Longitudes
Longitudes cuts across Latitudes’ projects and research with news, updates, and reportage.
Limited Edition Tote Bags Commemorating Latitudes' 10th Anniversary
25 May 2015As announced on an earlier post, this Spring we celebrate our 10th Anniversary!
Many of you know of our love for tote bags – as we made it clear on one of our 2013 Venice biennale posts! Well, this time we have produced our very own totes: we are delighted to mark the special occasion by presenting limited editions of four specially commissioned silkscreened tote bags featuring designs by four artists with whom Latitudes has collaborated over the past decade: Lawrence Weiner (New York, 1942), Haegue Yang (Seoul, 1971), Ignasi Aballí (Barcelona, 1958) and Mariana Castillo Deball (Mexico City, 1975).
With the summer art calendar in mind, the bags are made from natural durable cotton canvas with a reinforced base. They feature a press-stud closure, an internal pocket with a zip (never loose your biennale pass again!), an adjustable shoulder strap, as well as smaller handles for carrying like a briefcase. Versatility from vaporetto to vernissage!
Each bag have been hand silkscreened in Print Workers, Barcelona; this is an artisanal process and each printing results in slight variations.
Place your order(s) from our website.
Launch Price: 45 Euros + delivery. After 1 June 2015: 50 Euros + delivery.
Edition: 35 + 5 A.P. (Haegue Yang's tote is ed. 20 + 10 AP)
Measurements: 38 high × 40 width × 14 base (in cm)
Fabric: 475 gsm natural chlorine-free cotton canvas
Strap: Adjustable
Capacity: 15 litres
Weight: 420 gr aprox.
Related content:
Latitudes' 4th anniversary (April 2009)
Newsletter #22 – April 2010
It's our 10th anniversary! (22 May 2015)
Latitudes' Limited Edition Totes
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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 (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption).
Work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
It's our 10th anniversary!
22 May 2015We find it hard to believe, but April 2015 marked our 10th anniversary!
In October last year, we started working on our new website so that it would be ready to mark the decade of our two-person self-organisation. We submerged ourselves in the exercise of looking back and consolidating our physical and digital archives. The last decade has certainly been marked by the transition towards the latter, and hence files and hard drives now hold the most voluminous evidence of our activity, with all manner of USB-sticks and obsolescent CDs (remember those?) having fallen by the wayside.
We devised a plan for what we wanted to improve with a website conceived as a place for reportage as well as a publicly-accessible archive. This process included developing more extensive, and larger-format, photo galleries, cross-referencing to previously "buried" texts, making descriptions more concise, adding a related content section to cross-reference project information with blog posts, and consolidating locations as well as events. After six months of work, and some down-the-rabbit-hole endless weekends with the intricacies of CSS, we had re-edited ten years of our professional life online. Ta-da!
But we also hold on to physical archives and printer matter and they continue to delight! They also bear witness to something of what has been lost. The decline of the post as a means for distributing video (VHS! DVDs!) with the rise of Dropbox, or Vimeo, for example, has meant no more of those sweet hand-written notes that used to accompany artists' packages. Exhibition invitations are frankly a rarity now too, and these are filed alongside various postcards, discarded fragments of artists' work and other amusing ephemera.
Since we commissioned our mail-and-stamp graphic identity from More Associates back in April 2005, we have seeped more-and-more online to document and communicate: our first newsletter (November 2005), our first website, our early blog posts (starting in September 2006!), our Facebook page in early 2009 started with the presentation of Jan Dibbets' filming for Portscapes, our Flickr photo archive (also in 2009, now with nearly 4,000 photos online), followed by our first tweets in 2010, and sporadically YouTube, Issuu, Storify, Soundcloud followed.
