Longitudes

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

Partner organisation in ‘Today Is Our Tomorrow’, participation with Mercedes Azpilicueta, PUBLICS – club Kaiku, Helsinki, 12–14 September 2019

 Mon, Sep 2 2019
Graphic identity of the art festival. Design: julia.studio.


‘Today Is Our Tomorrow’ is a collaborative, collective, and transdisciplinary festival initiated by Helsinki-based curatorial agency PUBLICS, produced in partnership with local and international organisations, initiatives and institutions. The programme will include a co-commissioned and collaboratively curated programme of temporary public art commissions, live performance, music, dance, theatre, literature and symposia, and will pilot in Club Kaiku complex in Kallio, an underground music venue renowned for hosting an innovative lineup of DJs, and the neighbouring spaces Kieku and Stidilä.

The 2019 edition of ‘Today Is Our Tomorrow’ is curated, commissioned, organised in collaboration with the Finnish partners: Academy of Fine Arts, Baltic Circle, Globe Art Point, IHME Helsinki, Kohta Gallery, Live Art and Performance Studies (LAPS), and Museum of Impossible Forms, and the international partners Index Foundation from Stockholm, osloBIENNALEN from Oslo, the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art from Riga, and Latitudes from Barcelona.

The programme looks at ‘other’ versions of the present already being lived in Finland and globally: from Alternative futures to Indigenous-futures, to Afro-futures, to Asian-futures, to Eco-futures, to Bio-futures, to Queer and Feminist futures, and to non-hegemonic futures.
Graphic identity of the art festival.
At the invitation of PUBLICS to participate in the festival, Latitudes has invited Buenos Aires-born, Amsterdam-based artist Mercedes Azpilicueta to present her performance ‘Yegua-yeta-yuta’ at Kieku (ground loor, next to Stidilä) on Friday 13 September, 11–11:30pm. A day earlier, on Thursday 12 September, Latitudes will be in conversation with the artist at 5:30h also at Kieku.

‘Yegua-yeta-yuta’ (2015-ongoing) is an evolving solo performance by Azpilicueta that is part scripted, part improvised. Composed from a litany of hundreds of pejorative, abusive, and vulgar insults directed at women in Argentina, it transforms the everyday language of misogyny and harassment into a kind of tragicomic exorcism. Many of the words derive from the street slang of Buenos Aires, especially Lunfardo, a colloquial and cryptic dialect that first arose among working-class Italian-immigrant and tango communities in Argentina and Uruguay during the late 1800s. For example, yegua literally means a mare – a female horse, a slur for a “difficult” woman. A yeta is a person who brings bad luck, while a yuta is someone corrupt or unscrupulous, and slang for the police. Accompanied by a percussive beat, Azpilicueta reclaims the power to offend, distorting and distending the epithets into something powerful and playful rather than weak and degrading. Azpilicueta will perform to the beat of a new soundtrack produced for the occasion in collaboration with Chilean choreographer Rodrigo Sobarzo de Larraechea. 

Mercedes Azpilicueta performing ‘Yegua-yeta-yuta’ during the 2017 CA2M Picnic Sessions, Móstoles (Madrid). Photo: Arantxa Boyero.


Mercedes Azpilicueta is an Argentine visual and performance artist based in Amsterdam. Her practice has spanned theatrical mises-en-scènes and video installations, textile sculptures and drawing, sound works and 3D animation. With a particular interest in notions of the vulnerable or collective body, and the primal or dissident voice, her works have drawn inspiration from sources as diverse as Baroque painting, text messaging, medieval tapestries, street slang, and literary fiction, as well as singular figures including the Italian art critic and feminist activist Carla Lonzi (1931–1982), the Argentine-French performance artist Lea Lublin (1929–1999), the French futurist Valentine de Saint-Point (1875–1953), and the Costa Rican-born Mexican ranchera singer Chavela Vargas (1919–2012). A major survey of Azpilicueta’s work to date, ‘Cuerpos Pájaros’ (Body-birds) was recently staged by the Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art (November 2018–April 2019). In October 2019 she will present ‘Bestiario de Lengüitas’ (Bestiaire of Tonguelets), curated by Virginie Bobin, at CentroCentro, Madrid, an exhibition which will then tour to Museion, Bozen, and CAC Brétigny in 2020. Later in 2019, she will have a solo presentation as part of ‘Positions #5’ at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.

(Above) ‘Bestiario de lengüitas’ (2017-ongoing) pieces included in Mercedes Azpilicueta's solo show ‘Cuerpo pájaros’ recently programmed at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires. Photo: Latitudes.

Running parallel during the same week (9–14 September), Latitudes will attend the ‘Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities’, a six-day event organised by Frame Contemporary Art Finland in which artists, curators, researchers, and audiences in the field of contemporary art ‘are invited to rehearse and debate hospitality towards diverse ways of knowing and challenging of dominant knowledges’. Alongside the public programme, Frame will arrange studio visits, one-on-one meetings and networking situations.

