Walker Art Center. 

Over the last two decades, Max has published +60 texts covering topics in ecology, institutional thinking, open call fatigue, the history of IVAM – Spain’s First Modern Art Museum – and Barcelona’s cultural politics, amongst others. He has reviewed art events and exhibitions presented in Arlès, Bordeaux, Bregenz, London, Madrid, Málaga, Montpellier, Venice, and Zurich, and profiled the work of Spanish-based artists such as Ibon Aranberri, David Bestué, Lúa Coderch, Dora García, Adrià Julià, Rasmus Nilausen, Miralda, Xavier Ribas, Eulàlia Rovira, Francesc Ruiz, Julia Spínola, and Teresa Solar Abboud, as well as the international practices of Maria Thereza Alves, Duncan Campbell, Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Lucy Skaer, Nicholas Mangan or Bruno Zhu.

Other reviews, opinion columns, profiles, and features are here.



Reviews, opinion columns, profiles, and features here.


4 June 2024: Visited Espinavessa in the Alt Empordà, where Andrew Birk and Sira Pizà run Spiritvessel, with a gorgeous day-long opening of “Llaç” (Ribbon), a new project by Martín Llavaneras. The day was fueled by passion fruit margaritas, tacos de cochinita pibil and, of course, art conversations.

@andrewbirk

27 June 2024: Premiere of “Pass Me, For I Am Strange”, a short film by Askeaton Contemporary Arts’ long-term collaborator Michael Holly, presented during ACA’s yearly festival “Welcome to the Neighbourhood” curated by Michele Horrigan – in which we participated back in 2018.

The film “engages with myths and histories associated with the Franciscan Friary, one of the most extensive sites of its kind in Ireland. Holly’s film listens closely to points of view from characters embedded in the very stonework of the friary, including Fitzgerald, one of its reputed founders; Don Martínez de Mendoza, a repentant Catalonian nobleman who took shelter there, and a now faceless stone carving of Saint Francis. Considering the interpretation of Askeaton’s medieval heritage as an experiment in time and space, Pass Me, For I Am Strange is developed collaboratively through research, dialogue and contributions by and with fellow artists Niamh Moriarty, Ruth Clinton, Carl Doran, Eulàlia Rovira and historian Anthony Sheehy, in association with “The Pilgrim”, a residency programme developed between Askeaton Contemporary Arts and Latitudes, Barcelona.” (Text from Askeaton's website)

Listen to Carl Doran’s audio narration of “The Pilgrim” from an article published in Askeaton-Balysteen Community News, Summer 1984. 

Watch the short film here.

Reading the pilgrim inscription while shooting the film.  




2 July 2024: We received a copy of the latest book by our former RCA tutor, Dr Claire Bishop, titled Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today” (Verso Books, 2024). It includes a photograph we took in 2010 of Wolfgang Tillmans’ work “Truth Study Center” (2005–) while we live-edited a weekly tabloid that ultimately constituted the ten-part catalogue of “The Last Newspaper” (October 2010–January 2011) exhibition at the New Museum. Tillmans’ work shared the floor with our temporary office and is a project he began in 2005 with a show at his London gallery Maureen Paley. 

More on this here.





Looking forward

In the Autumn of 2023, Lisa LeFeuvre, Executive Director of the Holt/Smithson Foundation, invited Latitudes to contribute to the foundation's Scholarly Text Program, writing on one artwork by Nancy Holt and/or Robert Smithson. The works written about range from landmark earthworks and texts to lesser-known drawings, moving image works, and rarely-seen two-dimensional works. Max decided to write on Robert Smithson’s text “Aerial Art” (Studio International, February—April 1969), and Mariana on Nancy Holt's “Ventilation Systems” (1985–1992). The essays will be published on the Foundation's website in October and November 2024 and include images, a short bibliography, endnotes pointing to the author’s references and an ISBN.

And some further announcements in the autumn!


RELATED CONTENT:


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Latitudes’ "out of office" 2022–23 season

Sunset on our way to Mallorca aboard the Cecilia Payne ferry, 6 June 2023.


With the summer in full flow, and thoughts turning to holidays, we once more share a series of behind-the-scenes moments and encounters: trips, dinners, kind messages, postal surprises, follow-ups of artists we have worked with, and serendipitous situations that have happened in the background of our more visible curatorial practice seen on our website or in the Longitudes section. Plus some further notes and inspiration beyond our Instagrams – here and here.  

For earlier OUT OF THE OFFICE posts, check out the posts from 
2008–92009–102010–112011–122012–132013–142014–152015–162016–172017–182018–19, 2019–20, 2020–21 and 2021–22. All photos are by Latitudes unless stated otherwise in the photo caption.

Happy summer, apply and reapply sun protection!



September 2022: Between September and November, we mentored Matheus Calderón, winner of the first [ON RESIDENCE] residency, an online curatorial mentorship programme awarded to young Peruvian curators organised by TROPICAL PAPERS, and supported by Artus.

As one of the mentors, we embarked on six bi-monthly conversations focusing on what values are at stake today in our profession. Through sincere dialogue, we discussed the multiple realities of being an independent curator both in Lima and Barcelona, and we accompanied Matheus in shaping his approach to his forthcoming group exhibition project “El rodeo (el velo, la mancha o la grieta)” [working title]. Our conversations progressively became a space to share, pause and reflect during a time of ongoing political and societal tension in Lima in autumn 2022. 

Introductory Zoom with Tropical Papers, Latitudes and Matheus on 31 August 2022.

early September 2022: We submitted the essay “Soil for Future Art Histories”, which was commissioned for the forthcoming catalogue “Futuros Abundantes”, a group exhibition organised by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) at C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Córdoba. Subsequent edits and translation rounds in October–November, and publication release in January 2023.

13 September 2022: Received a copy of Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven’s catalogue “By The Sea. Land Art, Performance and Minimal Art” including photos Latitudes provided of Jan Dibbets’s “6 Hours Tide Object with Correction of Perspective” (2009).


Page spread of “By The Sea. Land Art, Performance and Minimal Art” with Jan Dibbets’ 2009 project.

19 September 2022: Final episode of “Incidents (of Travel)” with Jorge Satorre. By complete chance, this episode takes place on September 19, 2022, exactly ten years later to the day of the first tour commissioned for the first phase of Incidents (of Travel), a day Latitudes spent with Minerva Cuevas around Mexico City’s city centre on the 27th anniversary of the deadly 1985 earthquake


Visiting the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco with Minerva Cuevas, the first of five “Incidents of Travel” itineraries around Mexico City, 19 September 2012. Photo: Eunice Adorno.

Episode #20 culminates Latitudes’ collaboration with KADIST, producers of 20 fantastic episodes published online between 2016 and 2022 as part of their programme of online projects.

The dispatch went live on October 26, 2022. Read here.

27 September 2022: Published “‘Minor’ Ornithologies. Laia Estruch”, a podcast hosted by Latitudes’ curator, writer (and lifelong birder) Max Andrews for TBA21 on st_ageAccompanying Laia Estruch’s performance project Ocells Perduts V67” (2022) for TBA21 on st_age, the podcast takes flight into the realm of birds, looking at politics and practices that disrupt dominant historical narratives, and exceed scientific and cultural boundaries. It features Alex Holt, a spokesperson for Bird Names for Birds, a movement to decolonise bird names, and zoömusicologist Dr Hollis Taylor, who specialises in birdsong. Through their perspectives, we glimpse new and speculative kinds of human–bird narratives – “minor” ornithologies.

→ Listen here (34' 03'')
→ Transcript here
8 October 2022: 
Within the context of PUBLICS’ annual gathering Today Is Our Tomorrow, Laia Estruch and Irina Mutt led a workshop as part of this year’s programme focusing on the presentness of the voice in its many sonic forms, vocal modes and auditory modalities. This workshop culminated a series of encounters, part of Latitudes’ ongoing Parahosting at PUBLICS, that have taken place over the summer in collaboration with PUBLICS Youth, an education initiative for Helsinki-based 18-21-year-olds.

(📷 ↑↓) PUBLICS Youth with Irina Mutt during their workshop in Lammassaari, 3 August 2022. Photos: Micol Curatolo.


18 October 2022: Organised a casual networking dinner to mingle with local art professionals with a group visiting from the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Switzerland. Organised by the Mondriaan Fund, the Orientation Trip 2022 took them this time to Portugal and Spain.

Foto: Haco de Ridder.

21 October 2022: Post looking back at the first anniversary of MACBA exhibition “Panorama 21. Apunts per a un incendi dels ulls”, highlighting works by Antoni Hervàs, El Palomar, Claudia Pagès and Rosa Tharrats, four artists that participated in Panorama and whose shows in Frankfurt, Donostia and Marseille present work produced or derived from their MACBA presentation. 

Installation view of “Akaal / Selene \ Uluru” (2021) in Bombon Projects’ stand in Art-O-Rama, Marseille, August 2022. Photos: © Aurélien Meimaris.

Antoni Hervàs, “Under the firelight, the ash shines like glitter”, 2021-2022, installation view Frankfurter Kunstverein 2022, Photo: Norbert Miguletz, ©Frankfurter Kunstverein, Courtesy: the artist.

El Palomar, Schreber is a Woman, 2020, installation view Frankfurter Kunstverein 2022, Photo: Norbert Miguletz, ©Frankfurter Kunstverein, Courtesy: the artists.

Still from the video interview with Claudia Pagès about her video work “Gerundi Circular” (2021) (in Spanish with Basque subtitles).

26 October 2022: New and concluding dispatch of Incidents (of Travel) led by Jorge Satorre in Barcelona, narrated by Latitudes, creators and editors of the project since 2012. This is the 20th episode published by Kadist as part of their online programme since 2016 and also marks the 10th anniversary of the project.

Below are some photos that, for one reason or another, didn't make it to the final selection of 31 images.



Small bus del barri [neighbourhood bus] route # 111 around Vallvidrera.

Analysing footprints.

(Above and below) From the Curator’s Commentary: “(...) We’re here to see what is, after the Collserola Stone, the only other known megalith in Barcelona: the Pedralbes Menhir. The builders of the monastery in the fourteenth century respected the powers of this standing stone to such a degree that they not only preserved it but constructed a gateway in the perimeter wall around it. The bulk of the stone lurks below the paved surface like a lithic iceberg, its obstinate presence in a doorway from the middle ages a kind of rude protuberance of prehistory and geologic time into a continuous present.”



Jorge admires the Egyptian-inspired pantheon of the cotton industrialists Batlló family.


28 October 2022: A surprise message from Tara McDowell sharing that after 2 years, Nino Kvrivishvili and her were finally able to meet in person in Tbilisi, Georgia! Together they followed their itinerary around the city’s former silk industry commissioned for the Incidents (of Travel) series (episode 12). Due to the pandemic, Tara’s plans to travel from Melbourne to Tbilisi had to be cancelled, so Nino “in an act of radical Georgian hospitality” – as Tara wrote in her curator’s commentary – shared her itinerary with Tara via a WhatsApp call. 

In a wonderful turn of events, during their IRL meeting, Nino opened a small pop-up exhibition at Aleksandre Utmazyan's textile shop, one of the locations that appeared on Nino’s itinerary, an event that counted with the surprise visit of Georgian President, Salomé Zurabishvili.

Curated by Data Chigholashvili, the pop-up exhibition responded to the history of Georgia’s textile industry by interrelating topics of fabric production, changing places, time, and memory, presenting a recent series of paintings that convey a story of fabric production, the country’s formerly active industry. As Chigholashvili explains Nino Kvrivishvili “belongs to the generation who studied textile art while this industry was disappearing and the experience of practical training was becoming impossible. Abstract shapes of the series, in a way a meditation on industrial themes, repeat in this selection presented together with plaster additions inside the shop. Here we also see partially concealed bodies that remind us of images from fashion magazines, as well as hint at stories of many women who were involved in the industry, yet often remained unknown – a topic that Nino has been researching for several years now.”
 
Tara McDowell and Nino KvrivishviliPhoto courtesy of these and three below by Tara McDowell.

View of Nino Kvrivishvili’s pop-up exhibition at the Textile shop on Queen Tamar Ave. 17, Tbilisi. 

Curator Data Chigholashvili in Nino Kvrivishvili’s exhibition at the Textile shop on Queen Tamar Ave. 17 in Tbilisi.
 
Opening of Nino Kvrivishvili’s exhibition at the Textile shop on Queen Tamar Ave. 17 in Tbilisi. Left to right: Nino Kvrivishvili (artist), Salome Zourabichvili (President of Georgia), Aleksandre Utmazyan (the shop owner) and Data Chigholashvili (curator). 


In March 2022, Nino and Data participated in Haus der Kulturen Welt’s programme “They Are There, Sometimes” where Nino presented her Incidents itinerary around Tbilisi (videofrom min. 36:09).

 Nino and Data participated in Haus der Kulturen Welt’s programme “They Are There, Sometimes” where Nino presented her Incidents itinerary around Tbilisi (video from min 36:09).

18 November 2022: Claudia Pagès is awarded Radio Nacional de España’s Premio El Ojo Crítico de Artes Visuales 2022 for “her ability to turn words and language into an artistic tool in every possible form, a vehicle for a political message that is not afraid of confrontation and places the individual and collective body at the centre of her creative practice”. 

As highlighted in this post, in 2021 Claudia presented her video installation “Gerundi Circular” at the Latitudes-curated exhibition “Panorama 21. Apunts per a un incendi dels ulls” commissioned for MACBA’s exhibition and produced with the support of ELAMOR

16–19 November 2022: Inching for a trip abroad to see some art, we visited the 16e Biennale d’art contemporain de Lyon, titled “Manifesto of Fragility”, some highlights on Mariana's Instagram via this link.

Those in the curatorial business will understand that besides enjoying the art side, our analytical eyes are peeled, taking mental and photographic notes on how things are practically put together. This goes from looking at how temporary walls are built, how AV equipment is hidden, types of vitrines, how clear signage is, and of course often taking in some curious exhibition labels and poorly displayed art. Here are some random photos that only make sense for research or reference purposes. Going very meta now, behind the behind-the-scenes...







28 November 2022: First online introduction of The Pilgrim” team, a project Latitudes curates in collaboration with Askeaton Contemporary Art in Co. Limerick, southwest Ireland, and involving Barcelona-based artist Eulàlia Rovira, and Sligo-and-Leitrim-based Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty. To be continued...



29 November 2022: DART Festival awardees announced: Premio Laie DART 2022 a la Mejor Dirección (Laie DART 2022 Award to the Best Direction): “J’ai retrouvé Christian B.” (France, 2020) directed by Alain Fleischer. The documentary is an intimate portrait tracing the relationship between two contemporary creators, the artist Christian Boltanski and the filmmaker Alain Fleischer, who shared a friendship that lasted half a century. 

Premio Laie DART 2022 de la Crítica (Laie DART 2022 Critics Award): “The Melt Goes On Forever: The Art and Times of David Hammons” (EEUU, 2021). Directed by cultural journalist Judd Tully and filmmaker Harold Crooks, the documentary focuses on the elusive figure of African-American artist David Hammons, whose artistic practice spans six decades and foregrounds social criticism in the United States.

Screening at Cinemes Girona. Courtesy: DART Festival.




13 December 2022: MACBA presents their 2023 programme, announcing a list of their recent acquisitions, one being Claudia Pagès’s “Gerundi Circular” (2021), a video installation commissioned for Latitudes-curated exhibition “Panorama 21: Apunts per a un incendi dels ulls”, produced with the support of ELAMOR. The installation joins the museum collection as a long-term loan of the National Collection of Contemporary Art of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Claudia’s work was also featured in our January 2023 cover story.

17 January 2023: Second Zoom of members affiliated with Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC) based in Spain. In the following weeks, we organised a gathering during ARCOMadrid to explain GCC’s objectives to potential new members and meet with GCC’s volunteer groups in Berlin and Italy to hear their experiences of building a team. 



