Longitudes

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

Workshop with PUBLICS Youth for TODAY IS OUR TOMORROW 2022

 Mon, Oct 3 2022

(Above and below) Members of PUBLICS Youth with Irina Mutt during their workshop in Lammassaari, 3 August 2022. Photos by Micol Curatolo.


Within the context of PUBLICS’ annual gathering Today Is Our Tomorrow in Helsinki, artist Laia Estruch and curator Irina Mutt will lead a workshop on October 8th, 2022, as part of this year’s programme focusing on the presentness of the voice in its many sonic forms, vocal modes and acoustic modalities. 

This workshop culminates a series of encounters, part of Latitudes’ ongoing Parahosting at PUBLICS, that have taken place over the summer of 2022 in collaboration with PUBLICS Youth, an education initiative for Helsinki-based 18-21-year-olds.

Following a principle of a tour to bodies rather than to space, the sessions have encompassed new embodiments of Estruch’s “Ocells Perduts” (Stray Birds) (2021), a work originally produced for MACBA’s exhibition “Panorama 21. Notes for an Eye Fire”, curated by Latitudes and Hiuwai Chu, and supported by PUBLICS.



Latitudes has been collaborating with Laia Estruch since early 2020 in preparation for a year-long programme to be hosted at the Helsinki-based curatorial and commissioning agency PUBLICS, based around the notion of a partial, distributed, and fragmentary retrospective of her artistic practice. The pandemic altered those plans and in the summer of 2020, the invitation to curate MACBA’s first Panorama triennial (“Panorama 21: Apunts per a un incendi dels ulls”) came along, for which Laia presented the new commission “Ocells Perduts” (2021). The project was produced with the support of PUBLICS, and for the research phase, Laia received the support of the beca Premis Barcelona 2020 of the Ajuntament de Barcelona.


→ RELATED CONTENT:

 2022, birdwatching, Helsinki, Laia Estruch, ocells perduts, Panorama 21, parahost, PUBLICS, Workshop
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“‘Minor’ Ornithologies” podcast conducted by Max Andrews of Latitudes for TBA21 on st_age

 Tue, Sep 27 2022



Listen to the podcast here.

Latitudes’ Max Andrews, a curator, writer and lifelong birder, recently conducted the podcast “Minor” Ornithologies for TBA21 on st_age (Season 4, Episode 4). The podcast’s guests are Alex Holt, a spokesperson for Bird Names for Birds, a movement to decolonise bird names, and zoömusicologist Dr Hollis Taylor who specialises in birdsong. Through their perspectives, we glimpse new and speculative kinds of human–bird narratives – what Anna-Sophie Springer and Etienne Turpin have coined “minor ornithologies”. 

The interviews are complemented by two audio clips, one of a Pied Butcherbird recorded in N Queensland, and another of a Superb Lyrebird mimicking birdsong and two flute phrases recorded in New South Wales, both courtesy of Hollis Taylor.

This edition accompanies Laia Estruch’s performance “Ocells Perduts V67” (2022) also produced by TBA21 on st_age, and takes flight into the realm of birds, looking at politics and practices that disrupt dominant historical narratives, and exceed scientific and cultural boundaries.


(Above and below) Laia Estruch, “Ocells Perduts” (2021) was performed at MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona as part of the exhibition “Panorama 21. Notes for an Eye Fire”. Commissioned by MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona with the support of PUBLICS, Helsinki. Estruch’s research was supported by the grant Premis Barcelona 2020 of the Ajuntament de Barcelona. Photos: Miquel Coll.


“Ens han canviat el cel a ple vol” (Nos han cambiado el cielo a pleno vuelo / They changed the sky in mid flight) part of Laia Estruch’s “Ocells Perduts” (2021) installed at MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona as part of the exhibition “Panorama 21. Notes for an Eye Fire”, October 2021–February 2022. Photos: Roberto Ruiz.


Latitudes has been collaborating with Laia Estruch since early 2020 in preparation for a year-long programme to be hosted at the Helsinki-based curatorial and commissioning agency PUBLICS, based around the notion of a partial, distributed, and fragmentary retrospective of her artistic practice. The pandemic changed those plans and soon after the invitation to curate MACBA’s first Panorama triennial (“Panorama 21: Apunts per a un incendi dels ulls”) came along, for which Laia presented the commission “Ocells Perduts” (2021). The project was produced with the support of PUBLICS, and for the research phase, Laia received the support of the beca Premis Barcelona 2020 of the Ajuntament de Barcelona.


→ RELATED CONTENT:



 2022, apunts per a un incendi dels ulls, birdwatching, decolonise institutions, Laia Estruch, Max Andrews, ocells perduts, podcast, PUBLICS, TBA21, world ecology
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Latitudes (Barcelona) and PUBLICS (Helsinki)

 Sat, Mar 12 2022

Laia Estruch performing MIX at the Festival TNT in Terrassa. Photo by Alessia Bombacci. 


We are delighted to announce that PUBLICS in Helsinki will be Parahosting curatorial office Latitudes for the next year by hosting a series of curatorial research and activities, beginning with a public presentation and a performance by artist Laia Estruch, on Thursday 17th of March 2022 (5–7pm) at PUBLICS’ space in Vallila.

