Longitudes

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

Second 'Incidents (of Travel)' dispatch by Moses Serubiri and Mohsen Taha reporting from Jinja, Uganda

 Thu, Jun 30 2016

As part of Kadist Online Projects, Kadist and Latitudes are partnering in a new 'distributed' phase of 'Incidents (of Travel)' as an online periodical that is publishing regular contributions from curators and artists working around the world. 

Originally conceived by Latitudes as day-long artist-led tours around Mexico City (2012) – followed by Hong Kong (2013) and San Francisco (2015) – 'Incidents (of Travel)' explores the chartered itinerary as a format of artistic encounter and an extended conversation between curator/s and artist/s. Online storytelling presents and documents curatorial fieldwork and an offline day conceived by an artist for a curator.



The second 'Incidents (of Travel)' dispatch comes from Jinja, Uganda, where writer, researcher and curator Moses Serubiri met photographer Mohsen Taha. On this occasion, Taha photographed the day together exploring Jinja's Indian architectural legacy and Idi Amin's notorious expulsion of Uganda's Asian minority in 1972. Taha's photographs show the architectural remnants of their presence, and Serubiri's commentary tells of the forces at work in Uganda during that period.

Each of the 18 photographs in the sequence is augmented by one or more extra assets: a brief commentary, a caption or a soundscape, and is accessed by clicking the words which overlay the images.


The series inaugurated with an itinerary from curator Yesomi Umolu and artist Harold Mendez from Chicago – their tour was photographed by Nabiha Khan. 

Forthcoming contributions by Marianna Hovhannisyan (Yerevan / Istanbul), Yu Ji (Shanghai), Simon Soon (Kuala Lumpur / Sydney) and Natalia Zuluaga (Pereira / Miami), all fellows who participated in the seminar ‘The Place From Where We Look’ at Kadist Paris in June 2015. 


RELATED CONTENT:
 2016, fieldwork, Incidents of Travel, Kadist Art Foundation, online, report
Stacks Image 39


Documentación de la exposición de Pau Magrané/PLOM en La Capella, BCN Producció 2016

 Tue, Jun 28 2016
Fotografías exposición: Pep Herrero i La Capella/BCN Producció'16.
 
Como parte del equipo tutorial de BCN Producció 2016 (junto al comisario David Armengol y la artista Mireia Sallarès) acompañamos a los artistas Pau Magrané/PLOM (Espai Cub, abril–junio) y Antoni Hervàs (Sala Gran, septiembre–noviembre), y la comisaria Joana Hurtado Matheu (Sala Gran, 2 marzo 2016–30 abril 2017) a lo largo de este año en la preparación y producción de sus respectivas exposiciones. La exposición "Demo" de Pau Magrané finalizó hace unos días en La Capella (c/ Hospital 56). 

"Demo" (27 abril–12 junio 2016) compartió programación con la exposición "Background Immunity" de Ricardo Trigo, tutorizada por Armengol. "Demo" fue un concierto audiovisual en el que la reapropiación de sonidos y la visión escultórica juegan un papel fundamental. El concierto definió el Espai Cub de 3x3m como escenario-instrumento sonoro, una caja de resonancia que acoge distintas proyecciones y objetos activados por PLOM (alter ego de Magrané) durante su inauguración, pero que se mantuvieron durante toda la exposición invitando al público a interactuar con ellos.



Fotografías publicación: Folch.

 Podéis adquirir la publicación "Demo" [ISBN 978-84-985087-8-9 en catalán, castellano e inglés, 5 Euros] publicada por el Ajuntament de Barcelona y The Flames con motivo de la exposición, en La Capella y online a través de la web de Folch studio, diseñadores de la publicación y de la imagen gráfica del ciclo.



Aquí podéis ver un vídeo de la exposición (5'26'', catalán con subtítulos en castellano. Here with English subtitles) realizado por Hugo Barbosa.  

El 11 de julio 2016 a las 19h, los artistas y tutores presentarán la publicaciones resultantes del proyecto en la librería Múltiplos (c/ Joaquim Costa 30), que incluyen una entrevista entre artista-tutor y fotodocumentación de sus exposiciones.
   
BCN producció es una convocatoria anual dirigida a la comunidad artística de Barcelona (y su área de influencia), para la producción y presentación de tres exposiciones individuales en la Sala Gran de La Capella, tres en el Espai Cub, un proyecto de comisariado y dos proyectos deslocalizados. Es una iniciativa del Institut de Cultura de Barcelona (ICUB) del Ajuntament de Barcelona.