1 February 2023: Newsletter out announcing our next research and residency project “The Pilgrim” in collaboration with Askeaton Contemporary Art in Co. Limerick, Ireland, and involving the artists Eulàlia Rovira, Ruth Clinton, and Niamh Moriarty. 

→ More details here.

Left to right: Eulàlia Rovira (photo: Aníbal Parada), Ruth Clinton (photo: Colm Keating) and Niamh Moriarty (photo: Cian Flynn).

22–24 February 2023: During ARCOmadrid we are jurors, alongside Markus Reymann (co-director TBA21), and Marta Cardoso, of the first Six Senses Sustainable Art Award given to an artist whose work honours an awareness around sustainability and environmental urgencies. We studied and discussed the work of more than 40 artists whose work is presented at the art fair and unanimously decided to award Zé Carlos Garcia (1973, Aracajú, BR) for his presentation at the stand of Buenos Aires’s gallery PASTO

The jury stated: “We were intrigued to discover the practice of Zé Carlos García and to learn how his enchanting carved and turned wooden sculptures are embedded in such an inventive and resourceful approach to art, environmental responsibility, decolonial practice, and land restoration. The wood he uses comes from a small tract of a forest he oversees in Brazil where non-native trees such as pines and eucalyptus were once planted by Swiss settler colonists to give the landscape a more European feel. Over the centuries these thirsty species have had a detrimental effect on the indigenous ecosystem and Zé has been removing the invasive species over the last decade, repurposing the resultant wood as a resource for his art practice, while bringing back native trees to the Mata Atlántica.”


Zé Carlos Garcia holding the sign announcing his award (above) and the award (below). Photos ARCOmadrid 2023.


Zé Carlos Garcia. Photo: Max Andrews.

The catalogue “Futuros Abundantes / Abundant Futures”, accompanying the homonymous exhibition in Córdoba, was also launched during ARCOmadrid. The 336-page book includes Latitudes’ newly commissioned essay “Un suelo para las historias del arte del futuro” [Soil for Future Art Histories] – read an abstract here (in Spanish). 

(Above and below) Launch of Futuros Abundantes in ArtsLibris during ARCOmadrid 2023. Photos: IFEMA / ARCOmadrid.


Futuros abundantes / Abundant Futures” catalogue, copublished by TBA21 and Turner, 2023. Photos: Enrico Fiorese.

After a few work sessions over Zoom, we attended the first IRL Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC) gathering on February 22nd. This inaugurates the soft launch of the new formation of GCC Spain, a new national working group aligned with GCC’s core environmental targets and commitments

GCC is an international membership non-for-profit organisation with over 800 members from 40 countries, providing environmental sustainability guidelines for the art sector, whose primary targets are to facilitate a reduction of the visual art sector’s greenhouse gas emissions by a minimum of 50% by 2030 (in line with the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping global warming to below 1.5°C) and promote zero-waste practices. More info. 

GCC Spain is a newly formed semi-autonomous volunteer team (joining working groups in Berlin, Italy, Los Angeles, London, and Taiwan) that works to develop a dedicated platform of environmental resources for Spanish-based art organisations and professionals.

Informative gathering about GCC Spain at ARCOmadrid on @galleryclimatecoalition. Photo: Max Andrews.

@acercacomunicacion's Instagram Story.

March 2023: As part of Latitudes’ ongoing environmental commitment, and as new members of the Gallery Climate Coalition, we publish the first edition of our Environmental Responsibility Statement on our website (extended version here) and submit individual calculations of our Carbon Footprint from 2019 (our baseline from which reductions will be made) and 2022 to the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC). Below is a simple graphic showing the comparison of the two years. Latitudes’ carbon emissions were 17.4tCo2e in 2019 and 3.8tCo2e in 2022. 

Our 2023 Strategic Climate Fund is €190. This is calculated by multiplying our 2022 carbon footprint (3.8tCo2e emissionsby €50 per tonne. We set these funds aside to spend on low-carbon purchasing options that would otherwise be unaffordable.


beginning of May 2023: Checking out the Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona (aka Casa de l'Ardiaca), the Cathedral and its cloister, MACBA, and more with The Pilgrim” guest resident artists Niamh Moriarty and Ruth Clinton. Aptly, as their work has often been related to the Transatlantic relations between Ireland and the United States, their stay coincides with a visit of the Obamas (and Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks) to Barcelona to catch the beginning of Bruce Springsteen's tour.

Throughout the Spring, Latitudes researched documentation in the city archives with the hopes of finding evidence of Askeaton's Pilgrim, browsing certificates of docking in the Port of Barcelona, licences of the board of health, details of boat captain promotion, health patents, and plague-free certificates. With little to no factual data on Askeaton’s Pilgrim – besides his name (Don Martínez de Mendoza), his date of death (Askeaton, 1784), that he was a Barcelona merchant from the mid-18th Century who had a flagship called Isabella, and a daughter called Beatrice (¿Beatriz / Beatriu?) – we weren't able to find further evidence of his existence.





Giving Ruth and Niamh a “phantom tour” of the Panorama exhibition a year and a half after its closing. Here Eulàlia explains her work “La perla”.

6 May 2023: After a few initial days in Barcelona, The Pilgrim” guest resident artists Niamh Moriarty and Ruth Clinton present their work around relics, rubbings, and translation, alongside “The Pilgrim” co-curators Askeaton Contemporary Arts (ACA) (Michele Horrigan and Sean Lynch) at Eulàlia Rovira’s studio. What began as a vermut+talk event extended into pizzas for lunch, afternoon beers, and rolled into dinner.

→ Social Networks archived here.





10 May 2023: Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna of Latitudes qualified to be in the first cohort of Active Members of the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC). To achieve this status we demonstrated that we have implemented environmental sustainability best practices in line with GCC’s guidelines.

→ More info
→ Environmental Policy Statement here.

16–18 May 2023: Work trip to València to visit Antoni Miralda’s exhibition “Miralda. Honeymoon: Unclassified” at Bombas Gens, curated by its artistic director Sandra Guimarães. The show centres on his “Honeymoon Project” (1986-1992), a series of intercontinental ceremonial actions around the romance and subsequent marriage between two historical monuments: that of Christopher Columbus, in the port of Barcelona, and the Statue of Liberty, in New York Bay. Max of Latitudes will review it for frieze’s October issue (online in June). 

(Above) The “Zapato Góndola” (1990–2023) was exhibited in Bombas Gens’ patio. It has been remade in fibreglass in València, taking advantage of its fallas craft expertise. The heel now is removable becoming a gondola, and it's lighter than the original one made of wood. 

The exhibition mostly comprised of letters and ephemera gathered throughout the 40 years of the making of the project, from its presentation in the 1990 Spanish Pavilion to the many drafted letters, invitations, posters and drawings of potential ideas for floats, parades and even a prenup.




Also took the opportunity to visit Bombas Gens’s solo show of Carlos Bunga and the collection reading by El último grito, as well as IVAM’s shows dedicated to Lebanese artist Aref El Rayess, Danish Asger Jorn, and the design collective La Nave. At Centre del Carme Cultura Contemporània (CCCC) we met Diego Díaz and Clara Boj who showed us Permea teaching spaces, the first MA Programme in Experimental Mediation and
 Education through Art and guided us through CCCC’s shows. We also visit the commercial galleries House of Chappaz, Galería Set Espai d'Art, Galería Luis Adelantado, Tuesday to Friday, and Galería Jorge López. We had an overdue catch-up over noodles with old-time artist friend Fermín Jiménez Landa, and finally met the curators Julia Castelló and Ali A. Maderuelo in the flesh, who on June 8th opened “[DOSMILVINT-I-U] [DOSMILVINT-I-TRES] = 1 encuentro” at IVAM, the culmination of a two-year programme comprising workshops, conferences, performances, mediations with artists Diego Navarro and Darío Alva, Claudia Dyboski, Marina González Guerreiro, Álvaro Porras, and M Reme Silvestre. In 2021 Latitudes nominated them for the 11th Edition of the Premio Lorenzo Bonaldi per l’Arte – EnterPrize but this was the first time meet in person! 

early June 2023: Submitted a profile text on America-born Scotland-based artist, researcher, writer, and educator Crystal Bennes’ new project to be exhibited at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, in February 2024. The text will be included in the forthcoming publication “Betwixt 2024”, the next iteration of publications of the Freelands Artist ProgrammeInvolving tapestry, sculptural installation, video, and performance, Bennes’ new project addresses the rapaciousness and sophistry of commodities trading, an arena in which financial instruments are used to bet on the future value of raw materials and natural resources including crude oil, metals, coffee, and cotton. 

Design study for a Jacquard weaving titled “pecunia non olete” (2023) featured on Latitudes’ homepage as the June 2023 cover story. Courtesy Crystal Bennes.

6–8 June 2023: Trip to Mallorca as guests of Art Palma Contemporani’s event Art Summer Palma. Honouring our environmental commitment, we travelled to the island and back by ferry as foot passengers. As the ferry dropped us in Alcúdia, we visited the nearby Pollença (galería Maior, Coster Art i Natura), and then took the bus to the Palma, paying a visit to Es Baluard before joining the official programme visiting the galleries Pep Llabrés, Xavier Fiol, Kewenig, M77, Aba Art Lab, Fran Reus, Baró, Pelaires, PGallery, L21 Home and L21 by foot.


(Above and three below) Views of Pollença from Coster Art in Natura, the artist-led initiative by pollensí Amador Magraner (third photo down) that began in 2022.


Works by Susana Solano and Eva Lootz (above and below).


Ludovica Carbotta ceramic oven in progress.

Amador showing us one of his sculptures “Germinacions” which began in the 1990s.

View of the collection reading curated by Agustín Pérez Rubio at Es Baluard.

Wonderful Maria Lai 1981 action “Legare Collegare” registered in video and photography on view at Es Baluard, Palma, and some more works in the M77 gallery, a new space in Palma of the Milan-based gallery.

Solo exhibition by Adrià Maryordomo (portrayed) at Galeria Fran Reus, Palma. 



12 June 2023: The National Council for Culture and Arts (CONCA) plenary agreed to carry out a survey of Catalunya-based Art Critics and Curators, a tool to analyse the state of our profession from the economic, cultural, professional, and social points of view. An expert committee formed by representatives of ACCA, the Catalan Art Critics Association (amongst them Mariana of Latitudes, who recently became an ACCA member), the Platform of Catalan Artists (PAAC), and the Association of Cultural Management Professionals of Catalunya (APGCC) gathered at Palau Moja to share their feedback to create the most comprehensive possible survey, the results of which are aimed to be completed at the end of 2023.

Photo: Miquel-Àngel Codes Luna / ACCA.

19 June 2023: Zoom launch of GCC Spain, the Spanish chapter of the Gallery Climate Coalition. The event was an opportunity to introduce the London-based founders to Spanish professionals and explain the current and future challenges the Spanish volunteer team is taking on. 

→ Watch the video here (40 min.)
→ Read the press release (in Spanish)



27 June 2023: Attending Joan Morey’s performance “POSTMORTEM. Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu” (2006–2007) at Fundació Palau as part of the Poesia + festival. Performed by Sònia López, the piece was the first of a cycle of performances presented as part of Morey’s solo show curated by Latitudes at Fabra i Coats: Centre d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona in 2018

A better photo of the 2018 performance below.

Joan Morey, “POSTMORTEM. Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu” (2006-2007). Performance reenactment as part of the exhibition “COLLAPSE. Desiring Machine, Working Machine”, Contemporary Art Centre of Barcelona - Fabra i Coats (2018). Photo: Noemi Jariod. Courtesy of the artist.

28 June 2023: Visit TERSA, the publicly-owned company that manages Barcelona's Metropolitan Area waste management, transforming residues into energy by incineration (this waste-to-energy plant generated 142.013 MWh of electricity in 2022). We go around the Integrated Waste Management Plant (PIVR) at Sant Adrià del Besòs, which includes the Waste-to-Energy Plant and the Mechanical-Biological Treatment Plant, managed by Ecoparc del Mediterrani. This location processes what citizens throw into the grey containers – the remaining waste that cannot be reused or recycled (not paper, glass, plastic, or organic matter), whose process generates twice what's needed to supply the electricity grid of the city. The visit was organised as part of the public programme of the exhibition “Ciutat de sorra” [City of sand] by David Bestué at Fabra i Coats: Centre d'Art Contemporani.







29 June 2023: Max Andrews’ review of Antoni Miralda’s exhibition at Bombas Gens (València) is published online on frieze.com (on print in the October 2023 issue).

“A giant high-heeled shoe with Venetian gondola trimmings stands in the courtyard of Bombas Gens Centre d’Art like a monument to fairy-tale slippers. Yet, this is a true-to-size stiletto, made to fit a 93-metre-tall debutante who stands in New York’s harbour: the Statue of Liberty. Created in 1990 by Antoni Miralda as a wedding gift for Liberty’s proposed symbolic marriage to another monument of similar vintage, the Columbus Monument in Barcelona, the original shoe was taken down the Grand Canal before forming the centrepiece of the artist’s Spanish Pavilion at that year’s Venice Biennale. This replica, fabricated by a Valencian fallero craftsman, is destined for the collection of the Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid.” 

→ Continue reading here.



July 2023: Further schedule and reading prep for our end-of-August research trip to Dublin, Sligo, Askeaton, and Limerick, the second part of The Pilgrim residency exchange


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Latitudes’ "out of office": wrap up of the 2020-21 season

‘Keep the faith’ banner hanging at the entrance of La Escocesa studio facilities. All photos by Latitudes (unless otherwise noted in the photo caption).

This end of the season post is the thirteenth of the series – see 2008-92009-102010-112011-122012–132013–142014–152015–162016–172017–182018–19, 2019–20 posts. Unlike past years, there was no clear beginning to the 2020–21 season. As many of us experienced, the pandemic put our work and life plans on hold, at worst cancelled. August is usually a strange month for freelancers (at least in our sector and in these southern latitudes), as nothing much happens work-wise. Yet it can be a blessing if one has other activities to push through, such as writing or research, as hardly any work e-mails come into the inbox – even e-flux’s periodicity is reduced!— but it’s also a fearful period for income. 

We have been lucky to be able to work throughout this year on two group exhibitions: ‘Things Things Say’ at the Centre d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona Fabra i Coats (October 2020–January 2021) and the forthcoming ‘Notes for an Eye Fire’ at Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) opening October 21, 2021, which has not only kept us afloat but also made it possible for us to work within our immediate context in times when travel has not been possible or even desired. Here's our 2020-21 from behind the scenes:

5 August 2020: Max’s (Contributing editor, frieze magazine since 2015) review of Daniel G. Andújar show at La Virreina coincided with the new launch of frieze redesigned website.


13 August 2020: Eulàlia Rovira sends us a view of the improvised recording studio she managed to set up at home in order to become the voice of the exhibition ‘Things Things Say’. We are deeply thankful to her for her flexibility and endurance in recording our texts in three languages deep in the summer heat and in the small hours of the night to avoid neighbourhood noises. #ThingsThingsSay


28 August 2020: 
Early meetings with Hiuwai Chu (Curator, MACBA) in preparation for the first Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona's 
Panorama, a new series of recurring group shows focusing on the contemporary regional artistic scene [face masks were momentarily removed for the photo op!]. 
#PanoramaMACBA


31 August 2020: Between June and December 2020, Max was Editor of Season 01 of st_age and TBA21’s social media. Pictured a "new normality" Zoom with the TBA21 team across Madrid and Vienna offices, plus team members in Prague, London, Ibiza, Barcelona, etc.  


