Longitudes
Longitudes cuts across Latitudes’ projects and research with news, updates, and reportage.
2023 in 11 cover stories
Fri, Dec 29 2023Since Spring 2015 we have been publishing a monthly cover story on our homepage (www.lttds.org) featuring past, present, or forthcoming projects, as well as sharing our research, travel, or texts, featuring artworks, exhibitions, films, or objects related to our curatorial practice. Below are those published throughout 2023 (#90 to #100), which you can read again in this archive. See you in 2024!
Cover Story, January 2023: Claudia Pagès’ “Gerundi Circular”.
Cover Story, February 2023: Soil for Future Art Histories.
Cover Story, March 2023: Art, Climate and New Coalitions.
Cover Story, April 2023: Jerónimo Hagerman (1967–2023).
Cover Story, May 2023: Ruth Clinton & Niamh Moriarty in Barcelona
Cover Story, June 2023: Crystal Bennes futures
Cover Story, July–August 2023: Honeymoon in Valencia.
Cover Story – September 2023: The Pilgrim in Ireland.
Cover Story – October 2023: A tree felled, a tree cut in 7
Cover Story – November 2023: ”Surucuá, Teque-teque, Arara” by Daniel Steegmann Mangrané
And to close the year, Cover Story #100 – December 2023: Ibon Aranberri, Partial View
→ RELATED CONTENT:
- 2022 in 11 monthly Cover Stories, 27 Dec 2022
- 2021 in 11 monthly Cover Stories, 31 Dec 2021
- 2020 in 11 monthly Cover Stories, 28 Dec 2020
- 2019 in 10 monthly Cover Stories, 23 Dec 2019
Cover Story, November 2023: Surucuá, Teque-teque, Arara: Daniel Steegmann Mangrané
Thu, Nov 2 2023 November 2023 cover story on www.lttds.org
The November 2023 monthly Cover Story “Surucuá, Teque-teque, Arara” is now up on our homepage: www.lttds.org
“Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s exhibition “Una fulla al lloc de l’ull” (A Leaf Shapes the Eye) opens later this month at Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA). Curated by Hiuwai Chu and João Laia, the show includes works from the late 1990s to the present.”
→ Continue reading (after November 2023 this story will be archived here).
Cover Stories are published on a monthly basis on Latitudes’ homepage featuring past, present, or forthcoming projects, research, texts, artworks, exhibitions, films, objects, or field trips related to our curatorial projects and activities.
→ RELATED CONTENTS:
- Archive of Monthly Cover Stories
- Cover Story, October 2023: A tree felled, a tree cut in 7, 2 October 2023
- Cover Story, September 2023: The Pilgrim in Ireland, 6 September 2023
- Cover Story, July–August 2023: Honeymoon in Valencia, 1 July 2023
- Cover Story, June 2023: Crystal Bennes futures, 1 Jun 2023
- Cover Story, May 2023: Ruth Clinton & Niamh Moriarty in Barcelona, 1 May 2023
- Cover Story, April 2023: Jerónimo Hagerman (1967–2023), 1 Apr 2023
- Cover Story, March 2023: Art, Climate and New Coalitions, 1 March 2023
- Cover Story, February 2023: Soil for Future Art Histories, 2 Feb 2023
- Cover Story, January 2023: Claudia Pagès’ ‘Gerundi Circular’, 2 Jan 2023
- Cover Story, December 2022: “The Melt Goes On Forever. David Hammons and DART Festival, 1 December 2022
- Cover Story, November 2022: Jorge Satorre’s Barcelona, 1 Nov 2022
Cover Story—February 2020: Carioca Incidents
Mon, Feb 3 2020 |
| Latitudes' homepage www.lttds.org |
“My idea is to take a stroll around the natural wonders of the city, its colonial past, imperial Brazil … and end on the beach.” Artist Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s succinct recipe for the latest instalment of Incidents (of Travel), narrated by curator Catalina Lozano, led to a startlingly heady stew of a day in and around Rio de Janeiro.”
→ Continue reading
→ After February 2020, this story will be archived here
Cover Stories' are published on a monthly basis on Latitudes' homepage featuring past, present or forthcoming projects, research, texts, artworks, exhibitions, films, objects or field trips related to our curatorial activities.
