Latidues: Blog

Interview between Christina Li and Latitudes on 'Incidents of Travel' for Witte de With's 'Witness to Moderation(s)' blog

2013-05-07T11:00:00.000+02:00

From April, 2013 onwards, writer and curator Christina Li (HK/NL) takes up the role of a designated Witness to Moderation(s) the year-long programme of exhibitions, performances and residencies that unfolds between Witte de With in Rotterdam and Spring in Hong Kong. As such, Li is invited to post regular blog entries responding to the multi-faceted projects part of Moderation(s).

Christina Li has been a part of Moderation(s) since its inception, and participated in the research and development workshop that took place at Witte de With in October 2012. Li will also be one of the four curators –together with Lee Ambrozy, Amira Gad, and Xiaoyu Weng– organizing the day-long conference Stories And Situations: The Moderation(s) Conference to take place on 5 October 2013 at Witte de With.

The interview published below between Li and Latitudes was originally published on Witte de With's website on May 2, 2013.

Christina Li: “Incidents of Travel” in Hong Kong is a second iteration of a project that you started in Mexico D.F in 2012, could you talk a little bit about how the idea of inviting artists to plan an itinerary functioning as both an artistic encounter and alternative studio visit came about?

Latitudes: The idea of the tour guide is of course not new. Back in 2009 while we were doing a year-long project in the Port of Rotterdam, we organised a series of bus tours to the port where we would present projects by Jan Dibbets, Lara Almarcegui or Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller, etc. Listening to the feedback of the group that took part during those tours, we realised there was something very valuable about the idea of being (kindly) trapped in a bus for a day and to be taken around with a group of people whom you shared interests or even friendship with. Some were co-workers and took the day to talk about non-work related issues, to admire the landscape, to listen to the soundtrack that accompanied the bus tour and basically to enjoy a day away from the keyboard. We wanted to repeat what we thought was a successful format and thought our trip to Mexico DF was a perfect occasion for that.

Tour with Lara Almarcegui and botanist Remko Andeweg around the Port of Rotterdam, 8 November 2009. Photo: Latitudes. More images of the tour here.

While preparing a small exhibition of our eight years of practice for Casa del Lago in México DF, we felt we needed to add a ‘here and now’ contribution, and suggested inviting five artists (Minerva Cuevas, Tania Pérez Córdova, Diego Berruecos, Terence Gower and Jerónimo Hagerman) to develop a day-long tour for us.The choice of artists was mixed, some we had met before (Jerónimo or Terence) but didn’t know their work in much detail, and others (Tania, Minerva and Diego) we had been following their work for a while, but never met them in person. Our invitation was very open, our idea was for them to develop an itinerary that helped us understand their creative world, and that included them taking us to their favourite (or hated!) museums, libraries, markets, monuments, housing states, shops, restaurants, etc. that were special to their lives or to their artistic practice. We offered all artists a fee, covered all food and tickets-related expenses and had a car to take us around 9am–6pm, after that we used public transport. Experiencing any city accompanied by a local friend always offers a much deeper insight into any city, but navigating it with an artist whose work you admire, is even more meaningful as each site amplifies a personal connection.

Photo: Eduardo Loza

Li: Did you choose to adopt a different approach in your invitation to the artists in the Hong Kong edition? As far as I understood, Nadim Abbas’ tour was open to the public, while Yuk King Tan’s, Ho Sin Tung’s and Samson Young’s were conducted in a more intimate manner within a smaller group; what was the reason behind this decision? What were the responses to Nadim Abbas’ tour?

Latitudes: No, the invitation was the same in both occasions, though in Hong Kong we mostly used public transport. We also had more time to prepare and digest information, as were a month in residence at Spring. In the end it worked out as one tour per week as that suited best the artists’ schedule. Nadim’s tour was the first and was indeed open to the public, it has been the only tour so far with this aspect, although it was still a small group, initially of around fifteen people. We were interested in pushing the format and of course this meant that Nadim had to consider practical issues like distances and locations more carefully (ie. avoiding long walking distances, accessibility for groups, food availability…) in order to be realistic with the timings. A few people joined on and off, some engaged more actively than others. It was wonderful to see that Hong Kongers were also discovering sites they had never been to, like the Waterfall Bay Park or the nearby Waterfall Bay. Somehow we were all tourists for a day.

Nadim Abbas tour, 19 January 2013. Waterfall Bay Park's waterfall. Photo: Trevor Young

Li: Since these tours have always been meant for you both to converse privately with each selected artist and to get to know their practices and the city, has opening these tours up conjure a different perspective of how these tours could function for you both initially? How has this attempt challenge your thinking in mediating and presenting the immediate experience and documentation of these tours to a larger audience?

Latitudes: The tours were conceived from the point of view of research, and we haven’t wanted to necessarily burden the artists or the format with the expectations that they were participatory performances or some kind of touristic spectacle. We’ve tried to keep them quite casual and inconspicuous in this sense, and to respect the notion of hospitality in the same way that if we came to your house for dinner, you wouldn’t expect us to bring a group of strangers with us! Indeed this was literally the case in the day with Yuk King Tan, which concluded with a household of Filipina domestic workers making dinner for us – women whose trust and friendship she had earned through her personal affiliations and the concerns of her art. It is really not a question of us making the tours exclusive or private – we have not actually prohibited anyone else from coming along if the artist suggested it or was anyway okay with it. Yet it somehow seemed important to be able to commit to spending an entire day with them, and as soon as there is definitely something like an audience present (that might expect to be entertained or decide to leave) the dynamics and the logistics change.

The tours in México DF took place during five consecutive days right after our arrival, so the way we shared the photographic material was more direct via our Facebook at the end of each day. The exhibition at Casa del Lago opened only two days after we concluded the last tour, so had to come up with a fast solution to present our explorations: we projected a selection of 200 images as a slideshow, and displayed a selection of printed photos on the wall alongside a large map of the city with pins that located the sites we visited and the actual itineraries we followed written by the artists, which contained short descriptions of each site (we printed extra copies of these and made them available in the exhibition so one could pick them up and follow the route. These are now available to download from our website.)

Photo: Adrián Villalobos

In Hong Kong we were able to tweet during the tours, so it was an interesting process of documentation-on-the-go, of keeping a live diary of one’s journey, and to receive real-time responses from colleagues all over the world – the tweets have now been archived alongside some thirteen sound recordings, Facebook and blog posts. We also published blog posts of each of the tours which include extensive photo-documentation (by us and colleagues who took part) of the day interconnecting each photo with paragraphs of the itineraries written by the artists and our own impressions.

Li: You also have been to some other more specialised tours on offer during your stay in Hong Kong, were there more specific aspects of Hong Kong you were hoping to explore which guided your choices in attending these tours as a sightseer and a cultural tourist?

Latitudes: We were interested in studying what kind of readings the city offered away from the usual tourist sites (the Tian Tan Buddha, Victoria Peak, shopping tours, a day in Macau,…). We wanted to see if we could find more ‘marginal’ sculptures or sites that presented vernacular displays far from the polished and pre-packaged tourist experience.

1km of floating boardwalks, Deep Bay, Mai Po Marshes. Photo: Latitudes.

We picked up hundreds of leaflets in the information office and found a couple interesting ones offered by the Walk Hong Kong company we thought were somehow out of the usual menu. We have always been interested in environmental issues and wanted to approach the high density of Hong Kong from another angle, from its relation to the surrounding nature. We visited the Mai Po Nature Reserve in the New Territories, a wetland on the Australasia migratory route, and ended the day in Long Valley in Sheung Shui, observing birds and farmers collecting large amounts of lettuces and watercress. This also tied in with another wetland we visited later with Ho Sin Tung, the Nam Sang Wai area, in the northwest of Hong Kong. This is to say that our own interests ended up tying in nicely with the sites we visited with the artists. Samson Young took us to a nearby area on his tour, to the border fence that separates Hong Kong with mainland China were we listened to “Liquid Borders”, a soundtrack he has been recording placing contact microphones in the wired fencing and mixing it with the sound of water of the Shenzhen River.

Another tour we joined was the Feng Shui tour led by Susan Braun. We started visiting Norman Foster’s Hong Kong HSBC building in Admiralty, built according to strict Feng Shui principles, and finished at the Chi Lin Nunnery. The final one was with Martin Heyes, a former British Army officer and passionate World War II specialist, who took us to Devil’s Peak at the eastern extremity of Kowloon and to the Museum of Coastal Defence, to learn everything about the 1941 Japanese invasion of Hong Kong.

A group of Japanese tourists visit the fough battery on Devil's Peak. Photo: Latitudes

Li: As a whole, what would you say about the kinds of insights you have gained about the city from these tours, which might be seen as complements to the knowledge produced from the more casual encounters you have had through “Incidents of Travel”?

Latitudes: The Walk Hong Kong tours were an opportunity for us to specifically learn about birds, marshlands, Feng Shui and the 1941 Japanese invasion, but most importantly it was an opportunity to discuss with our tour leaders issues that went beyond the tour script so to speak, issues like immigration, recent historical events such as the 2003 SARS outbreak, the current economic climate, the relationship to mainland China, etc. Curiously, all of the tour leaders were expats that had lived in Hong Kong for many years, so for us it was very interesting to hear how it was to live there today. The same goes for the artists, we absorbed a great wealth of information from each other beyond discussing the sites we were taken to. We talked about books, films, about the art world, what it is to be an artist and a curator today, etc. ‘Incidents of Travel’ and our residency was very much in line with what Heman Chong, moderator of the Moderation(s) program, explained during the January press conference: Moderation(s) is about stretching time. Not surprisingly, the image he chose to illustrate the long term collaboration between Spring Workshop and Witte de With was a clock. That image stood out very clearly during our time there. The offered time gave us the chance to generate conversations with the artists, to find a common ground, to generously share and exchange some kind of knowledge, and to engage in multiple and repeated dialogues with locals and expats, a rare luxury one is not often given.

Latitudes' talk on 'Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong' and their practice during 'Open Day' at Spring Wo r kshop, 2 February 2013.

All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

"Archive as Method: An Interview with Chantal Wong, Hammad Nasar and Lydia Ngai" of the Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong. Final #OpenCurating interview.

2013-05-01T09:00:00.000+02:00

"Archive as Method: An interview with Chantal Wong, Hammad Nasar and Lydia Ngai" of the Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong, is available on ISSUU to view on screen and is also downloadable. It is also available as pdf format via Latitudes' web.

…And last, but certainly not least, our #OpenCurating research concludes with an interview with three members of the amazing Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong.

Asia Art Archive (AAA) was founded in 2000 with the mission of documenting, securing and making easily available information on the history of contemporary art in Asia within an international context. Based in the Sheung Wan district of Hong Kong, the non-profit organisation holds hundreds of thousands of physical and digital items. AAA aims to stimulate dialogue and critical thinking about how the region’s art histories are told and to “facilitate understanding, research, and writing in the field, enrich existing global narratives, and re-imagine the role of the archive”. Through its website – aaa.org.hk – AAA offers access to a wealth of digital material including scanned images, correspondence, artists’ personal documents, audio and video of performance art, artist talks, lectures, and events. A broad range of initiatives including the journal Field Notes, research grants, residencies, symposia, exhibitions and teaching workshops address the core of AAA’s commitment “to create a collection belonging to the public, existing not in an enclosed space, but in a space that is open and productive, generating new ideas and works that continually reshape the Archive itself”.