This "ecstasy of communication" as Dieter Roelstraete has ironically put it, a day-to-day reality, has certainly defined our practice and how we have come to produce, document and disseminate our projects. We always stress this rapid digital transition when presenting our practice, as adapting to it has certainly been crucial as a two-person spaceless self-organisation. Not running a regular programme of exhibitions or events has meant we have found the need to communicate the duration of what we are working on while being seemingly offline. Sometimes the standard drop-in question "What are you working on?", is not so straightforward to answer. Back to Roelstraete – "getting organised" could often be the most suitable answer. "Getting organised" for the next project, reflecting on a recently concluded activity, anticipating the one after that, sorting out finances, seeing how we might put together the next research trip, finding it a challenge to find the time to read a book from beginning to end, watching life and work go by in 'likes' and 'retweets' and 'regrams'... Yet far than being nostalgic, this transition has itself given us great food for thought. For example, we dedicated over a year to discussing the consequences of online presence for art practice and curating with colleagues from Hong Kong to Minneapolis in the #OpenCurating interview series.
We are thankful to the many artists and other creative people who have supported us throughout this past decade. Some projects started with innocuous conversations that eventually led to ongoing collaborations and friendships, and we are also grateful to colleagues willing to offer critical feedback and words of encouragement in those moments in which we most needed to regain trust. A huge thanks too to the institutions and organisations for financing our projects.
Very soon more news on a commemorative project we've been cooking up...
Related content:
Latitudes' 4th anniversary (April 2009)
Newsletter #22 – April 2010
–
This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption).
Work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
#OpenCurating, 10th anniversary, 2005, 2015, Barcelona, commissions, latitudes, Mariana Cánepa Luna, Max Andrews, website
In October last year, we started working on our new website so that it would be ready to mark the decade of our two-person self-organisation. We submerged ourselves in the exercise of looking back and consolidating our physical and digital archives. The last decade has certainly been marked by the transition towards the latter, and hence files and hard drives now hold the most voluminous evidence of our activity, with all manner of USB-sticks and obsolescent CDs (remember those?) having fallen by the wayside.
We devised a plan for what we wanted to improve with a website conceived as a place for reportage as well as a publicly-accessible archive. This process included developing more extensive, and larger-format, photo galleries, cross-referencing to previously "buried" texts, making descriptions more concise, adding a related content section to cross-reference project information with blog posts, and consolidating locations as well as events. After six months of work, and some down-the-rabbit-hole endless weekends with the intricacies of CSS, we had re-edited ten years of our professional life online. Ta-da!
But we also hold on to physical archives and printer matter and they continue to delight! They also bear witness to something of what has been lost. The decline of the post as a means for distributing video (VHS! DVDs!) with the rise of Dropbox, or Vimeo, for example, has meant no more of those sweet hand-written notes that used to accompany artists' packages. Exhibition invitations are frankly a rarity now too, and these are filed alongside various postcards, discarded fragments of artists' work and other amusing ephemera.
Since we commissioned our mail-and-stamp graphic identity from More Associates back in April 2005, we have seeped more-and-more online to document and communicate: our first newsletter (November 2005), our first website, our early blog posts (starting in September 2006!), our Facebook page in early 2009 started with the presentation of Jan Dibbets' filming for Portscapes, our Flickr photo archive (also in 2009, now with nearly 4,000 photos online), followed by our first tweets in 2010, and sporadically YouTube, Issuu, Storify, Soundcloud followed.
Presentation of 7 years of practice as part of the programme "La Sucursal" at Casa del Lago, Mexico City, September 2012. This invitation gave us the opportunity to begin the series 'Incidents of Travel' commissioning artists tours in Mexico and Hong Kong. Photo: Latitudes.
This "ecstasy of communication" as Dieter Roelstraete has ironically put it, a day-to-day reality, has certainly defined our practice and how we have come to produce, document and disseminate our projects. We always stress this rapid digital transition when presenting our practice, as adapting to it has certainly been crucial as a two-person spaceless self-organisation. Not running a regular programme of exhibitions or events has meant we have found the need to communicate the duration of what we are working on while being seemingly offline. Sometimes the standard drop-in question "What are you working on?", is not so straightforward to answer. Back to Roelstraete – "getting organised" could often be the most suitable answer. "Getting organised" for the next project, reflecting on a recently concluded activity, anticipating the one after that, sorting out finances, seeing how we might put together the next research trip, finding it a challenge to find the time to read a book from beginning to end, watching life and work go by in 'likes' and 'retweets' and 'regrams'... Yet far than being nostalgic, this transition has itself given us great food for thought. For example, we dedicated over a year to discussing the consequences of online presence for art practice and curating with colleagues from Hong Kong to Minneapolis in the #OpenCurating interview series.