CONTENIDO RELACIONADO:
 2016, Barcelona, BCN Producció, beca producción, La Capella, Pau Magrané, tutoría
Stacks Image 39


Barcelona Gallery Weekend 2016 – Artists and locations of the programme "Composiciones" announced

 Tue, Jun 21 2016

A "Save The Date" press release (scroll down for different languages) has been sent out with information on the participating galleries and spaces and their exhibitions for the forthcoming Barcelona Gallery Weekend (29 September–2 October 2016). 

Returning for its second edition in 2016, Latitudes will curate "Compositions" (Composiciones), a series of artistic interventions in unique sites across the neighbourhoods of the city. Each of the commissioned artists is represented by a gallery participating in the Barcelona Gallery Weekend. 

Resisting an overall theme, and instead developing from the artists’ responses to the specificity of each context—people as well as places—the five art projects form a temporary thread that links evocative locations and public space, running parallel to the Weekend’s exhibitions in galleries and museums.  

The invited artists are Lúa Coderch  (Iquitos, Perú, 1982), Regina Giménez (Barcelona, 1966), Lola Lasurt  (Barcelona, 1983), Robert Llimós  (Barcelona, 1943), and Wilfredo Prieto (Santi Spiritus, Cuba, 1978), and the spaces where their interventions will take place are: 
The full schedule of routes, guided tours and parallel programming will be announced in September.
'Composiciones', five new commissions for the Barcelona Gallery Weekend, 1–4 October 2015.

"Compositions" is a programme of artists’ interventions originally conceived and curated by Latitudes for the first Barcelona Gallery Weekend in 2015, when it produced five projects by David Bestué (in the former ceramics factory Cosme Toda, L'Hospitalet); Dora García (at the Biblioteca del Campo Freudiano de Barcelona); Jordi Mitjà (in the Museu Geològic del Seminari de Barcelona); Rasmus Nilausen in collaboration with Pere Llobera (at the house of the former priest, gardens of La Central del Raval) y Daniel Steegmann Mangrané (in the Umbracle – Shadehouse – at the Parc de la Ciutadella). 

#BarcelonaGalleryWeekend
#Composiciones2016

Related content:

  • Composiciones 2015 commissions;
  • 2015 social media archive;
  • Instagram of the Barcelona Gallery Weekend;
  • PRESS RELEASE: Latitudes curates "Composiciones", a series of five artists' commissions for the first Barcelona Gallery Weekend, 1–4 October 2015; 
  • NOTA DE PRENSA: Comisariado de "Composiciones", cinco intervenciones artísticas para el primer Barcelona Gallery Weekend, 1–4 Octubre 2015
 2016, Barcelona, Barcelona Gallery Weekend, commissions, Gallery Weekend, Lola Lasurt, Lúa Coderch, offsite, Regina Giménez, Robert Llimós, site-specific, Wilfredo Prieto
Stacks Image 39


Last days! Cover Story and exhibition of José Antonio Hernández-Díez: techno-pop, death and resurrection

 Mon, Jun 20 2016
Monthly cover story on www.lttds.org

José Antonio Hernández-Díez’s exhibition No temeré mal alguno (I will fear no evil) – curated by Latitudes – continues at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) until 26 June. Reconstructed for the exhibition, the extraordinary Sagrado Corazón Activo was first shown in September 1991 in a group show titled El Espíritu de los Tiempos (The Spirit of the Times) in Caracas, Venezuela. It belongs to a body of work that José termed a ‘New Christian Iconography’ in which the application of communications and medical technology interlace with systems of paranormal belief, most prominently Christian theology.


Published as part of MACBA’s Portable Notebook series, Latitudes’s essay about José’s exhibition explains that “this visceral work deals with a key point of difference in theologies related with transubstantiation and ‘real presence’ – the notion that Jesus Christ is actually somehow present in a fleshy way in the bread and wine of the Eucharist versus being a symbolic or a metaphorical presence. Sagrado Corazón Activo seems to inhabit the peculiarly disjointed temporality that is proper to hauntology – a techno-medical vision of a science-gone-mad future within an ancient symbolic past.”   
Photo: Inés Balcells for ABC El Mundo.

No temeré mal alguno (I will fear no evil) focusses on José’s first experimental works with videography in the late 1980s and early 1990s and such early iconic vitrine-based works, alongside a new project made for the occasion. The presence of ghosts and bodily organs in this phase of Hernández-Díez’s out-of-joint art – videographic spectres, disembodied voices, preserved creatures, hearts and skin – is only enhanced by the necromantic aspect of the fact that several of his works were remade, as if brought back to life, for the exhibition.

