Longitudes

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

Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum's installation ‘Work in Progress’ in the process of being acquired by ARTIUM, Vitoria-Gasteiz


Above and below: Installation views of "Work in progress" in the exhibition "The Margins of the Factory", ADN Platform, 25 January–30 April 2014. Video (14’ 22”), 739 polyurethane sculptures, and 47 moulds. Produced with support from the Eremuak program of the Basque Government and from Centrum Beeldende Kunst Rotterdam. Courtesy of the artists. Photos: Roberto Ruiz.






We are very happy to know that Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum's installation ‘Work in Progress’ (2013) is in the process of being acquired by ARTIUM, Centro Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Basque Country. The piece is on display as part of the exhibition ‘ARTres. El museo como deba ser’ (March 2–August 26, 2018).

Work in Progress’ was one of the two works included in their solo exhibition "The Margins of the Factory" presented at ADN Platform in January 2014, and curated by Latitudes.






Work in Progress’ immerses itself in the manufacturing industry of Markina-Xemein, the rural Basque village where Jaio comes from. A video documents the mass-production of rubber car parts, following the pieces from the assembly line in a worker-owned factory to subcontracted workshops where informal workers finish them by hand.

Several of these workers are employed by the artists to cast hundreds of replicas of small modernist sculptures. These are displayed on mass-produced shelving to evoke the “Chalk Laboratory” of Basque sculptor Jorge Oteiza (1908–2003), a fierce critic of the commodification of art. 

 Exhibition leaflet. Pdf downloadable here.

Latitudes previously collaborated with Jaio and van Gorkum in the exhibition cycle ‘Amikejo’ presented throughout 2011 in MUSAC, León, when they exhibited ‘Producing time between other things’ (2011), a work specially produced for the occasion, and also included in the above-mentioned show "The Margins of the Factory" in 2014.

—> Photographs of the exhibition.
—> Exhibition leaflet (pdf).
—> Exhibition reviews.
—> Video on ‘Producing time between other things’ (2011)



RELATED CONTENT:

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Sixth episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Marianna Hovhannisyan and students from the National Center of Aesthetics from Yerevan, Armenia

http://incidents.kadist.org/yerevan

The sixth 'Incidents (of Travel)' episode narrates a walking itinerary in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, documenting the transformed, disappeared, or permanently-closed art institutions in the city center

The itinerary was conducted by curator Marianna Hovhannisyan with Vardan Kilichyan, Gohar Hosyan, and Anaida Verdyan — three art students from the National Center of Aesthetics, one of the oldest alternative art educational hubs in the city. 

The inquiry was based on how knowledge transmission and generational exchanges in the Armenian contemporary art field could be approached—particularly in terms of exploring the fragmented histories of its institutional work.

Each of the 15 photographs is augmented by one or more extra assets – a brief commentary or a caption –, accessed by clicking the words which overlay the images.



Marianna Hovhannisyan (Yerevan/San Diego) is a research-based curator, a Ph.D student in Art History, Theory, and Criticism at Visual Arts Department, Univerisity of California San Diego. 

Originally conceived by Latitudes as day-long artist-led tours around Mexico City in 2012 (with five dispatches presented as part of an exhibition on Latitudes' curatorial practice at Casa del Lago) 'Incidents of Travel' had sequels in 2013 in Hong Kong (online dispatches published via twitter, instagram, and soundcloud) and San Francisco in 2015 (daily posts on Kadist's Instagram as part of their #ArtistNotInTheStudioCuratorNotAtTheOffice take over initiative).


The project 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.
In 2016 Kadist and Latitudes partnered in a new 'distributed' phase of 'Incidents (of Travel)' as part of Kadist Online Projects. This new phase is developed as an online periodical that publishes contributions from invited curators and artists working around the world.


http://incidents.kadist.org/chicago

A series of itineraries conceived by six curators, artists or researchers — previous fellows of the seminar The Place from Where We Look (Kadist Paris, June 2015) — launched in April 2016 with an itinerary by curator Yesomi Umolu and artist Harold Mendez from Chicago – a day photographed by Nabiha Khan


http://incidents.kadist.org/jinja

The second dispatch came from Jinja in Uganda, where curator Moses Serubiri invited photographer Mohsen Taha to explore Jinja's Indian architectural legacy and Idi Amin's notorious expulsion of Uganda's Asian minority in 1972.