7 September 2020: After months of communicating by phone and email with Pere Fernàndez Bori, president of the Friends of Fabra i Coats, we were finally able to meet IRL as he showed us around the association offices and archives. We are very thankful to Pere and the Friends of Fabra i Coats for their time and willingness to lend us materials for the exhibition at the Fabra i Coats: Contemporary Art Center of Barcelona. 



7 September 2020: First meeting with Rasmus Nilausen in the museum galleries. #PanoramaMACBA


9 September 2020:
Meeting with Laia Estruch to discuss her participation in MACBA’s Panorama 21. #PanoramaMACBA


15 September 2020: Conversation between Lola Lasurt and Rosa Maria Subirana Torrent, moderated by Ángel Calvo Ulloa, as part of Lasurt’s solo exhibition ‘Children's Games’ at La Capella. The conversation focused on Subirana’s meticulous inventory of the holdings of the first collections of contemporary art donated to the city as coordinator of Miró Year, which included the organisation of Joan Miró’s 1968 retrospective on the grounds of the former Hospital de la Santa Creu, the current venue of La Capella. Video here (Catalan and Spanish). Lasurt’s project was tutored by Latitudes as part of the 2020–21 season of Barcelona Producció.



23 September 2020: Self-timer selfie during our first studio visit with Marria Pratts in L’Hospitalet. #PanoramaMACBA


24 September 2020: As a culmination of Lasurt’s solo exhibition ‘Children’s Games’ at La Capella, and as part of Jordi Ferreiro’s mediation programme Exedra εξέδρα, Lasurt offered to paint a “transitional object” and to display it in a balcony of a neighbour of the Ciutat Vella district. In this case, the transitional object is a train from the cartoon series ‘A Little Engine That Could’ (1991) that Meritxell used to watch on VHS with her grandparents as a child.


Photos: Eva Carasol.

28 September 2020: New episode of Incidents (of Travel) from Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico went live! In the latest ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ dispatch from Cabo Rojo, in the southwestern corner of Puerto Rico, and on week 23 of lockdown, Sofía Gallisá and Marina Reyes begin a day together by driving to the Cabo Rojo Salt Flats where Sofía researched her film ‘Assimilate & Destroy I’ (2018). 

Incidents (of Travel) is an online project produced by KADIST that explores different corners of the world through chartered day-long travel itineraries as a form of artistic encounters and an extended conversation between a curator and an artist. #IncidentsofTravel


29 September 2020: First video call with El Palomar (Mariokissme and R. Marcos Mota). #PanoramaMACBA


1 October 2020: Beginning of installation of ‘Things Things Say’. Arrival of the works by Stuart Whipps, Sarah Ortmeyer and Annette Kelm at Fabra i Coats. Arterri team transported the pieces from Berlin, Dunkerque and Birmingham to the art centre and were assisted by JBM Muntatges i produccions crew on-site to accommodate the works in the exhibition space. 




A socially distant download of Stuart Whipps's car. 






JBM Muntatges i produccions crew constructing walls.

Painting by J. Roscolor.


Jordà 14 transported the tables and chairs lent by the twenty generous lenders from Barcelona who agreed to participate in Haegue Yang’s ‘VIP’s Union’.

Condition reports by conservator Beatriz Montoliu assisted by two crew members of JBM Muntatges i produccions.

(↑↓ Above and two below) Wall texts and vinyl production by DPR Producció i Exposicions.


JBM Muntatges i produccions’ tools stash in front of Annette Kelm’s photographs.

Cleaning up around Sarah Ortmeyer’s ‘SABOTAGE’. 

17 October 2020: New restrictions against the spread of COVID-19 begin – bars and restaurants would end up closing for a month. The exhibition doors opened with little fanfare at Fabra i Coats although we were grateful that some familiar faces come to join us on this sunny autumn day. 

With curators Veronica Valentini, Andrea Rodriguez and Anna Manubens (curator of Wendelien van Oldenborgh's exhibition on the first and second floor).

19 October 2021: Max’s (Contributing editor, frieze magazine since 2015) review of Eulàlia Rovira’s exhibition ‘Esmorteir l'esmorteït’ at EtHALL, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona) publishes on frieze online.


21 October 2020: 365 days left to open Panorama at MACBA. Co-curators are already in sync! #PanoramaMACBA

Hiuwai and Mariana taking a break after two Zoom conversations.

Revising the Danish Arts Council funding application that thankfully granted support for Rasmus Nilausen’s work to be produced and presented in the forthcoming Panorama 21.

26 October 2020: Video call with Laia Estruch and MACBA’s Eva Font, Hiuwai Chu. #PanoramaMACBA


27 October 2020:
First Teams with MACBA’s communication and press departments. #PanoramaMACBA



30 October 2020: New restrictions apply in Catalonia against the spread of COVID-19 provoking the cancellation of all the activities programmed for ‘Things Things Say’, most importantly the one-time screening of Adrià Julià’s ‘Popcorn’ (2012) at Zumzeig Cinema on November 6 – finally able to be rescheduled and screened on January 8, 2021. Guided tours planned for La Nit dels Museus on November 14 (as well as tours planned for November 25, rescheduled for December 9), all have been cancelled, as well as the weekend free tours of the exhibitions at Fabra i Coats: Contemporary Art Centre of Barcelona

Adrià Julià, ‘Popcorn’ [Palomita], (2012). Vídeo HD, color, sonido. 90 min. Cortesía del artista.


13 November 2020: Continuing with online conversation-studio visits, this time with Arash Fayez#PanoramaMACBA



23 November 2020: Site visit of Laia Estruch to MACBA to discuss options for her sculptural intervention for Panorama 21. #PanoramaMACBA



24 November 2020: Second round of photo documentation of the exhibition ‘Things Things Say’ / ‘Cosas que las cosas dicen’ / ‘Coses que les coses diuen’ at Fabra i Coats: Centre d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, with photographer Eva Carasol

Photo documentation of the show.


26 November–8 December 2020: One more year, we collaborate with DART Festival 2020 as jury members awarding the best national and international documentary: ‘Tierras construídas’ by Arturo Dueñas (España, 2019. 81 min. Castellano) and ‘The Proposal’ by Jill Magid (México, 2019. 82 min. Inglés). We are accompanied by film critic Quim Casas, and visual artist Jordi Colomer.


1 December 2020: Visiting Stella Rahola’s studio at Piramidón, with fantastic views over the city. #PanoramaMACBA



4 December 2020: Follow up meetings with Rosa Tharrats, Ruta de Autor and Eulàlia Rovira in preparation for the exhibition ‘Panorama 2021’ at the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA). The Head of General services gives us a tour around the building to areas usually not accessible to the public (photography not allowed) to be able to imagine the original structural design by its architect Richard Meier, to remember how the original walls have changed over the years, and paying attention to the scars left from previous exhibitions – aka ‘cadavers’ amongst museum staff. #PanoramaMACBA



Photo: Eulàlia Rovira.


7 December 2020: Follow-up meeting with Arash Fayez at the museum. #PanoramaMACBA


10 December 2020: Recording a guided visit of the exhibition ‘Things Things Say’ on view at Fabra i Coats: Centre d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona as a proxy to the three cancelled guided visits of the show. 

Photo: Mónica López.
 
21 December 2020: Meeting with Toni Hervàs to discuss his ongoing research around Paral·lel. #PanoramaMACBA


22 December 2020: New episode of Incidents (of Travel) from Singapore, following a tour set up by artists Fyerool Darma and Nurul Huda Rashid, and a report by curator Kathleen Ditzig. Incidents (of Travel) is an online project produced by KADIST that explores different corners of the world through chartered day-long travel itineraries as a form of artistic encounters and an extended conversation between a curator and an artist. 


2 January 2021: Always great to visit Rasmus Nilausen’s studio in L’Hospitalet and smell fresh oil paint. 
#PanoramaMACBA



8 January 2021: Screening and Q&A of Adrià Julià’s feature film ‘Popcorn’ (2012 90') at cinema Zumzeig, part of the exhibition ‘Things Things Say’ ending on January 17, 2021. 


9 January 2021: Catching up with Hiuwai in the metro on our way back from Fabra i Coats Centre d’Art Contemporani. #PanoramaMACBA


13 January 2021: 
Àngels Ponsa, Minister of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya, visited the exhibition ‘Things Things Say’ (centre, sitting in the chair she loaned from Palau Marc, home of the Minister of Culture of the Government of Catalonia, as part of Haegue Yang’s piece ‘VIPs Union’ (2001–ongoing), accompanied by Joana Hurtado Matheu, art centre director (right) and Max and Mariana of Latitudes (left). 


17 January 2021: Things Things Say’ ends today. Lots of Instagram stories over the last week from visitors. Check social networks archive. Weeks after we learn that 1926 people visited the exhibition over the past three months which, considering pandemic restrictions, is great news. #ThingsThingsSay
18 January 2021: Dismantling of ‘Things Things Say’ exhibition. Always sad to say goodbye to works that have been so present in our minds over the last months. It is unavoidable to think about what remains of a show once it’s gone. In times of COVID-19, this feeling is intensified as fewer people might have had the opportunity to visit, regardless of the circumstances. #ThingsThingsSay


JBM Muntatges i produccions crew and Bea Montoliu (conservation) wrapping up the furniture loaned to form Haegue Yang's piece ‘VIP’s Union’ (2001-2020).




Lifting up the protective glass on Stuart Whipps’s table.



19 January 2021: Videoconference with Antoni Hervàs to talk about his contribution to Panorama 21. #PanoramaMACBA


21 January 2021: Video call with Rosa Tharrats to discuss details of her forthcoming installation at the museum. Around this date, Gabriel Ventura and the editorial Documents Documenta, kindly agreed to give us permission to borrow the title of their latest publication for the Panorama series: ‘Notes for an Eye Fire’, for which we are very grateful. 
#PanoramaMACBA


22 January 2021: Ruta de Autor tell us to meet nearby the Torre de les Aigües del Besòs, a water deposit built in 1882 by Pere Falqués and offering stunning panoramic views over the city – and a Blinky Palermo piece Himmelsrichtungen in the entrance space. The tower is the headquarters of the Arxiu Històric de Poblenou#PanoramaMACBA








25 January 2021: Visiting the Centre d’Estudis i Documentació (CED) with Eulàlia Rovira, looking at maps, project proposals and photos of how MACBA was envisioned and ultimately built in the late 80s and early 90s. #PanoramaMACBA

Photo: Hiuwai Chu


Suitable photo albums from the former Panorama photo lab around town.

26 January 2021: Site visit with Claudia Pagès to MACBA to discuss her forthcoming participation in ‘Panorama 21: Apunts per a un incendi dels ulls’ (Notes for an Eye Fire). #PanoramaMACBA


27 January 2021: Once ‘Things Things Say’ is over and the galleries are empty once again. Eulàlia Rovira films ‘A Knot Which is Knot’ (2020-21), her contribution to the recently closed exhibition based on research done throughout the exhibition period, which will premiered a few days later, on February 15. 

Photo: Eulàlia Rovira

29 January 2021: Online meeting with Bendita Gloria to go through the materials of the forthcoming publication of ‘Things Things Say’, the exhibition that just ended a few days ago at Fabra i Coats.

1 February 2021: Consecutive meetings with Toni Hervàs, Aleix Plademunt and Marria Pratts to discuss their projects on-site, alongside Eva Font (architecture department) and Berta Cervantes (Exhibition, Project Assistant). #PanoramaMACBA




9 February 2021: Live streamed press conference announcing the 2021–22 season of the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA). ‘Panorama 21. Apunts per a un incendi dels ulls’ is finally public. #PanoramaMACBA




12 February 2021: Panorama 21 “wefie” after a meeting with Rasmus Nilausen in Gràcia. #PanoramaMACBA


15 February 2021: Eulàlia Rovira’s video ‘A Knot Which is Knot’, 2020 (video, 12min 21 sec, audio in Catalan) is premièred on Fabra i Coats’ YouTube channel. ‘A Knot Which is Knot’ is the result of an investigation that began with the opening ‘Things Things Say’ (Fabra i Coats: Contemporary Art Center of Barcelona17 October 2020-17 January 2021), an exhibition curated by Latitudes, which is made public once it has closed and the exhibition galleries are once again empty. 

Ver vídeo (12' 21'', audio in Catalan) 


16 February 2021: First tech checks in the exhibition galleries with Rafa Marcos of El Palomar and MACBA’s A/V technician Miquel Giner, followed by a group meeting with Claudia Pagès to go catch up on her project. 
#PanoramaMACBA




19 February 2021: Opening of Lara Almarcegui’s exhibition ‘Graves’ (Gravel) at the Centre d'Art La Panera in Lleida (on view until 30 May 2021). As part of the opening day events, Lara invited visitors to experience the quarry operated by Sorigué in La Plana del Corb, which stopped its operations for a day. 

Latitudes contributed a text on her new installation and on March 18 at 6:30pm, participated in a round table online discussion with the artist and Juan Guardiola. Due to mobility restrictions between municipalities, we couldn’t attend the opening.

View of Lara Almarcegui’s exhibition ‘Graves’ (Gravel) at the Centre d'Art La Panera in Lleida. Photo: Jordi V. Pou.


22 February 2021: Video call catch-up with Adrian Schindler (currently in residency at Casa Velázquez in Madrid until June 2021) to discuss his production for Panorama 21, followed by an in-person studio visit with Arash Fayez in Raval. #PanoramaMACBA

Trying to figure out the volume of works in the exhibition space.


2 March 2021: Running some tests of Aleix Plademunts work in the exhibition space while it’s empty between shows. #PanoramaMACBA




3 March 2021: Check-in meeting with Eulàlia Rovira on her ongoing research for her Panorama 21 contribution followed by a site visit by Stella Rahola to check natural light. #PanoramaMACBA





8 Març 2021: Laia Estruch visit to discuss the production of her work in the middle of the installation of Felix Gonzalez-Torres show. #PanoramaMACBA


13 March 2021: First trip outside the city in exactly a year (tomorrow is the first anniversary of the declaration of the first state of alarm in Spain). Invited by the Centre d’Art La Panera in Lleida, we were able to attend the opening of David Bestué’s ‘Pastoral’ solo exhibition and Lara Almarcegui’s ‘Graves’ (for which we recently contributed the text of the exhibition). Forthcoming a frieze review of the exhibition by Max in the September 2021 issue.

(Above and below) Lara Almarcegui, ‘Gravera’ (2021), vídeo, 10 min. Cámara: Daniel Lacasa; y ‘Rocas y materiales de la Cordillera de los Pirineos’ (2021). Cortesía de la artista.


(Above and below) Installation view of David Bestué’s ‘Pastoral’ at the Centre d'Art la Panera, Lleida.


18 March 2021: Online conversation with Lara Almarcegui and Juan Guardiola on the occasion of Almarcegui’s solo show ‘Graves’ at Centre d’Art La Panera in Lleida.

During the conversation with Lara Almarcegui. 

23 March 2021: Catch up with a provider for Laia Estruch’s installation and discussion of Panorama’s identity with graphic designer and ‘Panorama 21’ participant, Ana Domínguez. #PanoramaMACBA



29 March 2021: Morning meeting with Rasmus Nilausen and pm meeting with Gabriel Ventura and Rosa Tharrats to discuss the progress of their respective contributions for Panorama 21, titled after Gabriel’s latest book poem ‘Apunts per a un incendi dels ulls’ (Notes for an Eye Fire). #PanoramaMACBA



7, 14, 21 and 28 April 2021: Four reading groups are programmed this month as part of Adrian Schindler’s project to be presented as part of MACBA's inaugural Panorama exhibition in October 2021. These open-format groups constituted the last step before the production of his film Tetuan, Tetuán, تطوان , the first chapter of which will be shot in Barcelona in late Spring 2021. 