→ RELATED CONTENTS:
- Archive of Monthly Cover Stories
- Cover Story—January 2020: Safeguarding Gestures 2 January 2020
- Cover Story—December 2019: Cover Story—December 2019: Curating in the Web of Life 3 December
- Cover Story—November 2019: ‘Fighting fires in Valencia: the 30-year story of the IVAM’ 1 November 2019
- Cover Story—October 2019: Mercedes Azpilicueta in Helsinki 1 October 2019
- Cover Story—September 2019: ‘Polperro to Detroit’ 4 September 2019
- Cover Story—Summer 2019: Francesc Ruiz’s Brexit Bristol sequel, ten years ago 1 July 2019
- Cover Story—June 2019: Thinking like a drainage basin: Lara Almarcegui’s ‘Concrete’ 1 June 2019
- Cover Story—May 2019: Buenos Aires in Parallel 1 May 2019
- Cover Story—March-April 2019: "Icelandic refraction" 3 March 2019
- Cover Story—February 2019: Schizophrenic Machine (1 February 2019)
- Cover Story—January 2019: “Seesaw” (7 January 2019)
Tenth episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Catalina Lozano and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané from Rio de Janeiro
Wed, Jan 29 2020
http://incidents.kadist.org
A new episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ is now available on http://incidents.kadist.org — an online project produced by KADIST and edited by Latitudes exploring the chartered itinerary as a format of artistic encounter and an extended offline conversation between curator/s and artist/s.
The tenth dispatch begins with an itinerary proposed by Barcelona-born, Rio de Janeiro-based artist Daniel Steegmann Mangrané and is followed by images and videos recording a day roaming Rio's natural and artistic landscapes with Bogotá-born, Mexico City-based curator Catalina Lozano, who narrates their day spent together.
The site has been redesigned to present one continuous immersive read interwoven with vertical videos and images in a new mobile-friendly format.
‘Incidents (of Travel)’ was conceived by Latitudes in 2012 with 5 day-long artist-led tours around Mexico City presented as part of a short residency and exhibition on Latitudes’ practice at Casa del Lago. The project had sequels in 2013 in Hong Kong with online dispatches published live via social media platforms, and in San Francisco in 2015 with daily posts as part of Kadist's Instagram take over “Artist Not In The Studio Curator Not At The Office”.
In 2016 Kadist and Latitudes partnered in a new ‘distributed’ phase of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ extending the invitation to curators and artists working around the world, and publishing their dispatches as an Online Project.
Conversations have taken place in Reykjavík (Iceland), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Hobart (Tasmania), Yerevan (Armenia), Terengganu (Malaysia), Lisbon (Portugal), Suzhou (China), Jinja (Uganda) and Chicago (US).
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.
The seventh episode comes from Hobart, capital of Tasmania. It is narrated by curator Camila Marambio, following an itinerary devised by artist Lucy Bleach. They spent the day "encircling the outer limits of human understanding by visiting the histories, both past, and present, of attempts to reach beyond our sensory capacities through governance, technology, and reverie", and ended the day cooking at Lucy's home-sharing their mutual love for quinces.
In the eighth 'Incidents (of Travel)' dispatch Móvil co-founder and curator Alejandra Aguado followed the itinerary devised by the artist Diego Bianchi around Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Their exploration took them from the self-regulated community Velatropa to the buzzing commercial area of Once, identifying human and non-human flows and interactions. This became an entry point for discussing Bianchi's interests in how, as consumers, we define a particular zeitgeist and appropriate trends that enable us to affirm our identities.
In the ninth dispatch, Canadian curator Becky Forsythe and Icelandic artist Þorgerður Ólafsdóttir navigate Reykjavík's surroundings considering Þorgerður's “current interest in Icelandic Spar (a form of transparent calcite), its double refraction and light-polarizing properties. In a race with daylight, they travel between sites, collecting moments and considering the ways in which geologic time surfaces in the context of human time.”
