Longitudes

SAVE THE DATE: 29 June, 19h. Private view of the exhibition "4.543 billion. The matter of matter" at the CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux

 30 May 2017
Xavier Ribas, Chilean Nitrate publicity postcard, c. 1920 from "A History of Detonations", 2013. Courtesy the artist and ProjecteSD, Barcelona; and Lucas Ihlein, "Under Ground", 2010. Courtesy of the artist.


SAVE THE DATE

Exhibition ‘4.543 billion. The matter of matter’, CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, June 29, 2017–January 7, 2018.  

Opening: June 29, 2017 (6 pm)

With: A.J. Aalders, Lara Almarcegui, Maria Thereza Alves, Félix Arnaudin, Amy Balkin, Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck in collaboration with Media Farzin, Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher, Étienne Denisse, Hubert Duprat, Giulio Ferrario, Ângela Ferreira, Anne Garde, Ambroise-Louis Garneray, Terence Gower, Rodney Graham, Ilana Halperin (also at the Université de Bordeaux’s zoology department), Marianne Heier, Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller, Lucas Ihlein and Louise Kate Anderson, Jannis Kounellis, Martín Llavaneras, Erlea Maneros Zabala, Nicholas Mangan, Fiona Marron, Alexandra Navratil, Xavier Ribas, Alfred Roll, Amie Siegel, Lucy Skaer, Alfred Smith, Rayyane Tabet, Pierre Théron, Pep Vidal, Alexander Whalley Light, Stuart Whipps (also at the Musée des Beaux-Arts) as well as documents and objects lent by the archives of the CAPC, the Archives Bordeaux Métropole, the Archives départementales de la Gironde, and the geology collection of the UFR Sciences de la Terre et de la Mer, Université de Bordeaux.

Curated by Latitudes

With contributions from more than 30 artists, “4.543 billion. The matter of matter” is a major exhibition that addresses works of art, collections and cultural histories in relation to ecological processes and a geological scale of time. It presents a continuum of materials and temporal landscapes – films, works on paper, photographs, sculptures, documents, and other meaningful things – and springs from the CAPC building’s former life as a warehouse for colonial commodities whose limestone walls were once deep in the ground and whose wooden beams were once part of a forest.

A central proposal of the exhibition is that works of art are part of geophysical history as much as art history. “4.543 billion” attempts to take into account both a micro-local and a planetary perspective, and to rethink some of the histories of art as fragments of broader narratives about the Earth and how our place in it has been represented. What is at stake when art and museums take on greater temporal and material awareness? How might they move beyond a spatial framework of “think globally, act locally”, to “think historically, act geologically”? 

Collections are accumulations of real physical matter in time as well as of ideas, decisions, fashions, knowledge, and use. Likewise minerals and organic matter might be regarded as both cultural evidence and archival storage media. This exhibition takes a situated view of the past that resists an undifferentiated narrative in which modernity in general is at fault for global ecological disarray, or humanity in an invariably abstract sense must take responsibility.

Accordingly, the artists included instead often address the specific roles and purposeful effects of individuals, practices, states or corporations in an account of how mineral agents and organic processes have intertwined with and underpinned culture. Marianne Heier’s contribution, for example, documents a project addressing the decisive roll North Sea oil has played in shaping art and culture in Norway. Rayyane Tabet’s works deal sculpturally with the legacy of the Trans-Arabian Pipe Line, a joint venture by three American oil companies that came together in 1946 to construct an pipeline from Saudi Arabia to the Mediterranean. Incorporating a fragment of Breccia Pernice marble from the lobby of Trump Tower, Dynasty (2017) by Amie Siegel weaves Italian geology into the political turmoil of the present. 

Several of the more documentary projects on display (including those by Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck and Terence Gower) trace the relationships between Modern art, the museum, and wealth created through extractive industry, combining approaches framed by Earth sciences with colonial history, sociology and political reportage. Yet other works take a more atmospheric, filmic, sculptural or graphic approach to extraction, economy, energy and global exchange, whether orbiting around sunlight, forests, synthetic materials derived from fossil fuels (a subject addressed by Alexandra Navratil), or the services and substances entailed in buildings that display art (as seen through the work of Lucas Ihlein and Lara Almarcegui).
In addition to two new projects in development for the occasion (by Christina Hemauer & Roman Keller and Ilana Halperin), the exhibition will include many works kindly lent by the artists and international galleries, as well as those from the CAPC collection and its archives. Loans from Bordeaux institutions include those from the Archives Bordeaux Métropole, the Archives départementales de la Gironde, the Musée des Beaux-Arts, the Musée d’Aquitaine and the geology collection of the UFR Sciences de la Terre et de la Mer, Université de Bordeaux.

