Longitudes

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

Latitudes residency in Spring Workshop, Hong Kong, 7 January–10 February 2013, as part of the year-long programme Moderation(s)


Moderation(s) is a year-long programme occurring throughout 2013 between Witte de With, Rotterdam, and Spring, Hong Kong. It's ‘moderator’, Singaporean visual artist and writer Heman Chong, will steer a program involving more than fifty artists, curators and writers, and engender a conference, three exhibitions, three residencies and a book of short stories

Moderation(s) begins by hosting the Barcelona-based curatorial office Latitudes for a month residency in Hong Kong (7 January–10 February 2013). During this time, Latitudes will investigate the urban territory from a curatorial perspective by looking into how it is articulated through specialist tours and attractions, both phenomena at the edge of the cultural, tourism and leisure sectors

As part of this – and elaborating on the approach of their recent project Incidents of Travel [see here] at Casa del Lago, Mexico City – the duo invited Hong Kong-based artists Nadim Abbas, Yuk King Tan, Ho Sin Tung and Samson Young to develop day-long tours, thus retelling the city and each participant’s artistic concerns through personal itineraries and waypoints. Alongside these ventures into the city, research around local forms of vernacular collection display and eccentric attractions will be made. This will encompass self-made or esoteric museums, museum-like retail spaces, or ‘marginal’ sculptural displays.


 Incidents of Travel Mexico City. Day 3: Tour with Diego Berruecos. Visiting the Biblioteca Nacional Lerdo de Tejada. Photo: Eunice Adorno.

In October 2012, a working group of artists, curators, and
Witte de With staff members came together in Rotterdam. Comprised of A Constructed World (Geoff Lowe and Jacqueline Riva), Nadim Abbas, Defne Ayas, Mimi Brown, Amira Gad, Natasha Ginwala, Latitudes (Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna), Michael Lee, Christina Li, Pages (Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi), Vivian Sky Rehberg, and Samuel Saelemakers, the group took part in a two-day workshop developed by Heman Chong to explore and identify materials that will drive the content of Moderation(s). The first project to surface from this workshop is Bibliotheek (Library), a list of books identified by the group to function both as a bibliography for Moderation(s), as well as a planned physical library that will be installed both at Witte de With and Spring.


In speaking about this project, moderator Heman Chong proposes “to make ‘soft’ the practices of both artist and curator, so that one becomes easily soluble in the other, while retaining their unique forms and patterns of working. The participants will be encouraged to indulge in the pleasures of exchanging knowledge and tools without any pressure to collaborate.” 


The 2013 programme includes: 

Latitudes will produce Incidents of Travel (Spring, January 2013), for which the duo will invite four artists in Hong Kong to develop day-long tours that articulate the city and their artistic practice through routes and waypoints. Artist Michael Lee will join the project to develop a series of maps and charts that trace the larger constellation of Moderation(s). Performances by artists including Benjamin Seror, Anthony Marcellini, Koki Tanaka, and many more will occur in and around Rotterdam in A Thing At A Time (Witte de With, April 2013). In June, fifteen artists, curators, and writers will produce short stories during A Fictional Residency (Spring, June 2013). Additionally, a conference in four parts led by various moderators involving twelve guests will be staged (Witte de With, October 2013). A Constructed World will produce The Social Contract (Spring, October 2013), a work in which audiences are asked to sign a legal contract restraining them from speaking about what they saw inside the exhibition. The Part In The Story Where A Part Becomes A Part Of Something Else (Witte de With, December 2013), a large-scale show mounted at Witte de With that will sublimate many of the conversations and gestures found within Moderation(s)


Twitter: #Moderations / @WdWcentrum / @SpringHK / @HemanChong / @LTTDS

Moderation(s) is initiated by Witte de With’s Director Defne Ayas and Spring Workshop Founder Mimi Brown.