#HernándezDíez
   
Related content:
 2016, Barcelona, cover story, José Antonio Hernández-Díez, MACBA
Stacks Image 39


Reseñas sobre la exposición "No temeré mal alguno" de José Antonio Hernández-Díez en el MACBA

 Fri, Jun 17 2016
A una semana de concluirse la exposición de José Antonio Hernández-Díez en el MACBA (finaliza el 26 de junio), hacemos revisión de la cobertura de prensa más relevante (por orden cronológico) y que encontraréis bajo la pestaña "Contenidos relacionados" en la sección final en ésta y en todas nuestras páginas, espacio desde donde también compartimos entradas al blog.

Compartimos una vez más el registro fotográfico de la exposición y el archivo de redes sociales (reseñas, posts en instagrams y tuits) que diferentes usuarios han ido publicando a lo largo de los tres meses que ha durado la exposición. 

Recordad que quedan dos actividades más: el 22 de junio, 19h, se proyectará "Vampyr" de Carl Theodor Dreyer (1932, Francia y Alemania, 75 min, b/n, sin sonido) dentro del ciclo "Sombras y silencios o los fantasmas que vuelven como la primera vez" que comisaría el cineasta Andrés Duque para la exposición y el sábado 25 de junio, 19h, Nieve Fuga realizará un concierto en vivo en la sala de exposiciones en el contexto de la programación #MACBAesviu, un collage sonoro inspirado en las obras de la exposición. 
 
“Las obras de José Antonio Hernández-Díez toman el MACBA”, eldiario.com, 17 marzo 2016.


“El MACBA acull una exposició amb instal·lacions experimentals de José Antonio Hernández-Díez”, Vilaweb.com, 17 març 2016.

Núvol, video by Ester Roig, 17 març 2016.
 
Sonia Ávila, "José Antonio Hernández-Díez mira a su pasado”, El Periódico, 17 marzo 2016.

Carlos Sala “Cuando el video era el rey”, La Razón, 18 marzo 2016.
 
Griselda Oliver, "Viu o mort. El gos d’Antonio Hernández-Díez", Núvol.com, 19 març 2016.
Eugènia Sendra, “Com recuperar la fe perduda”, revista Time Out, 23 març 2016.

Javier Díaz-Guardiola, “La obsolescencia artística programada también existe”, ABC Cultural, 25 marzo 2016.
Antoni Ribas Tur, "Nova iconografia religiosa i un gos sant, al Macba”, www.ara.cat 29 març 2016.

Jaume Vidal Oliveras, "Hernández-Díez, líbranos de todo mal", El Cultural, El Mundo, 1 abril 2016.

 Maria Palau, "Art, vida i mort", El Punt/AVUI, 7 abril 2016.

Roberta Bosco, "Arqueología contemporánea", El País (Catalunya),17 abril 2016.

Contenido relacionado:
 2016, análisis, José Antonio Hernández-Díez, latitudes, MACBA, press coverage, public programme, related content, Reviews
Stacks Image 39


Kadist and Latitudes present 'Incidents (Of Travel)' online

 Tue, May 31 2016

Latitudes and Kadist Art Foundation are partnering in a new 'distributed' phase of 'Incidents (of Travel)' as an online periodical. As part of its Online Projects, Kadist will be publishing regular contributions from six of its fellows working around the world. 
 
Originally conceived by Latitudes as day-long artist-led tours around Mexico City (2012) – followed by Hong Kong (2013) and San Francisco (2015) – 'Incidents (of Travel)' explores the chartered itinerary as a format of artistic encounter. Online storytelling present and document curatorial fieldwork and an offline day’s itinerary.
 
Curator Yesomi Umolu and artist Harold Mendez inaugurate the series with a dispatch from Chicago – fieldwork and online storytelling photographed by Nabiha Khan of an offline day’s itinerary. 

Forthcoming contributions from Marianna Hovhannisyan (Yerevan / Istanbul), Yu Ji (Shanghai), Moses Serubiri (Kampala), Simon Soon (Kuala Lumpur / Sydney), and Natalia Zuluaga (Pereira / Miami), fellows who participated in the seminar ‘The Place From Where We Look’ at Kadist Paris in June 2015. 