→ RELATED CONTENT:
- Ninth episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Becky Forsythe and Þorgerður Ólafsdóttir from Reykjavík, Iceland 8 February 2019
- Eighth episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Alejandra Aguado and Diego Bianchi from Buenos Aires, Argentina 6 September 2018
- Seventh episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Camila Marambio and Lucy Bleach 28 June 2018
- Sixth episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Marianna Hovhannisyan and students from the National Center of Aesthetics from Yerevan, Armenia 1 March 2018
- Fifth episode of 'Incidents (of Travel)' – Dispatch by Simon Soon and chi too from Terengganu, Malaysia 26 April 2017
- Fourth episode of 'Incidents (of Travel)' – Dispatch by Pedro de Llano and Luisa Cunha from Lisbon, Portugal 2 March 2017
- Third episode of 'Incidents (of Travel)' – Dispatch by Yu JI and Xiao Kaiyu reporting from Suzhou, China 6 September 2016
- Second episode of 'Incidents (of Travel)' – Dispatch by Moses Serubiri and Mohsen Taha reporting from Jinja, Uganda 30 June 2016
- Kadist and Latitudes present 'Incidents (Of Travel)' online 31 May 2016
- An Instagram takeover of Kadist Art Foundation in San Francisco (28 August 2015)
- Residency at the Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco, 26 August–9 September 2015 (29 August 2015)
- Nadim Abbas' "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" public tour (19 January 2013)
- Ho Sin Tung "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" tour (30 January 2013)
- Yuk King Tan's "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" tour (3 February 2013)
- Samson Young's "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" tour (7 February 2013)
- Archive of social media posts related to "Incidents of Travel" tours and photo-documentation.
- 13 field recordings from 'Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong'
- Interview between Christina Li and Latitudes on 'Incidents of Travel' for Witte de With's 'Witness to Moderation(s)' blog, 7 May 2013 Inauguración de 'Incidentes de viaje' & 'Proyectos 2005–2012' en La Sucursal, Casa del Lago, México DF, 27 de septiembre 19:30h, 25 septiembre 2012
Photodocumentation of the five commissions 'Composiciones' now on flickr
Thu, Oct 22 2015
We just uploaded photos of the five new commissions "Composiciones" on Latitudes' flickr. These projects by artists active in the Barcelona art scene complemented the first Barcelona Gallery Weekend (1–4 October 2015) programme of exhibitions and events.
Each intervention responded to site and context-specific private and public location outside the contemporary art circuit – a private psychoanalytic library, the former home of the director of a ceramics factory, a public botanical collection, the home of a former priest and an invertebrate fossile collection.
Pinpointing some lesser-known aspects of the city's cultural history and municipal life, Composiciones offered moments of interruption, intimacy and immersion throughout the weekend.
Map of the five locations for the temporary projects.
Commissions by David Bestué (at the Factory complex Cosme Toda, L'Hospitalet); Dora García (at the Biblioteca del Campo Freudiano); Jordi Mitjà (at the Museu Geològic del Seminari de Barcelona); Rasmus Nilausen in collaboration with Pere Llobera (at the gardens of La Central bookstore, Raval); and Daniel Steegmann Magrané (at the Umbracle, Parc de la Ciutadella). Details of each project and locations.
Also on our website (highlighted in yellow where to locate it) you'll find the links to the audio and video documentation of the three talks led by Dora García as part of her intervention at the Biblioteca del Campo Freudiano. We recommend you read a nicely written account of these three sessions (in Spanish) by two of its participants.
On the same page and under 'Related content' you will find links to the press coverage related to 'Composiciones'. The most extensive and in depth review so far has been this considered and detailed blog entry by Barcelona-based art critic and curator Fede Montornés, which of course made us really happy.
And last but not least, we gathered the many tweets, instagram, press links, etc. that appeared in the last few weeks in Storify.
#BarcelonaGalleryWeekend
#Composiciones
Related content:
Storify – Social media archive
Details of the Barcelona Gallery Weekend programme.
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
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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.
'Compositions' a programme of five artists' interventions for the first Barcelona Gallery Weekend, 1–4 October 2015
Fri, Sep 25 2015
With the aim of distinguishing the Barcelona gallery weekend from similar initiatives, Latitudes' project Compositions compliments the existing calendar of exhibitions in galleries and museums by commissioning six artists active in the Barcelona art scene, to develop a series of public interventions responding to singular locations – sites significant for their architecture or their history. Here's a map of the five locations.