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"books_expanded_field: An Interview with Badlands Unlimited", fifth interview of the #OpenCurating research

'How To Download A Boyfriend' group exhibition as interactive e-book, 58 pp (Badlands Unlimited, 2012).

Founded in 2010 by artist Paul Chan – best known for his cycle The 7 Lights (2005–8) and Waiting for Godot in New Orleans, realised in collaboration with Creative Time and The Classical Theatre of Harlem – Badlands Unlimited is a New York-based publishing house whose motto is “books in an expanded field”. Its publications and editions in paper or digital forms (e-books for iPad or Kindle) acknowledge that “historical distinctions between books, files, and artworks are dissolving rapidly”. Badlands aspires to reimagine the activity of reading as it encompasses the artist book, choreography and poetry, 3D, experimental typography, historical translations as well as the format of the group show.



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 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

 




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The Indianapolis Museum of Art's transparency initiatives

Part of our interest in the #OpenCurating research we are currently carrying out is to look at how museums and curatorial departments are engaging in new ways with their audiences and the means through which "open" initiatives are being promoted and implemented in exhibition-making and via other types of programming.

The Indianapolis Museum of Art has created two really dynamic initiatives which promote transparency throughout the museum's operations: a real-time statistics "Dashboard" including data such as the museum's energy consumption, works of art currently on display, the value of the museum's endowment, their operating expenses, average time of visits to the website, etc. 

The tool was implemented in 2008 and is the brainchild of museum director Maxwell L. Anderson, an active advocate of implementing new media technologies to advance public interest in art. 



The data can be compared to previous years (stats for 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011), filtered by museum departments (Buildings, Education, Conservation, Curatorial, Finance...) as well as by topics (Art, Greening the IMA, Attendance...). 


 Dashboard data of the curatorial.

However admirable this tool is, the curatorial dashboard falls rather short on the depth of information, only offering statistics for the "number of acquisitions" and the "number of works with gaps in WWII-Era Provenance". They do not reveal full data sets of their departmental operational budget, for instance. This might show there is still some resistance to really open up  to show other kind of costs (shipping, insurance, exhibition display, fees paid to artists (or not?)...) or even interesting insights such as (air)miles travelled by the curatorial staff, or the amount of paper used for their publications, just to mention a few. 

Some of these topics (how to articulate institutions and organisations complex needs in seeming transparent, responsible and benevolent) were addressed in Latitudes' 2008 exhibition "Greenwashing. Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities" (Archive Books, 2008) and in its catalogue essay "Shades of Green: a conversation between the curators", as well as in the essay by Stephanie Smith "'Alas for the dreams of a Dreamer!': Art Museums and Sustainability" included in the Latitudes-edited publication "Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook' (RSA, 2006).

A second initiative we find quite relevant is the "Deaccessioning database", which classifies pieces that have been deaccessioned at the museum since 2007 (following IMA's policy, see pdf here), explaining provenance, the reasons for its deaccession, listing the recipient and the day of sale, etc.
 Deaccessioned Artworks page www.imamuseum.org/art/collections/deaccession

Take for instance "Houses in the Snow", a 1929 canvas by Maurice de Vlaminck sold via Sotheby's in 2009 for $173700; or the 1889 suite of prints "Les Misères Humaines" by Gaugin, which were transferred to the Musée de Pont-Aven in 2009. Fascinating and revealing, isn't it?


Deaccessioned file for Maurice de Vlaminck's 1929 canvas.



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"Democratizando la sociedad informacional", cuarta entrevista de #OpenCurating con Daniel G. Andújar


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).
 

 
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






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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)

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






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La cultura en España: estadísticas, cifras y porcentajes

El Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte acaba de publicar el Anuario de Estadísticas Culturales 2012. El estudio ha sido realizado por la Subdirección General de Estadísticas y Estudios de la Secretaría General Técnica y está disponible aquí.


 Detalle de la estadística "1. EMPLEO CULTURAL". Descargar aquí.