(Two Above) Moments from the performance ‘Oh, Eduarda!’ on April 14, 2019, also presented at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires. Photos: Latitudes.


→ RELATED CONTENTS:
 2019, artist talk, conversations, Helsinki, Latitudes-curated, Mercedes Azpilicueta, participation, partner organisation, performance
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Participants in the symposium "You're such a curator!" at de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 23–24 November 2016 and Amsterdam Art Weekend

 Mon, Dec 12 2016
 Above: de Appel director Niels van Tomme during his welcome speech.  
This and following photos: Carina Erdmann/De Appel.

Latitudes participated in de Appel Arts Centre two-day symposium "You are such a curator!" on 23 and 24 November 2016. Coinciding with the Amsterdam Art Weekend, the event presented lectures, discussions, performances and papers marking the conclusion of a three-year research project into the dynamics of de Appel’s curatorial programme and its position in the wider field of curatorial education.

Latitudes' presention "Following the Holy Greyhound" reflected "on the disinterment of a sculpture from 1991 – part of an exhibition by the Venezuelan artist José Antonio Hernández-Díez curated by Latitudes at MACBA, Barcelona, earlier this year – and their approach to a group exhibition in preparation for CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux in 2017. Their point of departure was responding to the question "what does the wrongful killing of a dog in medieval France have to tell us about the micro and the macro, the hyper-specific and the universal?"  

Above: Chris Sharp during his presentation 'The Willfully Minor Anomaly of Lulu'. 
Below: Q+A session.
 
Above: Presentation by Aneta Rostkowska and Jakub Woynarowski.  
Below: Latitudes' presentation "Following the Holy Greyhound".
 
Above: galerie founders Adriano Wilfert Jensen and Simon Asencio during their presentation. 
Below: Attentive (femenine!) audience. 

Above: (Intensive) Q+A amongst speakers and audience. 
Below: Renata Cervetto during her presentation '(Art) Mediation Projects. In & Out The Museum'.

Above: Kim Nguyen during her presentation 'That's Why We Love the Moon'. 
Below: Niels van Tomme during one of the many Q+A's.

Above: Prem Krishnamurthy during a Q+A.

The two-day symposium included contributions by Mira Asriningtyas, Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti, Renata Cervetto, Mateo Chacon-Pino, Galerie (Adriano Wilfert Jensen and Simon Asencio), Natasha Hoare, Kati Ilves, Prem Krishnamurthy, Inga Lace, Latitudes (Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna), Shona Mei Findlay, Fadwa Naamna, Kim Nguyen, Emma Ines Panza, Aneta Rostkowska and Kuba Woynarowski, Chris Sharp, Niels Van Tomme and Huib Haye van der Werf.
  
We also visited a few exhibitions and attended a few events  programmed for the Art Amsterdam Weekend (24–27 November). One of the highlights was Marinus Boezem's exhibition at Oude Kerk's grand Gothic architecture, one of its finest and oldest examples in Holland. Boezem's pieces resonated with the Gothic style of the church, an architecture that has fascinated him throughout this artistic practice – he has produced several pieces using plans of cathedrals, his most famous one being "Gothic Growing Project" (1978–1987), popularly known as "The Green Cathedral" in a polder landscape near Almere, composed of 178 Italian poplars.
 
"Progetto Spaziale" (1970/2016) video works, and "Meteorieten" (2016) on the floor.

(above) "Windschaal" (Wind Scale) (1968) projected in the Holy Sepulchre chapel.
Majestic "Labyrinth" (2016) piece above and below.
(above) "New Improvisation with Bart de Kroon", one of the five performances Jeremiah Day presented at Ellen de Bruijne Projects.

And of course Friday is the big day at the Rijksakademie OPEN 2016, where we found interesting presentations by Argentinian performance artist Mercedes Azpilicueta; the Argentinian-Dutch Aimée Zito Lema; the abstracted images of Claudia Martínez Garay (below); the sculptural and archival material of British artist Alex Farrar around his suit; the glass work of German artist Christine Moldrickx; the drawings, paintings and small sculptures of Dutch artist Eva Spierenburg; the sculptural works by the also Dutch artist Marije Gertenbach and the large video work "Band Rumorose" by French artist Pauline Curnier Jardin on the Sicilian festivity devoted to San Sebastiano.


Abstracted images by Claudia Martínez Garay. 

(Above and below) Installation on the ground floor by Eva Spierenburg.

Sculptural and archival material by British artist Alex Farrar around his suit.

More work by Eva Spierenburg was presented in a more intimate presentation on the second floor.

 Glass piece by German artist Christine Moldrickx (above and below). 
 Works by Marije Gertenbach.