RELATED CONTENT:
 2016, Curatorial Practice, field trip, fieldwork, Incidents of Travel, Kadist Art Foundation, out of the studio, report, San Francisco
Stacks Image 39


Cover Story, May 2016: Material histories – spilling the beans at the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux

 Tue, May 10 2016

A cover story is published monthly on www.lttds.org

"In pondering a museum’s memories you seldom think of coffee beans. Yet at CAPC Contemporary Art Museum Bordeaux, burnished nuggets of the past in the form of the seeds of Coffea arabica occasionally materialise, as if out of nowhere. One day one might appear atop a pile of papers on an office desk; weeks later, another bean might show up in the middle of one of the exhibition galleries. A look on top of a shelf in the library might harvest several. During Latitudes’ recent residency at CAPC, François Poisay from the exhibition team showed us the stash he has been squirrelling away in his desk for years." 

Continue reading on www.lttds.org (after May 2016, it will be archived here) 

Related content:  
 2016, 2017, CAPC Bordeaux, cover story, making of, material history, raw materials, research
Stacks Image 39


Interview with Nicholas Mangan for his forthcoming catalogue ‘Limits to Growth’

 Wed, Apr 20 2016
Nicholas Mangan, ‘Ancient Lights’ (2015). Installation views, Chisenhale Gallery, 2015. Co-commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, London and Artspace, Sydney. Courtesy the artist; Labor Mexico; Sutton Gallery, Melbourne; and Hopkinson Mossman, Auckland. Photo: Andy Keate.

We have just wrapped-up an interview with Melbourne-based artist Nicholas Mangan to be published by Sternberg Press as the catalogue of his forthcoming solo exhibition ‘Limits to Growth’, co-produced by Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Melbourne (opening July 20) and Institute of Modern Art (IMA), Brisbane (where it will be on view from October 29), it will later travel to Kunst-Werke Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin (summer 2017). 

The five-part interview weaves together a discussion of his recent works ‘Nauru, Notes from a Cretaceous World’ (2009), ‘A World Undone’ (2012), ‘Progress in action’ (2013), ‘Ancient Lights’ (2015) and his newest piece ‘Limits to Growth’ (2016), to be premiered at Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA). Part of an ongoing dialogue with Mangan, it developed from a public conversation event that took place at Chisenhale Gallery, London on 7 July 2015. 

‘Limits to Growth’ references a 1972 report commissioned by the Club of Rome that analysed a computer simulation of the Earth and human systems: the consequences of exponential economic and population growth given finite resource supplies. The overlapping themes and flows of energies in the five of Mangan’s projects discussed in the interview might be read as an echo of the modelling and systems dynamics used by the simulation in order to try and better understand the limits of the world’s ecosystems. 

Mangan is presenting ‘Ancient Lights’ (2015) at his Mexico City gallery LABOR on April 22, a work co-commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery in London and Artspace in Sydney.

In conversation between Latitudes and Nicholas Mangan, Chisenhale Gallery, 7 July 2015. Photos: Manuela Barczewski.

RELATED CONTENT:
 2016, catalogue, editorial, interview, Melbourne, Nicholas Mangan, Publication
Stacks Image 39


Graphic communication of the exhibition 'José Antonio Hernández-Díez. I Will Fear No Evil' at MACBA

 Mon, Apr 11 2016
Exhibition announcement sent via email.

The invitation for the solo exhibition "I Will Fear No Evil" by José Antonio Hernández-Díez has been created by the Barcelona-Newark-Paris-San Francisco-New York graphic design studio Mucho, responsible for the visual communication of this and other exhibitions at MACBA. 

Departing from the religious and technological references included in Hernández-Díez's exhibition, the cross appears like a distorted televisual aparition.

The design was later applied on the large glass vitrine that frames the entrance to the Convent dels Àngels, respecting the presence of two video pieces also on display in this space: 'La caja' (1991) and 'Vas pa'l cielo y vas llorando' (1992), videoprojections that remain lit until midnight.
 
 (Above) Draft design and (following) tests on the windows, vinyls being applied and final look of the entrance to the exhibition space at Plaça dels Àngels.

 (Above) Façade by day and façade by night (below, photo by Miquel Coll, MACBA).
 Finally, a smaller vinyl is also applied at c/ dels Àngels, easily viewed when visitors come from c/ Elisabets.

Related Content:
 2016, design, graphic communication, invitation, José Antonio Hernández-Díez, latitudes, MACBA, making of, Solo show
Stacks Image 39


The story behind José Antonio Hernández-Díez's 'San Guinefort' (1991)

 Tue, Mar 29 2016
 Pages with the story behind Plaça dels Àngels.