El estudio se estructura en tres partes: incluye estimaciones relacionadas con diferentes sectores culturales (empleo y empresas, financiación pública y privada, propiedad intelectual, comercio exterior, turismo, enseñanza y hábitos culturales), información sectorial (patrimonio, museos, archivos, bibliotecas, libro, artes escénicas, música, cine y video), y análisis del impacto de la cultura en la economía española (con indicadores sobre su aportación al Producto Interior Bruto (PIB) español). 

La nota de prensa resume el estudio a cinco puntos, que es lo que ha recogido la prensa (El Mundo, rtve.es, Faro de Vigo, El País (Valencia), Ara.cat...): 
  • El sector cultural aportó un 3,6% al Producto Interior Bruto (PIB) en 2009
  • Un 19,7% de los turistas vienen a España por motivos culturales
  • El empleo en el ámbito cultural ascendió en el segundo trimestre de 2012 a 452.700 personas, lo que supone un 2,6% del empleo total de nuestro país
  • El gasto medio de los hogares españoles en bienes y servicios culturales fue de 828,3 euros anuales
  • Escuchar música, leer e ir al cine son las actividades culturales realizadas con mayor frecuencia por la población española
Pero hay material para entretenerse con 17 capítulos por desengranar: 

  1. Empleo cultural
  2. Empresas culturales
  3. Financiación y gasto público en cultur
  4. Gasto de consumo cultural de los hogares
  5. Propiedad intelectual
  6. Comercio exterior de bienes culturales
  7. Turismo cultural
  8. Enseñanzas del ámbito cultural
  9. Hábitos y prácticas culturales
  10. Patrimonio
  11. Museos y Colecciones Museográficas
  12. Archivos
  13. Bibliotecas
  14. Libro
  15. Artes escénicas y musicales
  16. Cine y vídeo
  17. Cuenta Satélite de la Cultura
Allá vamos. Para los que quieran una rápido análisis de la situación, se puede descargar un "Cuadro resumen" en formato pdf aquí. En él se ofrecen cifras de las actividades comprendidas entre el 2000 hasta el 2011 en relación a cada uno de los capítulos mencionados anteriormente, desde "Empleo cultural" (con cifras según sexo, edad, nivel estudios), a "Cuenta Satélite de la Cultura" (porcentajes de la aportación al PIB y al VAB de las actividades culturales).
 Detalle del "Cuadro resumen" que se puede descargar aquí como pdf.

En lo que se refiere a las artes visuales, destacamos los porcentajes de visitas a museos, monumentos, exposiciones:

  • Datos del 2003: 27,5% (visita museos), 28,8% (visita monumentos), no hay datos de visitas a exposiciones
  • Datos del 2007: 31,2% (visita museos); 34,1% (visita monumentos); 24,7% (visita exposiciones)
  • Datos del 2011: 30,6% (visita museos); 39,5% (visita monumentos); 25,7% (visita exposiciones)
Y sigamos con las cifras:

En el 2009, la cultura generó un 2,8% del PIB español, ascendiendo al 3,6% si se le suman las actividades económicas vinculadas a la propiedad intelectual. Por sectores, destaca el de Libros y Prensa con una aportación total del 1% (36,9% en el conjunto de actividades). Las artes plásticas suponen un 9,6% del PIB. Nos parece curioso que no se tengan datos del PIB en el 2010 o en el 2011, y que éste porcentaje (2,8% y 3,6% total) se mantenga estable en el 2007, 2008 y 2009.



Detalle de la estadística "17. CUENTA SATÉLITE DE LA CULTURA". Descargar aquí.

Hay algo muy revelador en estas cifras: ponen de manifiesto (cita textual) "el significativo peso de las actividades culturales en el conjunto de la economía española, destacándose que equivale al generado en 2009 por el sector de la Energía (2,9%) y superior al de Agricultura, ganadería y pesca (2,6%)." 