Latitudes has invited artists David Bestué (Barcelona, 1980. Lives in Barcelona); Dora García (Valladolid, 1965. Lives in Barcelona), Jordi Mitjà (Figueres, 1970. Lives between Lladó and Banyoles); Rasmus Nilausen (Copenhagen, 1980. Lives in Barcelona) & Pere Llobera (Barcelona, 1970. Lives in Barcelona) and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané (Barcelona, 1977. Lives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) to produce site-specific temporary installations and one-off performances. Pinpointing some lesser-known aspects of the city's cultural history and municipal life, Compositions offers moments of interruption, intimacy and immersion throughout the weekend.
Home of the former director of the ceramic factory Cosme Toda. c/Enric Prat de la Riba 60, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat.
Opening hours: Thursday 1 October, 5–9pm;
Friday 2, Saturday 3 and Sunday 4: 11am–8pm.
David Bestué is primarily a sculptor who is fascinated by architecture – not with its hubristic icons or celebrity heroism, but by the very normality with which architectonic tropes underpin an emotional understanding of form.
For Compositions Bestué is producing a new installation in the form of a sculptural timeline defined by ignition and invention, fat and oil, obsolescence, fluorescence, luminescence and incandescence – a history of humanity from antiquity to the present day told through the evolution and refinement of lighting technology. Sited in the domestic setting of the Director’s house within the former Cosme Toda ceramics and tile factory, the installation is companioned by a sculptural intervention recuperating pieces found in the factory, linking to Bestué's ongoing interest in the evolution of architectural materials and building techniques.
Freudian Field Library in Barcelona located at Avinguda Diagonal 333, 3º 1ª. Opening hours: Thursday 1 and Friday 2 October 5–9pm; Saturday 3 October 10am–2pm. Sunday 4 October closed.
Dora García's collaborations and performances engage with radicalism, inadequacy and the marginal. Her contribution to Compositions consists in pointing out the wealth of information and the activites programmed by the Freudian Field Library in Barcelona, an organisation founded in 1977 by Argentinean Oscar Masotta (1930–1979). García's intervention considers the library as a knot which ties together art, psychoanalysis and literature.
A display of publications drawn from the library shelves and three conversations will activate the space over consecutive days. The first talk (1 October, 7pm), a "solo" by García, will focus on the library's holdings of literary fiction. The second talk on October 2nd, at 7pm will be a group conversation moderated by García, amongst Miquel Bassols, Enric Berenguer, Rosa Calvet, Estela Paskvan and Montserrat Rodríguez, who will discuss the founding of the library and its ongoing role in Barcelona, and the final event on October 3 at 10am will be a conversation around the work of Irish novelist James Joyce and French psychiatrist and psichologist Jacques Lacan, between García and psychoanalyst Xavier Esqué and Patrick Bohan, who has worked at the James Joyce Center in Dublin.
Rasmus Nilausen and Pere Llobera are painters that approach painting with a respect – at times melancholic, sometimes parodic – for its traditional genres and its ancient integrity as a craft. Nilausen’s canvases have often taken on ‘minor’ or anecdotal subjects such as candles or vegetables. Llobera frequently addresses the perils virtuosity and painterly heroism in his paradoxical, restless works. Nilausen and Llobera share a workspace in the Salamina studios in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat – which they cofounded – yet the invitation to collaborate in a presentation for Compositions is the first time they are exhibiting together.
In the Gardens of La Central del Raval their works occupy a former priest's house and explore "acheiropoietic" images – those that have supposedly come into being not by human hand, but miraculously. The Veil of Veronica, for example, refers to various Catholic relics and icons which tell of a piece of cloth said to have been imprinted with the image of the face of Jesus.
Geological Museum of the Seminary of Barcelona is in Carrer de la Diputació, 231.
Opening hours: Thursday 1 October, 5–9pm;
Friday 2, Saturday 3 and Sunday 4: 11am–8pm.
Jordi Mitjà’s recent “povera” approach to sculpture, has comprised works utilizing discarded wood, metal, burned paper and clay. His contribution to Compositions takes place in the Geological Museum of the Seminary of Barcelona – an institution dedicated to paleontology and the study of fossils since 1874.