The beautiful retrospective "Machine Spectacle" by Swiss artist Jean Tinguely was cleverly paired with Jordan Wolfson's "Manic / Love" – part 1 of his first solo show in a Dutch institution. The show premieres his newest animatronic in Europe: "Colored sculpture" (2016) and is accompanied by three other works only: the video "Raspberry poser" (2012), a series of large inkjet prints and "The Crisis" (2004), one of his earliest video works. In February a second part (Truth / Love) will follow with his first animatronic (Female Figure, 2014) and a new videoinstallation.

(Above) Two of the rooms presenting works by Jean Tinguely at Stedelijk Museum.

Jordan Wolfson's "Colored Sculpture" (2016).

San Serriffe art book shop in the red light district.

kunstverein new location in Hazenstraat 28, presented "Staples", 20 years of work by typographic artist Will Holder.

RELATED CONTENT:
 2016, Amsterdam, art weekend, Curatorial Practice, de appel, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Jordan Wolfson, latitudes, Lecture, microhistory, Oude Kerk, participation, Rijksakademie, symposium
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More from OMONOIA – Athens Biennale 2015–2017 on our December Cover Story

 Tue, Dec 1 2015
International Summit Synapse 1 at New Rex of the National Theatre of Greece. 'Session II: Rethinking Institutions': (from left to right) Leo Panitch, Maria Hlavajova, Adam Szymczyk, Amalia Zepou (moderator), Hilary Wainwright, Emily Pethick, Latitudes (Max Andrews & Mariana Cánepa Luna) © Eva Galatsanou.

The above picture by Eva Galatsanou was taken during 'Session II: Rethinking Institutions' one of the Summit panels that launched OMONOIA, the Athens Biennale 2015–2017. Latitudes participated in this panel on November 18, as one of the speakers. Our current Cover Story on Latitudes' home page features this event at the National Theatre of Greece, New Rex.  

 Below some more photos of that day and the working group meetings that took place at the former Bageion Hotel (18 Omonoia Square) on November 19, 2015.

 Omonoia Square. On the left the Bageion Hotel (with the orange banner), HQ of the Athens Biennial 2015–2017.
 
Omonoia Square from the first floor of the Bageion Hotel.

 Artistic Director Massimiliano Mollona, and Athens Biennale directors Xenia Kalpaktsoglou (left) and Poka-Yio (right) welcome guests to the second day of the Summit "Synapse 1: Introducing a laboratory for production post". 

 After the welcoming words, guests joined closed-door working groups sessions around the building on 'Cooperativism', 'Commons & Urban Welfare', 'Alternative Currencies' and 'Solidarity Networks'.

 10am–1pm: Latitudes joined the 'Commons & Urban Welfare' working group which had representatives of Avtonomi Akadimia (GR), Omada Metavasis / Transition (GR), Omikron Project (GR), Sarantaporo (GR), Votanikos Kipos Squat (GR), Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network (TBC) (GR), Green Park (TBC) (GR), Luigi Coppola (Parco Commune dei Frutti Minori, IT), Sylvia de Fanti (Teatro Valle, IT) and Federica Giardini.

2–5pm: During the Open Assembly, artist, activist and Berlin-based curator Margarita Tsomou feeds back to the audience what was discussed during the 'Solidarity Networks' working group which had representatives from Refugees Welcome (GR), Solidarity4all (GR), HYLE[Ύλη]matter (GR), Notara Squat (TBC) (GR), The Other Human (TBC) (GR), Metropolitan Community Clinic at Helliniko (GR), European Village (GR), Ivor Stodolsky (Perpetuum Mobile) (NO).

Potent voices like that of Tsomou raised questions about a proposed 'open' biennale format and the possible (in)adequacy of visual arts to host activism. "I do my activism in the street" – she exclaimed. (Tsomou has recently interviewed Adam Szymczyk (artistic director of documenta 14) for DIE ZEIT – download here.)

 Other speakers were more direct in their pragmatism and asked the forum "What do we have? Do we have a hammer? Do we have chairs?" to which Mollona and Poka-Yio responded the biennial has the Bageion Hotel building and in-kind sponsorship for production, everything else has to be decided and invented collectively for the next two years. 

 End of the Open Assembly at the Bageion Hotel.

 Stairs of the Bageion Hotel.


RELATED CONTENT:
 2015, Athens, Athens Biennale, collaboration, cover story, crisis, modes of assembly, openness, panel discussion, participation, photo, report, rethinking institutions, summit, Workshop
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Tutors of the 2015 International Curatorial Retreat, 9–13 May, Bari (Italy)

 Sun, May 17 2015
Introduction to the four-day workshop by Tara McDowell, director of the Curatorial Practice PhD. Program at MADA (Monash School of Art Design and Architecture), Melbourne.