Y aquí el quid de la cuestión: a pesar su peso económico, la cultura recibe menos del 1% del presupuesto anual español. La mayoría de datos preceden al 2012 y por tanto no recogen la entrada en vigor del reciente aumento del IVA al 21% (desde Septiembre 2012) sobre actividades culturales como el cine y el teatro. Así que habrá que esperar a contrastar estas cifras con futuros estudios.


Más cosas: el gasto medio por persona en bienes y servicios culturales de 312,9 euros anuales (en 2006 esa cifra era de 372 euros por persona, es decir que ha dismunuido un 15% desde entonces). El cine sigue liderando encuestas, con una tasa de asistencia anual del 49,1% (de nuevo, está por ver cómo serán estas cifras el próximo año cuando sí se contará con datos sobre la repercusión del aumento IVA).


Se estima que en 2010, los 1530 museos españoles recibieron 57,492 millones de visitantes


Expandiendo los datos aportados sobre el turismo cultural: en 2011, el 15,2% del total de viajes (13,2 millones de viajes) fueron iniciados principalmente por motivos culturales (un aumento de 2,5 puntos porcentuales respecto al 2010). En el 47,5% de los viajes realizados por residentes en España se realiza algún tipo de actividad cultural. El estudio "resalta que el 52,2% de los turistas internacionales realizan algún tipo de actividad cultural." 


Más datos que se desprenden de la Encuesta de Población Activa (INE), elaborada para el Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte:



 Detalle de la estadística "1. EMPLEO CULTURAL". Descargar aquí.


Datos del segundo trimestre de 2012 muestran que el sector cultural da trabajo a 452.700 personas, esto es el 2,6% del empleo total en España (una cifra en contínuo descenso con respecto a años anteriores: 488,7 en 2011; 508,7 en 2010; o los 544,8 en 2009). El 64,3% de los trabajadores tiene educación superior o equivalente.

Paridad por sexos: de los 488,700 trabajadores del 2011, 290,900 eran hombres frente a un 197,800 que eran mujeres, reflejando lo mucho que queda por hacer en cuanto a la igualdad de género en el mercado laboral.


Más datos curiosos sobre el empleo en el 2012: el 17,6% desarrolló su actividad a tiempo parcial. El 72,3% son asalariados frente a un 27,7% no asalariados, de los cuales 54,7% tiene contrato indefinido y 17,6% un contrato temporal de lo cual se deduce que hay un 27,7% restante sin contrato (?).

Para quien se quiera entretener más, se pueden consultar los gráficos correspondientes a los 17 capítulos del Anuario de Estadísticas Culturales 2012 (desde Empleo Cultural a Cuenta Satélite de la Cultura). 
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Haegue Yang "Der Öffentlichkeit" commission and 'Ends of the Earth – Land Art to 1974' at Haus der Kunst, Munich

Haegue Yang has been the first artist to be commissioned for the DER ÖFFENTLICHKEIT – VON DEN FREUNDEN HAUS DER KUNST [To the Public – from the friends of Haus der Kunst] series, which will take place on a yearly basis in the 800 square-metre Middle Hall of Münich's Haus der Kunst

Her installation 'Accommodating the Epic Dispersion – On Non-cathartic Volume of Dispersion', organised by Haus der Kunst curator Julienne Lorz, and related to her dOCUMENTA 13 contribution, "consists of Venetian blinds suspended from the ceiling. These elements are structured in three autonomous, yet united parts: A massive towering structure, which is confrontationally located at the hall's entrance; a flat vertical grid wall, and a voluminous rectangle on top, which is gradually fragmented toward the floor. Depending on the angle of approach, the blinds overlap in a varying number of layers, and the interplay of light and shadow changes depending on the location. At times, the installation appears completely opaque, and at others, completely translucent." (text from the website). 


On view until 22 September 2013. More info and photos here.