Follow:
@LTTDS
#OpenCurating
@AsiaArtArchive

ABOUT #OPENCURATING

What "old rules" about art programming, production and distribution has the internet broken? What challenges, expectations, and new possibilities does digital culture and social media present to contemporary art institutions? To what degree are curators, media teams, publishers and archivists concerned with a dialogue with their audiences? #OpenCurating has investigated these questions through how new forms of culture, participation and connectivity are being developed both on site and on line.

The research was structured around three elements. Ten new interviews were produced and published as free digital editions as well as via Issuu; a Twitter thread was moderated around the hashtag #OpenCurating; and a public conversation (transcribed as interview #7) between Latitudes and Yasmil Raymond, Curator of Dia Art Foundation, New York, was held on 19 February 2013 at the Auditorium of the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA).

#OpenCurating was a research project by Latitudes produced through La Capella. BCN Producció 2012 of the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona.

Content partners: Walker Art Center

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Visita de la Comisión de Programas de Hangar a los estudios de los artistas residentes, 24 Abril 2013, Barcelona

2013-04-29T10:00:00.000+02:00

Cartel "Salvem Can Felipa" de Quim Packard colgado en la zona común de los estudios en Hangar.

El pasado 24 de Abril, cinco miembros de la Comisión de Programas 2010–2013 de Hangar (formado por Àlex Mitrani, Joan Vilapuig, Jordi Mitjà, Dora Garcia (ausente) y Max Andrews y Mariana Cánepa Luna de Latitudes) realizó una de las visitas periódicas a los artistas residentes en el centro de Poble Nou, en este caso a Llobet y Pons; Quim Packard; Aggtelek; Rasmus Nilausen; Marla Jacarilla, Raúl Nieves (blablabLAB) y Mireia c. Saladrigues.

A continuación un breve sumario que recoge los tuits que publicamos durante la visita (véase https://twitter.com/lttds).

Llobet y Pons (dúo formado por Jasmina Llobet y Luis Fernandez Pons) acaban de participar en la Setouchi Triennale 2013, Japón, donde han presentado la pieza "No one wins – Minibasket". Asímismo hemos visto sus últimas investigaciones con piezas realizadas con pasta dental endurecida; al pulido de diamantes que realizaron durante una residencia en Lokaal01, Amberes, o sobre la reconversión de materiales, como es el caso de 'Ex-Fork' presentada recientemente en Can Felipa.

Quim Packard actualmente está desarrollando "Historias de amor y odio", un "relato en formado dibujo que se emite diariamente, a partir del 15 de abril, vía redes sociales (véase tumblr aquí) y que finaliza en un concierto / performance en la Capsa Jove de Tarragona, el día 24 de abril a las 19h; en motivo de la presentación de la publicación 2012 del CA Tarragona Centro de Arte" (web de Hangar).

En el estudio del dúo Aggtelek (Gema Perales and Xandro Valles) vimos la serie de pinturas realizadas a partir de collages que envían a una de las fábricas de producción (prácticamente mecánica) de pintura en China para su realización. Éstas han sido recientemente presentadas en la Galería Jos é Robles en Madrid, y próxi mamente se presentará un conjunto similar en 18a edición de la feria Liste en Basilea con la galería Exile de Berlin.

Marla Jacarilla fue ganadora de la reciente convocatoria BCN Producció 2013 con el proyecto "Acotaciones tras la cuarta pared" que inaugurará el próximo 15 de Mayo en el Espai Cub de La Capella en Barcelona. "'Acotaciones tras la cuarta pared' es un drama en cuatro actos cuyo tono oscila entre lo trágico, cómico, fársico y metalingüístico. Una historia en la que un presunto demiurgo conversa con personajes existentes que pertenecen a otras obras teatrales y que se han trasladado al momento actual" (web de La Capella).

En el 2012 Rasmus Nilausen expuso 'Sisyphus, rhopography and a headless chicken' (ver video) en el espacio de La Capella (como ganador de la convocatoria BCN Producció 2012), Barcelona y en el 2013 tuvo la exposición 'Still' en la nueva galería madrileña García Galería.

Raúl Nieves del dúo blablabLAB nos presentó su trabajo con impresoras 3D y herramientas de código libre que realiza a través de talleres programados periódicamente desde Hangar.

La entrevista con Mireia c. Saladrigues tuvo lugar en skype ya que se encuentra preparando 'No tocar, por favor', una exposición colectiva en el ARTIUM de Vitoria, comisariada por Jorge Luis Marzo (blog del proyecto aqu í) que inaugura en un par de semanas en Vitoria.

All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

"Free Forms: An interview with Lauren Cornell", Curator, 2015 Triennial, Digital Projects and Museum as Hub, New Museum, New York. 9th in the #OpenCurating interview series.

2013-04-24T17:25:00.000+02:00

"Free Forms: An interview with Lauren Cornell" is available on ISSUU to view on screen and is also downloadable. It is also available as pdf format via Latitudes' web.

After serving for seven years as Executive Director of new media non-profit Rhizome, in 2012 Lauren Cornell was appointed “Curator, 2015 Triennial, Digital Projects and Museum as Hub” of the New Museum, New York. During her tenure at Rhizome – a New Museum affiliate – Cornell initiated programmes including the annual Seven on Seven conference series, which bridges contemporary art and technology fields by pairing technological innovators with visual artists and challenging them to develop something over the course of a day. At the New Museum, Cornell was part of the curatorial team for The Generational: Younger Than Jesus (2009) and has curated exhibitions including Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries’ Black on White Gray Ascending (2007), and Free (2010), a group show that examined “how the internet has changed our landscape of information and our notion of public space”. She is currently preparing the 2015 Triennial, the institution’s signature exhibition, which she will curate together with artist and filmmaker Ryan Trecartin.

Follow:
@LTTDS
#OpenCurating
@newmuseum
@lcornell
#MuseumAsHub

ABOUT #OPENCURATING

Drawing on the emerging practices of so-called 'Open Journalism' – which seek to better collaborate with and use the ability of anyone to publish and share – #OpenCurating is a research project that investigates how contemporary art projects may function beyond the traditional format of exhibition-and-catalogue. #OpenCurating is concerned with new forms of interaction between publics – whether online followers or physical visitors – with artworks and their production, display and discursive context.

The project is articulated around a series of ten new interviews with curators, artists, writers and online strategists published as a free digital edition [read here the published ones so far], a Twitter discussion moderated around the hashtag #OpenCurating and an public conversation with Dia Art Foundation curator which took place at MACBA on the 19 February.

#OpenCurating is a research project by Latitudes produced through La Capella. BCN Producció 2012 of the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona.

Content partners: Walker Art Center

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art (IKT) Congress 2013, Madrid, 18–21 April 2013

2013-04-23T19:56:00.000+02:00

The programme of the 2013 congress of IKT, the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art, included meetings at the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in Móstoles as well as at Centro Cultural Matadero Madrid and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, where the IKT Members Forum, Symposium and General Assembly were held.

"Curating Value", the topic of this year's symposium organised by Brussels-based independent curator Zoë Gray, included the participation of Barnabás Bencsik (the recently forced-out director of the Ludwig Museum in Budapest), French artist Pierre Bismuth, Spanish curator and consultant María de Corral, London-based curator and theorist Dr. Simon Sheikh and Greek artist and Athens Biennial co-director, Poka-Yio.

Following is our photo diary documenting a few moments of these five days in Madrid alongside the organisers' schedule, starting the Pre-Congress programme on Thursday afternoon with a first meeting at E spacio Trap ézio at the Mercado de San Antón and ending on Monday morning with the Post-Congress programme which included studio visits to Fernando Sánchez Castillo and Cristina Lucas.

Friday, 19th April 2013

Buses depart from Plaza del Emperador Carlos V/ Atocha (opposite the renowned El Brillante bar) for Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M) in Móstoles.

IKT Members Forum. Opening of the congress, welcome and greetings.

Each of the +/- 120 members and guests had 90 seconds to introduce themselves to the rest and quickly explain what projects they were currently developing.

Exhibition visits: Pop Politics: Activismos a 33 revoluciones curated by Iván López Munuera and Hailil Altindere curated by CA2M Director, Ferran Barenblit.

Lyota Yagi, Vinyl (2005) plays the melodies of Debussy's “Clair de Lune” and “Moon River” by Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini on a record player from a record made of ice created with a silicon mould.

Lunch offered by CA2M at the Terrace.

Buses depart for Fundación Banco Santander (Boadilla del Monte) to visit the exhibition "Out of the House. Contemporary Art Cranford Collection", curated by Anne Pontégnie and Muriel Salem.

Sci-Fi-like building of the Fundación Banco Santander in the Ciudad Financiera, Boadilla del Monte.

The exhibition space holds a collection of Spanish currency. Here, the last pesetas notes that used to circulate before 2002.

View of the galleries presenting London's Cranford Collection. Holdings include mostly British art (Sarah Lucas, Rachel Whiteread, Damien Hirst, Phil Collins, Paul Noble, Eva Rothschild, Rebecca Warren, Gillian Wearing), but also pieces by Franz West, Albert Oehlen, Martin Kippenberger, Pierre Huyghe and Thomas Schütte.

You can also visit it virtually.

More blue chip works, by Damien Hirst (Something or Nothing, 2004).

Our Love Is Like the Flowers, the Rain, the Sea and the Hours, 2002 by Martin Boyce.

(Foreground) Jim Lambie's Sweet Exorcist, 2005.

(Foreground) Rebeca Warren, Log Lady, 2003.

Franz West, Appartment (2001)

Buses depart for Ivory Press. Exhibition visit: Ilya & Emilia Kabakov.

Tour through Ivory Press' artist books production with heavy weights like Noguchi, Chillida, Kapoor, Kiefer, Bacon...

...and of course Damien Hirst (again). Here The Holy Trinity explained in percentages, a part of a much larger sculptural/archive piece produced by Ivory Press.

View of Ilya & Emilia Kabakov's show Vertical Paintings and Other Wo rlds.

Walk to Galería Liebre. Exhibition visit: Ideas y presupuestos. Curator: Martí Manen.

Ideas and budgets for possible artworks by artists Sebastian Beyro, Black Tulip, Bonus Extra, Kalle Brolin, Priscila Fernandes, Guillem Juan Sancho, Sandra Paula Fernández, Ana García Pineda, Luis Pérez Calvo, Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum, Laramascoto, Connie Mendoza, Carlos Motta, Carl Palm, Pepo Salazar, Yes.

Visit to the Tabacalera Espacio Promoción del Arte. Exhibition visit: José Manuel Ballester “Bosques de Luz”. Curators: María de Corral and Lorena Martínez de Corral.

Entrance to Tabacalera, Espacio Promoción de Arte.

Tabacalera also shares spaces with La Tabacalera Centro Social Autogestionado (follow @latabacalera), where over 30 organisations self-manage their own spaces sharing, garden areas, storage, a stage, bar facilities, etc.

Saturday, 20th April 2013

Caixaforum. Exhibition: 'Maestros del Caos. Artistas y Chamanes'.