When giving a presentation or tour of an exhibition or project we have worked on, we are often asked how the project emerged – if there was a particular trigger or point of origin. In the case of José Antonio Hernández-Díez’s exhibition currently on view at MACBA (until June 26, 2016), our approach was a familiar one to us – we started by both delving in-depth in researching the artists previous works while at the same time looking into the history of the venue where the exhibition was going to take place.

 We are very fond of a book that has been in our library for many years – 'Histories and legends of Barcelona' by Joan Amades (Edicions 62). This two-volume tome gathers some of the myths behind Barcelona place names and includes the tales behind both familiar and obscure buildings, streets and monuments in the city. The story that most captivated us concerned the chapel of the Convent dels Àngels, and it is recounted in the essay we wrote to accompany the exhibition (published as the Quaderns Portàtils #32 – pdfs available in Spanish and English and epub in Spanish only). It goes as follows:

(...) "Outside the doorway of the deconsecrated sixteenth-century church that formed part of Barcelona’s Convent dels Àngels there once stood the stone figure of a dog, standing upright on its hind legs. Two separate legends account for its existence, as recorded by ethnologist and folklorist Joan Amades in the 1950s. A boorish man would routinely interrupt the services and torment the church congregation, it is said. He was punished by being turned into a dog. The other version states that the canine figure commemorates the thwarting of a robbery. The church once displayed an image of Saint Roch, the patron saint of dogs, accompanied by a hound. It is said that the prospective thieves were frightened away as the image miraculously began to bark. (The supernatural mythology of the chapel does not cease there – in 1627 an image of Christ began to sweat blood profusely.) 

Sculpture of a dog once stood in front of La Capella dels Àngels, the church of the Convent dels Àngels.
 
Parallel to this, we started looking at Hernández-Díez’s earliest works and investigating his pieces in MACBA’s collection. We found that the museum had his 1991 work San Guinefort on long-term loan in their collection, but it had never been exhibited. As narrated in our essay: 

(...) "that José Antonio Hernández-Díez (Caracas, Venezuela, 1964) had already been dealing with Catholic belief and superstition in his art – and moreover, specifically addressing canine veneration – is much more than an uncanny coincidence for his exhibition at MACBA’s Convent dels Àngels in 2016."  

The legend behind Saint Guinefort is one of the more obscure intersections of Catholic history and folk tradition:

(...) "Writing around 1260, the Inquisitor and Dominican friar Étienne de Bourbon related his investigation into the veneration of Saint Guinefort in the Dombes region of France. He discovered that this supposed Saint was, in fact, a dog. The account he disclosed was that a knight and his wife had one day left their greyhound Guinefort to guard their baby. When they returned to the castle they found the cradle empty and Guinefort covered in blood. Assuming it had murdered the baby, the knight hastily killed the dog, only later realising his error. Guinefort had in fact fought off a snake in order to save the child, who was found unharmed. Guinefort was buried unceremoniously in the forest outside the castle walls. Hearing of the martyred dog, local people began to believe in its power to protect children and began to bring their sick infants to the grave. Étienne de Bourbon was horrified to discover the strength of the superstition that had taken root. Children were being left overnight by Guinefort’s grave in the belief that he would rid them of spirits, and several babies had died as a consequence. Defending the orthodoxy of the church, the friar had the heretical remains of the greyhound dug up and destroyed, razed the forest and outlawed the canine cult, yet there is evidence of its persistence into the nineteenth century. The episode is worth recounting in detail, as previous accounts of it in relation to Hernández-Díez’s work have been misleading."


Coinciding with our research period, in August 2014 we happened to be travelling near Lyon, France, and took the opportunity to visit to the Bois de Saint Guinefort in the Dombes region, where the story of Saint Guinefort emerged (and where the dog-saint may still be venerated every 22nd August, despite the regional tourism office assuring us the festival day was no longer celebrated). 

Somewhere on the road between Villars-les-Dombes and Châtillon-sur-Chalaronne one can, with the help of a tagged flickr photo and GPS, find a sign, as seen below, which briefly narrates these peculiar events from the 13th Century. 



Related Content:
 2016, behind the scenes, e-books, Exhibition, José Antonio Hernández-Díez, latitudes, looking back, MACBA, microhistory, Publication, research
Stacks Image 39



Cookies Advice: We use cookies. If you continue browsing, we consider that you accept their use. Aviso de Cookies: Utilizamos cookies. Si continua navegando, consideramos que acepta su uso.