In 2010 we were awarded the inaugural Curatorial Prize given by the Catalan Gallery Association, recognising our "curatorial work and especially for their involvement in the local context and their efforts to disseminate national art in an international context." Photo: Latitudes.
We are thankful to the many artists and other creative people who have supported us throughout this past decade. Some projects started with innocuous conversations that eventually led to ongoing collaborations and friendships, and we are also grateful to colleagues willing to offer critical feedback and words of encouragement in those moments in which we most needed to regain trust. A huge thanks too to the institutions and organisations for financing our projects.
Very soon more news on a commemorative project we've been cooking up...
Related content:
Latitudes' 4th anniversary (April 2009)
Newsletter #22 – April 2010
–
This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption).
Work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Tutors of the 2015 International Curatorial Retreat, 9–13 May, Bari (Italy)
17 May 2015
Introduction to the four-day workshop by Tara McDowell, director of the Curatorial Practice Ph.D. Program at MADA (Monash School of Art Design and Architecture), Melbourne.
Organised by Vessel in collaboration with the Curatorial Practice Ph.D. 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 one 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 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.
Light display at the Piazza del Ferrarese during the Feste di San Nicola.
View from the Doppelgaenger Gallery in the old town area, space that hosted the seminars.
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 Ph.D. 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).
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 '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:
- Review of the 2015 VESSEL /MADA International Curatorial Retreat, by Dr Alexandra Ross, June 2015 Residents, Visiting Curator Program, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 12 May–7 June 2014.
- Lecture and seminar, MADA | Monash University of Art Design & Architecture, 14 May 2014 (6 May 2014)
- Lead Facilitators, Curating Lab 2014–Curatorial Intensive, National University of Singapore (11–14 June) 30 May 2014
- Latitudes' writing archive (essays, reviews, catalogue entries, etc. since 2005)
–
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.
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.
Archive of Cover Story (April): "Beneath the Connaught Road West flyover, Hong Kong, 19 January 2013"
04 May 2015This past March we launched our re-designed website, which includes improved features as well as new sections such as "cover story" on our home page: a monthly focus on an artwork, artist, book, site or trip we've experienced in our recent past, accompanied by a short text.
Our April Cover Story titled "Beneath the Connaught Road West flyover, Hong Kong, 19 January 2013" looked back at the first 'Incidents of Travel' tour led by artist Nadim Abbas, part of our month residency at Spring Workshop.
We recommend reading the text while listening to this field recording we made on the very same spot!
Related content:
Cover Story #1: Wilfredo Prieto's work "Grease, Soap, Banana" (2 April 2015)
New re-designed website now online! (25 February 2015)
Witte de With and Spring Workshop's 'Moderation(s)' publication 'End Note(s)' is out! (5 March 2015).
Nadim Abbas' "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" public tour (19 January 2013)
Archive of social media posts related to "Incidents of Travel" tours and photo-documentation.
Interview between Christina Li and Latitudes on 'Incidents of Travel' for Witte de With's 'Witness to Moderation(s)' blog (7 May 2013)
13 field recordings from 'Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong'
–
This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption).
Work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
2015, cover story, Heman Chong, Hong Kong, Incidents of Travel, Moderations, Nadim Abbas, soundcloud, Spring Workshop, website, Witte de With
Our April Cover Story titled "Beneath the Connaught Road West flyover, Hong Kong, 19 January 2013" looked back at the first 'Incidents of Travel' tour led by artist Nadim Abbas, part of our month residency at Spring Workshop.
We recommend reading the text while listening to this field recording we made on the very same spot!
Related content:
Cover Story #1: Wilfredo Prieto's work "Grease, Soap, Banana" (2 April 2015)
New re-designed website now online! (25 February 2015)
Witte de With and Spring Workshop's 'Moderation(s)' publication 'End Note(s)' is out! (5 March 2015).
Nadim Abbas' "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" public tour (19 January 2013)
Archive of social media posts related to "Incidents of Travel" tours and photo-documentation.
Interview between Christina Li and Latitudes on 'Incidents of Travel' for Witte de With's 'Witness to Moderation(s)' blog (7 May 2013)
13 field recordings from 'Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong'
–
This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption).
Work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.