http://incidents.kadist.org/suzhou

The third episode took place while curator Yu Ji and poet Xiao Kaiyu hiked on Dong Shan (East Mountain), 130 km west of Shanghai, on a peninsula stretching into Tai Hu lake near the city of Suzhou, China
http://incidents.kadist.org/lisbon

The fourth dispatch came from Lisbon, where Galician curator Pedro de Llano visited key locations that marked the life and work of Luisa Cunha.
http://incidents.kadist.org/terengganu

The fifth episode took place in April 2016, when curator Simon Soon and artist chi too visited the Malaysian North Eastern state of Terengganu, where chi spent some time in 2013, surrounded by "men and women who work(ed) multiple jobs as a fishermen, house builders, boat builders, farmers, coconut pickers, food producers, and everything else that matters."  


RELATED CONTENT:


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"The Kørner problem” essay by Max Andrews in the monograph "John Kørner" published by Roulette Russe

Exhibition poster of "Altid Mange Problemer" at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Summer 2017. Photo: Latitudes.

Last Summer, Max Andrews of Latitudes was invited to contribute an essay for the forthcoming monograph of John Kørner's work published by the Danish editorial Roulette Russe and designed by Spine Studio. The publication is out now and includes essays by Max, London-based writer Oliver Basciano, and a conversation between the artist and Marie Nipper, curator of John's recent mid-career exhibition in Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen. 

The 280-page bilingual Danish/English monograph will be launched on March 2, 2018, at 4:30pm, in Kunsthal Charlottenborg's Apollo Kantine, though it will become available for online orders from February 26.

(Above and following): Photos: Finn Wergel Dahlgren. Courtesy Roulotte Russe. 













In his essay, Max tries to define what "The Kørner problem” (the title of the essay) might be:

(...) "The apparently ‘wicked’ problems and appalling catastrophes that interpenetrate Kørner’s works are manifold. The upsurge in jihadist terrorist activity in Europe since 2015 and its fallout are unavoidable (whether vestiges of the Charlie Hebdo shootings and the Bataclan attacks in Paris, suicide bombings in Brussels and Manchester; or truck attacks in Nice, Berlin, Barcelona; rampaging attacks in London, and so on). The civil war and the rise of ISIL (ISIS, Daesh) in Syria and the exacerbating effects of climate change and mega-drought that affected the region are inescapable. The European debt and migrant crisis are here. Yet elsewhere Kørner also brings to mind what at first seem like unrelated problems: the 2011 Tōhoku tsunami and the calamity of the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown, human trafficking, et cetera, states of exception that seem to confirm that the problem is evermore radical, atrocious, ungrounded—more diffuse while remaining intractably real. American pop star Ariana Grande knows this as well as Kørner. Released in spring 2014, three years before the suicide bombing of her concert at Manchester Arena, her most successful single to date is titled “Problem”. We are witnessing new kinds of wicked problems and Kørner paints accordingly."


In preparation for the catalogue essay, in July 2017 Latitudes visited Kørner's impressive "Altid Mange Problemer" mid-career exhibition at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, the largest exhibition of his works to date, gathering paintings and sculptural pieces from 2004 to the present.

(Above and following): Photos by Latitudes.


Max has previously written on John's work for the catalogue of his 2006 exhibition "Problems" at Victoria Miro Gallery in London.

Latitudes' first visit to Copenhagen also involved Kørner's work, as we visited his solo show 'ARoS Bank' at the ARoS Århus Kunstmuseum, Denmark (13 June–10 September 2006), which became the subject of our first blog post over a decade ago, in September 2006 (!).

RELATED CONTENT:
  • Latitudes' writing archive
  • Latitudes' "out of office" 2016–2017 season 1 August 2017
  • Max Andrews essay on Christopher Knowles for NoguerasBlanchard at Liste 2017 21 July 2017
  • Mariana Cánepa Luna reviews Ana Jotta’s “Abans que me n’oblidi (Before I forget)” exhibition in art-agenda 11 November 2016
  • '2006 Problems' exhibition and publication by John Kørner, Victoria Miro Gallery, London 29 November 2006
  • Copenhagen trip. 'Woman with 24 problems' by John Kørner 30 September 2006
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Cover Story—February 2018: Paradise, Promises and Perplexities


Latitudes' home page www.lttds.org 

The February 2018 Monthly Cover Story "Paradise, Promises and Perplexities" is now up on www.lttds.org – after this month it will be archived here.