Located at opposite ends of the galleries will be two imposing works that bookend the exhibition conceptually as well as physically. Originally made for CAPC in 1985, Jannis Kounellis’s nine-metre-long Sans titre is a slab of steel draped with coffee sacks that spits flames. On the other side, Ancient Lights (2015) is a two-screen video installation by Nicholas Mangan that is powered by an off-grid solar system with panels on the roof of the CAPC building. With sections filmed at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona, and a salt-storage solar plant near Seville, Mangan’s looped videos speculates on the ideology and politics of energy. 

Several works by Ângela Ferreira also link diverse histories: those of the Cullinan Diamond Mine in South Africa, the source of one of the largest gems ever found, and the Chislehurst Caves in South East London, a crucible of counter-culture in the 1960s. In terms of an exploration of the underground – in this case with a sociological dimension – one could also mention All surface expectations disappear with depth (2010) a three-screen video work by Fiona Marron that juxtaposes text from a 1954 field report on working conditions in an American gypsum mine with footage from present-day excavation in Ireland.

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‘4.543 billion’ is the contribution of the CAPC musée to the cultural season Paysages Bordeaux 2017. Within the exhibition framework, Latitudes will lead the month-long residency programme ‘Geologic Time’ at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Alberta, Canada, in September–October 2017.


RELATED CONTENT:
 2017, 2018, 4543 billion, Bordeaux, CAPC Bordeaux, Ecology, Exhibition, Lucas Ihlein, research, save the date, Xavier Ribas

Jurado y tutores de Barcelona Producció – Anuncio de los proyectos ganadores temporada 2017–2018

 25 May 2017
Fotos de Pep Herrero para Barcelona Producció/La Capella.

Después de una intensísima semana de lectura de las 230 solicitudes recibidas, otra semana de debate entre los miembros del jurado y una tercera semana entrevistando a los 31 candidatos pre-seleccionados, el jurado de la temporada 2017–2018 de Barcelona Producció formado por David Armengol, Alexandra Laudo, Mónica Bello, Joan Caselles, Mireia Sallarès y Latitudes junto a Oriol Gual, director de La Capella (con voz, sin voto), ha decidido seleccionar los siguientes 17 proyectos para su producción y presentación a lo largo de la temporada:

Sala Grande – Exposición individual
  • "Synthesis" de David Mutiloa
  • "Talk trouble" de Claudia Pagès
  • "El Gafe i la Revolució" de Dani Montlleó
Sala pequeña – Exposición individual
  • "Remover con una vara de madera" de Matteo Guidi
  • "ARTENGO2000" de Camille Orny y Magda Vaz
  • "SSSSSSSilex" de Paco Chanivet
Sala Gran – Comisariado
  • "A break can be what we are aiming for" de Irina Mutt
Sala pequeña – Comisariado
(Modalidad desierta)

Proyectos deslocalizados
  • "Són els microorganismes els que tindran l’última paraula" de la Associació Cultural Nyamnyam
  • "En frontera" de Marco Noris
Investigación
  • "El Peso de mis Vecinas - La Poesía y el Cante como Dispositivos Estratégicos" de Christina Schultz
  • "El mal alumne. Pedagogia crítica per a intel·ligències artificials" de Taller Estampa
Publicación
  • "The Drowned Giant" de Anna Moreno
Acción en vivo
  • "Chroma" de Quim Pujol
  • "The Reading Room #3 presenta: Aparatos del habla – Materialismo histórico" de Eliana Beltrán
  • "Fine Cherry" de Victoria Macarte
Entornos digitales
  • "Eixams" de Alex Muñoz
  • "Notes on a novel (that I am not going to write), or the swimming pool, or the hair, the herb and the bread or the tomato plant" de Irene Solà
Latitudes tutorizará los proyectos de David Mutiloa (Sala Grande, 18 julio– 25 septiembre 2017), Anna Moreno (Proyecto de publicación, noviembre 2017) y Magda Vaz y Camille Orny (Sala pequeña, 23 enero–1 abril 2018).