The reading group “A quienes la inspiraron y no la leerán: Goytisolo, Marruecos y el Otro” (To those who inspired it and will not read it: Goytisolo, Morocco and the Other) proposes a critical approach to the theoretical and fictional work of Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo (1931–2017), influenced by Morocco. Contrasting his ambition to deconstruct the islamophobic literary tradition with the fantasies that inhabit his novels, we will address issues such as the construction of the image of the Other in Spain, the ghosts of the colonial project and the tensions inherent to decolonial works developed by white cultural agents. Participants read excerpts from the novels Reivindicación del conde Don Julián (1970), Juan sin tierra (1975) and Makbara (1980), as well as from the essay collection Crónicas Sarracinas (1981). The sessions were carried out with Salma Amzian, Núria Gómez Gabriel and iki yos piña narváez funes, who contributed to examining Goytisolo’s contradictions and potentialities through other literatures and epistemologies. The meetings took place in the Parc de la Ciutadella, near a colonial monument and an orientalist sculpture. #PanoramaMACBA


2 April 2021: Video call with Claudia Pagès to check in the development of her project while at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. #PanoramaMACBA


7 April 2021: MACBA’s 2021-22 exhibition programme is up. Just over 6 months to the opening. #PanoramaMACBA


9 Abril 2021: Catch up meetings with Ruta de Autor and Nyamnyam (from Montpellier). #PanoramaMACBA



12 April 2021: Publications meeting with Ana Domínguez. #PanoramaMACBA



13 April 2021: Meeting with Adrian Schindler at the museum’s offices to discuss the production of his work for MACBA’s ‘Panorama’. #PanoramaMACBA


15 April 2021: Monthly catch-up with the communication department with dazzling spreadsheets, followed by a visit to Stella Rahola Matutes's project at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion. Curators’ outfits merging – too many hours together ;-) #PanoramaMACBA




22 April 2021: Design briefing with MACBA’s communication team, Marta Reus and Carla Ventosa, and Panorama 21 designers Ana Domínguez and Lara Coromina, about the exhibition. #PanoramaMACBA


30 April 2021: Meet with Arash Fayez and walk through the museum galleries with Ana Domínguez and Lara Coromina, designers of the first edition of MACBA’s Panorama
#PanoramaMACBA



4 May 2021: Plotting with Antoni Hervàs and Marc Vives, with the valuable help of Eva Font. Tip of the day: always bring a tape measure on a site visit! #PanoramaMACBA

Photo: Hiuwai Chu



7 May 2021: Balcony break in between meetings with Eulàlia Rovira and Ruta de Autor#PanoramaMACBA

Photo: Hiuwai Chu



8 May 2021: Presentation of Agustín Ortiz Herrera’s research ‘To name, to own. Critique of taxonomic practice’ project and publication at the Gabinet Salvador (Institut Botànic de Barcelona), one of the best-preserved examples of a cabinet of curiosities. Agustín’s research is one of the three projects Latitudes mentored throughout 2019–20 as part of the Barcelona Producció season at La Capella.

Representation of the cabinet of curiosities by the Danish naturalist and antiquarian Ole Worm in 1655. Salvador Library, Botanical Institute of Barcelona.

11 May 2021: Recording the teaser to be launched with the announcement of the participants in the inaugural Panorama exhibition. #PanoramaMACBA



12 May 2021: Review of David Bestué’s exhibition ‘Pastoral’ at the Centre d’Art la Panera, Lleida, published online at frieze.com



12 May 2021: Visiting Ana Dominguez studio and lunch with her and Lara Coromina to discuss the elements of the exhibition graphics. #PanoramaMACBA


Some artist portraits for the exhibition website.

13 May 2021: A new
 dispatch of the ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ online series is live on incidents.kadist.org this time from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where curator Àngels Miralda narrates a day navigating COVID restrictions with Salim Bayri. + info

17 May 2021: Jitsi catch up with nyamnyam (Iñaki Álvarez and Ariadna Rodríguez) and Pedro Pineda. #PanoramaMACBA


20 May 2021: Catch up with Eulàlia Rovira at the museum. #PanoramaMACBA


21 May 2021:
Birdwatching with Laia Estruch around the Vall del Llobregós and the plains north of Santa Maria de Montmagastrell, in preparation for her upcoming project ‘Ocells perduts’ to be premiered in MACBA’s ‘Notes for an Eye Fire’ exhibition. 
#PanoramaMACBA


22 May 2021: Laia Estruch rehearsing at El Graner. #PanoramaMACBA


Foto: Hiuwai Chu.

28 May 2021: Catch up with Ruta de Autor at the museum. #PanoramaMACBA

Photo: Hiuwai Chu.

1 June 2021: Work meeting at Rasmus Nilausen’s studio in L’Hospitalet. #PanoramaMACBA


4 June 2021: Final presentation of the graphic image of Panorama 21 by Studio Ana Dominguez. #PanoramaMACBA


7 June 2021: Meeting at TMDC in La Verneda with Pedro Pineda and nyamnyam (Ariadna Rodríguez & Iñaki Álvarez). #PanoramaMACBA



Photo: Hiuwai Chu.



8 June 2021: Visiting Rosa Tharrats and Gabriel Ventura in Cadaqués and visit Rosa’s two-person exhibition in the Museu de l’Empordà, Figueres. #PanoramaMACBA

View of the two-person exhibition ‘Tura Sanglas/ Rosa Tharrats: Un diàleg artistic. Subjectivitat de la material, poètica de l’objecte’, curated by Laura Cornejo at Museu de l’Empordà.  

‘Les babes de la molsa’ (2020) by Rosa Tharrats.

‘Els ancestres de les anênomes’ (2020) by Rosa Tharrats.

Photo: Ivo Wald.




Photo: Ivo Wald.

Meetings by the shore.

10 June 2021: Visiting Marria Pratts’ studio L’Hospitalet. #PanoramaMACBA


17 June 2021: Meeting with Arash Fayez and Rosa Tharrats and the MACBA team. #PanoramaMACBA



18 June 2021: Round of meetings with nyamnyam followed by Ruta de Autor and Stella Rahola at the museum. #PanoramaMACBA




20 June 2021: Recording the 8th and last episode of the podcast series ‘Quasi Veu’ in the lobby of Fabra i Coats – released 2 July 2021. In the first part of the +2h programme, Mariana discussed some aspects of ‘Things Things Say’, the exhibition Latitudes curated last fall at the Fabra i Coats: Centre d’Art Contemporani.


22 June 2021: Adrian Schindler filming Tetuan, Tetuán, تطوان  at Plaça Tetuan. Schindler's project will be presented as part of MACBA’s inaugural Panorama exhibition in October 2021. #PanoramaMACBA



1 July 2021: Announcement of ‘Notes for an Eye Fire’ participants, launch of the web with the graphic image of the Panorama exhibition series: Ana Domínguez, El Palomar (Mariokissme & R. Marcos Mota), Laia Estruch, Arash Fayez, Antoni Hervàs, Rasmus Nilausen, nyamnyam (Ariadna Rodríguez & Iñaki Álvarez) with Pedro Pineda, Claudia Pagès, Aleix Plademunt, Marria Pratts, Stella Rahola Matutes, Eulàlia Rovira, Ruta de autor (Aymara Arreaza R. & Lorena Bou Linhares), Adrian Schindler, Rosa Tharrats, Gabriel Ventura, and Marc Vives. #PanoramaMACBA


6 July 2021: Online catch-up with public programmes Tonina Cerdà and Alicia Escobio. #PanoramaMACBA


14–16 July 2021:
Press trip to visit the newly opened Hauser & Wirth, at the Illa del Rei, Maó (Menorca). Max Andrews will review Mark Bradford’s show ‘Masses and Movements’ for frieze







Carlos Cruz-Diez at Galería Cayón, Maó. 

17 July 2021: Rough cut screening of Adrian Schindlers filmTetuan, Tetuán, تطوان  to be premiered as part of MACBA’s inaugural Panorama exhibition in October 2021. #PanoramaMACBA

Photo: Hiuwai Chu.

26 July 2021: Visiting Toni Hervàs at La Escocesa alongside MACBA’s team Alex Castro, Eva Font and Berta Cervantes (conservation, architecture and coordination). #PanoramaMACBA






→ RELATED CONTENTS:

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Episode #13 of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Marina Reyes and Sofía Gallisá from Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico


A new episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ from Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, is now live! This is the latest dispatch of the online project produced by KADIST and edited by Latitudes since 2016, exploring the chartered itinerary as a format of artistic encounter, an extended offline conversation between curator/s and artist/s. 

In the 13th dispatch, and on week 23 of lockdown, Sofía Gallisá and Marina Reyes begin their day together driving to the Cabo Rojo Salt Flats where Sofía researched her 2018 film ‘Assimilate & Destroy I’. They later end up in Poblado de Boquerón, the queer capital of Puerto Rico's south where a large public beach and a usually busy street still show traces of 2017’s devastating Hurricane Maria.

Incidents (of Travel) site presents one continuous immersive read interwoven with images and short videos in a mobile-friendly format. Tap, swipe and scroll!


Incidents (of Travel) was conceived in 2012 when Latitudes commissioned 5 day-long artist-led tours around Mexico City in the framework of a short residency at Casa del Lago. The project had sequels in 2013 in Hong Kong with online dispatches published live via social media, including soundscapes (archived on Soundcloud), and in 2015 in San Francisco with daily posts as part of Kadist's Instagram take over “Artist Not In The Studio Curator Not At The Office”.

A year later, KADIST and Latitudes partnered in a new ‘distributed’ phase of Incidents (of Travel) extending the invitation to curators and artists working around the world and publishing their dispatches as part of KADIST's Online Projects.

Since 2016, thirteen conversations have taken place in Cabo Rojo (Puerto Rico), Tbilisi (Georgia), Panama City (Panama), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Reykjavík (Iceland), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Hobart (Tasmania), Yerevan (Armenia), Terengganu (Malaysia), Lisbon (Portugal), Suzhou (China), Jinja (Uganda) and Chicago (US). 



The first dispatch launched in April 2016 with an itinerary by curator Yesomi Umolu and artist Harold Mendez from Chicago – a day photographed by Nabiha Khan


The second dispatch came from Jinja in Uganda, where curator Moses Serubiri invited photographer Mohsen Taha to explore Jinja's Indian architectural legacy and Idi Amin's notorious expulsion of Uganda's Asian minority in 1972.


The third episode took place while curator Yu Ji and poet Xiao Kaiyu hiked on Dong Shan (East Mountain), 130 km west of Shanghai, on a peninsula stretching into Tai Hu lake near the city of Suzhou, China.


The fourth dispatch came from Lisbon, where Galician curator Pedro de Llano visited key locations that marked the life and work of Luisa Cunha.


The fifth episode took place in April 2016, when curator Simon Soon and artist chi too visited the Malaysian North Eastern state of Terengganu, where chi spent some time in 2013, surrounded by “men and women who work(ed) multiple jobs as fishermen, housebuilders, boat builders, farmers, coconut pickers, food producers, and everything else that matters.”


The sixth episode narrates a walking itinerary conducted by curator Marianna Hovhannisyan with Vardan Kilichyan, Gohar Hosyan, and Anaida Verdyan in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, documenting the transformed, disappeared, or permanently-closed art institutions in the city centre.


The seventh episode comes from Hobart, capital of Tasmania. It is narrated by curator Camila Marambio, following an itinerary devised by artist Lucy Bleach. They spent the day "encircling the outer limits of human understanding by visiting the histories, both past, and present, of attempts to reach beyond our sensory capacities through governance, technology, and reverie", and ended the day cooking at Lucy's home-sharing their mutual love for quinces.


In the eighth 'Incidents (of Travel)' dispatch Móvil co-founder and curator Alejandra Aguado followed the itinerary devised by the artist Diego Bianchi around Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

Their exploration took them from the self-regulated community Velatropa to the buzzing commercial area of Once, identifying human and non-human flows and interactions. This became an entry point for discussing Bianchi's interests in how, as consumers, we define a particular zeitgeist and appropriate trends that enable us to affirm our identities.


In the ninth dispatch, Canadian curator Becky Forsythe and Icelandic artist Þorgerður Ólafsdóttir navigate Reykjavík's surroundings considering Þorgerður's “current interest in Icelandic Spar (a form of transparent calcite), its double refraction and light-polarizing properties. In a race with daylight, they travel between sites collecting moments and considering the ways in which geologic time surfaces in the context of human time.”



The tenth dispatch begins with an itinerary proposed by Barcelona-born, Rio de Janeiro-based artist Daniel Steegmann Mangrané and is followed by images and videos recording a day roaming Rio's natural and artistic landscapes with Bogotá-born, Mexico City-based curator Catalina Lozano, who narrates their day spent together. 


In the 11th episode, Swiss curator Sandino Scheidegger (Random Institute) visits Panama City in preparation for a solo exhibition by Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker at Casa Santa Ana in 2021. Conlon and Harker collaboration since 2006 (while also pursuing their own individual art practices) has resulted in seventeen video works to date. The places Sandino, Donna and Jonathan visited together pointed to the origin of some of their video works, the ideas behind them, or simply served as stages in their pieces, turning into “an exercise in sneaking through fences to reach former recycling plants, imagining how things looked before the skyscrapers took over, and navigating the complex social fabric of Panama City — all while getting a taste of local food between every stop.” 


The 12th episode from Tbilisi, Georgia, set a different tone in the online series as it was programmed to take place in late May 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic. The itinerary set by Tbilisi-based artist Nino Kvrivishvili to lead Melbourne-based Associate Professor Tara McDowell became a WhatsApp video tour/conversation around Nino's artistic practice and the Georgian silk industry — a production that began in Tbilisi in the 5th century and continued until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. 


→ RELATED CONTENT:

Episode #12 of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Nino Kvrivishvili and Tara McDowell from Tbilisi, 25 Jun 2020 
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=7159211982397983135/episode-12-of-incidents-of-travel

Episode #11 of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Sandino Scheidegger and Donna Conlon & Jonathan Harker from Panama City, 9 April 2020
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=4425215029591365006/11-episode-of-incidents-of-travel

Tenth episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Catalina Lozano and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané from Rio de Janeiro, 
29 January 2020
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=144735152408473327/tenth-episode-of-incidents-of-travel

The ninth episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Becky Forsythe and Þorgerður Ólafsdóttir, 8 February 2019
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=6371927610418460689

The eighth episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Alejandra Aguado and Diego Bianchi, 6 September 2019
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=8721104601538735691

Seventh episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Camila Marambio and Lucy Bleach from Hobart, Tasmania, 28 June 2018
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=1055853895543348027

The sixth episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Marianna Hovhannisyan and students from the National Center of Aesthetics from Yerevan, Armenia, 1 March 2018
http://www.lttds.org/blog/blog.php?id=5887133486742947361

The fifth episode of 'Incidents (of Travel)' – Dispatch by Simon Soon and chi too from Terengganu, Malaysia, 26 April 2017 
http://www.lttds.org/blog/blog.php?id=4083951540089486920

The fourth episode of 'Incidents (of Travel)' – Dispatch by Pedro de Llano and Luisa Cunha from Lisbon, Portugal, 2 March 2017 
http://www.lttds.org/blog/blog.php?id=4185860148466062617

The third episode of 'Incidents (of Travel)' – Dispatch by Yu JI and Xiao Kaiyu reporting from Suzhou, China, 6 September 2016 
http://www.lttds.org/blog/blog.php?id=1437935620149738144

Second 'Incidents (of Travel)' dispatch by Moses Serubiri and Mohsen Taha reporting from Jinja, Uganda, 30 June 2016 
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=2504250800654900933

Kadist and Latitudes present 'Incidents (Of Travel)' online, 31 May 2016
http://www.lttds.org/blog/blog.php?id=1076947282278624159


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Latitudes’ “Out of office”: wrap up of the 2019–20 season

Seen in l'Hospitalet de Llobregat. Photo: @marianacanepaluna

In what has now become something of a Latitudes’ tradition we wrap up the season with a retrospective glance behind the scenes of some of our projects and activities of the previous twelve months (see the 2008-92009-102010-112011-122012–132013–142014–152015–16, 2016–172017–18 and 2018–19 posts). This last year has of course been unprecedented in so many ways. From mid-March, the Covid-19 pandemic meant that everything that had been in place was suddenly thrown into permanent doubt, delayed, or simply cancelled. As a healthcare crisis now precipitates an economic crisis, and with things we once took for granted (among them international travel, and visiting physical art exhibitions) completely changed for the foreseeable future, it is with more than a little trepidation that we even dare to look back at what once seemed normal. 