Organised by Vessel in collaboration with the Curatorial Practice PhD Program at MADA (Monash School of Art Design and Architecture) in Melbourne – which a year ago co-hosted our Melbourne residency as part of Gertrude Contemporary's Visiting Curatorial Program – the retreat brings together participants and tutors in an intense mobile four-day format. 

The 2015 International Curatorial Retreat (9–13 May) focused on issues which have gained urgency within contemporary curatorial practice under the conditions of globalization, in particular, the process of writing when related to the ‘epistemologies of the South’ – a term adopted from Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos. 

As a member of the team of tutors of the retreat, Latitudes presented two of its recent editorial projects (The Last Newspaper and Incidents of Travel in Mexico and Hong Kong) and led an afternoon workshop titled “Near Future Artworlds Curatorial Foresight Disruption Group” that operated in the realm of "art-fiction", of desirable or dystopian prototypes, speculative objects and art world services, as well as imminent and real (to use the startup term) disruptions. A kind of near-future think tank and foresight group, the workshop imagined curatorial-editorial prototypes and use-case scenarios.
Tirdad Zolghadr during his workshop.

 Alexandra Ross presented http://www.continuous-curatorial-conversations.org/, a "compilation of supplementary histories which appropriately emphasizes the oral nature of curatorial practice".

Photo: Piero Percoco.
Participants (via the open call): Rachel Dedman (1989, London, lives and works in Beirut; Curator-in-Residence, 98weeks, Beirut); Maya Mikelstone (1982, Latvia, lives and works in Paris/Latvia, independent curator); Jesse van Oosten (1986, Rotterdam, lives and works in Rotterdam, Associate Curator, TENT Rotterdam); Heidi Rabben (1982, Laguna Beach, California, lives and works in San Francisco; Assistant Director, Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco); Maayan Sheleff (1976, Tel-Aviv, lives and works in Tel-Aviv, independent curator); Eszter Szakács (1983, Mór, Hungary, lives and works in Budapest; curator and researcher at tranzit.hu, Budapest); Christel Vesters (1972, Oldebroek, The Netherlands, lives and works in Amsterdam; PhD candidate, School of Humanities, Royal College of Art in London). 

Participants from the Curatorial Practice PhD at MADA, Melbourne: Léuli Eshraghi, Sarah Ann Farrar, Rosemary Forde, Melanie Oliver, Joel Stern and Holly Williams. 

Tutors: Tara McDowell (Associate Professor and Director of Curatorial Practice at MADA); Dr Alexandra Ross (Postdoctoral fellow, Centre for Curating the Archive at Michaelis Art School, University of Cape Town); Tirdad Zolghadr (Curator and writer currently affiliated with Al Quds Bard College and the International Academy of Art, Ramallah); Fucking Good Art (travelling artists’ magazine or editorial project for research in-and-through art); Vít Havránek (theoretician and organizer based in Prague, co-founder of Tranzitdisplay and Latitudes (independent Barcelona-based curatorial office). 

Light display at the Piazza del Ferrarese during the Feste di San Nicola.

View from the Doppelgaenger Gallery in the old town area, the venue that hosted the seminars.

 Part of the group visited Monopoli for a workshop led by Rob and Nienke of Fucking Good Art.

 Monopoli seafront.

 Walking through the old city centre of Bari on the way to lunch.

 Food shopping at the Mercato ex Manifattura Bari (former tobacco factory) in the Quartiere Libertà.

 Dinner cooked by the International Curatorial Retreat's chef-in-residence Boris Portnoy.

 Photo: Piero Percoco

(Above and below) 'Notes and Quotes' session led by Rob and Nienke of Fucking Good Art, a 'de-briefing'  session that wrapped up the discussions by exchanging notes and quotes drawn from the previous few days.


Final remarks and feedback session. Photo: Piero Percoco.
 
RELATED CONTENT:


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This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos:Latitudes | www.lttds.org
Work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
 2015, Bari, Curatorial Practice, Lecture, MADA, Melbourne, Near Future Artworlds, participation, teaching, Vessel, Workshop, writing
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"Free Forms: An interview with Lauren Cornell", Curator, 2015 Triennial, Digital Projects and Museum as Hub, New Museum, New York. 9th in the #OpenCurating interview series.

 Wed, Apr 24 2013

"Free Forms: An interview with Lauren Cornell" is available on ISSUU to view on screen and is also downloadable. It is also available as pdf format via Latitudes' web.
 