"This month marks ten years since the opening of Greenwashing, curated by Latitudes and Ilaria Bonacossa. Subtitled Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities, this exhibition at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, addressed the melding of corporate agendas and individual ethics in the wake of the exhaustion of traditional environmentalism." 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 Monthly Cover Stories
Cover Story – January 2018: I'll be there for you, 2 January 2018
Cover Story – December 2017: "Tabet's Tapline trajectory", 4 December 2017
Cover Story – November 2017: "Mining negative monuments: Ângela Ferreira, Stone Free, and The Return of the Earth", 1 November 2017
Cover Story – October 2017: Geologic Time at Stanley Glacier 11 October 2017
Cover Story – September 2017: Dark Disruption. David Mutiloa's 'Synthesis' 1 September 2017
Cover Story – August 2017: Walden 7; or, life in Sant Just Desvern 1 August 2017
Cover Story – July 2017: 4.543 billion 3 July 2017
Cover Story – June 2017: Month Light–Absent Forms 1 June 2017
Cover Story – May 2017: S is for Shale, or Stuart; W is for Waterfall, or Whipps 1 May 2017
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

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Mariana Cánepa Luna vocal del jurado del Premi Ciutat de Barcelona 2017 en el ámbito de las Artes Visuales


El Ayuntamiento de Barcelona convoca anualmente los Premios Ciudad de Barcelona con el objetivo de premiar la creación, la investigación y la producción de calidad realizada en Barcelona por creadores o colectivos, instituciones y organizaciones barcelonesas. 

El Instituto de cultura de Barcelona (ICUB), encargado de la organización de los Premios, profundiza en la dimensión ciudadana de estos galardones al reconocer el talento de otros ciudadanos -los ganadores.
Los miembros del jurado son propuestos por el Consejo de la Cultura de Barcelona y nombrados por la Alcaldesa Ada Colau.

Este año el jurado en la categoría de artes visuales compuesto por el director del Museu d'art contemporani de Barcelona, Ferran Barenblit Scheinin (Presidente) y formado por las vocales Violant Porcel Roqué (hasta hace poco directora de la Galería Marlborough), Martina Millà Bernard (Jefa de Exposiciones y proyectos, Fundació Joan Miró), Teresa Sesé Monclús (crítica de arte, La Vanguardia) y Mariana Cánepa Luna (co-directora de la oficina curatorial Latitudes) ha decidido por unanimidad otorgar el premio al artista Joan Morey: 

‘Por un año de excepcional calidad que ha resultado en el proyecto de vídeo «Cos Social [Lliçó d’anatomia]» presentado por LOOP Barcelona en el Arts Santa Mònica, en una coproducción con la Xarxa de Centres d’Arts Visuals de Catalunya, y en la performance «Tour de Force», una coproducción del CCCB y la Fundació Han Nefkens, en el marco de la exposición «1000 m2 de desig. Arquitectura i sexualitat»’. 


Joan Morey fotografiado por Marc Medina.

CONTENIDOS RELACIONADOS
:

  • Antoni Hervàs's exhibition "El Misterio de Caviria" awarded the Visual Arts prize of the Premis Ciutat de Barcelona 2016 1 February 2017
  • Jurado y tutores de Barcelona Producció – Anuncio de los proyectos ganadores temporada 2017–2018 25 Mayo 2017
  • Jurado y equipo tutorial de BCN Producció 2016, La Capella, Barcelona. 2 Febrero 2016
  • Resolución Convocatoria 2012 de Artes visuales y Tutorial de la Sala d'Art Jove 7 Diciembre 2011
  • Fallo Jurado Premios Casablancas 2008, 20 Junio, 20h 16 junio 2008
  • Otros jurados – véase sección "About"
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Reviews of the exhibition "4.543 billion. The matter of matter" at the CAPC musée, Bordeaux

As the ‘4.543 billion. The matter of matter’ exhibition concluded on January 7, 2018, at the CAPC musée in Bordeaux, we finished archiving all the social media posts visitors, the museum and ourselves have published – see our Wakelet feed below – since research phase to the exhibition itself, and below share the most relevant print and online reviews.
Wakelet collection of the "4.543 billion" exhibition.

December 8, 2017: Tom Jeffreys highlighted the exhibition in his "Looking Back: Paris" roundup for frieze magazine – illustrated with two works included in the show by Nicholas Mangan and Alexandra Navratil.