Walk to Medialab Prado, Calle Alameda 15, which officially opened its doors a day before our visit.

Walk to La Casa Encendida, Ronda de Valencia 2.
Exhibitions: Generaciones 2013. Proyectos de Arte Caja Madrid.
Albert Oehlen, Moderne Farbkonzepte. Curator: Christian Domínguez.

Lunch offered by La Casa Encendida in their terrace.

Buses depart for Matadero Madrid, Plaza de Legazpi 1, 28045 Madrid.

Manuela Villa, Head of Contents at Matadero introduces the different areas of the 80,000m2 of the former slaughterhouse and its programmes, including the Programa de Pensamiento Matadero Madrid; Intermediae Laboratory for the production of projects and social innovation and Archivo de Creadores (Documentation of 150 Madrid-based contemporary artists).

Fernando García-Dory of Campo Adentro working at Matadero Madrid.

Archivo de Creadores de Madrid, offering "physical and online documentation on 150 young artists or collectives of 17 different nationalities with links to the city of Madrid."

IKT Symposium “Curating Value” at the Cineteca.

"Curating Value" symposium at the Cineteca, Matadero Madrid.

Left to right: Zoë Gray, Pierre Bismuth, Dr. Simon Sheikh Poka-Yio, Maria de Corral and Barnabás Bencsik.

Exhibition visits. Abierto x Obras: Candela. Los Carpinteros . Curator: Manuela Villa; and Arqueológica, curated by Virginia Torrente. Followed by a dinner and party offered by Matadero Madrid.

Candela, site-specific work by Los Carpinteros at the Abierto x Obras space.

Pedro Barateiro's piece The Negative Reader, 2012-13, included in the group exhibition Arqueológica in Nave 16.

Mariana Castillo Deball, five dance costumes produced by artisans in Yautepec in Morelos, used to perform the Brinco de los Chinelos dance during the Carnival. Part of the group exhibition Arqueológica in Nave 16.

Sunday, 21th April 2013

IKT General Assembly in the Auditorio 200, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS).

One of the issues to discuss during the General Assembly was to decide on the next venue/city to host the IKT Congress 2014 and 2015. The members voted that CCA Derry-Londonderry would host the 2014 event (the bid included visiting the biennial Eva International in Limerick) and that Vienna's Kunsthalle Wien to host the following year.

Here Johan Lundh co-director of CCA Derry-Londonderry during his presentation for Derry-Londonderry to host the 2014 IKT Congress.

Exhibition visits: Colección I. 1900-1945; Colección II. 1945-1968; Colección III. 1962-1982; Cristina Iglesias; Robert Adams. el lugar donde vivimos. Una selección retrospectiva de fotografías; La invención concreta. Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros; and Azucena Vieites. (Programa Fisuras).

Favourite Gego mobile, "Reticularea" (1973–76), in the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros.

Favourite Jesús Soto, "Pre-penetrable" from 1957 in the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros.

Wonderful 1967 Tropic ália by Hélio Oiticica in the "Colección III , 1962-1982" (above and below).

(End of congress & beginning of Post-Congress)

Afternoon gallery visits around c/ Doctor Fourquet

NoguerasBlanchard, with the exhibition "Can’t Hear My Eyes" curated by Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk.

MaisterraValbuena, with the exhibition "Entre lo fugitivo y lo infinito" curated by Anja Isabel Schneider.

Isidoro Valcárcel–Medina, Conducto, 2013. From the press release: "On the occasion of this exhibition project, Isidoro Valcárcel Medina proposes a site-specific intervention on the floor in the gallerys entrance zone. With a critical, at times provocative stance towards the art market, voiced among others in Ley del Arte - Ley reguladora del ejercicio, disfrute y comercialización del Arte (1992), Valcárcel Medinas work sees art and life interrelated, inviting the spectator above all to an experience."

García Galería with the exhibition "En la zona gris" curated by Virginia Torrente.

Joaquín García of García Galería introducing the meteorite piece by Belén Rodríguez González

Moisés Pérez Albéniz with an exhibition of works by Antoni Muntadas (below).

Helga de Alvear with an exhibition of works by Prudencio Irazabal.

Fúcares, with the exhibition "Escópico-Esconder(se)-Escaparcurated" by Juan Francisco Rueda.

Visit to artists studios at Rampa in the Carabanchel neighbourhood, Madrid.

Found photograph in the former car repair shop that existed before Rampa.

IKT members listening to Rampa's presentation and questions on curating and the artist-curator relationship.

Bus departs for Colección Inelcom at the Ciudad de la Imagen, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Madrid. Artistic direction of the collection: Vicente Todolí.

The circa 3,000m2 headquarters at Ciudad de la Imagen, hold 72 works by 24 artists, including Pavel Büchler, Anthony McCall, Markus Schinwald, Ernesto Neto, Sophie Calle, Kader Attia, Candice Breitz, Ceal Floyer, Fiona Tan and Fernando Bryce's 'Work in Progress' (2006) a suite of 80 ink drawings (below).

Monday, 22th April 2013

Visit artists studios: Fernando Sánchez Castillo and Cristina Lucas.

How many curators can you fit in an artist studio?

Espacio Valverde group show included a work by Antonio R. Montesinos, one of the members of Rampa.

AVE back to Barcelona... end of journey.

All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

"Digression(s), Entry Point(s): An interview with Heman Chong", Singapore-based artist, curator and writer. Eighth in the #OpenCurating research series

2013-04-02T10:23:00.000+02:00

Cover of the interview. Photo: Joan Kee

Interview available for download as a pdf or readable on ISSUU via Latitudes' web.

Heman Chong’s art practice is comprised of “an investigation into the philosophies, reasons and methods of individuals and communities imagining the future”. His ongoing project, The Lonely Ones, looks at the representation of solitude and the “last man on earth” genre in art, film and literature, and is the basis for a forthcoming novel entitled Prospectus. Chong’s recent solo exhibitions include LEM 1, Rossi & Rossi, London (2012), Calendars (2020–2096), NUSMuseum, Singapore (2011) and The Sole Proprietor and other Stories, Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou (2007). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions including the Asia Pacific Triennale 7 (2012), Performa 11 (2011), Momentum 6 (2011), Manifesta 8 (2010), Busan Biennale (2004), and the 50th Venice Biennale (2003) representing Singapore. Amonograph of his work entitled "The Part In The Story Where We Lost Count Of The Days", edited by Pauline J. Yao, will be published in June 2013 by ArtAsiaPacific.

The interview was initiated at Spring Workshop, Hong Kong, in the context of Chong’s invitation to Latitudes to make a curatorial residency as part of Moderation(s), a year-long series of programming between Spring and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam. "Digression(s), Entry Point(s): An interview with Heman Chong" also includes a guest spot with Gotherburg-based artist and writer Anthony Marcellini.

Follow:
@LTTDS
#OpenCurating
@HemanChong
#Moderations

ABOUT #OPENCURATING

Drawing on the emerging practices of so-called 'Open Journalism' – which seek to better collaborate with and use the ability of anyone to publish and share – #OpenCurating is a research project that investigates how contemporary art projects may function beyond the traditional format of exhibition-and-catalogue. #OpenCurating is concerned with new forms of interaction between publics – whether online followers or physical visitors – with artworks and their production, display and discursive context.

The project is articulated around a series of ten new interviews with curators, artists, writers and online strategists published as a free digital edition [read here the published ones so far], a Twitter discussion moderated around the hashtag #OpenCurating and an public conversation with Dia Art Foundation curator which took place at MACBA on the 19 February.

#OpenCurating is a research project by Latitudes produced through La Capella. BCN Producció 2012 of the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona.

Content partners: Walker Art Center

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Research trip to Dublin and Derry-Londonderry, Ireland, 8–14 March 2013

2013-03-16T22:29:00.001+01:00

View of Dublin's 1816 Ha'penny Bridge nearby Temple Bar.

Invited by Dublin City Council: The Arts Office, Latitudes visited art spaces, artists' studios and galleries in Dublin and Derry-Londonderry throughout the week.

The schedule included visits to the Red Stables Studios; Temple Bar Gallery + Studios; Fire Station Artists' Studios; Green On Red Gallery; Kevin Kavanagh Gallery and Project Arts Centre - Visual Arts, as well as talks by Latitudes to students of the MA in Visual Arts Practices (MAVIS) (8 March, 3pm), and at the recently inaugurated CCA Derry~Londonderry (9 March, 7pm) as well as participation in the seminar "Within the Public Realm" at the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane (12 March, 2–5pm), alongside curator Aisling Prior and the artist Sean Lynch.

Latitudes was invited to Dublin in the context of the Barcelona Mayor's visit to Dublin and the renewing of the twinning agreement between the two cities. Here a coffee table at the Lord Mayor's Mansion House displays "Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape" and "Barcelona" books.

Talking to MA in Visual Arts Practice (MAVIS) students at The Lab on 8 March. Photo: @lemuela

9 March: After +4h bus ride north, we arrive at Centre for Contemporary Art in Derry–Londonderry for a talk that evening at 7pm.

View of CCA's galleries hosting the touring exhibition The Grand Domestic Revolution GOES ON (GDR), which in Derry-Londonderry "focuses on the contemporary working conditions of caregivers—primarily mothers and grandmothers—in the domestic sphere."

In the galleries, two of the London-based design collective Åbäke (Patrick Lacey, Benjamin Reichen, Kajsa Ståhl and Maki Suzuki), building a bed inspired by a 1970s design by Enzo Mari.

Collection of books on domestic spaces, DYI, cooking, gardening, self-build architecture, urban planning, etc. accompany the The Grand Domestic Revolution GOES ON (GDR) exhibition.

Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh, co-directors of CCA Derry–Londonderry, hosted a wonderful Thai pre-talk dinner.

Sunday walk around the Bloody Sunday Memorial and the Bogside area of Derry-Londonderry.

Two of the murals around Bogside.

Ernesto Che Guevara Lynch mural in Derry-Londonderry's Bogside.

With Aileen and Johan at Kinnagoe Bay in Donegal, site of 1588 shipwreck of one of the Spanish Armada ships.

11 March: Back to our temporary home in Dublin's The R ed Stables in St. Anne's Park.

A windswept North Bull I sland looking towards the city.

Visitor Centre at North Bull Island.

12 March: Studio visits at Temple Bar Studios + Gallery in the heart of the city.

Temple Bar Studios + Gallery, a former shirt-factory building, celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.

Studio of artist Alan Bu tler, one of the 30 on site.

Setting up for the 2–5pm talk at The Hugh Lane Dublin City Gallery organised by MAVIS, The Hugh Lane and Dublin City Council.

After the seminar, artists Sean Lynch and Michele Horrigan took us to see the 'failed' Richard Serra nearby the Guiness factory.

13 March: Visiting the sculpture workshop facilities of Fire Station A r tists' Studios with Development Manager Liz Burns and Director Clodagh Kenny.

Studio of Martin Healy in Fire Station A r tists' Studios and his work around perpetual motion.

Artist Ma ria Mc Kinney research on wheat weaving and straw craft techniques for her project 'Gar lands'.

Karl Burke "wooden drawings" photos and renderings.