Also on view at Haus der Kunst is the much awaited 'Ends of the Earth – Land Art to 1974' (until 20 January 2013) organised in collaboration with The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA – see website of the exhibition). The show is notable for its careful and thoroughly-researched reconsideration of the idea of Land art, and the way in which it incorporates many artists outside of the usual American white male practicioners associated with the term. (And also through its inclusion of three part-reconstructions of seminal exhibitions/projects: "Earthworks" at Virginia Dwan Gallery, Willoughby Sharp's "Earth Art" as well as Gerry Schum's "Fernsehgalerie Land Art" ). Unfortunately, this is its only iteration on its European tour.


Exhibition poster with an image of the 1967-74 film "Athmospheres: Duration Performances" by Judy Chicago.


  Hans Haacke's "Grass Grows" (1969–2012) at the entrance to the museum.


Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" (1970) film projected in the background and "A Nonsite (Pine Barrens)" from 1968 in the foreground.


Robert Morris' "Earthwork aka Untitled (Dirt)" (1968–2012) a 2000-pound pile of earth, grease, peat moss, brick, steel, copper, aluminum, brass, zinc and felt – urban debris gathered from the surrounding New York environs, originally made for the 1968 exhibition at Virginia Dwan Gallery.


Two views (above and below) of Joshua Neustein's 1970 "Road Piece", originally presented in the Tel Aviv Art Museum and remade for the first time for 'Ends of the Earth' exhibition.



All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)

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"Der Öffentlichkeit – Von den Freunden Haus der Kunst", begins on November 9

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=58839#.UJ6Z7YVe6kI[/url]
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"Der Öffentlichkeit – Von den Freunden Haus der Kunst",

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"Der Öffentlichkeit – Von den Freunden Haus der Kunst",

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=58839#.UJ6Z7YVe6kI[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org
"Der Öffentlichkeit – Von den Freunden Haus der Kunst",

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=58839#.UJ6Z7YVe6kI[/url]
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"Der Öffentlichkeit – Von den Freunden Haus der Kunst",

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Copyright © artdaily.org
As announced in May, this installation is the first in a series of commissioned work that will be exhibited in the museum's 800 square-meter Middle Hall over a period of one year. The series, "Der Öffentlichkeit – Von den Freunden Haus der Kunst", begins on November 9.

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=58839#.UJ6Z7YVe6kI[/url]
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"Accommodating the Epic Dispersion – On Non-cathartic Volume of Dispersion", 2012.

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Photodocumentation of Latitudes' "Incidents of Travel: México DF" a project for Casa del Lago

As the Casa del Lago exhibition in Mexico City draws to a close (on Sunday 4th November), we would like to share photodocumentation of the "Incidents of Travel: México City" project

Artists Minerva Cuevas, Tania Pérez Córdova, Diego Berruecos, Terence Gower and Jerónimo Hagerman were invited to develop day-long tours for Latitudes, articulating the city and their artistic practice through routes and waypoints in the metropolitan area. Documented and mapped in La Sucursal space alongside an overview presentation of Latitudes' projects ("Proyectos 2005–2012"), the project aims to explore the chartered itinerary as a format of artistic encounter with the capacity to bypass the convention of the studio visit through highly specific views of the city.


More documentation follows in this slideshow also presented in the exhibition at Casa del Lago.


Photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)
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Max Andrews reviews 'Utopia is possible' in frieze magazine's October 2012 issue

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
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Moderation(s) meeting in Rotterdam and a few shows in Amsterdam

Last week we were in Witte de With, Rotterdam, for a two-day meeting in preparation for the 2013 project Moderation(s). Moderation(s) is a year-long programme of residencies, performances, exhibitions, workshops and research initiated by Witte de With’s director Defne Ayas and Spring Workshop founder Mimi Brown. At the core of the project stands ‘The Moderator’, incarnated by Singaporean visual artist and writer Heman Chong. More news soon, in the meantime you can read more in this interview with the artist. 
 Artist and writer Heman Chong (left) introduces the Moderation(s) programme to participants and collaborators.