"A little less academic, but no less rigorous, was ‘4,543 milliards’ (4,543 billion), curated by the Barcelona-based Latitudes (co-founded by frieze contributing editor Max Andrews) at CAPC, Bordeaux. Subtitled ‘The matter of matter’, the exhibition provided a material, geological and political response to the building’s former life as a warehouse for colonial commodities and, by extension, the complex entanglement of culture, money, politics and ecological impact. Marble from Trump Tower (Amie Siegel’s "Strata", 2017) was exhibited alongside partially-burnt documents rescued from a fire at the Bordeaux municipal archives and a 1939 mock invitation to the ‘Museum of Standard Oil’, actually MoMA’s new building, issued by the then-publications director, Frances Collins (unsurprisingly fired soon after). Combining archival materials with work by 30 artists, big ideas with specificity and nuance, this was exactly the kind of exhibition I would want to return to again and again. If the selection of the next artistic director the Venice Biennale were a democratic process, I’d be voting for Latitudes."


November 28, 2017Frank Browning, Paris-based Contributor to the Huffington Post author, and former NPR Correspondent, reviewed the recently opened retrospective of Beatriz González and concluded his article with a short mention:

"Meanwhile, around the corner at CAPC there’s an intriguing assembly of stones, papers, paintings, photographs and projections that unite geo-physics, sculpture, and art history, including the conversion of the building itself from a one-time commodities warehouse into its current life as a museum.

Entitled “The Matter of Matter,” [missing "4.543 billion" years, the age of the Earth, and the first part of the exhibition title] it includes the work of 30 artists, assembled and mounted by a Spanish team, Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna. They call themselves Latitudes [wrongly published with two "T"]; they aim to excavate the world we inhabit daily, be it through the history indigo mining in Mexico and southern France (vital for fine pottery and coloring bluejeans) or oil extraction in Venezuela, gas infused sculptures or open pit diamond mining in southern Africa. All that we do, all that we eat, all that we create derives from one form of excavation or another. Simple truism as it may seem, Latitudes takes us into the intimacies of our relation with this earth and calls us to meditate on our physical and aesthetic relation to the steadily warming round rock that is our home."




September 20, 2017: Emmanuel Labails of RCF Radio did a 9-minute interview with Pedro Jiménez Morras, Head of Press of CAPC, who discussed the premises of the exhibition and some of its works. (Listen between minute 4:39 and 13:36).

August 19, 2017: Bea Espejo's ‘Cambio de tiempo’, on the Spanish national cultural supplement Babelia, in El País newspaper begins:

˝A ese pensamiento geológico del tiempo conduce la exposición 4.543 millones. La cuestión de la materia en el CAPC de Burdeos. La muestra aborda obras de arte, colecciones e historias culturales con relación a procesos ecológicos y la escala geológica del tiempo. En total, más de 35 artistas que dan valor a las discontinuidades, a las derivas y a las ausencias. La muestra almacena el tiempo como una batería almacena la energía. Y lo hace en varias capas de lectura. Una de ellas es el tiempo que lleva Latitudes, la oficina curatorial de Mariana Cánepa Luna y Max Andrews, trabajando en este proyecto, seguramente el más complejo y ambicioso, aunque esta investigación en torno a las complejas relaciones entre la ecología y el arte contemporáneo está en la base de todos sus proyectos desde 2005. Aquí no pueden ser más rotundos. Abordan la cuestión de la materia desde el lado más inmaterial, que es la memoria. Para ello, estudiaron a fondo el contexto de la ciudad bajo un programa de residencias del museo. Hablamos, pues, de un proyecto de investigación, algo que se traduce en cada pequeño gesto que recoge la muestra, y que lo expande todo. De ahí las relaciones de algunas obras con el departamento de zoología de la universidad (Ilana Halperin), el Museo de Bellas Artes (Stuart Whipps, o el préstamo de Alfred Roll), así como los muchos documentos y objetos que se incluyen de los archivos Métropole, de la Gironde y la colección geológica de la UFR Sciences de la Terre et de la Mer, de la Universidad de Burdeos.˝




July 12, 2017: Catherine Darfay's ‘Le CAPC remonte le temps’ on the local newspaper "Sudouest", was the first feature. The article was illustrated with a with an image showing Amy Balkin's ‘Today’s CO2 Spot Price’ (2009) chartering the daily price of carbon dioxide emissions allowances in the world’s largest carbon market —a changing value documented in this blog post.