Crossing the Sean O'Casey bridge to begin a gallery tour including Green on Red Gallery, Kevin Kavana gh Gallery, The Dou glas Hyde Gallery, Project Arts S pace and T emple Bar Studios + Gallery, with Dublin-based critic, curator and Senior Lecturer at the School of Irish, Celtic, Folklore & Linguistics, Caioimhin MacGiolla Leith.

Group show "Material Fact" at Green On Red Gallery included works by Silvia Bächli, Paul Doran, Dennis McNulty and Gerard Byrne (photographed), one of the more well-known Irish artists.

'Detached' group show at Project Arts Cent re, guest curated by The A rtists' Insti tute director and founder Anthony Huberman, recently appointed Director of CCA Wattis in San Francisco.

Alice Channer's "Amphibians" (left) and Sunah Choi's "Abdrucke (Imprints)", 2011-13 (wall)

Temple Bar Studios + Gallery, hosted 'Or tears, Of Course' a solo show of British artist Ed Atkins (photos above and below).

Gathering plenty of material during studio visits, lunches, dinners and meetings.

14 March: Morning visit to the wondrous Natural History, a 1857 building displaying "animals from Ireland and overseas, also geological exhibits from a total collection of about 2 million scientific specimens".

Ground floor gallery dedicated to dedicated to "Irish animals, featuring giant deer skeletons and a variety of mammals, birds and fish".

The minimal education department are doing a great job at dynamising the nicknamed "Dead Zoo" or "Museum of Museums": The 5 year old giraffe has her own twitter account @SpotticusNH and they will soon host a "night at the museum" event where a few kids will be able to sleep (or try to) in the museum galleries.

The stunning upper gallery was "laid out in the 19th Century in a scientific arrangement showing animals by taxonomic group. This scheme demonstrated the diversity of animal life in an evolutionary sequence." Unfortunately the second and third floor balconies have been closed due to a safety review as they do not comply with current safety regulations, which impedes visitors from seeing, amongst many other things, the museum's unique collection of glass models manufactured in Dresden in the late 19th Century by the father-and-son team of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka.

All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

"Host and Ambassador: A Conversation with Yasmil Raymond" Curator of Dia Art Foundation, New York. Seventh in the #OpenCurating research series

2013-03-07T15:40:00.000+01:00

Yasmil Raymond has been the curator of Dia Art Foundation in New York since 2009. Previously, between 2004–9, she worked at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. At Dia she has organised exhibitions and projects with artists including Jean-Luc Moulène, Yvonne Rainer, Ian Wilson, Robert Whitman, Koo Jeong A, Franz Erhard Walther and Trisha Brown. She is currently working on the retrospective Carl Andre: Sculpture as Place, 1958–2010, due to open in May 2014, as well as on Gramsci Monument, a project by Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn that begins this July.

The published text [available via Latitudes' web on pdf and ISSUU format] is a transcription of a conversation between Raymond and Latitudes that took place on 19 February 2013 at the auditorium of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), as the public event of Latitudes’ #OpenCurating research. The conversation begins with an overview of this research, followed by a brief introduction to Dia and its projects since 1974. It incorporates “crowd-sourced” questions that were received via Twitter and Facebook, including from Raymond’s current and former work colleagues, and concludes with questions from the audience.

Interview with Yasmil Raymond available via Latitudes' web as a pdf and in ISSUU format.

–

ABOUT #OPENCURATING

Drawing on the emerging practices of so-called 'Open Journalism' – which seek to better collaborate with and use the ability of anyone to publish and share – #OpenCurating is a research project that investigates how contemporary art projects may function beyond the traditional format of exhibition-and-catalogue. #OpenCurating is concerned with new forms of interaction between publics – whether online followers or physical visitors – with artworks and their production, display and discursive context.

The project is articulated around a series of ten new interviews with curators, artists, writers and online strategists published as a free digital edition [read here the published ones so far], a Twitter discussion moderated around the hashtag #OpenCurating and an public conversation with Dia Art Foundation curator which took place at MACBA on the 19 February.

#OpenCurating is a research project by Latitudes produced through La Capella. BCN Producció 2012 of the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona.

Content partners: Walker Art Center

All photos above: Joan Morey

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

#OpenCurating: "Latitudes in conversation with Yasmil Raymond", Curator, Dia Art Foundation, New York. Tuesday 19 February, 19:30h. Auditori MACBA, Barcelona

2013-02-11T11:30:00.000+01:00

Dia Art Foundation curator, Yasmil Raymond. Photo: Lina Bertucci

| ENG |

"Latitudes in conversation with Yasmil Raymond"
Tuesday 19 February 2013, 19:30h
Auditori MACBA, Barcelona.

Free admission. Limited seating. With simultaneous translation.

This event is part of Latitudes' ongoing #OpenCurating research, which analyses the implications of Web 2.0, participation and transparency for contemporary art production and programming. The core of #OpenCurating is formed through a series of interviews, freely available online, most recently with Steven ten Thije (Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven), Sònia López and Anna Ramos (MACBA, Barcelona), and Badlands Unlimited (New York).

The conversation with Dia Art Foundation's curator Yasmil Raymond will address Dia's historical identity, the evolving role of the curator, and Raymond's vision in commissioning and preserving art projects.

The evening will incorporate "crowd-sourced" questions by the public previously solicited via Twitter (hashtag #OpenCurating) and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LTTDS).

Yasmil Raymond has worked at the Dia Art Foundation since 2009, where she has organized exhibitions and projects with artists such as Jean-Luc Moulène (2012); Yvonne Rainer (2011-12); Koo Jeong A (2010-11); Franz Erhard Walther (2010-2012); and Trisha Brown (2009-10). Prior to joining Dia, Raymond worked at the Walker Art Center (2004–2009) in Minneapolis where she organized solo exhibitions with Tomás Saraceno (2009), Tino Sehgal (2007) and group exhibitions including Abstract Resistance (2010); Brave New Worlds (2007, co-curated with Doryun Chong). Raymond studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1999) and the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (2004).

As a nonprofit institution founded in 1974, the Dia Art Foundation is renowned for initiating, supporting, presenting, and preserving art projects. Between 1987 and 2004, the Dia Center for the Arts in Chelsea, New York, saw presented site-specific exhibitions and projects including those by Robert Gober, Jenny Holzer, Jorge Pardo and Pierre Huyghe. Dia:Beacon opened in 2003 in upstate New York, as the home for Dia’s distinguished collection of art from the 1960s to the present. Dia Art Foundation maintains long-term, site-specific projects including Walter De Maria’s The New York Earth Room (1977) and The Broken Kilometer (1979), Max Neuhaus’s Times Square (1977), Joseph Beuys’s 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks) (1988), and Dan Flavin’s untitled (1996), all in Manhattan; the Dan Flavin Art Institute in Bridgehampton, New York; De Maria’s The Vertical Earth Kilometer (1977) in Kassel, Germany; Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) in the Great Salt Lake, Utah; and De Maria’s The Lightning Field (1977) in Quemado, New Mexico. Currently Dia is developing a project space on West 22nd Street in New York City.

#OpenCurating is a research project by Latitudes produced through La Capella. BCN Producció 2012 of the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona.

Content partner: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis / walkerart.org

| ES |

"Latitudes conversa con Yasmil Raymond"
Martes 19 de febrero, 19:30h
Auditori MACBA

Entrada gratuita. Aforo limitado. Con traducción simultánea.

Este evento es parte del proyecto de investigación #OpenCurating de Latitudes, enfocado en el análisis de las implicaciones de la web 2.0, así como la expectación de participación y transparencia, en la producción y programación de arte contemporáneo. El núcleo de #OpenCurating consiste en una serie de diez entrevistas, disponibles en línea y gratuitas, con artistas, comisarios y escritores tales como Steven ten Thije (Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven), Sònia López and Anna Ramos (MACBA, Barcelona), y Badlands Unlimited (Nueva York).

La conversación con la comisaria del Dia Art Foundation, Yasmil Raymond se centrará en la identidad histórica del Dia, la evolución del rol del comisario y la visión de Raymond en el encargo y la conservación de proyectos artísticos.

La sesión incorporará preguntas previamente enviadas por el público a través de Twitter (@LTTDS con hashtag #OpenCurating) y Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LTTDS).

Yasmil Raymond ha sido Comisaria del Dia Art Foundation en Nueva York desde el 2009, donde ha organizado exposiciones y proyectos de artistas como Jean-Luc Moulène (2012); Yvonne Rainer (2011–12); Ian Wilson (2011–13); Robert Whitman (2011); Koo Jeong A (2010-11) (2010-11); Franz Erhard Walther (2010-2012); y Trisha Brown (2009–10). Anteriormente Raymond trabajó en el Walker Art Center en Minneapolis, donde organizó exposiciones individuals de Tomás Saraceno (2009), Tino Sehgal (2007) y exposiciones colectivas como Abstract Resistance (2010); Statements: Beuys, Flavin, Judd (2008); y Brave New Worlds (2007, co-comisariada con Doryun Chong). Raymond estudió en The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1999) y cursó un máster en el Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (2004).

Como institución sin ánimo de lucro fundada en el año 1974, el Dia Art Foundation es conocida por haber iniciado, apoyado, presentado y preservado proyectos artísticos. Entre 1987 y 2004, el Dia Center for the Arts en Chelsea, Nueva York, presentó exposiciones y proyectos site-specific de Robert Gober, Jenny Holzer, Jorge Pardo y Pierre Huyghe, entre otros. Dia: Beacon abrió sus puertas en 2003 en el norte del estado de Nueva York, como sede de la distinguida colección de arte desde la década de 1960 hasta la actualidad. Dia Art Foundation mantiene proyectos a largo plazo en sitios específicos tales como The New York Earth Room (1977) y The Broken Kilometer (1979) ambos de Walter De Maria; Times Square (1977) de Max Neuhaus, 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks) (1988) de Joseph Beuys; untitled (1996) de Dan Flavin, todos en Manhattan; el Dan Flavin Art Institute in Bridgehampton, Nueva York; The Vertical Earth Kilometer (1977) de Walter De Maria en Kassel, Alemania; Spiral Jetty (1970) de Robert Smithson en Great Salt Lake, Utah; y The Lightning Field (1977) Walter De Maria en Quemado, Nuevo Mexico. En la actualidad, Dia está desarrollando un espacio para proyectos en la calle West 22nd de Nueva York.

#OpenCurating es un proyecto de investigación de Latitudes producido por La Capella. BCN Producció 2012 del Institut de Cultura de Barcelona.

Content partner: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis / walkerart.org

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Latitudes' Open Day at Spring Workshop on 2 February 2013

2013-02-09T11:00:00.000+01:00

On February 2nd, Spring Workshop hosted an Open Day during which Latitudes discussed, together with Moderation(s) moderator Heman Chong, their month-long residency in Hong Kong. The contribution to the project consisted in realising the second iteration of "Incidents of Travel", with tours by Hong Kong-based artists Nadim Abbas (19 January), Yuk King Tan (24 January), Ho Sin Tung (29 January) and Samson Young (7 February) – amongst other explorations around the city, such as to Mai Po marshes, F e ng Sh ui tour or to D evil's P eak.