After serving for seven years as Executive Director of new media non-profit Rhizome, in 2012 Lauren Cornell was appointed “Curator, 2015 Triennial, Digital Projects and Museum as Hub” of the New Museum, New York. During her tenure at Rhizome – a New Museum affiliate – Cornell initiated programmes including the annual Seven on Seven conference series, which bridges contemporary art and technology fields by pairing technological innovators with visual artists and challenging them to develop something over the course of a day. At the New Museum, Cornell was part of the curatorial team for The Generational: Younger Than Jesus (2009) and has curated exhibitions including Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries’ Black on White Gray Ascending (2007), and Free (2010), a group show that examined “how the internet has changed our landscape of information and our notion of public space”. She is currently preparing the 2015 Triennial, the institution’s signature exhibition, which she will curate together with artist and filmmaker Ryan Trecartin.

Follow:
@LTTDS 
#OpenCurating 
@newmuseum
@lcornell
#MuseumAsHub

 ABOUT #OPENCURATING

 Drawing on the emerging practices of so-called 'Open Journalism' – which seek to better collaborate with and use the ability of anyone to publish and share – #OpenCurating is a research project that investigates how contemporary art projects may function beyond the traditional format of exhibition-and-catalogue. #OpenCurating is concerned with new forms of interaction between publics – whether online followers or physical visitors – with artworks and their production, display and discursive context.

 The project is articulated around a series of ten new interviews with curators, artists, writers and online strategists published as a free digital edition [read here the published ones so far], a Twitter discussion moderated around the hashtag #OpenCurating and an public conversation with Dia Art Foundation curator which took place at MACBA on the 19 February.

 #OpenCurating is a research project by Latitudes produced through La Capella. BCN Producció 2012 of the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona. 








Content partners: Walker Art Center

  


Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
 #OpenCurating, 2.0, 2013, BCN Producció, curators, interview, Lauren Cornell, Museum As Hub, New Museum, New York, online, participation, publications, social networks, triennial
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"Democratizando la sociedad informacional", cuarta entrevista de #OpenCurating con Daniel G. Andújar

 Wed, Dec 5 2012

Daniel G. Andújar, Democraticemos la democracia, “A vuelo de pájaro, Barcelona–Badalona”, 22 de mayo 2012. 
Cortesía de Daniel G. Andújar estudio / TTTP.

La práctica del artista visual, activista en la red y teórico del arte Daniel G. Andújar cuestiona, mediante la ironía y la utilización de estrategias de presentación de las nuevas tecnologías de la comunicación, las promesas democráticas e igualitarias de estos medios y critica la voluntad de control que esconden detrás de su aparente transparencia. En 1996 Andújar funda la empresa virtual Technologies To The People (TTTP) “dedicada a acercar los avances de la tecnología a los más desfavorecidos, una especie de imprecisa corporación que reproducía el lenguaje disuasorio, los tics de identidad y los arquetipos visuales asociados a las compañías comerciales del ámbito digital”.

 "Democratizando la sociedad informacional" es la cuarta entrevista en la investigación #OpenCurating – leer la primera con el equipo del Walker Art Center aquí (inglés), la segunda con Ethel Baraona Pohl (español e inglés); y"Itinerarios transversales" con Sònia López y Anna Ramos del Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA).


El documento se puede visualizar en ISSUU, y también se puede descargar como pdf desde la web del proyecto y por de ahí leerlo en vuestro iPad (visualización optimizada para la pantalla Retina).
 
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ACERCA DE #OPENCURATING

Partiendo de las preocupaciones exploradas por Latitudes durante el proyecto editorial realizado durante 'The Last Newspaper' (New Museum, Nueva York, 2010), y basándose en las prácticas del denominado 'periodismo abierto' (Open Journalism) – que trata de mejorar la colaboración y utilizar la habilidad de cualquier persona para publicar y compartir – #OpenCurating es un proyecto de investigación que indaga en las nuevas formas de interacción entre los públicos – sean seguidores en red o visitantes físicos – con obras de arte, su producción, exhibición y su contexto discursivo.

El proyecto se estructura a partir de tres elementos: una serie de diez entrevistas a comisarios, artistas, escritores y expertos web publicada en una edición digital gratuita (véase aquí), una discusión en Twitter moderada por el hashtag #OpenCurating y por último, un evento (fecha por determinar).

#OpenCurating es el proyecto ganador de la primera convocatoria BCN Producció 2012 en la categoría de investigación, otorgada por el Institut de Cultura de Barcelona.

Síguenos en Twitter: #OpenCurating
 






     

Content partners : Walker Art Center






Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
 #OpenCurating, 15M, 2012, AAVC, Barcelona, BCN Producció, crisis, cultura, Daniel G. Andújar, democracia, entrevista, participation, Sala d'Art Jove, tecnología, transparency
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"Itinerarios transversales", tercera entrevista de la investigación #OpenCurating, con Sònia López y Anna Ramos del Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)

 Wed, Nov 28 2012
El estudio radiofónico de Ràdio Web MACBA en el Auditorio del MACBA. 
Foto: Gemma Planell / MACBA, 2012. Some rights reserved.