RELATED CONTENT:
  • 4.543 billion. The Matter of Matter” exhibition
  • Archive of social networks posts related to "4.543 billion"
  • Photo gallery of the exhibition 
  • CAPC website (French, English, Spanish) http://www.capc-bordeaux.fr/programme/4543-milliards
  • Cover Story—December 2017: "Tabet's Tapline trajectory" 4 December 2017
  • Alfred Roll's 1878 "The Old Quarryman" exchanged with Alfred Smith's "The Grave Docks" (1884) in the exhibition "4.543 billion" at the CAPC musée 3 November 2017
  • Cover Story—November 2017: "Mining negative monuments: Ângela Ferreira, Stone Free, and The Return of the Earth" 1 November 2017 
  • 15 November 2017, 4:30–8pm: 'The Return of the Earth. Ecologising art history in the Anthropocene' study day at the CAPC musée, Bordeaux 24 October 201
  • Cover Story – July 2017: 4.543 billion 3 July 2017
  • Cover Story – May 2017: S is for Shale, or Stuart; W is for Waterfall, or Whipps 1 May 2017
  • 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
  • Cover Story – May 2016: Material histories – spilling the beans at the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux 10 May 2016.
  • Second research trip to Bordeaux 16 July 2016
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Progress of Amy Balkin's ‘Today’s CO2 Spot Price’ (2009)



Installation of Amy Balkin's ‘Today’s CO2 Spot Price’ (2009) on the opening day, 29 June 2017. Photo: Latitudes/RK. 

Throughout the course of the ‘4.543 billion. The Matter of Matter’ exhibition at the CAPC musée in Bordeaux, the work by Amy Balkin (Baltimore, Maryland, 1967. Lives in San Francisco) ‘Today’s CO2 Spot Price’ (2009) charted the daily price of carbon dioxide emissions allowances in the world’s largest carbon market, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. The numbering system was manually updated every morning to show the price in Euros of an entitlement to legally emit one metric tonne of CO2. Polluters—power plants or factories—receive or buy emissions allowances at auctions and trade them as needed to minimize costs.

A product of the increasing dominance of the finance sector and the expansion of financial derivatives that emerged in the 1970s, the carbon market ‘fix’ has abstracted the qualitative problem of climate change mitigation into a commodity market based on a molecule treated as the singular cause. There is a trend towards emissions that can be lucratively ‘avoided’, while there has been little effect on structural fossil fuel dependence. In this perspective, global warming is a market failure that can be corrected by governing the atmosphere via an economic instrument with no real material or historical reference.

Balkin's piece was presented alongside works by Pep Vidal, Lucas Ihlein, and Lara Almarcegui, all focusing on humans' calculations and quantification of nature and its progressive abstraction.

—Latitudes 

(Text from the exhibition guide)

4.543 billion. The matter of matter’ took place between the June 29, 2017 and January 7, 2018 at the CAPC musée d'art contemporain, Bordeaux, France.



General view of room 8. Photo: Latitudes/RK.


Work by Lara Almarcegui (wall) and Pep Vidal (floor). Photo: Latitudes/RK.


Prints by Lucas Ihlein (wall) and part of a tree by Pep Vidal (floor). Photo: Latitudes/RK.


Below a sequence of all the social media posts (mostly from Instagrammers, more on this and other works on this Wakelet feed) showing the ongoing flux of its price—which has ranged from 4,84 Eur per tonne of CO2 during the installation of the piece, to 4,93 Eur on the opening day (29 June 2017), to the last picture on record showing a whopping 7,76 Eur per tonne of CO2.

We would like to thank the KADIST in San Francisco for having given us the opportunity to, after years of corresponding over email, finally meet Amy during a residency in September 2015. Her "Incidents of Travel" day on several locations in and outside San Francisco (download the specially-commissioned itinerary here) was invaluable towards the conceptualization of this exhibition.




Installing ‘Today’s CO2 Spot Price’ (2009). Photo: Latitudes for @capc 



Taken on 2 July 2017. Photo: Latitudes. 



Image published in the Sudouest newspaper on 12 July 2017 showing 04,98 EUR/tC02.


Taken on 13 July 2017 by Hélène Lucien. 


Taken on 16 July 2017 by Adriano Pedrosa. 


Taken on 2 August 2017 by Lena Joreis. 