The evening began tracing "Incidents of Travel"'s origins with itineraries and tours organised in previous projects such as the seminar-on-wheels for the 8th Sharjah Biennial (2007) as well as during P ortscapes (2009) in the Port of Rotterdam. After introducing "Inc idents of Travel" in Mexico City and the four tours in Hong Kong, we fielded questions from the audience and discussed the ongoing research project #OpenCurating and its origins with the editorial project realised for the T he Last Newspaper (2010) exhibition at the New Museum in New York.

Moderation(s)' moderator: artist, writer and curator Heman Chong.

Q+A begins.

Food time! Thai food from the neighbouring Cooked food Market on Nam Long Shan Road, Aberdeen.

All photos: Spr ing W orkshop.

Samson Young's "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" tour

2013-02-07T12:11:00.001+01:00

As part of Moderation(s), the year-long collaboration in 2013 between Witte de With, Rotterdam, and Spring Workshop, Hong Kong, curators-in-residence Latitudes have invited artist Samson Young to develop a day-long tour of Hong Kong retelling the city and artistic concerns through personal itineraries and waypoints.

To complement the tour, please check the archive of twitter and facebook and soundcloud posts.

Follow Twitter: #IncidentsOfTravel #Moderations

– "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong"
by Samson Young
7 February 2013

I am very envious of artists who are able describe their practices in a manner that is concise, succinct, and consistent. To tell one’s life story is also to confess. I purge my catalog of works and rebuild my identity (as told by images, sounds, and self-descriptions) every couple of years. Moderation(s)asks that I create a tour that “articulates the city and (my) artistic practice through routes and waypoints.” Are routes and waypoints more authentic than a studio visit? Are the vernacular, the eccentric and the marginal more “real,” in the same way that punk is real and techno apparently isn’t? The pressure to define the unique and the authentic is perhaps growing more urgent with globalization; but behind each assiduous defense of the authentic lies what Regina Bendix calls “an unarticulated anxiety of losing the subject” (Bendix 1997).

During this tour, I eavesdrop on my own works in the presence of six others. We take an early morning sound-walk around the Kwun Tong industrial district, visit a site near the City Hall in Central where the now demolished Queen's Pier was once located, and trespass the frontier closed area near the Hong Kong-China border. In between locations, we listen to recordings of music and/or read texts that have informed my work one way or another.

Sound walk begins at 75 Hung To Road in the industrial district of Kwun Tong.

Sound-walk: 75 Hung To Road, Kwun Tong

We begin the tour at 75 Hung To Road. I will conduct again a sound walk that I created back in 2009. Participants of the sound-walk follow me on a route through the Kwun Tong industrial district. To create this work I walked the same route a number of times at different dates and times, generating one full recording in each walk through. I then edited these recordings into a single sound track, to which the participants listen during the sound-walk. During the sound-walk, I follow my own footstep by listening to the sound marks in the sound track, to ensure that I am in sync with my recorded presence.

Samson Young leads us while listening to the 44 min. soundtrack "Kwun Tong Soundwalk" on mp3 players.

Young takes us through the bus station.

Photo: Spring Workshop.

Condemned industrial buildings around Kwun Tong.

Around Kwun Tong's shops and markets. Photo: Spring Workshop.

More condemned buildings. When Young recorded the soundtrack in 2009 these places were still open, a proof of the swift gentrification of Kwun Tong.

Short pause at Yue Man Square Rest Garden. Photo: Spring Workshop.

Soundwalk-ing in a bus terminus. Photo: Spring Workshop.

Tsim Bei Tsui, Frontier Closed Area

I was born in Hong Kong but mostly educated in Australia. I’ve always felt that children of Mainland Chinese parents had an easier time answering the question, “Where are you from?” They simply say, “I’m Chinese.” I always feel more natural saying I’m from Hong Kong, rather than plainly stating that I’m Chinese. Or, if I say I’m Chinese, I feel the need to add the footnote that I was born in Hong Kong. I am frankly confused by all of this. For the longest time I avoided identity politics in my work, but the national education saga in 2012 prompted me to revisit this issue.

Hong Kong and Mainland China are physically separated by the ShenzhenRiver and a great wall of wired fencing, and south to the border are restricted zones known as the Frontier Closed Area. Entry into the Frontier Closed Area without an official permit is strictly forbidden. In October 2005, the then chief executive Donald Tsang announced a proposal to drastically reduce the Frontier Closed Area. In February 2012, 740 hectares of land were initially opened up for public access. The proposal will be implemented in phases, and other areas will soon follow suit. Since July 2012, I had been systemically collecting the sound of places and/or objects that separate the two regions. I recorded the vibration of the wired fencing with contact microphones, and the water sounds of the Shenzhen River with hydrophones. I rearranged these recordings into sound compositions. I then re-transcribed these sound collages into graphical notations.

Frontier Closed Area.

Walking through the fields that border China.

Nearby Kaw Liu Village.

Pig farm guarded by angry dogs.

New development to house relocated villagers following highway construction.

Photo: Spring Workshop

Self-build constructions/storage along the way.

Young introduces the making of the soundtrack "Liquid Borders" which we are about to listen to.

Since early 2012, 740 hectares of land have been opened up for public access, and buildings have been constructed nearer the fence which runs along the Shenzhen river.

Bordering the fence while listening to the "Liquid Border" soundtrack.

Field recording. Photo: Spring Workshop

Queen’s Pier in Edinburgh Place.

Queen's Pier was a public pier in central in front of the City Hall. For decades it served not only as a public pier but also as a major ceremonial arrival and departure point. The pier witnessed the official arrival in Hong Kong of all of Hong Kong's governors since 1925; Elizabeth II landed there in 1975, as did the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1989. On 26 April 2007 the pier officially ceased operation. The government’s plan to demolish the pier to make way for a new highway was met with fierce opposition by conservationists. Despite the public outcry, Queen's Pier was demolished in the February of 2008.

I was living in New York when all of this happened. In 2009 I composed and directed a music theatre work entitled “God Save the Queen.” The work started out as a requiem for the Queen’s Pier. It evolved into a hymn to the structures, both physical and symbolic, of my teenage days – which were also the last of the colony’s. The performance was accompanied by a mixture of live footage from five theatre-based CCTV cameras, and pre-recorded clips of screen icon Helena Law Lan (who often played royalty for TV), dressed as the Queen.

1956 City Hall building that connected with the now demolished Queen's Pier in Edinburgh Place.

Photo: Spring Workshop

The lotus pond, University of Hong Kong

I was what you might call a “straight-down-the-center” composer to begin with. For over a decade I operated only in the concert in the capacity of a composer of the Western classical tradition. Now I do all kinds of weird things in all sorts of weird places. Chan Hing-yan, my mentor during my years at HKU, had a looming influence on me. I think a lot of what I do today is a reaction against what (I imagine that) I’d learnt during those formative years – a sort of a “creative misreading” as Harold Bloom would put it.

University of Hong Kong in Pok Fu Lam.

To end the tour Samson reads a passage of his dissertation about his approach to music composition and cultural politics.

Talking nearby the lotus pond at "Hong Kong U". Photo: Spring Workshop

–

Samson Young (1979) is a composer, sound artist and media artist. Young received training in computer music and composition at Princeton University under the supervision of computer music pioneer Paul Lansky. He is currently an assistant professor in sonic art and physical computing at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. Young is also the principle investigator at the Laboratory for Ubiquitous Musical Expression (L.U.M.E), and artistic director of the experimental sound advocacy organization Contemporary Musiking. In 2007, he became the first from Hong Kong to receive the Bloomberg Emerging Artist Award for his audio-visual project “The Happiest Hour”. His brainwave non-performance “I am thinking in a room, different from the one you are hearing in now” received a Jury Selection award at the Japan Media Art Festival, and an honorary mention at the digital music and sound art category of Prix Ars Electronica.

Festival presentations and honors include: Prix Ars Electronica (Austria 2012); Japan Media Art Festival (Japan 2012); Sydney Springs International New Music Festival (Australia 2001), the Canberra International Music Festival (Australia 2008), ISCM World Musid Days (Australia 2010), MONA FOMA Festival of Music and Art (2011); the Bowdoin International Music Festival (US 2004), Bang on a Can Music Summer Music Festival (US 2005), Perspectives International Festival of Media Art (US 2009); Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt (Germany 2006); Dark Music Days (Iceland 2008); Kuala Lumpur Contemporary Music Festival (Malaysia 2009); amongst others. His music received performances by Hong Kong Sinfonietta, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, London NASH Ensemble, City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong, Bang on a Can and summer institute fellows, Network for New Music, New Millennium Ensemble, SO Percussion, Sydney Song Company, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, MIVOS Quartet, among others.

All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Tour of Devil's Peak and the Museum of Coastal Defence

2013-02-06T11:30:00.000+01:00

Alongside the four tours led by Hong Kong artists Nadim Abbas, Yuk King Tan, Ho Sin Tung, and Samson Young, Latitudes is also venturing into the city, researching around local forms of vernacular collection display and eccentric attractions. This encompasses museum-like retail spaces, or ‘marginal’ sculptural displays, as well as joining pre-existing tours.

On 30th January, Latitudes joined the "Devils's Peak and Museum of Coastal Defence" tour organised by Walk Hong Kong and led by former British Army officer and War World II specialist Martin Heyes, who has lived in Hong Kong for nearly 40 years. Heyes is a passionate and insightful guide for anyone interested in the context and details of the 1941 Japanese invasion of Hong Kong.

Following are abstracts of text from Walk Hong Kong website and images of our route.

Wilson Trail up to Devil's Peak.

"At the end of the 19th century, and early into the 20th, the British authorities were very concerned about perceived threats to the safety of their colonial possessions in the Far East from other European powers. Hong Kong fell into this category. Accordingly the British Government constructed impressive military fortifications to protect their imperial possessions, and one of these was at Devil's Peak at the eastern extremity of the Kowloon peninsula."

Kowloon and Victoria Harbour.

"The large fortification constructed to defend the eastern approaches to Hong Kong harbour consisted of 2 fixed gun battery positions, together with a Redoubt at the summit of Devil's Peak which later became the Fire Command Headquarters for the eastern part of Hong Kong."

Overgrown trench.

View from Devil's Peak Redoubt.

"Although the position was eventually considered redundant and was in fact decommissioned before the outbreak of the Pacific War, the location was the scene of bitter fighting between the courageous Indian soldiers of the Rajput Battalion and the attacking Japanese army during the battle for Hong Kong in December 1941, immediately prior to the British evacuation of the mainland to Hong Kong island."

Gough battery.

"Following our visit to the gun battery position on Devil's Peak, we walk down through the seafood restaurant area of Lei Yue Mun to catch the ferry to Sai Wan Ho on Hong Kong island. A short taxi ride then brings us to the Museum of Coastal Defence, housed inside the late Victorian-era Lei Yue Mun Fort."

Descending towards Lei Yue Mun.

Lei Yu Mun promenade in eastern Kowloon.

Seafood restaurants' fish tanks in Lei Yue Mun.

Lei Yu Mun bay.

"The fort occupied a strategic position guarding the eastern approaches to Victoria Harbour. The British military built barracks here as early as 1844, but these were abandoned shortly afterwards. In 1885, in the face of perceived aggrandizement from other European powers, artillery barracks were constructed with a redoubt at the core of the fortifications."