Keep well, keep safe.
#DistanciaManosMascarilla
#DistànciaMansMascareta


September 1, 2019: New season, new month, new cover story. ‘Polperro to Detroit’ tracked the improbable connection between Polperro, a small town Latitudes passed through on its summer sojourn, and an American Rust Belt metropolis we would be visiting later this September as participants of the Red Bull Arts Global Curatorial Initiative: Detroit.

September monthly Cover Story on https://www.lttds.org/coverstory

September 9–15, 2019: Beginning of the 2019–2020 season. This was our first trip to Helsinki where we were participating in two events. Firstly Latitudes was a partner organisation in the arts festival ‘Today Is Our Tomorrow’, a three-day event (12, 13 and 14 September) initiated by PUBLICS that presented a collaboratively curated program of temporary public art commissions, live performance, music, dance, theatre, literature and symposia. Latitudes invited Mercedes Azpilicueta to present her performance ‘Yegua-yeta-yuta’ (2015) at Club Kaiku, an underground music venue renowned for hosting an innovative lineup of DJs. 

We were also guests of Frame Contemporary Art Finland’s Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities’, a week composed of talks, performative dialogues, interventions and screenings developed in collaboration with a number of local partners.


‘Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities’ organised by Frame Contemporary Art Finland, hosted at the Museum of Impossible Forms.

 
September 12, 5:30h: Mercedes Azpilicueta during her talk in Helsinki.

 
Inga Lace’s Instagram Stories documenting the conversation between Mercedes and Latitudes on September 13, 2019.


Mercedes during her rehearsal at Club Kaiku. 

Mercedes and Max in the ferry to Suomenlinna Island to visit HIAP and a film installation by Marjolijn Dijkman and & Toril Johannessen. 

 

With Jussi Koitela (Head of Programme, Frame Contemporary Art Finland) and curators Anne-Sophie Springer and Sofia Lemos in HIAP's office space in Suomenlinna island. 

Listening to Wet Code, a sound piece by Myriagon at Suomenlinna Island. Photo by Ida Enegren / Frame Contemporary Art Finland.


On top of the Temppeliaukion Kirkko (A church built into rock) with Anne-Sophie Springer and Sofia Lemos.


Our October 2019 cover story featured Azpilicueta's performance programmed during TODAY IS OUR TOMORROW. 

PUBLICS' Library in Helsinki incorporated Latitudes-edited publications to their beautiful shelves in Vallila, Helsinki.



September 18–23, 2019: Joined the 2019 EXPO CHICAGO/Red Bull Arts Global Curatorial Initiative participating in a range of events and visits in Chicago (18–21 September) and Detroit (21–23 September).

→ Read the photo report here.

Caught purchasing books during our visit to ExpoChicago's section Index Art Book Fair. Photo: Casa Bosques. 

Morning session with the participating curators in the EXPO CHICAGO/Red Bull Arts Global Curatorial Initiative together with the Art Institute curatorial staff at the Art Institute Chicago. Photo: Expo Chicago.

The first stop in Detroit was visiting Dabls’ African Bead Gallery where we met its creator, Olayami Dabls led by our fantastic host Scott Campbell, Artist Liaison at Red Bull Arts Detroit, accompanied also by curator Maria Inés Rodríguez. 

Laura Mott (Senior Curator of Contemporary Art and Design) leading a tour of her curated exhibition ‘Landlord Colors: On Art, Economy, and Materiality’ at the Cranbrook Art Museum. Painting by Yoan Capote.

September 20, 2019: Meanwhile in Copenhagen, Rasmus Nilausen's solo exhibition ‘Bluetooth’ opened at Overgaden. Institut for Samtidskunst, Copenhagen, for which Max contributed an essay.

→ Exhibition views and text (pdf).

(↑↓) Views from Nilausen's exhibition at Overgarden, Copenhagen. Photos: Anders Sune Berg. 



October 7, 2019: artfridge.de published the interview Helene Romakin conducted with us over the summer.

→ Read the interview.

artfridge.de



October 9, 2019: The artist Céline Mathieu (and former BAR TOOL #2 participant) published an article in the Belgian magazine HART on the Barcelona art scene mentioning Latitudes and our three closed-door sessions ‘Barcelona / Such a beautiful horizon: Critical social infrastructure to promote art scene health resilience’ Latitudes led with BAR Tool's 2018–19 participants.



October 17-19, 2019: Lecture ‘4.543 billion and abstract social nature’, Jornadas Eremuak, AzkunaZentroa, Bilbao. Taking as a reference point one of the ten galleries hosting the 2017 group exhibition ‘4,543 billion. The matter of matter’ at the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, we expanded on the notion of ‘abstract social nature’ coined by environmental historian and geographer Jason W. Moore through the work of four exhibiting artists: Lara Almarcegui, Pep Vidal, Lucas Ihlein and Amy Balkin.

→ Video presentation here (Spanish, 24'45'')
→ Q&A session here (Spanish, 19'52'').


Photo: Eremuak.

October 23, 2019: First meeting with Joan Morey to discuss the adaptation of his retrospective exhibition COLLAPSE for Casal Solleric in Palma de Mallorca, opening at the end of January. Time is of the essence.



November 1, 2019: Max Andrews’s feature-length article ‘The Rise, Fall and Reinvention of Spain’s First Modern Art Museum’ on Valencia’s IVAM was published in the November–December 2019 (issue 207) of frieze magazine. The article focuses on the city’s trailblazing Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM) through the cultural and (often notorious) political agents that have forged its institutional history since it opened in 1989.

→ Featured as our November 2019 Cover Story.

November 2019 Cover Story www.lttds.org/coverstory

November 7, 2019: Latitudes presents the lecture ‘Curating in the Web of Life’ as part of the public programme for the group exhibition ‘The Coming World: Ecology as the New Politics 2030–2100’, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 7 November 2019. This was our first trip to Russia.

→ Video of the lecture (1h 28min including Q&A).


(↑↓) Latitudes during the lecture ‘Curating in the Web of Life’. Photo: Anton Donikov. © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. 
 
Hello from Moscow's Red Square. 

The lobby of the heartbreaking zoological Museum in Moscow, the second largest zoological museum in Russia in Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street
(↑↓) The most beautiful, cleanest and ad-free metro network we've ever seen. 



November 20-25, 2019: Trip to Amsterdam Art Weekend (AAW). Mariana was writing a Roundup review on the event for art-agenda (published on December 13). Since we’ve already published a post in December 2020 about what we saw during the week, we’re now remembering on the always beautiful flower arrangements the Rijksakademie displays in their welcoming areas!

→ Earlier iterations of the AAW 2014, 2016 and 2018.





November 28, 2019: Inaugural screening of DART Festival of Contemporary Art Documentaries (28 November–1 December). Latitudes was a jury member this year together with film critic Quim Casas and visual artist Núria Güell, and awarded the film ‘Barbara Rubin & the Exploding NY Underground’ (USA, 2018, 78 min) by Chuck Smith as the best international documentary and ‘Elliott Erwitt – Silence Sounds Good’ (Spain-France, 2019, 61 min) by Adriana López Sanfeliu as the best national documentary.


The inaugural session of the 3rd edition of the festival took place at cinema Phenomena with the 1974 film ‘A bigger splash’ by Jack Hazan, and a welcome intro by TV host Laura Sangrà and DART Festival co-directors Enrichetta Cardinale and Marc Gomariz. Below one of the sessions at the always busy Cinemes Girona. Photo: DART Festival.





December 1, 2019: December gloom was compensated on our homepage by a feature on Edward Steichen’s 1936 exhibition ‘Delphiniums’, at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
September monthly Cover Story https://www.lttds.org/coverstory/

December 3, 2019: Press presentation of the 2019-20 season of Barcelona Producció coinciding with the opening of Martin Llavaneras’s solo show. 

 
(Left to right) Alexandra Laudo (Barcelona Producció 2019-20 jury member and tutor of Martin Llavaneras’ project), Oriol Gual (Capella director), David Armengol (Tutor coordination), and Jordi Ferreiro (artist in charge of the newly created mediation grant).

We-fie with the three artists Latitudes tutored this season (left to right): Lola Lasurt, Consol Llupià, Agustín Ortiz (and Lola's baby Margot).

December 13, 2019: art-agenda publishes Mariana's Amsterdam Roundup, expanded with more photos on this Longitudes' post.

Read the review.


December 20, 2019: Mariana attends the last (official) meeting as secretary and board member of the Fundació Privada AAVC, the organisation governing HANGAR Centre de Producció i Recerca d'Arts Visuals. The board has met on a regular basis between December 2015 and December 2019 in order to discuss all aspects regarding its daily running—overseeing expenditure, approving financial forecasts or more philosophical yet pressing issues over its daily governance. A new board begins the next four-year term 2020–24.

Christmas 2019: Slow inbox days dedicated to writing and editing artwork captions, finalising an essay and the press release for the new iteration of Joan Morey's retrospective adapted to Casal Solleric in Palma de Mallorca.

Max editing Joan Morey's texts for its new iteration at Casal Solleric

January 2, 2020: New Year, New Decade, New Month, New Cover Story. Featuring Adrián Villar Rojas’s ‘Poems for Earthlings’ transformative installation at Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, and featured in Mariana’s recent art-agenda Roundup.

January 2020 Monthly Cover Story on www.lttds.org, archived here

January 21, 2020: Publish a refreshed Reduce Art Flights website (first published in 2008!) now including an exhibition history and a transcript of the interview with RAF’s instigator, the late Gustav Metzger.

https://reduceartflights.lttds.org


January 22, 2020: First meeting with Clara Renau, Miriam Soms and Joana Hurtado, the team of the Fabra i Coats: Centre of Contemporary Art of Barcelona to begin work on a group exhibition for the Autumn 2020...


January 28, 2020: Launch of the 10th dispatch of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ with contributions from Catalina Lozano and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

http://incidents.kadist.org




January 31, 2020: Opening of the solo exhibition by Joan Morey ‘COLLAPSE. Bachelor Machine’ at Casal Solleric, Palma de Mallorca. The exhibition is an adaptation of the first two parts of the project COLLAPSE presented in three concurrent venues in Barcelona between September 2018 and January 2019.


Bringing one of the seven vitrine-coffins exhibiting materials related to Morey's performances. Photo: @joanmorey via Instagram. 

Exhibition vinyl placed at the entrance of the exhibition. 


Installing ‘COS SOCIAL’ (2017) film. Photo: Joan Morey. 

Joan Morey guided tour on the opening night.

 
Celebratory coques i espinagades with Joan at the unbeatable Fornet de la Soca. 

February 21, 2020: Max joins Agustín Ortiz Herrera (whose research ‘Naming, Possessing. Critique of Taxonomic Practice’ is mentored by Latitudes as part of the Barcelona Producció 2019–20 season) the Cabinet of Curiosities of Francesc Bolós in Olot.

→ Featured in Latitudes' March cover story.


Agustín browsing through one of the copies of Linnaeus' "Species plantarum".



February 24, 2020: Ahead of ARCOmadrid art fair, Max (Contributor Editor, frieze magazine) selected some institutional and gallery shows to see in Madrid this week.


Frieze magazine organised evening drinks during ARCOmadrid at the legendary Bar Cock near Gran Via.

March 10, 2020: Attended the opening of Pere Llobera's solo show at La Capella, the second of the Barcelona Producció 2019-20 season. This became the last opening before the state of alarm was declared in Spain (eventually extended until June 21) triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and we had to remain at home until June.


View of Pere Llobera's exhibition ‘Faula Rodona. Sols i embogits. Entre la precisió total i una cancó de Sau’ (Circular Fable. Alone and Maddened; Between Total Accuracy and a Song by Sau). Photo: Pep Herrero / La Capella. 

March 13, 2020: Confinement. Projects on hold, conversations postponed. One of them was the three-day seminar Agustín Ortiz Herrera was preparing in the context of his ongoing research project ‘To name, to own. Critique of taxonomic practice’. Agustín’s research is one of the three projects mentored by Latitudes as part of the Barcelona Producció 2019–20 production grant. More on this and other ‘frozen’ projects, hopefully soon.

Photo: Agustín Ortiz Herrera, 2019.

April 2020: This month marks Latitudes’ 15 anniversary, celebrated during a strict lockdown.


April 9, 2020: . Launch of the 11th dispatch of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ with an itinerary by the artist duo Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker and report and photos by curator Sandino Scheidegger (Random Institute) from Panamá City, Panama. 

incidents.kadist.org


May 2, 2020: After more hours than we'd like to know or admit (and one of the few good side effects confinement allowed) we finally launched our rebuilt and redesigned website.

https://www.lttds.org 



May 22, 2020: Consol Llupià, one of the three artists we have been tutoring this year as part of the visual arts grant scheme Barcelona Producció, launched her online initiative ‘Vibraera’, part of her long-term ongoing project ‘La Balena de El Prat a El Prat’ [The El Prat Whale to El Prat]. On this day, during the migratory season of Whales around the Mediterranean coast and coinciding with a new moon, Llupià invited collaborators to join her in “an energetic rebellion, a call for collective immaterial action”, as she described it. This unfolding chapter was conceived as a symbolic communicative dialogue between humans and whales and consisted of an energetic global gathering intended to activate the vibrational capacity of humans to generate interspecies connections.


June 1, 2020: Jitsi catching up with the tutors of Barcelona Producció (Antònia Folguera missing) to discuss the results of the co-signed Open Letter (in Catalan) requesting the Barcelona Institute of Culture to immediately launch the 2021 Open Call, a petition that thankfully became effective a week later.

Photo: David Armengol. 

June 24, 2020: The of our contributions to Questions and Appearances, an initiative by Kadist, is Fermín Jiménez Landa’s response to our question “What is your advice, or warning, to the government?”, followed on the 8th by a second one (“What is importantly non-essential?”) which we posed to Arash Fayez.

https://www.instagram.com/questionsandappearances/


 

June 29, 2020: Technical meeting in preparation of Lola Lasurt’s forthcoming show at La Capella. David Armengol (Barcelona Producció 2019-20 coordinator, affectionally known as the ‘Tutor of tutors’) picked up an old-fashioned drawing table from Massana art school.


July 1, 2020: New cover story and a new episode of Incidents (of Travel) from Tbilisi, Georgia. A spring itinerary through the city’s former silk industry and the heart of Nino Kvrivishvili’s practice, the tour took place via a screen in Australia as Georgia emerged from the Spring lockdown.

→ incidents.kadist.org

Latitudes’ July 2020 homepage. 

July 21, 2020: After a month's of postponement, Lola Lasurt’s exhibition ‘Children’s Game’ opens at La Capella. It’s been a long process since it was announced as one of the three selected shows to be produced and presented at La Capella.

Lasurt’s exhibition looks back at the 1968 retrospective exhibition ‘Miró. Barcelona 1968-69’ with which La Capella was inaugurated as a venue dedicated to contemporary art. Through a new series of paintings, photos, videos, and ceramics, Lasurt addresses the socio-political turmoil at the end of the 1960s. She depicts imagery related to childhood published in the national press during the two-month state of exception declared in Spain just a few days after the Miró exhibition had ended.