La entrevista "Itinerarios transversales" con Sònia López y Anna Ramos del Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), es la tercera en la investigación #OpenCurating – leer la primera con el equipo del Walker Art Center aquí (inglés), y la segunda con Ethel Baraona Pohl aquí (en inglés aquí).

El Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) abrió sus puertas en el Raval de Barcelona en el 1995, aunque su fundación se remonta a 1987 cuando miembros representantes de la sociedad civil catalana y empresas privadas crean Fundación MACBA, una de las cuatro entidades que integran el Consorcio junto con la Generalitat de Catalunya, el Ayuntamiento de Barcelona y el Ministerio de Cultura. La nueva página web del museo (macba.cat), se lanzó a principios del 2012 tras un periodo de rediseño y reconceptualización, e incluye novedades como los Recorridos (permite al visitante crear itinerarios transversales seleccionando entre las cinco mil obras que componen la Colección MACBA, además de vídeos, fichas de artista, podcasts, publicaciones, etc.) y la unificación de bases de datos de la colección y el Archivo del Centro de Estudios y Documentación, entre otras muchas. Ràdio Web MACBA, el proyecto radiofónico del museo iniciado en el 2006, cuenta con su propia web rwm.macba.cat e incluye una selección de más de 250 podcasts sobre arte, filosofía, música experimental y material documental con la voluntad de fomentar una aproximación crítica a la producción sonora y el pensamiento contemporáneo. 

 Sònia López es la responsable de la web y las publicaciones digitales del MACBA desde el 2001. Ha participado en diversos proyectos artísticos y pedagógicos en el MACBA y otras instituciones culturales de Barcelona. Activista crafter a tiempo parcial.

Anna Ramos es la coordinadora del proyecto radiofónico online Ràdio Web MACBA, y co-responsable del sello ALKU, plataforma pluridisciplinar que opera desde 1997. Bajo ambos paraguas desarrolla publicaciones, proyectos, instalaciones y ciclos en torno a la música por ordenador, el audio generativo, la síntesis, el pensamiento contemporáneo y otras áreas relacionadas. Asimismo, acaba de co-editar el libro del artista danés Goodiepal, El camino del hardcore (ALKU, 2012).

 El documento se puede visualizar en ISSUU, y también se puede descargar como pdf desde la web del proyecto y por de ahí leerlo en vuestro iPad (visualización optimizada para la pantalla Retina).
 Foto: Latitudes.
 –

ACERCA DE #OPENCURATING

 Partiendo de las preocupaciones exploradas por Latitudes durante el proyecto editorial realizado durante 'The Last Newspaper' (New Museum, Nueva York, 2010), y basándose en las prácticas del denominado 'periodismo abierto' (Open Journalism) – que trata de mejorar la colaboración y utilizar la habilidad de cualquier persona para publicar y compartir – #OpenCurating es un proyecto de investigación que indaga en las nuevas formas de interacción entre los públicos – sean seguidores en red o visitantes físicos – con obras de arte, su producción, exhibición y su contexto discursivo.

El proyecto se estructura a partir de tres elementos: una serie de diez entrevistas a comisarios, artistas, escritores y expertos web publicada en una edición digital gratuita (véase aquí), una discusión en Twitter moderada por el hashtag #OpenCurating y por último, un evento que tendrá lugar en Barcelona (fecha por determinar).
  
#OpenCurating es el proyecto ganador de la primera convocatoria BCN Producció 2012 en la categoría de investigación, otorgada por el Institut de Cultura de Barcelona.

Síguenos en Twitter: #OpenCurating
 





 
   
Content partners : Walker Art Center






Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
 #OpenCurating, 2012, Barcelona, BCN Producció, conversations, entrevista, MACBA, museo, participation, publications, radio, website
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Max Andrews reviews 'Utopia is possible' in frieze magazine's October 2012 issue

 Tue, Oct 30 2012
Below Max Andrews' frieze review on the exhibition 'Utopia is possible. ICSID. Eivissa, 1971' currently on show (on view until 20 January 2013) at the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA). An interesting follow up is Ethel Baraona Pohl's review on Domus (published 15 October 2012) which is accompanied by a lot more photodocumentation presented in the exhibition.

 Instant City, 1971. Col·lecció MACBA. Centre d'Estudis i Documentació. Fons Xavier Miserachs

‘This will be an ICSID Congress only 10 metres from the sea,’ read the welcoming Bulletin of the Seventh Congress of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design in 1971. ‘The environment, the climate and the sea bathing will act as a stimulant to the general business of the Congress.’ As 1,500 delegates registered at the ziggurat-like hotel venue in northern Ibiza, the more adventurous made their way to  Instant City, an inflatable camp below on Sant Miquel bay. Three days of meetings, debates, performances and partying were to follow –a professional design conference that was also a beach-side experiment in leisure and the creative potential of industrial plastic. The exhibition ‘Utopia is Possible’ was not only significant as an exercise in advocating the pioneering importance of an interdisciplinary festival that predated the better-known Encuentros de Pamplona’ (Pamplona Meetings) the following year – both all the more astonishing as Spain remained under the grip of dictatorship until 1975 – but also (and following a sprawling exhibition about the latter at Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofía in 2009) as a corollary of the emergence of curatorial and exhibition history as legitimate fields of study, as exhibition.