Devil's Peak (right) seen from the Museum of Coastal Defence.

Display in the Museum of Coastal Defence showing the life of a British soldier in the 19th Century.

The Hong Kong Telegraph from January 1902 – including a prominent ad for beloved Brit product Bovril.

Japanese naval flag & pistols from the December 1941 invasion of Hong Kong.

Follow the project: #IncidentsOfTravel #Moderations

To complement the tour, please check the twitter and facebook and soundcloud posts via storify.

Moderation(s) is a year-long programme occurring throughout 2013 between Witte de With, Rotterdam, and Spring Workshop, Hong Kong.

All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Yuk King Tan's "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" tour

2013-02-03T12:10:00.001+01:00

As part of Moderation(s), the year-long collaboration in 2013 between Witte de With, Rotterdam, and Spring Workshop, Hong Kong, curators-in-residence Latitudes have invited artist Yuk King Tan (China/New Zealand) to develop a day-long tour of Hong Kong retelling the city and artistic concerns through personal itineraries and waypoints.

To complement the tour, please check the twitter and facebook and soundcloud posts via storify.

Follow on Twitter: #IncidentsOfTravel #Moderations

–

'Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong'
by Yuk King Tan24 January 2013

My art practice is a series of negotiations, folding ideas, curiosities, structures and translations which together form stories that are not entirely expected or make narratives in a slightly unfamiliar tongue. I am curious about systems of value: what is valuable and how does it appreciate? Who defines value and is that control static or creative? Where and how do we house what is seen as precious and what is finally disposable?

A large part of the tour is not only about looking at sites but about visiting the people that inhabit these places and hearing their stories. Connecting different inhabitants of Hong Kong with the tour may even intervene in how certain groups see their roles. In Hong Kong people live parallel lives. It is ironic that in such an over-populated hyper urban city, people cohabitating in one home can find themselves in completely separate, disparate existences. Part of my art process tries to investigative and re-form, and part of the tour looks at the positioning between host and visitor, migrant and home, belief and skepticism.

At the first art talk I ever gave I dressed as a tour guide, and with a loose mid-west American accent, I narrated a tour about art practice by highlighting art work seen and made and books read as various ‘attractions’, which were ingested over a travel slide presentation and onboard snacks. Like a twisted Greyhound bus tour complete with uniform and a cheerily dismissive attitude, I was interested in the distancing devices defining one’s art practice around the performance of presenting artwork in general. Any tour is an act of intimacy and distance. The act of memory is also a creative and theatrical set of gestures. This tour is a set around actions and meetings which are intimate, truthful and theatrical just as Hong Kong is a city rife with the potential for drama, fantasy and invention. I hope that the people we meet on the tour share in a larger discussion about what is valuable and what cannot be quantified.

The 12-storey meeting house buildling of T he Church of Jesus Christ of Lat ter-day Saints in Wan Chai, Hong Kong, administrative headquarters of the Mormon church in Asia.

Wanchai Meetinghouse

In a early artwork “I am the light of the world, Dlrow eht fo thgil eht ma I” I made a video about a photograph made by group of New Zealand missionaries who went to southern China in the 1940s to spread the word of Christianty – a mission that unfortunately was a political and social disaster. The work was an image of the missionaries created entirely from firecrackers. In the video loop the firecrackers explode into a blaze of furious golden fire until the footage is reversed, setting up a continuous cycle of destruction and reformation.

Elder Elliot. Courtesy Yuk King Tan.

Part of my general research is about the economic moves of T he Church of Jesus Christ of Lat ter-day Saints (LDS Church) as they are set up Hong Kong as a base to bring the Mormon Church into Mainland China. The Wanchai Meetinghouse is a 12-storey building that serves as meeting place for 12 wards, the administrative headquarters for the LDS Church in the Asia region and, with three apartments on top floor housing the church ‘Area Presidency’, as the obvious symbol of the reach of the Mormon faith.

Designed by a Mormon architect Leland Gray and his son Stephen Gray its presence suggests that one of the most regimented Christian religions in the world will also move towards a strong presence in China. Inside the Meetinghouse is a maze of rooms: sports courts, multi-purpose prayer-zones, music and classrooms all decorated with spiritually focused paintings. The Church of the Latter Day Saints requires one-tenth of their follower’s income as part of the tilling process and also committed unpaid service such as the two-year missionary tours undertaken by 19-25 year old Mormons. I became interested in the missionaries ideas about language, belief, politics and service. Most of the missionaries are required to learn as much about their host country and language of the country as possible, they even have at times have a new terminology that fuses the slang from the host country with the language of the faith and church. The Wan Chai Meetinghouse has become a type of “one-stop baptism shop” where Mainland Chinese people can be anointed a ‘Mormon’ in just twelve hours to try to circumnavigate the backlash from communist officials. As most of the churches in Hong Kong are run on a tight economic business model, the possibility of using the city as a base into China’s billion possible new recruits can be seen of as an golden, priceless opportunity.

Lobby area.

Sports area.

One of the three chapels.

Our guides share some of their musical skills.

One of the many congregation/teaching rooms.

Chung King Mansions and the nearby Mirador Mansions on Nathan Road, include low-budget guesthouses, electronic stores, clothing shops, sari stores, curry houses, tailors, and foreign exchange office. It has been estimated that 4,000 people live in the Mansions.

Chung King and Mirador Mansions

Built in the 1960s Chung King Mansions were built for a higher level of economic strata because of their height and type of construction. Now they house the largest amount of guesthouses and the greatest level of ethnic diversity in Hong Kong. It has been called the by Time magazine “Best Example of Globalization in Action” or by Gordon Mathews “the backside or globalism”. The economic trade passing through these two buildings has been significant enough to have a cause and effect in the entire region. Hong Kong anthropologist Gordon Mathews states that 20% of the mobile phones in sub-Saharan Africa have been traded through these buildings. He goes on to say:

“Chungking Mansions figures as an important depot of the worldwide movement of goods and capital to and from the developing world - low-end globalization”, reports CNN.go. These two buildings are described by Surajit Chakravarty in his ‘Dissertation in Urban planning – Social Sciences’ as “spaces of market-culturalism with tensions arising from this hyper "market-culturalism", a socio-spatial condition (or entity) whereby identity is expressed through the market, legitimacy sought through consumption, and interaction between communities is marked by a spirit of competition, with tensions persisting under the façade of cooperation.”

I became interested in the light well structures when I first arrived in Hong Kong. They seemed something like a physical metaphor for the very density of change that Hong Kong aspires too achieve. The pipes and internal systems climbing up the buildings are a form of root system and, as the bars barricading the top of the wells are unable to prevent large collection of rubbish thrown at the bottom, the wells suggest the contrasts between daylight with dark obscurity, connection versus containment. A friend, who is a caretaker of the poorest housing estates in Hong Kong, once described a story where a young man wrenched off the bars at the top of the light well and from a cocktail of hallucinogens and perhaps suicidal thoughts jumped down the well. After hitting most of the air conditioners and injuring himself on the metal clothing racks he hit the bottom but survived as his body was expectedly cushioned by the huge amount of garbage that had been tossed down there.

With regards to Chung King mansions, Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai has said that “…its 200 lodgings, it is a mix of different cultures ... a legendary place where the relations between the people are very complicated. It has always fascinated and intrigued me. It is also a permanent hotspot for the cops in HK because of the illegal traffic that takes place there. That mass-populated and hyperactive place is a great metaphor for the town herself…”

At Chung King Mansions we will be lead through the floors by another filmmaker, Berlin-based Elke Marhöfer who currently lives in the mansions recording and researching the stories from African traders for a film about exchange, migrants and trading with sub-Saharan Africa.

Berlin-based artist Elke Marhöfer joins us for a bit during our Mansions visit and tells us about the filming project she has been conducting in recent weeks focusing on the trade between Africa and Asia. Photo: Heman Chong.

Elke recommends Gordon Matthews' book "Ghetto at the center of the world. ChungKing Mansions, Hong Kong" (The University of Chicago Press, 2011).

Advertising low-budget lodging in the corridors of Chungking Mansions.

First floor of Chungking Mansions.

Boxed merchandise in Chungking Mansions.

Mirador Mansions (more photos here).

Notice board in Mirador Mansions.

Tailor workshop in Mirador Mansions.

In the stairwell of Mirador Mansions. Photo: Mimi Brown.

Monica's enterprises, a sari store in Mirador Mansions.

Courtyard of Mirador Mansions.

Laundry and A/C at Mirador Mansions.

Maximising laundry space.

A lost mexican sombrero in the Mirador Mansions.

Interior façades, Mirador Mansions.

Kowloon Mosque

The tour of the Kowloon Mosque is lead by an Imam, Muhammad Ashrad. Both the mansions and the Kowloon Mosque hold 4,000 people and in many ways the two structures have defined the urban population of that area. As the largest and most attended mosque in Hong Kong it also shaped the development of that area, servicing and encouraging the Muslim population to stay and work in close proximity for prayer and for counsel. Most large religious institutions are constructed around notions of belief and grandiosity. The chandeliered grandeur of the main prayer space of the mosque has becomes its own inspirational jewel at the heart of the Muslim in Hong Kong yet by keeping the Muslim population centered around one area, it can be seen as problematic, creating a type of social isolation tank which acerbates the homogeneity of Hong Kong’s cultural make-up.

Kowloon Mosque and Islamic Centre in Nathan Road, largest in the city. Photo: Mimi Brown.

Yuk King exploring the roof of the Mosque.

Tea break with macanese-portuguese pastéis de nata and chicken pie at Macau Dai Pai Dong.

Entrance to the Chai Wan recycling depot, focus of Yuk King Tan's video 'The Limit of Visi bility' (2012).

Chai Wan Working Cargo Area – Recycling Industry

My home overlooks the recycling depot of Chai Wan and it’s a daily activity to watch the progress of the boats filled with compacted paper and scrap metal move through the harbour. Two of my art projects have looked at value in terms of recycling and labour. The video ‘Scavenger’ followed the work of elderly recycle-trolley workers, named ‘scavengers’ in Hong Kong, and in the video ‘Limit of Visibility’ I filmed the progress of the recycling material around the cargo areas and as it is loaded on ships that take the material to various sites in Hong Kong and China.

Still from the video 'Scavenger' (2008). Courtesy Yuk King Tan.

The government owns all of Hong Kong's cargo working areas but private operators lease parts of the cargo bay from the government so that the refuse industry balances in tension between private enterprise and public management. One of the operators of the Chai Wan cargo bay will take us on a tour of the area and talk about his business working in the district over the last four years.

The compacted cubes of paper and cardboard, craned from trucks into formal grids carpeting the long barges, can seen as a refuse landscape, the material creating its own mountains and valleys. Compacted into modernist blocks, the previously loose paper detritus is the byproduct of a booming information industry. Distributed between masses of ships and industrial crane equipment, this material is prepared to become another kind of vast colony. Sent to less developed countries further broken down and salvaged, the waste material is a literal paper trail about the scale, power and wastage of economic development and trade. The sheer tonnage of the paper and the beauty of its compressed form about to undergo future transformation are all tied to the fluctuating market value attached to refuse material.