Exhibition sheet (pdf)
Exhibition publication (pdf)



August 2019 meeting discussing layout and production calendar. 

(↑↓) During the Spring lockdown, we continued to check on each other and share the work-in-process. Lola was working on her ceramics and paintings in a garage-turned-studio nearby her house in Manresa and we were writing the text for the exhibition sheet. 

(↑↓) 14–16 July 2020: Lotema team during the installation. 




Due to the pandemic health measures, there was no opening event and visitors RSVPd in groups of 10. Photo: Pep Herrero/La Capella.

Lola Lasurt during one of the guided visits. Photo: Pep Herrero/La Capella.

Publication designed by Carles Murillo. 

July 23, 2020: Joan Morey presented the performance “COLLAPSE. Possible Machine” at the house museum Can Balaguer as part of his retrospective exhibition ‘COLLAPSE. Bachelor Machine’ at Casal Solleric (now extended until 6 September 2020). The performance took his 2017 performance ‘TOUR DE FORCE’ as a departing point but situated it in the present SARS-CoV-2 global pandemic.

(↑↓) July 9, 2020: Rehearsals with the actresses Anna Sabaté and Candela Capitán, protagonists in ‘COLAPSO. Máquina posible’ alongside Nadal Roig. Photo: @joanmorey 


(↑↓) Poster produced for the performance with an essay by Latitudes. Photos: Joan Morey. 

Latitudes’ August 2020 Cover Story.

Looking forward to (hopefully) attending some Autumn activities for Lasurt’s recently opened exhibition at La Capella, to publicly present Agustín Ortiz’s ongoing research and publication in October, as well as Consol Llupià’s publication. And, most importantly, to open on October 17, the group show ‘Things Things Say’ we have been working on since January, to be presented at Fabra i Coats: Contemporary Art Center of Barcelona’s ground floor. Things will be revealed in due course.


RELATED CONTENTS:
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Cover Story—September 2019: ‘Polperro to Detroit’

Latitudes' homepage www.lttds.org

The September 2019 monthly Cover Story ‘Polperro to Detroit’ is now up on Latitudes' homepage: www.lttds.org

“In 1937 the retired sailor Samuel Puckey began transforming Peace Haven, his 19th-century fisherman’s cottage, into what would become known as The Shell House. Over the years Puckey used his collection of cowries, limpets, clams and other shells from around the world to embellished the façade with his maritime memories, including a depiction of the eminent Eddystone lighthouse. The Shell House is effectively a public artwork (as well as being holiday cottage) in Polperro, an idyllic seaside village in Cornwall, England. Polperro once revolved around the vast shoals of pilchards that used to come into Cornish waters in late summer. The thriving fishing industry was the mainstay of the community, and the seine-netted and salted pilchards exported in their millions to Italy.”


Continue reading
→ After September 2019, 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 activities.

→ RELATED CONTENTS:


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Latitudes' "out of office": wrap up of the 2018–2019 season

Seen in Malasaña, Madrid. Photo: @marianacanepaluna

This is our tenth ‘Out of Office’ post, a tradition which started with this 2008-9 post in pre-Facebook, pre-Twitter, pre-Instagram days. We’ve come a long way, but remain faithful to the idea of sharing behind-the-scenes moments. Below we share a selection of the art we’ve seen, the trips we had a chance to take, the conversations we began, the meals we shared, and (oh, we particularly love these) installation scenes. Subverting the institutional convention of the year-end report, our ‘out of office’ mixes official and unofficial photos, screengrabs and we-fies, even! Revision, reflection, remembrance, re-ignition. Create or die!

September 1, 2018: New season, new month, and new cover story on the Harald Szeemann exhibition in Bern (cover story archive here).
September 5, 2018: Launch of a new dispatch of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ from Buenos Aires, Argentina. In this eighth episode, Móvil co-founder and curator Alejandra Aguado followed the itinerary devised by the artist Diego Bianchi around the self-regulated community Velatropa, the buzzing commercial area of Once, identifying human and non-human flows and interactions. This became an entry point for discussing Bianchi’s interests in how, as consumers, we define a particular zeitgeist and appropriate trends that enable us to affirm our identities.

Each of the 20 photographs is augmented by one or more extra assets – a brief commentary, a sound or a caption – accessed by clicking the words overlaying the images. 

‘Incidents (of Travel)’ is an ongoing editorial project edited by Latitudes and produced by KADIST. Earlier offline conversations have taken place in Chicago (USA), Jinja (Uganda), Suzhou (China), Lisbon (Portugal), Terengganu (Malaysia) and Yerevan (Armenia).


September 11–15, 2018: Installation and opening of the exhibition ‘Cream Cheese and Pretty Ribbons!’ at Martin Janda Gallery, Vienna. 

But before that, works like those by Eulàlia Rovira and Adrian Schindler were carefully crated and traveled to Vienna from their studio in Barcelona.


Photo: Eulàlia Rovira and Adrian Schindler.

Installation process of ‘Cream Cheese and Pretty Ribbons!’. Photo: Martin Janda Gallery.

Exhibition file with correspondence, floor plan, artist's CVs, checklist, price list, technicians notes, etc. Above and following photos: Latitudes.

Mariana installing David Bestué’s ‘Trencadissa’ (2013).

(Left) Eulàlia Rovira and Adrian Schindler’s ‘Els peus fixats al terra delatant cap impaciència’ [THE FEET FIXED TO THE GROUND BETRAY NO IMPATIENCE] (2016) and (right) photograph series by Sean Lynch, part of the installation ‘A BLOW BY BLOW ACCOUNT OF STONE CARVING IN OXFORD’, (2013-14).


Eulàlia and Adrian holding their print. Where shall we hang it?

With Sean, Eulàlia and Adrian. Unanimously decided Adrian’s arm was the longest and therefore would perform better as a ‘we-fie’ stick. 


September 14, 2018: The day after the opening Eulàlia and Adrian presented “One motif says to another ‘I can't take my eyes off you’” a new performance produced for the occasion at the gallery (focus of the October Cover Story), and Sean Lynch performed the lecture ‘A Blow by Blow Account of Stonecarving in Oxford’, parrots and owls! More photos.
October 2018 cover story. Archived here.

September 2—18, 2018: Intermittent installation of Joan Morey’s exhibition ‘COLLAPSE’ at the Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona — Fabra i Coats.


Deciding among the two options for the façade banners. Italics or not?

Last-minute proofreading of exhibition captions and panels.
Planning the next steps during the installation with technician guru Alberto Calvete.
A heads up to visitors.
Listing the contents in each vitrine.
Wall labels, exhibition guide, essay and remote controls.

September 19, 2018: Opening of Morey’s exhibition ‘COLLAPSE’, Centre d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona – Fabra i Coats. 


 Opening photos: Eva Carasol. 

September 27, 2018: First reenactment of Joan Morey’s performance ‘POSTMORTEM. Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu’ [POSTMORTEM. To have done with the judgment of God] (2006–2007) interpreted by Sònia Gómez, in the context of the exhibition ‘Desiring machine, Working machine’ at the Contemporary Art Centre of Barcelona – Fabra i Coats.

‘POSTMORTEM. Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu’ [POSTMORTEM. To have done with the judgment of God] (2006–2007) published in frieze magazine Instagram.

September 28–October 7, 2018: Research trips to London  during Frieze art week (blog post here, art-agenda round-up here) and Liverpool for the Liverpool biennial (photo report here). 


While in London we met with Valentina Ravaglia, Assistant Curator, to donate Lawrence Weiner's limited edition tote bag, designed in 2015 to commemorate Latitudes’ 10th anniversary. Shortly after, the tote was included in Tate's ‘ARTIST ROOMS: Lawrence Weiner’ exhibition, on view from November 2, 2018, at The McManus Museum and Galleries in Dundee, Scotland, until February 17, 2019.

(Above and below) View of ‘Lawrence Weiner. ARTIST ROOMS’, National Galleries of Scotland and Tate. ©Lawrence Weiner. 

October 11, 2018: Second reenactment of Joan Morey’s performance within the exhibition ‘Desiring machine, Working machine’ at the Contemporary Art Centre of Barcelona – Fabra i Coats. ‘LLETANÍA APÒRIMA’ [APORIC LITANY] (2009) was interpreted by Jordi Vall-lamora.

Joan Morey. LLETANIA APÒRIMA (2009). Performance reenactment within the frame of the exhibition ‘COLLAPSE. Desiring MKachine, Working Machine’ (2018–2019). Photo: Noemi Jariod. Courtesy the artist.

October 12, 2018: art-agenda.com publishes Mariana Cánepa Luna’s Frieze Roundup review. Read it here.


October 12–14, 2018: Train to Arlès to visit the exhibition ‘Picture Industry: A Provisional History of the Technical Image’ at LUMA Arlès (Max Andrews’s review was published in December).



Frank Gehry’s building under construction. 
 A large exhibition devoted to Gilbert & George works. 
Saturday morning reception at LUMA.
Before the morning reception, a quick walkthrough Arlès busy Saturday market. 

October 19, 2018: (Secret) Site-visit to La Modelo prison with Joan Morey (artist) and Esther Doblas (executive production) to check the spaces, discuss script possibilities (plan A, B, C, D...), identify mobility issues, etc. At this point in time, nobody knew the location of the event which was only disclosed the very same evening of the performance.

Salvador Puig Antich, the last political activist executed by Franco’s dictatorial regime, was jailed in this wing, in the cell 443. He was garroted in March 1974 in a room where parcels were delivered to the prison.
 Advanced tangle wiring techniques.
 Central space. Morey makes notes on his map of all the access, exits, gallery numbering, etc.
 Exit to the largest prison yard.
 Cisterns placed outside the cells in cages to avoid prisoners hiding anything in them.

 Joan taking further notes nearby the room where prisoners were given methadone.

Joan, Esther and Mariana discuss options in the Panopticon-inspired central space (this cabin is not the original structure).

October 25, 2018: Fifth reenactment of Joan Morey’s performance within the exhibition ‘Desiring machine, Working machine’ at the Contemporary Art Centre of Barcelona – Fabra i Coats. ‘GRITOS Y SUSURROS. Conflicte dramàtic cinquè (amb l’obra d’art)’ [CRIES & WHISPERS. Fifth Dramatic Conflict (with the Work of Art)] (2009) was interpreted by Carme Callol and Tatin Revenga.

Carme Callol and Tatin Revenga rehearsal. Photo: Joan Morey.

Joan Morey, ‘GRITOS Y SUSURROS. Conflicte dramatic cinquè (ambos l’obra d’art)’ [CRIES & WHISPERS. Fifth Dramatic Conflict (with the Work of Art)], 2009. Interpreted by Carme Callol and Tatin Revenga. Performance reenactment within the frame of the exhibition ‘COLLAPSE. Desiring Machine, Working Machine’ (2018–2019). Photo: Noemi Jariod. Courtesy the artist.

October 26–27, 2018: Attending the opening of ‘Te toca a tí’ in Espai d'art contemporani de Castelló (EACC). Mariana’s review of the exhibition would be published on
 January 7, 2019, in art-agenda


Teresa Lanceta’s work, exhibition view of ‘Te toca a tí’ in Espai d’art contemporani de Castelló (EACC). 

November 1, 2018: Morey’s first performance of the series is this months’ focus on Latitudes’ home page. 
November 13, 2018: frieze.com publishes the review of Pere Llobera show at Bombon Projects and SIS galería by Max Andrews. Read the review here. Also included in the January-February 2019, issue #200, page 242.

November 15, 2018: Fourth reenactment of Joan Morey’s performance within the exhibition ‘Desiring machine, Working machine’ at the Contemporary Art Centre of Barcelona – Fabra i Coats. ‘BAREBACK. Fenomenología de la comunión’ [BAREBACK. Phenomenology of Communion], (2010) was interpreted by Manuel Segade.

Preparation of Manuel Segade’s outfit before the reenactment of the performance ‘BAREBACK. Fenomenología de la comunión’ [BAREBACK. Phenomenology of Communion], (2010) by Joan Morey. Photo: Noemi Jariod. Courtesy the artist.

Portrait of Manuel Segade at the end of his performance ‘BAREBACK. Fenomenología de la comunión’ [BAREBACK. Phenomenology of Communion], (2010) on Max Andrews’s Instagram.
November 18–22 Vienna Art Week; November 22-25 Amsterdam Art Weekend: This blog post documents the exhibitions and studios visited during our trip to Vienna, hosted by the Vienna Art Week. As part of the programme, Latitudes participated in a panel discussion on ‘Some Current Positions of Curating’ at das weisse haus.


(Above and below) Photos by eSeL.


November 22, 19:30h: Unfortunately due to our earlier engagement to attend the Vienna Art Week and a sudden change of dates, we were unable to attend the opening of Joan Morey’s ‘COS SOCIAL’ at Centre d’Art Tecla Sala, the second chapter of ‘COLLAPSE’. Below some install shots when the works arrived from Lleida’s La Panera.


Morey striking a pose on the façade of Tecla Sala. Photos: Latitudes.

November 22-25, 2018: Amsterdam Art Week. Visited De Appel, Rijksakademie OPEN Studios, Andriesse, Oude Kerk, RongWrong, Stedelijk museum, Ellen de Bruijne, Fons Welters, tegenboschvanvreden, andriesse eyck, a.o. Photo report here (with photos from the Vienna Art Week, too).

November 29, 2018: Fifth reenactment of Joan Morey’s performance within the exhibition ‘Desiring machine, Working machine’ at the Contemporary Art Centre of Barcelona – Fabra i Coats. ‘IL LINGUAGGIO DEL CORPO. Prólogo’ [IL LINGUAGGIO DEL CORPO. Prologue] (2015–2016) was interpreted by Catalina Carrasco and Gaspar Morey.

The final shot of ‘IL LINGUAGGIO DEL CORPO’ published on Max Andrews' Instagram (later deleted by Instagram due "not following their community guidelines on nudity").

December 1, 2018: Following on our recent trip to Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum to see their historic Brueghel exhibition, we decided to dedicate December’s cover story to another of their current shows: ‘Spitzmaus Mummy in a Coffin and Other Treasures’ conceived by filmmaker Wes Anderson and his partner Juman Malouf. 
December 2018 cover story on www.lttds.org

December 2–4, 2018: Short research trip to Madrid to visit exhibitions: group show ‘Querer parecer noche’ at the Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo in Móstoles; Lúa Coderch’s ‘La vida de O.’ at CentroCentro; comprehensive solo shows by Luigi Ghirri, Luis Camnitzer, Dorothea Tanning, and Dierk Schmidt at Museo Reina Sofia; Lina Bo Bardi at Fundación March; works by Portuguese artists Alexandre Estrela and João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva at La Casa Encendida; and a few solo exhibitions in commercial galleries such as David Goldblatt at Elba Benítez; Alejandro Cesarco in Parra & Romero; Eva Fàbregas at garcía galería; Enric Farrés Duran at NoguerasBlanchard and Daniel Jacoby at Maisterravalbuena. We also had time to squeeze in a visit to the Museo Geominero, a place we’ve long wanted to visit and never managed to find time for. And it didn’t disappoint. Highly recommended to everyone not only into minerals and stones but also nerds (as we are) on exhibition display and cabinets.

Lúa Coderch’s ‘La vida de O.’ at CentroCentro.
Alejandro Cesarco at ParraRomero, Madrid.

Above and below: Museo Geominero, Madrid.


Group exhibition ‘Querer parecer noche’ at the Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo (CA2M) in Móstoles.


Dierk Schmidt at Museo Reina Sofia’s Palacio Velázquez.