As a first introduction to PUBLICS and to Helsinki audiences, Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna of Latitudes will present their curatorial practice and later be joined by Barcelona-based artist Laia Estruch to present “Mix” (2021–ongoing), a solo performance compilation that revisits the diverse voiced sounds, resonances, and articulations she has developed and learned throughout her projects to date. An exercise in sonic recall and muscle memory, “Mix” is a live non-chronological edit that extracts the most ephemeral aspect of her practice – the voice – while exploring it as a kind of organ of the body, and as a tool for sculpting air.

Entrance to PUBLICS in Vallila neighbourhood. Photo: Noora Lehtovuori.

PUBLICS Parahosting began in the Autumn of 2018 and has grown into a key method of decentering its own curatorial authorship, and as an essential means of working together without boundaries or containment. 

Through Parahosting PUBLICS supports its para-sites, para-institutions, and para-guests, and has grown into a flexible, evolving, expanding, and sometimes messy, programme. In 2020–2021 PUBLICS Parahosted curatorial studio Shimmer (Eloise Sweetman and Jason Hendrik Hansma) with a year-long project ACROSS THE WAY WITH… where artists, poets, philosophers, and curators from around the world were invited to explore the notion of intimacy through online readings. 

Mercedes Azpilicueta performing “Yegua-Yeta-Yuta” (2015-ongoing) as part of the 2019 TODAY IS OUR TOMORROW festival at Kaiku, Helsinki. Curated by Latitudes. Photo Kush Badhwar.

Latitudes collaborated with PUBLICS in September 2019 as a partner organisation in the first edition of the multidisciplinary arts festival Today is Our Tomorrow initiated by PUBLICS, presenting the performance “Yegua-Yeta-Yuta” (2015-ongoing) by Argentina-born, Amsterdam-based artist Mercedes Azpilicueta. 

In 2021, PUBLICS supported the production of Laia Estruch’s “Ocells Perduts” (Stray Birds, 2021), a new work commissioned for the first MACBA triennial exhibition “Panorama 21. Notes for an Eye Fire” (October 2021–February 2022).


(Above and below) Laia Estruch, “Ocells Perduts” (2021) performed at MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona as part of the exhibition “Panorama 21. Notes for an Eye Fire”. Commissioned by MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona with the support of PUBLICS, Helsinki. Research supported with the grant Premis Barcelona 2020 of the Ajuntament de Barcelona. Photos: Miquel Coll.


About PUBLICS

PUBLICS is a curatorial agency with a dedicated library, event space and reading room in Helsinki, Finland. As such PUBLICS is an educational resource where critical learning, knowledge production and discursive programming are integral to its curatorial approach. Under the artistic direction of curator Paul O’Neill, with program manager Eliisa Suvanto, PUBLICS explores a “work together” institutional model with multiple overlapping objectives, thematic strands and collaborations. 

https://www.publics.fi


About Laia Estruch

Laia Estruch’s practice hinges on the voice as a material reality—an expressive force and a medium that is expelled from the body. Over the last decade, her work has broached the fields of sculpture and contemporary art, spoken word, and experimental theatre, undertaking a kind of no-frills exploration of the voice’s communicative and emotive grammar while probing the conventions of staging it. Her interest focuses on the extremities and porosity of the spoken word in its relationship with song and raw sound. The articulation of noises and meanings often encompasses and exceeds human vocal language: breathing, exclamation, mumbling, ululation, cries and whispers. The voice is recast as an extraordinary, supra-human object. Estruch’s recent performances have involved scenes and routines in which her body is suspended above the ground, be it via the playground-like structures and inflatables of “Moat” (2016–2018), the swimming pool setting of “Crol” (2019), the hanging stage of “Ganivet” (2020–2021) or the monumental bird trap of “Ocells Perduts” (2021–2022).

Laia Estruch has a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from the Universitat de Barcelona (2010) and also studied at The Cooper Union, New York (2010). She has had solo exhibitions at the Fundació Joan Brossa, Barcelona (2020–2021); Capella de Sant Roc, Valls (2019); and Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (2019). Her group exhibitions include “Panorama 21: Apunts per a un incendi dels ulls” MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2021–2022), “La cuestión es ir tirando”, Centro Cultural de España, Mexico City (2020), and “Back to School”, Fundación Rafael Botí, Córdoba (2018). In 2022 she won the 6th Premio Cervezas Alhambra de Arte Emergente (Alhambra Beer Award for Emerging Art) and in 2021 she was awarded the Premi Ciutat de Barcelona (City of Barcelona Prize) in the category of Visual Arts.

https://laiaestruch.com


About Latitudes 

Find out more on https://www.lttds.org/about/


Laia Estruch, “MIX” (2021-ongoing) at the Festival Domingo, La Casa Encendida. Photo: © Arturo Laso.

→ RELATED CONTENT:

               2019, 2022, apunts per a un incendi dels ulls, commissions, Helsinki, Laia Estruch, latitudes, ocells perduts, paraguest, parahost, PUBLICS, Shimmer
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