Still from the video "The Limit of Visibility" (2012). Courtesy Yuk King Tan.

The recycling industry that brought in so much revenue through the last ten years to ‘recycle cities’ in China has been stymied by the global market slowdown. There are times where the material shipped to China has lost most of its share value over the travel time between ports. The paper cubes are like giant books from the transactions of the city, which now may only be used as landfill. There were stories from China that refuse paper blocks are being used as less than stable filler in creating reclaimed land. For Hong Kong, waste and recycling will always be a complicated issue in a dense and expensive land and property-controlled city.

Chai Wan depot transports metal, paper and plastic to mainland China and Taiwan.

Boat route Chai Wan to Joss House Bay.

Fishing Boat Tour

The Chai Wan cargo bay operator who has an office on the Cargo Bay, also runs a small charter boat service from Chai Wan.

There is also a fishing boat area close by and we will take a small boat out into the harbour to look at the Hong Kong coastline from both urban and mountain landscape perspective over the sea. The famous Chinese painting trope of mountains and mist painting can be literally seen in Hong Kong landscape. I think of the philosophical traditions of the mountains and mist ink painting or mountain water as an analogy to the values of Hong Kong. The symbolism of a singular figure against nature, or in this case the mountains shrouding a hyper-dense urbanization can be seen best over sunset in a creaky fishing boat navigating between the large cargo tankers and cruise liners.

While on the harbour we will visit the largest Tin Hau Temple in Tai Mui Wan (or Joss House Bay) which can only be accessed by water as well as the floating fishing villages of Fat Tong Mun.

The Tin Hau Temple at Joss House Bay from the water, the oldest and largest Tin Hau Temple built in 1266.

View of the pier and the bay from the Tin Hau Temple, Joss House Bay.

Floating fish farms in the coast of Tung Lung Island.

Sunset over the bay.

Filipina Summit

We end with the tour with a dinner at a tiny boarding house where nine domestic helpers will make a meal from the Philippines and discuss political and personal issues around life as a Filipina woman working in Hong Kong.

These woman are friends, some of whom I have met, as part of a previous project ‘Helper’ 2009 in which a group of domestic helpers inhabited an gallery in Hong Kong to become both living sculptures and gallery invigilators for the duration of the exhibition.

Excerpt from Beth Laygo Interview – part of the 2009 project ‘Helper’ presented at 1aSpace, Hong Kong:

"I am a person behind everyone. We are always invisible, and if you want to call your work something, well, it should be just H, like Hey, or just like the sound ‘Hhh”, or H_____ with a gap. That’s like us - without a name. I have to subdue my personality, be in the background. Sometimes I feel as if I am losing myself piece by piece. Everyday a little part is gone, the worse thing is that it’s your self-confidence. And as time goes on you are lost, you have to be humble, and it’s so hard to be quiet all the time. You know… it's like I left my personality home in the Philippines.

We have a relationship based on verbs. My employer does not speak English, and I do not yet know how to speak Cantonese. We always use verbs in our everyday life, so we do action words. Not nouns or adjectives, the verb relationship.

Helper Beth. Courtesy: Yuk King Tan

It’s okay to be called maid, because we are like that. But sometimes it’s so degrading. Just like a helper, you are really helping and when you are really helping you feel satisfaction, you feel joy and happiness and you feel some fulfillment. Just like, ‘maid’, is a bit above a slave. It’s so very low. When called a maid, it is a compulsory word. You are obliged to do it and have no choice.

That is an irony, even for us, that we are going to other countries taking care of others kids to have more money for our kids. Just like them, the employers, they entrust us their kids and we bring them up so they can make more money. It is bad, but needed in this kind of society, for this kind of lifestyle that we all want. Because we must enjoy life. It is in our nature to seek what others have. Though it is sometimes more about wants than necessities.

The most difficult part is the adjustment period. It’s a very long adjustment period. Both parties must put up with each other; you have your own attitudes, upbringing and values. So of course I try to correct mine, but also you must adjust to my values.

I will do in the gallery space what needs to be done, if I need to sweep the floor I will sweep, if there is dust I will dust the pictures. But we are used to it, is very hard to get away from your routine. When you are used to doing it, it is very hard to stop. The routine is sometimes boring; I am a person who likes to do fieldwork. It’s so boring if it’s just about the floor and house. Not everyday you have someone to talk to because everyday is very busy. It’s so comforting to be able to talk.

It’s quite bad; the Philippines is poor because there is so much politicking. They think about politics without considering the needs of the people. The people get poorer and poorer. I studied accountancy. To be working is a necessity; no mother wants to be away from her kids. We are the ‘light of the home’, yet we must go out and earn money.

I cannot explain art; art is something other people have like a gift, its drawing and pictures. Art is a gift, something that not everyone appreciates. Something its about dreams, sometimes its when things that are extra good. I feel so honored and thankful; it’s not everybody that wants us to be an artwork. My daughter is good at drawing."

–

Yuk King Tan (China/New Zealand) is an artist who lives and works in Hong Kong, negotiating issues such as bi-cultural and multi-cultural identity within a constantly evolving post-colonial society.

Her work, which includes detailed drawings in ash and smoke residue, exploding fire cracker installations, photographs taken from rockets, and a giant cardboard HSBC lion pushed through the streets of Hong Kong, is often poetic and frequently suggestive, connecting highly different subject-matters and mediums. The meta-themes in the artist’s work unveil interests in cultural delineations, global migration, and a personal relationship to world-defining issues such as value and economy.

Yuk King Tan has had solo and group exhibitions, most notably at the Hong Kong Arts Centre (1996); Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen (1999); Museum Fridericianum, Kassel (1999 and 2002); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2000); Camden Arts Centre, London (2000); Wellington City Gallery, New Zealand (2005); and Artists Space, New York (2006); Kunstverein, Hamburg (2008). She has held residencies at Dunedin, New Plymouth, Queensland, Aachen, Sydney, and London and has participated in international biennials in Queensland, Vilnius, Auckland, and São Paulo. She graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University, New Zealand in 1993. She has taught and lectured at graduate and post-graduate art schools.

All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Ho Sin Tung "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" tour

2013-01-30T00:39:00.001+01:00

As part of Moderation(s), the year-long collaboration in 2013 between Witte de With, Rotterdam, and Spring Workshop, Hong Kong, curators-in-residence Latitudes have invited artist Ho Sin Tung to develop a day-long tour of Hong Kong retelling the city and artistic concerns through personal itineraries and waypoints.

Ho Sin Tung's tour of Hong Kong revisits shooting spots (which are still accesible) from her video "Folie à deux" (2011), in which people read aloud their favorite passages with their back to the camera at the spots they chose. Through her reading-and-listening relationship with her readers, intimate and unique memories are created in the locations.

To complement the tour, please check the twitter and facebook and soundcloud posts via storify.

Follow on Twitter: #IncidentsOfTravel #Moderations

–

'Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong'
by Ho Sin Tung
29 January 2013

In 2011, I made a video called “Folie à deux” (trailer here), named after a psychological term describing “a condition in which symptoms of a mental disorder, such as the same delusional beliefs or ideas, occur simultaneously in two individuals who share a close relationship or association”. The video is a simple depiction of 17 people reading aloud from a passage from their favourite book with their back to the camera, at different indoor and outdoor locations chosen by each reader.

I know many people read, but only a few read books in a more personal way. The 17 people in “Folie à deux” were carefully selected as I sensed something “passionate” about them and their reading habits. Despite being a friend of the readers, I have never really discussed literature with them.

The places in which the readers chose to read are significant to each, and some locations I am unfamiliar with. However, through filming, listening to their reading, staring at their backs and spending some time with them before and after filming , stories and memories of the places are created. The video gets its name because, through reading, readers unwittingly unburden themselves - you can even see their fragility at that moment - and I am part of it.

I intend to re-visit each location (marked in this map) and by revisiting, I hope to re-tell the stories of each reader and the books they chose. Most of the places included in the trip are actually art spaces and artists’ studio. But through their stories, each place becomes less general and more intimate.

Meeting in Tai Po, New Territories, Hong Kong.

Cho Yun Kei, a favourite noodle spot in Sin Tung's family, and a very popular destination in Tai Po and beyond.

Breakfast in Tai Po.

Breakfast conversations.

Wandering through Tai Po.

The framers Sin Tung works with in Tai Po.

Tai Po chatting. Artist Ho Sin Tung with Mimi Brown of Spring and Max Andrews of Latitudes.

Observing a school where kids are practicing percussion instruments for Chinese New Year. Listen to the field recording here. Photo: Spring Workshop.

The 'hood.

Amazing family-run bean curd shop "Grandma Tofu Pudding" in Tai Po.

Delightful Tai Po treats: warm bean curd flower (also called "soya bean custard" / "bean curd dessert" / "bean curd jelly") at "Grandma Tofu Pudding".

Beautiful greens in Tai Po Market.

At Lo Wu station, mainlanders openly smuggle things like baby milk powder from Hong Kong.

Sheung Shui hi-rises.

Sheung Shui dialogues: "...and that? What is it? / Hmmm, I don't know... / it seems difficult to eat! / Do you think it's sweet or salty? / It looks more like an offering or maybe used for New Year decoration / I think they look like Wallace & Gromit-like fruit!

Queuing for lunch at the Gu ong Shing Ice Café in Sheung Shui.

Observing our surroundings while queuing up for lunch. Photo: Spring Workshop.

Across the street from the lunch break in Sheung Shui.

Lunch break: Pinneaple bun, a soft bun with sugar on top and a slice of butter inside.

Recurrent in the Hong Kong shopping landscape: foldable chairs and tables for sale.

Sheung Shui citizen amongst noodles and eggs.

Nam Sang Wai, New Territories, Hong Kong

Reader: Wong Wai Yin
Book: "Thomas the Obscure" by Maurice Blanchot

Wong Wai Yin is a Hong Kong artist married to Kwan Sheung Chi, also an artist. They are well known for their collaborative work, including a long performance piece,“Everything Goes Wrong for the Poor Couple”. Their work often references literature and they have a wonderful selection of books in their home bookshelf.

Wong Wai Yin brought me to Nam Sang Wai, a place I had never previously visited, and where they had their wedding photographs taken. There has been great discussion over the years about developing the wetland area of Nam San Wai - one of the most beautiful areas in Hong Kong attracting many film directors, “photographers” and their “models”.

Near where we filmed Wong Wai Yin reading, another couple was also taking wedding photos. These things reoccur over and over again in the grassy fields!

Afternoon walk around Nam Sang Wai wetlands.

Exploring Nam Sang Wai wetlands. Photo: Spring Workshop.

Abandoned house in Nam Sang Wai.

Photo: Spring Workshop

Vegetation around Nam Sang Wai wetlands.

For the unwanted visitors, a "scare cormorant" at Nam Sang Wai wetlands.

Further exploration around Nam Sang Wai wetlands.

Abandoned house, favourite spot for Hong Kong TV drama kidnapping scenes.

From here, Sin Tung filmed Wong Wai Yin segment in the video "Folie à deux".

View from the window.

A busy wedding photo location indeed!