December 13, 2018: Sixth and final reenactment of Joan Morey’s performance within the exhibition ‘Desiring machine, Working machine’ at the Contemporary Art Centre of Barcelona – Fabra i Coats. ‘TOUR DE FORCE. El cos utòpic’ [TOUR DE FORCE. The Utopian Body] (2017) was interpreted by Eduard Escoffet.


Backstage makeup and application of fake tattoos – in the hurry the ‘Memento Mori’ tattoo on one on Escoffet’s arm was upside down. No big deal. 

December 20, 2018: frieze.com publishes Max’s review on the exhibition ‘Picture Industry: A Provisional History of the Technical Image’, a survey exhibition at LUMA Arlès captures the history of mechanically-reproduced imagery from the 19th century to the present. Read the review here.
January 7, 2019: art-agenda publishes Mariana’s review of the group exhibition ‘Te toca a tí [It's your turn]’ at Espai d'art contemporani de Castelló (EACC). Read the review here.

The review is also the focus of our January’s Monthly Cover Story on Latitudes home page (archived here).

January 8–10, 2019: Set up for the performance ‘Schizophrenic Machine’ by Joan Morey, the closing event of the three-part project ‘COLLAPSE’. Both exhibitions at the Centre d’art contemporani de Barcelona – Fabra i Coats and Centre d’art Tecla Sala close on January 13, 2019. 



January 10, 2019, at 7pm: Performance ‘COLLAPSE. Schizophrenic Machine’ by Joan Morey. Performance structured in a prologue and five acts inside Barcelona’s La Model prison. A group of people was driven by coach to the location from each of the two art centres that hosted the first two parts of ‘COLLAPSE’. The performance was integrated into the architecture and the memory of the building, creating an imposing immersive experience. Public restricted by capacity to 113 spectators. Attendance had to be requested in advance and was subject to prior selection and the acceptance of specific rules and a strict dress code. More here.

‘COLLAPSE. Schizophrenic Machine’ by Joan Morey.© 2019. All documentation photographs by Noemi Jariod. Courtesy of the artist.

January 14, 2019: frieze.com publishes Max’s fan letter on ‘Frank Zappa’s Genre-Defying ‘Civilization Phaze III’’. Published in Issue 200, January - February 2019. Read the text here.
February 1, 2019: New cover story focusing on Morey’s closing performance ‘COLLAPSE. Schizophrenic Machine’ at La Model prison in Barcelona.
February 8, 2019: Launch of a new ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ dispatch from Reykjavík (and cover story on Latitudes’ home page between March-April 2019). In this new itinerary, Canadian curator Becky Forsythe and Icelandic artist Þorgerður Ólafsdóttir navigate Reykjavík’s surroundings considering Þorgerður’s “current interest in Icelandic Spar (a form of transparent calcite), its double refraction and light-polarizing properties. In a race with daylight, they travel between sites, collecting moments and considering the ways in which geologic time surfaces in the context of human time.”

Each of the 27 photographs is augmented by one or more extra assets – a brief commentary, a sound or a caption – accessed by clicking the words overlaying the images.


‘Incidents (of Travel)’ is an editorial project that began in Spring 2016. It’s edited by Latitudes and produced by KADIST as part of their online projects. Earlier offline conversations have taken place in Chicago (USA), Jinja (Uganda), Suzhou (China), Lisbon (Portugal), Terengganu (Malaysia), Yerevan (Armenia) and Buenos Aires (Argentina).




February 20, 2019: After a few weeks facing the screen and months mining hard disks, we finally upload Latitudes’ redesigned portfolio, available to download for desktop/laptop/tablet view (83pp, 30.9 MB), for mobile (164pp,15.8 MB) or for print (164pp, 155.3 MB).



February 26–March 1, 2019: Three intensive days navigating ARCOmadrid events. We enjoyed Reina Sofía’s exhibitions dedicated to Chicago-based artist H. C. Westermann (reviewed by Mariana in the April issue of L’Officiel Art International) and Mapa Teatro’s site-specific installation as part of the Fisuras programme; David Bestué’s solo show at García Galería; Catalina Lozano’s exhibition ‘Winning by Losing’ at CentroCentro; Charlotte Moth’s subtle play with three works from CA2M’s collection in Móstoles, and Armando Andrade Tudela also at CA2M.


Above and below: David Bestué solo show at García Galería, Madrid.
(Above and below): Following on from Joao Laia’s earlier exhibition ‘Transmissions from the Etherspace’ in the same institution, his latest exhibition ‘Drowning in a sea of data’ —despite the ubiquity of the topic of the incessant presence of technology and algorithms in our daily lives — included great works such as Clemens von Wedemeyer’s film and Tomasz Kowalski’s small canvases.

Downstairs the highlights of this year’s Generación 2019 were Susanna Inglada and Lucía P. Moreno.
 Catalina Lozano’s group exhibition ‘Winning by Losing’ at CentroCentro. Above: work by Patricia Esquivias. Below: Work by Asier Mendizábal and (next images) Jorge Satorre and Xavier Salaberría.
(Above and below) Bravo to Charlotte Moth’s subtle play with three pieces in CA2M’s collection in dialogue with some of her work. A highlight was the two-part theatre backdrop painted by Leonor Fini in the 1950s and commissioned by Antonio el Bailarín for the 1956 International Festival of Granada.


March 13, 2019: Max’s review on ‘Domènec. Y la tierra será el paraíso’ exhibition at adn galería, Barcelona, published on frieze.com (also included in frieze, issue 202, April 2019).
23 March–16 April 2019: Montevideo (family trip) and Buenos Aires (work trip). Read a fully documented report of our week in Buenos Aires, invited by arteBA.

Max Andrews and Lara Marmor conversation ‘First Things First: Making Exhibitions for a General Audience’ covered the contradictions for curatorial and artistic strategies addressing larger audiences. Photo: Art Basel.

In ‘Beyond the Museum: New Institutional Frames for Art’ Mariana Cánepa Luna and Solana Molina Viamonte discussed some of the current transformations institutions undergo, as well as identifying forthcoming challenges. Photo: Art Basel.

Pizza and fugazza at El Cuartito with Alejandra Aguado.

April 2019: Two articles were published this month. Latitudes wrote a 14-page feature on Joan Morey for THE SEEN—Chicago’s International Online Journal of Contemporary and Modern Art, and Mariana wrote a review of H. C. Westermann’s retrospective ‘Goin’ Home’ (Volver a casa) exhibition at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, published in L’Officiel Art International’s issue #29. More on our writing archive.


The first page of the 14-page feature on Joan Morey’s performative practice was published on THE SEEN—Chicago’s International Online Journal of Contemporary and Modern Art.

Views of the H. C. Westermann's retrospective "Volver a casa" exhibition at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid. Photo: Latitudes.

Additionally, a third text appeared later this month: the essay ‘Thinking like a drainage basin’ included in the exhibition catalogue ‘Lara Almarcegui. Béton’ published by Silvana Editoriale, accompanying her solo exhibition at CAIRN centre d’art in Digne-les-Bains in southern France.

In 2011 Latitudes edited the monograph ‘Lara Almarcegui. Projects 1995–2010’ published by Archive Books.

(Two above) IVAM’s new sculpture park under construction.



(Two above) Views from their current permanent collection display ‘TIEMPOS CONVULSOS. Historias y microhistorias en la colección del IVAM’.

(Above and below) Views from the exhibition ‘Ice and Earth: The Shimmering Abstractions’ by Anna-Eva Bergman at Bombas Gens, Valencia. Read here


May 2–4, 2019: Trip to Valencia to research for an article on the Valencia art scene in the framework of IVAM’s 30th anniversary (to be published in November 2019 in frieze magazine).

May 6–31, 2019: Intense jury duty selecting Barcelona Producció awardees of the 2019–2020 season, 
an initiative of La Capella. Three long weeks reading 259 applications, debating with the rest of the jury, and interviewing 32 shortlisted candidates in order to award 15 production grants.


On June 3, winners are announced. Latitudes will tutor three of the fifteen awarded projects: ‘Joc d'infants’ [Children’s game] by Lola Lasurt (solo exhibition, June-October 2020), the offsite project ‘La Balena del Prat al Prat’ [The El Prat Whale to El Prat] by Consol Llupià, and the research ‘Nombrar, poseer. Crítica de la práctica taxonómica’ [To name, to own. Critique of taxonomic practice] by Agustín Ortiz Herrera.
May 29, 2019: Frieze published Max’s review ‘Ice and Earth: The Shimmering Abstractions’ on Anna-Eva Bergman’s retrospective of the terrestrial geographies at Bombas Gens, Valencia. Printed in the September 2019 issue of frieze (#205). 

Exhibition catalogue ‘Lara Almarcegui. Béton published by Silvana Editoriale.

June 4, 2019: We received copies of the publication ‘Lara Almarcegui. Beton’ (Silvana Editoriale, April 2019), which includes Latitudes' essay ‘Thinking like a drainage basin’. 


One of the cleverest interventions: (Theresa) ‘May you live in interesting times’, Venice Biennale 2019.

June 10–14, 2019: Visiting the Venice Biennale. Highlights: Jannis Kounellis at the Fondazione Prada; in the biennale enjoyed works by Khalil Joseph, Ed Atkins, Gabriel Rico, Hito Steyerl, Otobong Nkanga, Haris Epaminonda, Ulrike Müller, Michael Armitage, Gauri Gill (a highlight of Documenta14), Cyprien Gaillard, Jimmie Durham and Lara Favaretto, et. al. The group show at Punta della Dogana (always impeccably installed) had great pieces by Hicham Berrada, Charbel Joseph H. Boutros, Stéphane Saade, and Ari Benjamin; Christopher Kulendran Thomas at V-A-C; mixed feelings about Luc Tuymans at Palazzo Grassi; visited the empty Lithuanian (performances were only on Saturdays, Wednesdays has now been added to the schedule). In the Giardini, we enjoyed the presentations in France, Brazil, Belgium and Switzerland, and elsewhere Ghana, Cyprus, Wales, France, Madagascar, Dineo Seshee Bopape's work in the South African pavilion, the maze-like Italy and Hong Kong. Future Generations is always good to visit, though we'd be grateful if they could provide a leaflet or sheet with information on the exhibited works and artists. We enjoyed the presentations by Toyin Ojih Odutola, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Daniel Turner and Gala Porras-Kim and had time to swing by Victoria Miro which presented great paintings by Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Others are photographed below.

Detail from Cathy Wilkes’s work at the British Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2019.

Ingela Ihman’s work at the Nordic Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2019.

 Sergio Prego’s sculptures at the back of the Spanish Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2019.

Yu Ji sculptures in the Central Pavilion, Giardini, Venice Biennale 2019

Jimmie Durham’s ‘Black Serpentine’ in the Central Pavilion, Giardini, Venice Biennale 2019.

Lara Favaretto's ‘Thinking Head’ in the Central Pavilion, Giardini, Venice Biennale 2019.

Haris Epaminonda in the Arsenale, Venice Biennale 2019.

Joël Andrianomearisoa at the Madagascar Pavilion, CorderieVenice Biennale 2019.

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings at the Ghana Pavilion, Corderie, Venice Biennale 2019.

 Irish pavilion with work by Eva Rothschild, Corderie, Venice Biennale 2019.

Welsh Pavilion presented work by Sean EdwardsVenice Biennale 2019.

July 1, 2019: New cover story rewinding 10 years to Francesc Ruiz's (visionary?) participation in the group show ‘Sequelism, part 3: Possible, Probable and Preferable Futures’ in Arnolfini, Bristol.
July 11, 2019: Conversation with Lara Almarcegui at the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM) in the context of her new exhibition ‘Lara Almarcegui. Agras volcano. Mining rights


Photo © Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM).

July 16, 2019: Website update with a new page on our forthcoming participation in PUBLICS’s ‘Today Is Our Tomorrow’ art festival taking place in early September in Helsinki. Running parallel during the same week (9–15 September), Frame Contemporary Art Finland is organising ‘Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities’, a six-day gathering in which artists, curators, researchers and other critical minds ‘are invited to rehearse and debate hospitality towards diverse ways of knowing and challenging of dominant knowledges’.
July 19, 2019: As a board member of the Fundació Privada AAVC governing HANGAR since 2015, Mariana attends the last HANGAR board meeting before the Summer break. This is a longer than usual session as 2018 accounts have to be approved. Enjoying the blue sky and bright colours before entering the spreadsheet world.



Nearby building to HANGAR on c. Marroc / Espronceda.


July 22, 2019: We learn Joan Morey is one of the eight beneficiaries of the 27th edition of the Botín Foundation’s International Visual Arts Grants. Yey! 

July 26-28, 2019: Trip to Madrid to catch a few exhibitions before they finished and the August exodus. Henrik Olesen, David Wojnarowicz, Miriam Cahn, Sara Ramo and Rogelio López Cuenca at the Museo Reina Sofía; Inéditos 2019 at La Casa Encendida; Eva Fàbregas and Aimée Zito Lema at CentroCentro; the recently inaugurated Paloma Polo at CA2M in Móstoles; Joël Andrianomearisoa (at Galería Sabrina Amrani) and Darío Villalba at Sala Alcalá 31, two shows ending this weekend.


 Joël Andrianomearisoa at Galería Sabrina Amrani.

 Above and below: Darío Villalba at Sala Alcalá 31

 Eva Fàbregas ‘Gut feeling’ at CentroCentro.

  Paloma Polo, ‘A Fleeting Moment of Dissidence Becomes Fossilised and Lifeless After The Moment Has Passed’ 2014, at CA2M in Móstoles.

 Henrik Olesen, ‘SOME GAY-LESBIAN ARTISTS AND/OR ARTISTS RELEVANT TO HOMO-SOCIAL CULTURE BORN BETWEEN C. 1300–1870’ (2007) at Museo Reina Sofía.

David Wojnarowicz's photograph ‘What Is This Little Guy’s Job in the World’ (1990) at the Museo Reina Sofía


The 2019–2020 season will kick off on 9–15 September. We'll be in Helsinki participating in two events. Firstly the art festival ‘Today Is Our Tomorrow’, a three-day event (12, 13 and 14 September) initiated by PUBLICS presenting a collaboratively curated program of temporary public art commissions, live performance, music, dance, theatre, literature and symposia, local and international organisations. Latitudes’ has invited Mercedes Azpilicueta to present the performance ‘Yegua-yeta-yuta’ (2015) at Club Kaiku, an underground music venue renowned for hosting an innovative lineup of DJs. 


Skype conversation with the artist Mercedes Azpilicueta and Paul O'Neill from PUBLICS.

And secondly, we'll be part of Frame Contemporary Art Finland's ‘Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities’, a week composed of a series of talks, performative dialogues, interventions and screenings developed in collaboration with a number of local partners.

A few days later, we'll be participating in the 2019 EXPO CHICAGO/Red Bull Arts Global Curatorial Initiative visiting a range of institutions and artists in Chicago (17–21 September) and Detroit (21–23 September).


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Latitudes' "out of office": wrap up of the 2017–2018 season

This is possibly our favourite post of the year. Not just because it means we’ll shortly be taking a deserved summer break. But also because it brings a sense of accomplishment to look back at what has happened during the last twelve months — to remember the many conversations we’ve had, the places we’ve been privileged to visit and to refresh all those ideas and plans we intended to move forward. Onwards!

September 11—October 6, 2017
: Lead Faculty of the month-long "Geologic Time" residency at The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Alberta, Canada.


In this blog post, we shared some lithic impressions of the four weeks we spent leading a programme in Alberta's Rocky Mountains.

One of the epic moments of the month: a gorgeous hike to Stanley Glacier.
At the base of Mount Stanley, we found 505-million-year-old Burgess Shale trilobites, soft-body fossils from the Eldon formation.
Snow surprised us on our final week in Banff.

Welcome coffee with third week Guest faculty Sean Lynch.
A fun evening at High Rollers bowling alley in Banff town.