 ‘Utopia is Possible’ remembered and celebrated an event that evoked a meltdown of academia, inflatable architecture, cinema, Catalan artistic vanguardism and countercultural ceremonies – part ‘Exploding Plastic Inevitable’, part technology enthusiast craft convention. Through teeming type and handwritten correspondence arranged in vitrines, hundreds of photographs, technical notes and newspaper reports – as well as four projections showing archival footage and a dozen monitors presenting newsreels and newly-made interviews with those involved – it revealed a project that clearly had a life-changing impact on those who experienced it. ICSID 1971 championed liberal social innovation and user-generated content. ‘This is an “open” congress’, declared its introductory statement, ‘a new experience […] for the first time the congress members will be able to participate to the utmost […] this is YOUR congress.’ The proceedings in the hotel comprised ‘Speaking Rooms’ with themes proposed by delegates, 65 talks including ‘The House Style of the Netherlands railway’,‘What We Are Doing in the Belgrade School of Design’, and ‘Basic Design with Computers’ – the latter led by the pioneering Centro de Cálculo (Computing Centre), a collaboration between Madrid’s Complutense University and IBM.

 Down by the beach, meanwhile, the participation was of a somewhat different order – kinetic sculptural events with air, water, fire and food. Josep Ponsatí collaborated with members of the Grup Obert de Disseny Urquinaona (Urquinaona Open Design Group), who themselves collaborated in the pop-style signage of the congress, which was replicated in the show’s exhibition design. They tethered together 12 pairs of huge air-filled white plastic pillows that floated out over and on the bay like a giant flower. Vacuflex-3 (1971) by Antoni Muntadas and Gonzalo Mezza is a portable sculpture in the form of a 150-metre flexible plastic pipe which, with teamwork, can be variously carried around, used to spell out words on the sand (‘LOVE’, ‘LAND’, ‘HERE’) or floated on the sea. The opening dinner took the form of a multi-colour ritual orchestrated by Antoni Miralda, Jaume Xifra and Dorothée Selz; masked performers and diners wore green, red, blue and yellow cloaks, and feasted on similarly coloured paella and wine.

 Yet Instant City took such multi-coloured experiences to architectonic dimensions, and it remains the ideological and pictorial emblem of the congress. Architecture students Carlos Ferrater and Fernando Bendito had persuaded architecture professor José Miguel de Prada Poole to transform their idea of inflatable student accommodation into reality. What resulted was a global manifesto for a new way of living intended to embrace the ‘nomadic and mobile’ values of impermanence and flexibility. Following publicity in colleges and magazines around the world, scores of volunteers came in the weeks before the congress to collaborate in stapling together a pop-up plastic community. Instant City was the backdrop to some of the exhibition’s most striking images, of bemused locals in traditional dress watching bearded design hippies building something between Hélio Oiticica’s ‘Penetrables’ and Maurice Agis’s ill-fated Dreamspace V (an inflatable environment that killed two women when it broke free from moorings in 2006). And although the taste of Utopian living was evidently challenged by the whiff of residing in sweltering polytunnel tentacles with too few toilets, it also inspired some soaring prog rock poetry that, perhaps more succinctly than any other words in the exhibition, gave a blast ofthe elaborate techno-paganism which must have blown minds at this extraordinary Congress. ‘Green cornfields alongside Instant City / Awaken to Ibizan sunrise’, read a typewritten sheet alongside module construction diagrams. ‘We are children of the future / Born into the paleo-cybernetic age / our minds extended electrically through the video sphere.’ 

 ‘Utopia is Possible’ offered a timely pre-history of participatory practice from a Spanish perspective and, against the backdrop of contemporary funding cuts, an object lesson in artistic solidarity and internationalism against the odds. 

 – Max Andrews

  (Originally published in Frieze, October 2012, Issue 150)  
 Antoni Muntadas and Gonzalo Mezza Ceremonial and Vacuflex-3, 1971.  


Related materials:
  • Video where participants' discuss their experience here 
  • Tour of the exhibition by exhibition co-curator Teresa Grandas, here (both in Catalan)
  • Latitudes' writing archive
 2012, architecture, Barcelona, congress, design, event, knowledge exchange, MACBA, Max Andrews, modes of assembly, participation, performance, Reviews
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Entrevista a Ethel Baraona Pohl, segunda en la serie #OpenCurating, beca de investigación BCN Producció 2012

 Mon, Oct 8 2012

 Retrato de Ethel Baraona Pohl. Foto: Marcelo Isarrualde.