La undécima convocatoria introduce varias novedades: se han doblado el número de categorías pasando de nueve a dieciocho y se suman tres nuevos tutores (las comisarias Alexandra Laudo y Mónica Bello, y el artista Joan Casellas). La otra novedad es que el "Espai Cub" desaparece para transformarse en una sala más amplia con paredes blancas de 4×8m situado a la entrada de La Capella ("sala pequeña").

Las nuevas líneas que se han introducido se destinan a la producción de un proyecto curatorial para la sala pequeña para formatos reducidos o de archivo (1 proyecto), edición de una publicación (1 proyecto), proyectos en entornos digitales (2 proyectos), proyectos en vivo (3 proyectos), y se ha recuperado la añorada beca de investigación (2 proyectos).

El calendario preliminar de exhibición será en siguiente:

18 de julio–25 de septiembre 2017
Sala Gran (individual 1) + Sala Petita (individual 1)

11 de octubre–7 de enero 2017
Sala Gran (individual 2) + Sala Petita (individual 2)

23 de enero 2017–1 de abril 2018
Sala Gran (individual 3) + Sala Petita (individual 3)

27 de abril–24 de junio 2018
Sala Gran (comisariado) + Sala Petita (comisariado)

Los proyectos deslocalizados, de edición, de acción en vivo, digitales y de investigación se producirán y presentarán a lo largo de la temporada.


Barcelona producció es una convocatoria anual dirigida a la comunidad artística de Barcelona y su área de influencia. Es una iniciativa del Institut de Cultura de Barcelona (ICUB) del Ajuntament de Barcelona.

CONTENIDO RELACIONADO:
 2017, Barcelona, Barcelona Producció, BCN Producció, beca producción, emerging artists, exhibition-making, grant, Jurado, tutoría

Cover Story – May 2017: "S is for Shale, or Stuart; W is for Waterfall, or Whipps"

 01 May 2017
 
www.lttds.org

The May 2017 Monthly Cover Story "S is for Shale, or Stuart; W is for Waterfall, or Whipps" is now up on www.lttds.org – after May it will be archived here.  

"Today, as for millennia, the mighty River Zambezi is crashing over a series of precipitous basalt gorges—a place the Makololo people described as Mosi-oa-Tunya. The smoke that thunders. Since the 1870s, a Scottish stream has been plunging over a diminutive replica, seen in this month’s video Cover Story, located in the gardens of a mansion that is now a country house hotel (by all accounts with an enviable breakfast) in the village of Polbeth, less than an hour’s drive from Edinburgh." Continue reading

Cover Stories' are published on a monthly basis on Latitudes' homepage and feature past, present or forthcoming projects, research, writing, artworks, exhibitions, films, objects or field trips related to our curatorial activities. 

RELATED CONTENT:
  • Archive of Cover Stories
  • Cover Story – April 2017: Banff Geologic Time 3 April 2017
  • Cover Story – March 2017: Time travel with Jordan Wolfson 1 March 2017
  • Cover Story – February 2017: The Dutch Assembly, five years on 1 February 2017
  • Cover Story – January 2017: How open are open calls? 4 January 2017
  • Cover Story – December 2016: Ten years ago – Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook 5 December 2016
  • Cover Story – November 2016: Plucking Gilda, synesthetic Toni and dazzling Víctor 2 November 2016
  • Cover Story – October 2016: "A Funny thing Happened on the Way to the Gallery, 13 October 2016
  • Cover Story – September 2016: "El misterio de Caviria" by Antoni Hervàs 1 Septiembre 2016
  • Last chance to read the August 2016 Monthly Cover Story "Fermínlandia" 31 August 2016
 2017, 4543 billion, CAPC Bordeaux, cover story, oil, report, slowing down, Stuart Whipps

Founded in 2005 by Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna, Latitudes is a curatorial office based in Barcelona, Spain, that works internationally across contemporary art practices.

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2005—2019