The closing event of "Geologic Time" was conceived as a two-hour infiltration into the pages, shelves, and display possibilities of The Banff Centre library. Featuring storytelling, documentation, annotation, sculpture, video, conversation and other live situations, the event presented some sediments of the ten participants’ ongoing research and geological collaborations. Pdf of the event programme.

Posters communicating some of the seminars and excursions programmed during the four weeks. Design/Photos: Latitudes.

Intervention by Semâ Bekirovic, based in Amsterdam. Bekirovic employed a number of external hard drives to act as pedestals for small stones. How many terabytes can a hunk of rock hold? What fragments of data detritus, chunks and grains of documents, broken off images, or weathered files, might be read and written, stored or retrieved?

Intervention by Caitlin Chaisson based in Vancouver. Chaisson researched a former experimental farm station in Agassiz, British Columbia, and a forgotten centennial time capsule buried under a granite marker there. Caitlin also presented a cut-and-paste station on the table next to the photocopier, and a display for the tall vitrine just behind it.

Intervention by Caroline Loewen, based in Calgary. Caroline delves deep into the story of sandstone in Alberta, a rock that gained widespread favour for building and decorative use following Calgary’s Great Fire of 1886. The black-and-brown Rundle Rock that was once quarried at the base of Banff-Centre-neighbour Mount Rundle and was used extensively in creating the Banff Springs Hotel also joins a conversation that anticipates an exhibition scheduled for next summer at Lougheed House in Calgary.

Intervention by Justy Phillips & Margaret Woodward (A Published Event) based in Hobart. Described by the Hobart-based duo as “an accumulative event of mineralogical, metaphysical and metallurgical telling”, the books that have come into the world to date have been incorporated into the library’s holdings alongside a glossary and can be found in the geology section upstairs.

An audio narration drafted by Penelope Smart was also heard on the upper floor, near the “memoirs and narrative” section. Here, an image of the exquisite marble bust by Giovanni Strazza animated Penny’s writing during the last weeks. It came to St.John’s, Newfoundland, in 1856. Ring the bell to the right of the main door of the Presentation Convent adjoining the Basilica in St.John’s and maybe one of the sisters will let you see it.

Remnants of the 2-hour event.

For the final event on October 5th, participants Becky Forsythe and Camila Sposati decided to collaborate through a performance using the library photocopier on the main floor. ‘"Receding Agate" and "Receding Rhodochrosite" was a collection of pages produced during a procedural artwork that slowly and methodically extracted copies of Agate and Rhodochrosite from Roger Caillois' "The Writing of Stones". Each page is a copy of the last, so text begins to harden into pebble-like shapes, and images begin to simplify as darker forms in an experiment of accumulation and sedimentation.’




Far Afield, the artistic-curatorial initiative led by the also participant Caitlin Chaisson, hand-bound the resulting two-part publication for Far Afield's library, a platform for "collecting and sharing publications that support experimental art practices".


      Photos by Far Afield's library.

27 October 2017: Cabaret at La Capella space, a public programme organised by the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona in the context of their Joan Brossa exhibition. The Capella space was decorated with fragments of Antoni Hervàs "El Misterio de Caviria" scenography, presented only a year earlier at the other La Capella space as part of the 2016 BCN Producció season. The project was mentored by Latitudes. Following Hervàs’s interests in Barcelona’s dwindling cabaret scene, he invited Gilda Love and castanets master Juan de la Cruz "el Rosillo" (who sadly passed away a few months after) to interpret a moving repertoire of popular Spanish copla, against the backdrop of parts of his scenography. 


Gilda Love and castanets master Juan de la Cruz "el Rosillo". Photos by Dani Cantó/MACBA.

5 November 2017: The 1878 painting by Alfred Roll "The Old Quarryman" is exchanged with Alfred Smith's "The Grave Docks" (1884) in the Latitudes-curated exhibition "4.543 billion" at the CAPC musée. The show remains on view another two more months, until January 7, 2018.

Photo: Lysian Gauthier © Musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux.

Photo: Alice Cavender.

(Unframed) Alfred Smith's (Bordeaux, 1854–Paris, 1936) “Le Quai de la Grave” [The Grave Docks] (1884). Collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux.

15 November 2017: Study day at CAPC musée "The Return of the Earth. Ecologising Art History in the Anthropocene." 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 convened by '4.543 billion'-curators Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna, saw art practice and historical research intertwining with environmental and geological narratives, and vice versa.

(Top) Left to right: Max Andrews, Xavier Ribas, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz and Ângela Ferreira during the debate. (Below) Ângela discussing her work in the exhibition. Photos (Above and below): Latitudes.


22 November 2017: Launch of Anna Moreno's "The Drowned Giant" publication at the Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya alongside architect and researcher Lluis A. Casanovas. Moreno's project is part of the BCN Producció 2017–18 programme of which Latitudes' is a jury member and mentor. 

Video of the presentation (in Catalan).

Photos (this and following): Pep Herrero / La Capella—Barcelona Producció 2017.




(Above) Photo: Anna Moreno.

Earlier that week we spent two intense mornings unpacking, hand spraying, numbering, inserting poster and booklet and re-packaging the limited edition of 300 vinyl records in the former Escola Massana, nearby La Capella. 

A short video on the project was screened on betevé tv (in Catalan, starting 04:24min).


Photos (Above and below): Latitudes.




1 December 2017: Latitudes introduces the documentary "Harald Szeemann. The Life of a Dreamer" premiered at Cinemes Girona as part of the first edition of Dart Festival 2017, the Festival of Documentary Cinema on Contemporary Art.


Photo: Latitudes.

9 December 2017: Mariana of Latitudes led the first "Parlem" [Let's talk] guided tour around the exhibition "Rosemarie Castoro. Focus at infinity", curated by Tanya Barson, MACBA's Chief Curator, a free event repeated on March 10 and March 31st.

Photo: Latitudes.

December 2017: Transition from Storify to Wakelet to archive all the social media stories related to Latitudes' projects.
Latitudes' Wakelet profile.

20 December 2017: Max Andrews of Latitudes (and Contributing Editor of frieze magazine) looks back at 2017 from Barcelona and beyond, at some art highlights from a tumultuous 2017, including Amie Siegel, Pierre Huyghe, Lúa Coderch, Francesc Torres, Adrià Julià, Jordi Mitjà, Eulàlia Rovira & Adrian Schindler, Joan Morey, and Claudia Pagès. 

2017 from Barcelona and beyond.

23 January 2018: Opening of the exhibition "Artengo2000" by Magda Vaz and Camille Orny at the sala petita of La Capella. This is the third and final Barcelona Producció project mentored by Latitudes.


(Above and below) View from "Artengo2000", an exhibition by Camille Orny and Magda Vaz at the Sala Petita in La Capella. Photo: Pep Herrero / La Capella.




23 January 2018: The online platform arteinformado.com publishes three artist recommendations by five Spanish-based curators. Mariana Cánepa of Latitudes selected Gerard Ortín, Martín Llavaneras and Anna Moreno.

25 January 2018: Print proofs of the forthcoming John Kørner's monograph published by Roulette Russe with texts by Oliver Basciano, Marie Nipper and Max Andrews' of Latitudes, published on the occasion of his recent mid-career retrospective "Altid Mange Problemer" at Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen (17 June–13 August 2017).



2 February 2018: Roulette Russe publish an image of John Kørner's book hot off the press.























9–10 February 2018: Trip to Montpellier to attend the opening of "Crash Test" at La Panacée/Centre d'art Contemporain MoCo.

16 February 2018: Max Andrews of Latitudes wrote a review of the show for frieze magazine published online and in the printed issue in April.

Installation piece by Alice Channer.
Work by Agnieszka Kurant (foreground) and Aude Pariset (background).

Detail of a vitrine piece by Bianca Bondi.

15 February 2018: Award ceremony of the 2017 Premis Ciutat de Barcelona, of which Mariana was a jury member in the Visual Arts category. Joan Morey was the awarded visual artist.

20–23 February 2018: Trip to ARCOmadrid fair, below some social media posts.






Photo: Roberto Ruiz.

Lola Lasurt presented ‘Donació’ (Donation) in the Galeria Joan Prats booth, a body of work produced for the ‘Composiciones’ commissioning series Latitudes curated for the Barcelona Gallery Weekend 2016. Lasurt was also exhibiting as part of La Casa Encendida's "Generación 2018".

22 February 2018: Max Andrews' review of Lúa Coderch's solo show "The girl with no door on her mouth" at àngels barcelona, is published online. The text is also be included in the printed issue in April. 
Review of Lúa Coderch's solo show "The girl with no door on her mouth" at àngels barcelona.


26 February 2018: After nearly two years in development, the sixth ‘Incidents (of Travel)dispatch from Yerevan, Armenia, is finally live! 

In her day-long tour Yerevan-born, San Diego-based curator and researcher Marianna Hovhannisyan extended the invitation to Vardan Kilichyan, Gohar Hosyan, and Anaida Verdyan, three students from the studio college at the National Center of Aesthetics. The purpose was to document transformed, disappeared, or permanently-closed art institutions in the city centre. The shared inquiry was based on how knowledge transmission and generational exchanges in the Armenian contemporary art field could be approached—particularly in terms of exploring the fragmented histories of its institutional work. As they were putting together the touches on this online version of the offline day, the studio-college itself closed down permanently at the end of 2017.

http://incidents.kadist.org/yerevan

2 March 2018: Book launch of John Kørner's monograph in Copenhagen. Published by Roulette Russe with texts by Oliver Basciano, Marie Nipper and Max Andrews.


 (Above and below). Courtesy Roulette Russe. Photos by Finn Wergel Dahlgren.






March 10 and 31, 2018: Second and third guided visits to Rosemarie Castoro's exhibition at MACBA led by Mariana Cánepa Luna of Latitudes.

MACBA's Instagram story announcing the talk.

March 20, 2018: Mariana Cánepa Luna of Latitudes reviews ‘Allora & Calzadilla’ at the Fundació Tàpies, Barcelona, for art-agenda."A piercing whistle punctuates the blaring of a trumpet. But in the columned central space of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, the only visible instrument is a grand piano. For three days a week throughout the course of the exhibition, the instrument is played—and, one could say, worn—by a pianist who stands in a hole cut into its center."

Mariana Cánepa Luna of Latitudes reviews ‘Allora & Calzadilla’ at the Fundació Tàpies, Barcelona, for art-agenda.

The same day, we sent the Spring newsletter to our contacts, in English and in Spanish.

12—14 April 2018: Three performances by Les Brontë, Quim Pujol and Eliana Beltrán over three consecutive evenings at La Capella, part of the BCN Producció 2017–18 programme of which Latitudes' is a jury member and mentor.


(Above and below) "Fine Cherry" performance by Les Brontë. Photos: Latitudes.





"Verde Croma" by Quim Pujol. Photos: Latitudes.

"Reading Room #3" by Eliana Beltrán. Photos: Latitudes.


1 May 2018: Max Andrews' profile on Madrid-based artist Teresa Solar Abboud goes online on frieze website.



28 April–4 May 2018: Trip to Berlin during the Gallery Weekend, and later to Cologne to visit Haegue Yang's mid-career retrospective ‘ETA 1994–2018’ at Museum Ludwig, and Ana Jotta's first solo exhibition in Germany at the Temporary Gallery. More on this blog post and on this Wakelet feed.





23–29 May 2018: Trip to London to visit +35 exhibitions, friends, and family – highlights below, full photo report here. Short day trip to Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum (a favourite of ours), the Natural History Museum and Modern Art Oxford. 

 (Above and below) Cinthia Marcelle's "The Family in Disorder" (2018) at Museum and Modern Art Oxford.
(Above) The incredible main hall of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.
 (Above) The opening of Leonor Antunes's "a thousand realities from an original mark" at Marian Goodman.Polycarbonate and brass screens and rope sculptures. Each screen corresponds to the exact measurements of one of the glass panels in the Upper Lawn Pavilion in Wiltshire, built between 1959 and 1962 by the British architects Alison and Peter Smithson (1928-1993 and 1923-2003). 

 Fantastic assembly of Markus Lüperz's tent paintings at Michael Werner Gallery, which the artist painted at age 24 using distemper on canvas.

 Batia Suter's work at The Photographers' Galery. One of the nominees for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2018, finally won by Luke Willis Thompson with his striking film "autoportrait".
   (Above) Antoni Hervàs studio at Gasworks during his 3-month residency.
   (Above) View of Trafalgar Square with Michael Rakowitz's "The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist" featuring on the Fourth Plinth commission.
(Above) Peter Gabriel discussing his during the internet interspecies symposium "The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish" curated by Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa Ramos for the Serpentine Gallery at the London Zoo.

Things that make us very happy: when a friend travels half the world to find one of our publications (Amikejo catalogue by Mousse Publishing in 2011) in the library of TEORética in Costa Rica and shares a snapshot on Twitter :-)

28 June 2018: The seventh ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ dispatch from Hobart, Tasmania, goes live on http://incidents.kadist.org/ On this occasion, the offline conversation took place between curator Camila Marambio and artist Lucy Bleach. We're also working on the eighth destination: Buenos Aires.
Throughout June–July 2018: Intense writing period in preparation for two forthcoming exhibitions: ‘Cream cheese and pretty ribbons!’ (Galerie Martin Janda, Vienna, opening on September 13 and, on view until October 14) and ‘COLLAPSE’, a solo exhibition by Joan Morey opening on September 19 over two floors of the Centre d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona - Fabra i Coats, with the following chapters at the Centre d'Art Tecla Sala (23 November 2018–13 January 2019) and a new commission at a yet-undisclosed location (10 January 2019).


18–29 July 2018: Two days in Dublin followed by a 10-day residency in Askeaton, as part of Askeaton Contemporary Art's (ACA) thirteenth annual event "Welcome to the neighbourhood". In 2018 ACA invited artists Matt Calderwood, Jonny Lyons, Ruth Clinton, and Niamh Moriarty, alongside curators Gareth Bell-Jones (Flat Time House, London) and Latitudes. More on this post.

Desmore castle undergoing restoration.
Artists and POW workers after the tour.
RUSAL Aughinish alumina plant from afar, this is the largest alumina refinery in Europe.
Group trip to Lismore Castle upper garden in County Waterford.
The gardens featured works by Franz West (above) and Rashid Johnson (below).

The Grange Stone circle.



During the residency, we learnt of the story of ‘the Pilgrim’, a merchant from Barcelona who arrived in Askeaton around 1767 and who lived out his life in the Franciscan friary, dying there in 1784. Digging further in the local library, we came across a 1984 article written by Tim Kelly in a back issue of the ABC News, Askeaton’s local publication of record. The story reveals a dramatic narrative bringing to life a cryptic inscription found in the cloister that reads “Beneath lies the Pilgrim’s body, who died January 17, 1784”. The tale involves an Italian, a Spaniard, and a morbid blood-hunt that links Barcelona with Askeaton and is read aloud by artist Carl Doran. 


Matt Calderwood's boat ready to sail on the River Deel.

Making of Jonny Lyons’ "Joyride" on the River Deel.

"Welcome to the neighbourhood" Open day.



August 2018: Aaaand we’re out of office! Kinda.

Save the following dates:

13 September, 6–9pm: Opening of ‘Cream cheese and pretty ribbons!’ at Galerie Martin Janda, Vienna. 


14 September, 6pm: Performance “One motif says to the other: I can’t take my eyes off you” by Adrian Schindler and Eulàlia Rovira. Followed by the artist lecture: “A Blow by Blow Account of Stonecarving in Oxford” by Sean Lynch. Part of the exhibition ‘Cream cheese and pretty ribbons!’ at Galerie Martin Janda, Vienna.

19 September, 19h: Opening of ‘Joan Morey. COLLAPSE’, Centre d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona - Fabra i Coats.




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