Longitudes

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

'Greenwashing' reviewed in summer issue of Artforum


Eva Scharrer reviews 'Greenwashing' in the current issue of Artforum, Summer 2008, on p. 456. There is a printable pdf version on our Greenwashing archive along with other critical responses to the exhibition including from El Mundo, La Stampa and Artforum.com
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Catálogo 'Estratos', texto sobre Lara Almarcegui, PAC Murcia 2008


El catálogo de la exposición 'Estratos', PAC Murcia 2008 está ya disponible. La publicación contiene una selección de textos nuevos, 'rescatados' y reimpresos, entrevistas, textos de los propios artistas, etc. acompañados de fotografías del montaje, vistas de la exposición y de los proyectos que tuvieron lugar durante la exposición y actividades paralelas (Enero–Marzo 2008).

Mariana Cánepa Luna de Latitudes escribió sobre 'La Montaña de Escombros' (2008) de Lara Almarcegui. Podéis descargar el texto desde el archivo de textos (5.6 MB).


Para completar la lectura, podréis escuchar una breve entrevista con la artista sobre esta pieza en el blog, así como ver imágenes de todo el proyecto en este blog (4 Febrero 2008).

Título: 'Estratos', Proyecto Arte Contemporáneo Murcia 2008
Formato: 33,5cm x 21 cm, Color, 324 pp.
Edita: Comunidad Autónoma de la Región de Murcia. Consejería de Cultura, Juventud y Deportes - Dirección General de Bellas Artes y Bienes Culturales.
Diseño: Germinal Comunicación
ISBN 978-847564-400-4
Distribución: Cataclismo S.L., circulació[email protected]

8 June update:
See Latitudes' Max Andrews Frieze review of Estratos here (Frieze, Issue 116, June-August 2008, 180 KB jpg)

[Imágenes: Latitudes | www.lttds.org]
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Site visit to Maasvlakte 2, the Port of Rotterdam expansion

All images: Latitudes | www.lttds.org

Last week we visited the port and industrial zone of Rotterdam. On the west of the existing port, construction is undergoing to build Maasvlakte 2, a new port area arising from the sea in front of the Maas estuary, which will be constructed between 2008 and 2013. The reclaimed land will add 20% of port area and triple the container capacity. Following such land reclamation or polder mega-projects such as the Flevopolder, Ijburg and Neeltje Jans, the second Maasvlakte will be the latest chapter of the Netherlands’ ongoing relationship between the sea and the land.



As stated in the Maasvlakte website: "The land reclamation will measure around 2,000 hectares in total. Half of this will consist of infrastructure, such as sea defences, fairways, railways, roads and port basins. The other 1,000 hectares will provide the space for industrial sites."

The Maasvlakte 2 project organisation of the Rotterdam Port Authority wants to involve artists in this 5 year development stage, and for that they have involved SKOR. The Port Authority and SKOR invited Latitudes to visit the area and to generate ideas for the forthcoming 5 year period, from planning to realisation of what will be one of the biggest trade zones in the world.
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Wilfredo Prieto wins The Cartier Award 2008




The Cartier Award 2008 has been awarded to Cuban artist Wilfredo Prieto (b. 1978). The award enables artists to realise a major project as part of Frieze Projects at the Frieze Art Fair, curated by Neville Wakefield, as well as to enjoy a 3-month residency at Gasworks, London, to produce the piece.

According to Frieze Art Fair 2008, "Prieto will present Pond, a site-specific installation of more than 100 oil drums. The mirrored pond-like effect created by water in the lids of the drums will be punctured by the presence and movement of a frog. The work will be a beautiful and poetic reflection on the current international obsession with accumulation and growth."


A version of the work is currently on view in the group show Latitudes curated with Ilaria Bonacossa at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin as part of the exhibition “Greenwashing. Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities” (until 18 May).


To know more about Prieto's work, read the profile that appeared in Frieze Magazine (October 2007, Issue 110) and the images of 'Grasa, Jabón y Plátano' (2006) in 'Extraordinary Rendition', the exhibition we curated in NoguerasBlanchard (March 2007).