Mitjà considers the borders between evolutionary biology and the ancient geology of Catalonia in an installation which focusses on a primitive relationship between materials and morphology. A series of overheard projectors illuminate the central space of the museum with a panoply of images, shadows and geometries – layers that are unearthed by Mitjà’s exploration of the geospatial taxonomy of this unique collection of 70,000 specimens.
Umbracle in the Parc de la Ciutadella, Passeig Picasso, 13.
Opening hours: Thursday 1 October, 5–9pm;
Friday 2, Saturday 3 and Sunday 4: 11am–8pm.
The art of Daniel Steegmann Mangrané hinges on the natural and the geometric, often splicing the unfathomable dimension of the forests of his adopted home Brazil with the clear lines of abstraction and man-made order.
His contribution to Compositions takes place amongst the subtropical plants of the 1887 Umbracle (shade house) in the Parc de la Ciutadella and centres on the acoustic installation “Surucuá, Teque-teque, Arara” (2012). We hear sounds that were recorded along a 60 metre transect through a section of the Atlantic Rainforest of Brazil, the tropical forest that Portuguese colonists would have encountered on their arrival in the year 1500. The sound loop reproduces the disembodied calls of colourful birds such as trogons and macaws which merge with the ambient sounds of the city. As if a 1:1 scale collage, the artifice of an urban botanical collection becomes intertwined with an acoustic slice of the authentically wild.
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#BarcelonaGalleryWeekend
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Calendar of Related Events and Guided Visits
Thursday 1 October, 5pm:
Guided tour of the intervention by Jordi Mitjà at the Museu Geològic del Seminari de Barcelona by the artist and Latitudes.
c/ Diputació, 231
Thursday 1 October, 7pm:Guided tour of the intervention and talk by Dora García on the library holdings of literary fiction, Biblioteca del Campo Freudiano de Barcelona (Library of the Freudian Field).
Avda. Diagonal 333, 3º 1ª
Limited seating. Reservations: bcfb@illimit.es
Friday 2 October, noon:Guided tour of the intervention by Daniel Steegmann Mangrané at the Umbracle del Parc de la Ciutadella by the artist and Latitudes.
Passeig Picasso, 13
Friday 2 October, 7pm:
Conversation moderated by Dora García with Miquel Bassols, Enric Berenguer, Rosa Calvet, Estela Paskvan and Montserrat Rodríguez, on the origins of the Biblioteca del Campo Freudiano de Barcelona, its founder Óscar Masotta and the Barcelona of 1977.
Avda. Diagonal 333, 3º 1ª
Limited seating. Reservations: bcfb@illimit.es
Friday 2 October, 7:30pm:Guided tour of the intervention by David Bestué at the house of the former director of the Cosme Toda factory by the artist and Latitudes.
c/ Enric Prat de la Riba, 60
L’Hospitalet de Llobregat
Saturday 3 October, 10am:
Conversation between Dora García and the psychoanalyst and psychologist Xavier Esqué at the Biblioteca del Campo Freudiano around James Joyce and Jacques Lacan.
Avda. Diagonal 333, 3º 1ª
Limited seating. Reservations: bcfb@illimit.es
Sunday 4 October, noon:Guided tour of the intervention by Rasmus Nilausen and Pere Llobera at the Jardines de La Central del Raval by the artists and Latitudes.
c/ Elisabets, 8
Additionally, ARCO Foundation offers ARCO Gallery Walks, five free guided tours around the galleries throughout the weekend. Limited places. Pre-registration required: info@therealthing.es
Thursday 1 October
Route Eixample South
Meeting place: Galería Joan Prats at 5pm
Friday 2 October
Route Ciutat Vella – Born
Meeting place: Galería Senda at 11am
Route Montjuïc – L’Hospitalet
Meeting place: Galería Carles Taché at 5pm
Saturday 3 October
Route Ciutat Vella – Raval
Meeting place: etHALL at 11am
Route Eixample North
Meeting place: ADN Galería at 5pm
The Barcelona Gallery Weekend is an initiative of the Asociación de Galerías de Arte Contemporáneo Art Barcelona and is supported by the Ajuntament de Barcelona (ICUB), the Generalitat de Catalunya (ICEC), the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte; and the Ajuntament de L’Hospitalet de Llobregat.
http://www.barcelonagalleryweekend.com/