Taken on 19 August 2017 by Semi-Sans.


Taken on 22 August 2017 by Mads Freund Brunse.


Taken on 12 October 2017 by Tomas Mendizabal.


Taken on 17 October 2017 by @Margareth.


Taken on 20 November 2017 by @matlegall. 


Taken on 2 November 2017 by @Elénie. 


Taken on 30 November 2017 by @mllelahaye 


Taken on 1 December 2017 by @mommou.elle 


Taken on January 7, 2018, the last day of the exhibition, by exhibition coordinator Alice Cavender. 


RELATED CONTENT
  • 4.543 billion. The Matter of Matter” exhibition 
  • Archive of social networks posts related to "4.543 billion" 
  • Photo gallery of the exhibition 
  • CAPC website (French, English, Spanish) http://www.capc-bordeaux.fr/programme/4543-milliards
  • Cover Story—December 2017: "Tabet's Tapline trajectory" 4 December 2017
  • Alfred Roll's 1878 "The Old Quarryman" exchanged with Alfred Smith's "The Grave Docks" (1884) in the exhibition "4.543 billion" at the CAPC musée 3 November 2017
  • Cover Story—November 2017: "Mining negative monuments: Ângela Ferreira, Stone Free, and The Return of the Earth" 1 November 2017
  • 15 November 2017, 4:30–8pm: 'The Return of the Earth. Ecologising art history in the Anthropocene' study day at the CAPC musée, Bordeaux 24 October 201
  • Cover Story – July 2017: 4.543 billion 3 July 2017
  • Cover Story – May 2017: S is for Shale, or Stuart; W is for Waterfall, or Whipps 1 May 2017
  • 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 
  • Cover Story – May 2016: Material histories – spilling the beans at the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux 10 May 2016
  • Second research trip to Bordeaux 16 July 2016

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Cover Story—January 2018: I'll be there for you

Latitudes' home page www.lttds.org

The January 2018 Monthly Cover Story "I'll be there for you" is now up on www.lttds.org – after this month it will be archived here.
 

"Camille Orny and Magda Vaz’s exhibition for the Sala Petita of Barcelona’s La Capella will open on 23 January—it is the last of three projects that Latitudes is mentoring during the current season of the Barcelona Producció grants." 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. 


(Above and below) View from "Artengo2000", exhibition by Camille Orny and Magda Vaz at the Sala Petita in La Capella. Photo: Pep Herrero / La Capella.

Below the text written by Latitudes, mentors of the project:

"Bringing the format of the miniseries into the Sala Petita, Camille Orny & Magda Vaz have created a drama-documentary for six screens premised on the story of a group of five flatmates—including semi-fictionalized versions of themselves—who have struck a sponsorship deal with a corporation known as Artengo. In one reality Artengo is a sub-brand of the sporting goods retailer Decathlon dedicated to racket sports, yet in another reality, it is an arcane Russian-American multinational corporation. The series begins with a dream in which a flatmate is haunted by the Artengo-branded socks that the flatmates have agreed to wear at all times as part of the sponsorship deal that in return sees them receive occasional deliveries of unbranded food and a discount on their gas bill. Artengo2000 is a cumulative narrative: each installment is comprehensive and distinct, while each is grafted onto the body of the series, with certain elements and plot lines that link across.

Artengo2000 hinges on possible spiritual advancements and psychic disorders caused by shared living and by being obedient brand ambassadors. We witness the transformation of a communal flat into a laboratory-like space governed by the unwritten transactions entailed in lifestyle sponsorship and company patronage. Although the drama takes us to Montjuïc, the W Barcelona hotel, and to the Arenas shopping centre, and other branded flats, the Artengo apartment itself is the core psychological location. Yet in contrast to the breezy comedic and romantic adventures of the flat-sharing television series Friends (1994–2004), the Artengo apartment fills with irrational drama, distrust, deranged dreams, and doppelgängers. The flatmates become more like guinea pigs in a pioneering space station, afloat in a void at the limits of corporate ethics, loyalties and interpersonal relations. Characters include Camille and Magda’s flatmates Manu and Laura, a washed-up professional tennis player, and a supposed Danish-Catalan man named Borja with an academic interest in the introduction to Barcelona of novel and more covert forms of whole-life sponsorship.