Following is an excerpt of the artist entry in the 'Greenwashing...' catalogue:

The artist’s most visible contribution to Greenwashing is Estanque (Pond) (2007), a new sculpture in which a congregation of crude oil barrels have seemingly been transformed into an idyllic, ‘eco-friendly’ lily pond habitat with the addition of water puddles and a live frog. Though the oil barrel is not commonly part of our everyday surroundings as a physical object, it has a familiar significance as the standard unit of volume for the production and consumption of petroleum, and as such, it is often cast as a symbol of all of the ills of fossil-fuel dependency. Furthermore, the price of a barrel is a global index of macroeconomic conditions, geopolitical stability, and the fundamentals of energy supply-and-demand. [1] The environment that Prieto has created by converting the petroleum containers is no more ‘natural’ than the oil itself – which is, after all, an organic substance. Yet the sculpture inevitably suggests the prospect of eco-advertising, as if its graphic visual summary of apparent amphibian-petroleum harmony could perfectly lend itself to an audacious company marketing department in a bid to demonstrate their ‘green’ industrial principles. [2] – Max Andrews

1. According to the 2007 CIA World Factbook, in Italy the equivalent of 32.1 barrels of oil are used each day for every 1000 people – or 11.7 barrels per person per year. The figure for the US is roughly double this estimate, and for Cuba, roughly half.
2. The connection to a recent Ford Motor Company campaign is irresistible: the well-known character Kermit the Frog appears pedalling on a bicycle singing his 1970 song ‘Bein’ Green’, before he spots a Ford Escape Hybrid in a verdant wood, ‘I guess it is easy being green’, Kermit declares. See www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKotANcNVyo

[Image: Wilfredo Prieto 'Estanque (Pond)', 2008. Oil barrels, water, frog. Courtesy the artist and Galería NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona. Photo: Courtesy Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino]
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'Una estaca en el lodo, un hoyo en la cinta. El campo expandido del Land Art' en el MARCO, Vigo




CICLO DE VÍDEO. Panorámica
Una estaca en el lodo, un hoyo en la cinta
El campo expandido del Land Art, 1968-2008

SALÓN DE ACTOS

FECHAS
jueves 8 y viernes 9 de mayo de 2008
jueves 15 y viernes 16 de mayo de 2008 [repetición]

COMISARIADO POR
Latitudes | www.LTTDS.org

ENTRADA LIBRE Y GRATUITA hasta completar aforo

MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo.
C/ Príncipe 54. 36202 Vigo.
Tel: 986 113900. Fax 986 11 39 01
[email protected] www.marcovigo.com

Durante cuatro días del mes de mayo, el salón de actos del MARCO acoge el ciclo de vídeo “Una estaca en el lodo, un hoyo en la cinta. El campo expandido del Land Art, 1968-2008”, comisariado por Latitudes, después de su presentación en el Museo Tamayo de Arte Contemporáneo de México, y antes de continuar su itinerancia a Basilea, Sevilla, Barcelona y Holanda.

Tomando prestado su título de los escritos de Robert Smithson, este programa presenta una selección de imágenes en movimiento que forman parte de la memoria histórica del Land Art, acompañadas de producciones de artistas contemporáneos.

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Life On Mars: 55th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh

Life On Mars: 55th Carnegie International

All photos: Latitudes.

Our installation views of the 55th installment of the Carnegie International, curated by Douglas Fogle, which was unveiled last Thursday 1st May and runs until January 11th 2009. Latitudes's Max Andrews contributed to the catalogue, designed by COMA, with texts on 20 of the 40 participating artists, including Carnegie prize winners Vija Celmins and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. There's more about the opening on Artforum Diary.
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James Yamada's Public Art Fund Project, New York


Unveiled on Monday "this new sculpture by James Yamada entitled Our Starry Night, will be on view at Doris C. Freedman Plaza at Fifth Avenue and 60th Street. Built from powder coated aluminum and punctuated with 1,900 colored LED lights, Our Starry Night is a 12-foot-tall sculpture that acts as an interactive passageway to Central Park."

As visitors to the park walk through the Public Art Fund Project sculpture at all hours of the day and night, it will illuminate in response to each person individually. When visitors walk through the portal in the piece, they trigger a metal detector hidden inside the structure's casing. This activates the LED lights that perforate the exterior of the sculpture. Common everyday metal objects such as cell phones, keys, belts, jewelry, cameras, computers, and the like will trigger the lights; the luminosity and the light patterns seen in the piece will correspond to the quantity of metal detected. Our Starry Night is literally activated by the public, reinforcing the notion that art — and particularly public art — is dependent on the people around it." (until October 28, 2008)

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'Greenwashing' in Artforum Critics' Picks

Below you can read the review of the 'Greenwashing. Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities' exhibition by Emily Verla Bovino in Artforum Critics' Picks. The project website (www.greenwashing.lttds.org) has also been updated with links to press articles (ongoing) and a photogallery with a selection of installation shots.