At the end of the first day of the workshop, Witte de With director Defne Ayas, gave a tour of their current show 'The Humans', a year-long project by visual artist and writer Alexander Singh (image above and three photos below), which "includes a variety of formats, from presentations and rehearsals to discursive events that are informed by the props produced on site. Leading up to the final presentation of his play in the Spring of 2013, Singh transforms Witte de With’s second floor into an artist’s studio." (text from Witte de With's website).





The exhibition included spatial design by architect Markus Miessen, including "a multi-purpose yellow monolith. This giant modular cube consisting of sixty-four separate blocks constantly mutates in accordance to a series of events taking place in 2012, including Singh’s Causeries."
(from the website).


The previous evening to the workshop TENT and Witte de With hosted an evening of events which began with a lecture by Vivien Sky Rehberg's "Deschooling/Deskilling" lecture.


(Above) Rotterdam ladies on stage. Left to right: Mariette Dölle (Programme director, TENT), Vivian Sky Rehberg (Director of the Master of Fine Art at the Piet Zwart Institute) and Defne Ayas (Director, Witte de With) introducing the evening.

Downstairs TENT had the exhibition "Between the map and the territory" which included the below installation by curator Maaike Gouwenberg and artist Joris Lindhout, on their ongoing research into the "gothic as a cultural strategy". 

Bik van der Pol's piece "Accumulate, Collect, Show" (below) at TENT (originally produced as part of Frieze Projects 2011). View video of the piece changing the modular text elements to spell out a number of abstract idioms, quotes and maxims here.


(Above) view of 'Untitled (Assimilated being), version 2"( 2011) by Swiss artist Karin Hueber: "Hueber’s work consists of installations of architectural elements that are apparently waiting to be used, as pieces of scenery for a stage production, as attributes for a performance. Elements are bent, folded, doubled, reversed or enlarged." (from the website).

On Sunday 21st we visited Amsterdam, quickly visiting the new spaces of de Appel and W139. de Appel presented the group show "Stem Terug! / Vote back!" which included a new presentation of the 2010 work "Local regulation" by Amikejo artists Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum (image below).


(Above) General view of the first room of the exhibition with works by Artur Zmijewski ("Them (Oni)", 2007), Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum ("Plaatselijke Verordening" (Local Regulation), 2010) and Otto Berchem ("Blue Monday", 2011).


(Above) General view of the first room of the exhibition with works by Sam Durant ("Tell it like it is", 2005), Yuri Veerman ("Red White Blue", 2012)  and Otto Berchem ("Blue Monday", 2011).

 (Above) Otto Berchem's "Blue Monday", 2011. Courtesy Gallery La Central.
(above and below) The Yes Men spoof edition of the "New York Times Special Edition", 2008.

The nearby W139 hosted the group exhibition "The Research and Destroy Department of Black Mountain College" (below) with the participation of 30+ artists whose work share the idea of 'collecting'.


At 4pm we joined the tour of the exhibition "Time, Trade and Travel" by Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam curator Jelle Bouwhuis (photographed below). The event coincided with the closing day of the exhibition.
 
View of the exhibition "Time, Trade & Travel" at Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam. More images here.
 

Following Bouwhuis' tour, there was an in conversation between American artist Zachary Formwalt and Dutch critic and historian Sven Lütticken in which they discussed Formwalt's film 'A Projected Geometry' (2012) (presented in the "Time, Trade and Travel") in relation to his previous film work such as "unsupported transit" (2011), amongst others.

Witte de With, TENT, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (SMBA), de Appel and W139 were all part of Latitudes' curated programme 'The Dutch Assembly': 30 hourly talks, readings, artists presentations, performances, book launches, in conversations and screenings presented last February over the course of the five days of ARCOmadrid.

All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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