Artengo2000 takes place in a familiar but twisted world in which gig economies, collaborative work and service sharing appear to have developed in even more perverse ways. A brand called Little Bits makes an appearance—a sort of mutant Deliveroo based on micro-tapas. As Orny and Vaz have suggested, their shared flat drama imagines the bizarre incompatibility of a kommunalka (kommunalki were multi-family communal apartments encouraged by Lenin as a response to the housing crisis after the Russian revolution of 1917) set in a near-future where neoliberal and Silicon-Valley logic wields even greater power. Here the so-called ‘sharing economy’ of coworking, or online platforms such as BlaBlaCar and Airbnb, is evidently not representative of an altruistic fantasy of entrepreneurship or dynamic community cohesion, but is a symptom of evermore precarious socioeconomic circumstances. Giving up some personal space is part of the experience of sharing a flat, yet it allows a lower cost of living. However, the sponsorship deal that the flatmates are signed up to exacerbates their sacrifices to extremes. The work-life balance has not been blurred, but completely collapsed, as the flatmates renounce their intimacy and subjectivity in commodifying themselves for the Artengo brand.

Where the vast majority of television narrators strive for neutrality and self-effacement, as if viewers are supposed to ignore the fact that the story is coming through a mediator, Orny and Vaz’s storytelling, and the Artengo2000 world of homemade myth-making, is far from straightforward. It incorporates numerous doubtful narratives, both onscreen and offscreen. Film genres such as the Western, or the film noir, routinely passed through a kind of four-stage metamorphosis, media scholars have suggested.1 In the first stage, conventions were established and isolated. In the second ‘classic’ stage these conventions reached equilibrium and were mutually understood by makers and audiences; the third stage saw formal and stylistic embellishments. Finally in a ‘baroque’ stage, the embellishments were accented to the point where they themselves became the substance of the work. Yet whether television series have followed the same logic is moot, particularly in an age where gathering in the living room to watch the latest hit show at the scheduled time has long been a thing of the past, usurped by viewers binge-streaming multiple episodes. Moreover, is it not the case that Artengo2000, much like David Lynch’s surreal crime drama Twin Peaks (1990–91), was already born congenitally baroque?

While Artengo2000 is steeped in cinematic theory and the study of genre, more plausible still is that it comes at us not only through a filter of American television, and series that have experimented with the medium of the episodic drama in often darkly-comic and self-referential ways, such as Seinfeld (1989–1998), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000–present), and Louie (2010–15). Artengo2000 has also filtered through many diverse influences related to what critic Jordi Costa has identified as ‘post-humor’ in Spain, including YouTube channels and self-made web series from the likes of Canódromo Abandonado, Pioneros Siglo XXI, and Venga Monjas.2 Yet why does a series ‘happen’ when it does? Was the fanatical following that built around the supernatural detective series The X-Files (1993–2002), for example, in some way a Bill-Clinton-era phenomenon, a result of psychohistorical factors at work in 1990s America? And why do we now see a return of Twin Peaks (2017–) just at the same time as we see Artengo2000 emerge in Barcelona? Appropriately, asking more questions that providing answers, we offer no more closure than a typical episode of either." 

Latitudes 

Mentors of the project. Text written for the exhibition and available in English, Catalan and Spanish.


1 See Thomas Schatz, ‘Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and The Studio System’, McGraw-Hill, 1981.

2 See Miguel Iríbar, ‘El posthumor, la tortilla deconstruida de la risa’, http://www.jotdown.es/2014/12/el-posthumor-la-tortilla-deconstruida-de-la-risa/



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2017 in 12 monthly Cover Stories

Another year has gone by!

Revisit some of Latitudespast–present–future–ongoing projects through our online archive of Monthly Cover Stories, a chance to focus on an artwork, article, event, film, exhibition, excursion or ongoing train of thoughts. 