"Alguien dijo 'Adhocracia'?" es la segunda entrevista de la serie #OpenCurating (leer la primera entrevista 'Beyond Interface' aquí). En esta ocasión Latitudes entrevista a Ethel Baraona Pohl, arquitecta, co-fundadora de la editorial dpr-barcelona y blogera afincada en Barcelona, y actual miembro del equipo curatorial de 'Adhocracy', exposición de la primera Istanbul Design Biennial, que inaugura el próximo 13 de octubre.

Ethel Baraona Pohl desarrolla su trabajo profesional vinculada a varias publicaciones de arquitectura y diseño. Colabora en blogs y revistas, entre los que se incluye Domus, Quaderns y MAS Context, entre otros. Ha sido invitada a presentar su trabajo en eventos como Postópolis! DF y el festival internacional de arquitectura Eme3. Co-fundadora de la editorial independiente dpr-barcelona junto con César Reyes Nájera, sus proyectos, digitales e impresos, subvierten los límites de las publicaciones convencionales, acercándose a aquellos que son probablemente los títulos de la arquitectura y el diseño en el futuro.  

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ACERCA DE #OPENCURATING
  
Partiendo de las preocupaciones exploradas por Latitudes durante el proyecto editorial realizado durante 'The Last Newspaper' (New Museum, Nueva York, 2010), y basándose en las prácticas emergentes del denominado 'periodismo abierto' (Open Journalism) – que trata de mejorar la colaboración y utilizar la habilidad de cualquier persona para publicar y compartir – #OpenCurating es un proyecto de investigación que indaga cómo los proyectos de arte contemporáneo pueden funcionar más allá del tradicional formato 'exposición y catálogo'. #OpenCurating se enfoca en las nuevas formas de interacción entre los públicos – sean seguidores en red o visitantes físicos – con obras de arte, su producción, exhibición y su contexto discursivo.

El proyecto se estructura a partir de tres elementos: una serie de diez entrevistas a comisarios, artistas, periodistas y expertos online publicada en una edición digital gratuita, una discusión en Twitter moderada por el hashtag #OpenCurating y por último, un evento que tendrá lugar en Barcelona (fecha por determinar).
 
#OpenCurating es el proyecto ganador de la primera convocatoria BCN Producció 2012 en la categoría de investigación, otorgada por el Institut de Cultura de Barcelona.

 Síguenos en Twitter: #OpenCurating
 







Content partner: Walker Art Center

 

Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
 #OpenCurating, 2012, Arquitectura, BCN Producció, blog, collaboration, design, ebooks, editor, entrevista, Ethel Baraona Pohl, interacción, participation, prácticas curatoriales, research, transparency, twitter
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'Beyond Interface', first interview of the #OpenCurating series, BCN Producció 2012 research grant, 2012

 Mon, Sep 3 2012
Photo: Courtesy Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.


'Beyond Interface' is the first interview of Latitudes' #OpenCurating project, which was awarded the first BCN Producció 2012 Research Grant. The inaugural interview was conducted with three key figures involved in the website of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, which is also the #OpenCurating content partner.

 
#OpenCurating interview with Robin Dowden, Nate Solas and Paul Schmelzer from the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

Robin Dowden (Director of New Media Initiatives), Nate Solas (Senior New Media Developer) and Paul Schmelzer (Web Editor), discuss the museum's new website – walkerart.org – relaunched in December 2011 following a two-year conceptual reboot and complete redesign. Styled as an online newspaper, the new site heralds a paradigmatic shift for innovative museum websites in creating an online platform with an emphasis on publishing while placing itself at the centre of generating conversations around content from both inside and outside the Walker’s activities. 


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ABOUT #OPENCURATING

Drawing on the emerging practices of so-called 'Open Journalism' – which seek to better collaborate with and use the ability of anyone to publish and share – #OpenCurating is a research project that investigates how contemporary art projects may function beyond the traditional format of exhibition-and-catalogue. #OpenCurating is concerned with new forms of interaction between publics – whether online followers or physical visitors – with artworks and their production, display and discursive context.

The project is articulated around a series of ten new interviews with curators, artists, journalists and online strategists published as a free digital edition, a Twitter discussion moderated around the hashtag #OpenCurating and a finissage event in Barcelona (date TBA).

#OpenCurating was awarded the first BCN Producció 2012 Research Grant of the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona. 









Content partners: Walker Art Center

 



Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
 #OpenCurating, 2012, BCN Producció, design, interview, newspapers, participation, Paul Schmelzer, research, Walker Art Center, website
Stacks Image 39



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