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"Greenwashing"
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo
Via Modane, 16
February 29–May 18


“Cyclus Offset,” “KeayKolour Recycled May,” “Shiro Alga Carta”: A series of “all natural,” “ecological” papers color the catalogue for “Greenwashing” in a muted rainbow of earthy greens, yellows, and pinks. Designed by the exhibition’s curators—Ilaria Bonacossa and Latitudes’s Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna—the volume offers its own version of “green sheen.” Are the Fondazione and the organizers self-consciously engaging in the same banal posturing they set out to critique? Or do they see the printing of an art catalogue on recycled paper as a step in the direction of philosopher Félix Guattari’s exhortation to “think transversally,” toward a reconciliation of the nature/culture dichotomy? Like most of the show’s twenty-five participating artists, the organizers are uncompromising in their ambiguity: They neither propose grand solutions nor shy away in passive resignation. An ambitious project that occasionally falters, “Greenwashing” is largely successful in broadening and interrogating the narrow views that dominate environmentalist debates.

Works by Jorge Peris, Lara Almarcegui, and Chu Yun provide the most exemplary models of this approach. For Fairy, 2008, Peris bolted slabs of wet clay to the walls of a back room, transforming the space’s frigid architecture into a musty den of soft, sweating walls kept moist by a network of sprinklers. Like Peris’s installation, Almarcegui’s slide show and postcards, titled A Wasteland: Rotterdam Harbour, 2003–2018; Genk, 2004–2014; Arganzuela Public Slaughterhouse, Madrid, 2005–2006; Peterson Paper Factory, Moss, 2006–2007, documents microenvironments that are at once constructed and deconstructed, simultaneously additive and subtractive. In A Wasteland—wilderness by design—the artist negotiated with municipal authorities and landowners to preserve the atmosphere of disuse in a selection of urban lots, sparing them from the restoration and clean-up of urban planners. In Chu’s Constellation, 2006, various appliances set to “sleep” mode are arranged in a dark room. Their twinkling red, blue, and green lights are the stars of a heaven inhabited by obsolete electronics, including VHS players and soon-to-be-outmoded technologies, like CRT television monitors. While Chu’s work evokes what Andrews calls the “‘What can I do?’ responses to climate change,” it also explores the seductiveness of the spectacular apocalypse scenarios frequently invoked in environmentalist rhetoric. Such eschatological visions aren’t the province of environmentalists alone, however. As Noam Chomsky affirms in Cornelia Parker’s video, Chomskian Abstract, 2007: “About a third of the population probably believes it doesn’t matter what we do about global warming . . . because Jesus is coming and so . . . what’s the difference? . . . Those of us who are saved will rise to heaven, and everyone else will be massacred—and it’ll be wonderful.”

Emily Verla Bovino

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Thomas Hirschhorn's 'Poor tunning' in kurimanzutto, Mexico City



'Poor Tuning' at kurimanzutto, Mexico City continues until April 27: "Thomas Hirschhorn’s current exhibition, “Poor Tuning,” presents ten pimped-out race cars..." (Artforum) more...

While 'Stand-alone' at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, which continues until May 18, presents a three-room rendering of a kind of demonic fireplace inspired by a student occupation of a university campus.
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Premiere del ciclo de video 'Una estaca en el lodo, un hoyo en la cinta. El campo expandido del Land Art, 1968-2008' en el Museo Tamayo, México DF


'Una estaca en el lodo, un hoyo en la cinta. El campo expandido del Land Art, 1968-2008'
Auditorium Museo Tamayo, Mexico City

Programme 1. Tuesday 1 April 2008, 19:30 h
Programme 2. Wednesday 2 April 2008, 19:30 h
(Repetition: 5 & 6 April 2008, 13:00 h)

Free entrance.

With films by Maria Thereza Alves, Francis Alÿs, Ibon Aranberri, Donna Conlon, Cyprien Gaillard, Mario García Torres, Nancy Holt & Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark, Damián Ortega, Nikolaj Recke, Thiago Rocha Pitta, Hans Schabus, Gerry Schum (with films by Richard Long, Barry Flanagan, Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Smithson, Marinus Boezem, Jan Dibbets and Walter de Maria), Robert Smithson, Jordan Wolfson.

Download the full screening programme here.

  
Paseo Reforma y Gandhi
Bosque de Chapultepec
Ciudad de México
CP 11580 Mexico
tel. (+5255) 5286 6519/29
fax. (+5255) 5286 6539
[email protected]
www.museotamayo.org
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