Cover Story January 2017: "How open are open calls?", 4 January 2017

Cover Story February 2017: "The Dutch Assembly, five years on", 1 February 2017

Cover Story – March 2017: "Time travel with Jordan Wolfson", 1 March 2017

Cover Story – April 2017: "Banff Geologic Time", 3 April 2017

Cover Story – May 2017: "S is for Shale or Stuart; W is for Waterfall, or Whipps", 1 May 2017 

Cover Story – June 2017: "Moth light—Absent Forms", 1 June 2017
Cover Story – July 2017: "4.543 billion", 3 July 2017 


Cover Story – August 2017: "Walden 7; or, life in Sant Just Desvern", 1 August 2017  


Cover Story – September 2017: "Dark Disruption. David Mutiloa's 'Synthesis'", 1 September 2017

Cover Story – October 2017: "Geologic Time at Stanley Glacier", 11 October 2017

Cover Story—November 2017: "Mining negative monuments: Ângela Ferreira, Stone Free, and The Return of the Earth", 1 November 2017
Cover Story—December 2017: "Tabet’s Tapline trajectory", 4 December 2017

RELATED CONTENT:
Latitudes' Cover Story archive,
Latitudes' writing archive,
Latitudes' newsletters.
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Public programme of the exhibition "4.543 billion. The Matter of Matter" at the CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux

First public event on 30 June to the Salle des Collections de l'Unité de Formation de Biologie, Université de Bordeaux. This and following photos: Latitudes.


On December 14 at 2pm, the mediation department of the CAPC will lead a guided visit to Ilana Halperin’s "The Rock Cycle" (2017) intervention at the Salle des Collections de l'Unité de Formation de Biologie, Université de Bordeaux. 

The event is the third visit (earlier ones took place on October 19 and November 16) programmed in the context of her participation in the exhibition ‘4.543 billion. The matter of matter’ on view at the CAPC musée d'art contemporain de BordeauxThe next (and final one) will be taking place on January 4, three days before the exhibition closes on January 7, 2018. 

These events are free. Booking is recommended via Léo Correa l.correa@mairie-bordeaux.fr T. (+33) 05 56 00 81 60.


Ilana Halperin’s new project for the exhibition '4.543 billion' deals with geological intimacy and vivacity, and the uncanny fact that something as apparently inert and certain as the stone walls of the CAPC building were once marine life from a tropical ocean of the Oligocene epoch, around 32 million-years-ago. This Calcaire à Astéries (asteriated limestone) characteristic of Bordeaux takes its name from the countless tiny fossil organisms of the genus asterias (a type of sea star) that can be found in the stone alongside fossil mollusks and coral.

Halperin addresses stone, not as dead matter or a mere resource, but as a story-laden substance that both surpasses and partners in humans’ view of the world. 'The Rock Cycle' incorporates the reading of a letter and the hosting of a number of the artist’s geological sculptures within the displays of the zoology collection of the University of Bordeaux. These ‘curios’ originated as fragments of sea-weathered brick from the Isle of Bute in western Scotland, as well as waterjet-cut sandstone, that the artist left for three months in Fontaines Pétrifiantes in Saint-Nectaire. For generations, the mineral-rich waters that percolate through the rock at this site in central France have been used to create sculptures using the same process by which stalactites form, only one hundred times faster. Objects become rapidly encrusted with new layers of stone. 


—Latitudes 
[Excerpt from the exhibition guide]


Three other events have been programmed in the context of the exhibition.

Visit with Terence Gower (participating artist) and Prof. Bruno Cahuzac. Photo: CAPC musée/Département des publics.

8 November 2017, 5:30–7pm
Jam Session #1—Guided tour by Terence Gower (participating artist) and Prof. Bruno Cahuzac (UFR Sciences de la Terre et de la Mer, Université de Bordeaux Montaigne).

Guests during “The Return of the Earth: Ecologising art history in the Anthropocene” event. Photo: Latitudes.

15 November 2017, 4:30–8pm
The Return of the Earth: Ecologising art history in the Anthropocene”—Lecture by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, a conversation between Xavier Ribas and Ângela Ferreira, debate convened by Latitudes. Free access. Simultaneous translation English-French.



During Jam Session #2 event. Photo: CAPC musée/Département des publics.

6 December 2017, 5:30–7pm
Jam Session #2—Guided tour by Isabelle Kanor (Head association "Le Labo de Lettres” dealing with cultural issues in the Antilles and colonization), and Charlotte Bouvier and Rémi Cazamajour (Inélia, company that supplied the solar panels feeding the video installation "Ancient Lights" (2015) by Nicholas Mangan). Sign up: Stéphane Mallet, s.mallet@mairie-bordeaux.fr


Photo: Latitudes/RK.

The exhibition ‘4.543 billion’ is the contribution of the CAPC musée to the cultural season Paysages Bordeaux 2017. Between September 11–October 6, 2017, and within the exhibition framework, Latitudes led the month-long residency programme ‘Geologic Time’ at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Alberta, Canada.

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