ACO, Foo Tak Building, Wan Chai
Reader: Li João Ye Chun
Book: "Slam Dunk" by Takehiko Inoue

The owner of the Fuk Tak Building in Wan Chai offers cheap rent to some Hong Kong artists. There is also an English bookshop called ACO on the first floor; not just a bookshop but also a multi-use space for meetings, screenings, and education.

João is a former work colleague whom I admire and is now studying for a PhD in Berlin. He is very left wing and intelligent, but never in an intimidating way. I expected him to read something very academic, but rather than choosing a writer like Kant or Hegel, he picked a Japanese comic book that he liked as a boy. It’s a comic book about basketball.

He chose the last basketball match in the comic, and read aloud the count down of the match’s final seconds: 2 seconds, 0.8 seconds, 0.1 seconds, 0 seconds…

He chose something from pop culture and found a philosophical aspect to it.

ACO bookstore. Photo: Spring Workshop.

Outside Hong Kong Arts Centre
Reader: Alice Ho
Book: "Cry, the Beloved Country" by Alan Paton

Alice has worked for the Goethe Institute in Hong Kong for many years. I first met her while exhibiting there.

She is a very energetic person and full of stories, I had a really good time working with her. The book has always reminded her of her father’s death.

While reading, a nearby street musician – unexpectedly - played sad music.

Alice Ho from the Goethe Institute.

Crab buns dinner at "The 369 Shanghai Restaurant" in Wan Chai.

–

Ho Sin Tung (1986, Hong Kong) graduated from the Fine Arts Department of Chinese University in Hong Kong. She is currently a full-time artist and has a studio located in Fotan, Hong Kong. Sin Tung’s recent work predominantly uses pencil, graphite and watercolour in combination with found and ready-made images – such as stickers, maps, charts, rubber-stamps and timelines. These are reinterpreted to narrate stories of places, relationships and periods of time often within a considered, objective historical setting.

Her most recent exhibitions include “Hong Kong Inter-vivos Film Festival” in Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong (2012), “You Are Running A Business Called None Of My Business” in Abu Dhabi Art Fair (2011), “Folie à duex” in Experimenta, Hong Kong (2011) and “Don’t Shoot the Messenger” in Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong (2010). She also participated in group shows like “Hong Kong Eye” in Saatchi Gallery, London (2012), “The 9th Shanghai Biennale” in the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art (2012), “Octopus” in Hanina Contemporary, Tel Aviv, Israel (2011), “Urban Utopia : if and only if” in Goethe Institute, Hong Kong (2011), “Drawing Out Conversation : Taipei” in Nanhai Gallery, Taipei (2010).

More information via Hanart TZ Gallery, Kong Kong.

All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

"Temple and Feng Shui Tour", a guided walk around Hong Kong Island & Kowloon

2013-01-22T17:49:00.002+01:00

The "Temple and Feng Shui Tour" that we joined on the 22nd January around Hong Kong Island & Kowloon began by looking at Norman Foster's Hong Kong HSBC building in Admiralty, built according to Feng Shui principles.

The HSBC building has a large wide open area (i.e. the Statue Square) in front of it, with no other large buildings blocking the view of Victoria Harbour – thus a big plus point for good feng shui.

Natural sunlight makes its way inside the building via a movable platform regulated by computer which directs sunlight towards giant mirrors at the top of the atrium.

ATMs in the atrium.

Left lion statue (focus of Yuk King Tan's 'Scavanger' (2008) video) protecting the entrance of the building.

Two escalators access the building; three after the first floor (4 is a superstitious number as, when pronouned in Cantonese it sounds like the word for "death", hence the building doesn't have floors 4, 14 or 24).

I.M. Pei's Bank of China Tower has notoriously bad Feng Shui, nearby buildings try to compensate with shield-like shapes and curved corners.

View from 43rd floor of Bank of China Tower towards West Kowloon.

Wong Tai Sin temple (Sik Sik Yuen) where people worship Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism.

Main altar to worship Master Wong Tai Sin.

Incense sticks and offerings to Master Wong Tai Sin.

Nan Liam garden built in the style of a Tang Garden.

Blue Pond in the Nan Liam garden.

Pavilion of absolute perfection at the Nan Liam garden, Diamond Hill, Kowloon.

The Rockery gallery in Nan Liam garden, "a collection of rocks excavated from the Red River in its stretch through Dahua County in Guangxi Province, China."

Chi Lin Nunnery in Diamond Hill, Kowloon, across the Nan Liam garden.

The Buddhist temple at the Chi Lin Nunnery.

Nan Lian garden and Buddhist temple at the Chi Lin Nunnery.

View of the Japanese-style pagoda from the Buddhist temple at the Chi Lin Nunnery.

Follow the project: #IncidentsOfTravel #Moderations

To complement the tour, please check the twitter and facebook and soundcloud posts via storify.

Moderation(s) is a year-long programme occurring throughout 2013 between Witte de With, Rotterdam, and Spring Workshop, Hong Kong.

All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Nadim Abbas' "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" public tour

2013-01-20T10:36:00.000+01:00

As part of Moderation(s), the year-long collaboration in 2013 between Witte de With, Rotterdam, and Spring Workshop, Hong Kong, curators-in-residence Latitudes have invited artist Nadim Abbas (Hong Kong, 1980) to develop a public tour of Hong Kong on Saturday, 19 January.

The day-long itinerary plots a course through a handful of sites in the city, which have in one way or another influenced the form, content, and processes of Nadim’s practice. Since Hong Kong has been his home for most of his life, some of these places have been all too familiar to him since childhood. This project now offers him the opportunity to spring fresh surprises on unsuspecting “tourists”, and possibly on himself as well.

To complement the tour, check the twitter and facebook and soundcloud posts via storify, as well as the text "T he Pathology of Hong Kong in the work of artist Nadim Abbas", an account of the tour by Zoe Li on ArtInfo.com (includes a slidesh ow).

Follow future events on Twitter: #IncidentsOfTravel #Moderations

Nadim Abbas introduces his tour to 16 participants in the Wah Fu Estate, Aberdeen.

Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong
by Nadim Abbas
19 January 2013

Although I usually speak about my work in terms of images and the imaginary, there is always an equally important component that describes an encounter with externalspace. By that I am referring to the heterogenous space in which we live, which we rarely have time to reflect upon except in a state of distraction. But just because there is no time to reflect doesn’t mean that these spaces don’t affect our thoughts, subtly penetrating the internal space of our imagination; in some cases to the point where one can no longer distinguish between the internal and the external, or between dream and reality. It is these moments of uncertainty that interest me the most, and which, in my own experience, transforms art making into a perpetual balancing act on the threshold between banality and oblivion.

The itinerary outlined below plots a course through a handful of sites in Hong Kong, which have in one way or another influenced the form, content, and processes that define my practice. Since Hong Kong has been my home for most of my life, some of these places have been all too familiar to me since childhood; waiting for the right opportunity to spring fresh surprises on this unsuspecting tourist.

Wah Kwai Estate block.

Wah Kwai Estate water feature (with no water).

Around the Wah Kwai Estate. Photo: Heman Chong.

Waterfall Bay Park, Aberdeen, Hong Kong

Waterside "resort" used by the local community to swim and exercise by the side of the South China Sea.

Waterfall Bay is said to have attracted Portuguese and British ships to its shores to collect fresh water from its namesake as far back as the 16th century. Today, about 30m from the falls lie the ruins of a WW2 military pillbox and petrol powered searchlight, referred to officially as “Beach Defense Units” by Allied troops during the Japanese siege of Hong Kong in 1941. A few minutes walk from the rocky beach along the coastline, residents of a nearby public housing estate have over the years converted what looks like a disused pier into an veritable seaside resort for the local community. Despite numerous government placards warning against swimming in ungazetted waters, residents eager for an early morning dip in the South China Sea have gone so far as to add ad hoc steps, pool ladders and even fresh water facilities for an after-swim wash.

Tour guide of the day, artist Nadim Abbas. Photo: Trevor Young.

Looking towards Lamma Island from Waterfall Bay Park.

For the less adventurous, there are shelters and seating areas where the elderly gather everyday to play chess/cards, chat or simply watch the boats passing by. But perhaps the most endearing aspect of this site are the hundreds of porcelain statues of various Chinese deities clustered along the hillside and shoreline. I don’t know what started this particular outdoor collection; perhaps a makeshift shrine to protect local fisherman, or to commemorate a traumatic event? Or because it is considered unlucky to throw away statues of deities, they were quietly transferred to this idyllic setting instead. Needless to say, this latter aspect lends the whole site, already steeped in history, with a certain sacred quality. In a city like Hong Kong, where the regulation of land use usually falls into the purview of one dimensional governmental policies or market driven real estate developments, such elaborate appropriations of public space are a rarity. They represent in my mind a kind of fragile heterotopia, or an unwitting piece of relational art par excellence.

Offerings to deities, Waterfall Bay Park, Aberdeen.

Hillside covered with porcelain statues of various Chinese deities.

and more... Photo: Nadim Abbas

...some with their own shelters.

The waterfall of Waterfall Bay Park!

Looking the other direction an abandoned WWII beach-defense unit.

Inside the WWII beach defense unit.

Exploring the bay.

Nadim Abbas, Cataract (Iguazu Falls), 2011. Kinetic lightbox with Duratran print and aluminium window frames. 70(h) x 85(w) x 15(d) cm.

Walking through the Wah Fu Estate in Pok Fu Lam. Photo: Heman Chong.

Wah Fu Estate laundry.

Photo: Trevor Yeung.

Concrete Islands, Eastern Street, Hong Kong

My fascination with marginal spaces in the urban landscape began with this network of concrete islands that are located beneath the Connaught Road West flyovers next to the Western Harbour Tunnel (WHT) entrance. It is a site that I regularly pass by on bus rides to Kowloon side, and it became the model for a 46sq/m sandscape that was built in a warehouse space as part of an installation titled Afternoon in Utopia(2012).

Underneath the Connaught Road West flyover. Photo: Heman Chong.

Photo: Trevor Yeung.

Nadim Abbas, Afternoon in Utopia, 2012. Mixed media installation (sand, concrete, pigment prints, painted wall text, red tinted lighting). Dimensions variable (sandscape coverage approx 46 sq/m).

One of the distinguishing characteristics of this particular set of islands are the uniform grids of solid concrete trapezoidal prisms that were set into the ground either by government departments or the government-franchised company that operates the WHT. The usual explanation for this strangely monumental arrangement of blocks is to discourage the homeless population from sleeping on the islands. I see it also as a way for the authorities to mark their territory, much like a dog urinates on a lamppost. A couple of questions remain: are concrete islands private or public spaces? What are the laws and jurisdictions that regulate the use of these spaces? Much like the status of homeless people, it seems that these anomalous zones occupy a certain legal grey area, perpetually overlooked because they exist on the boundaries of function and visibility.^¹

Photo: Heman Chong.

Lunch break at the West Kowloon Waterfront Promenade, site of the West Kowloon Cultural District development, to host the future M+, a museum for visual culture to open in 2017 with a focus on 20th and 21st century art, design, architecture and moving image.

Hong Kong skyline from We st Kow loon Waterfront Promena de along the Victoria Harbour.

Man Cheong Street Housing Complex, Jordan, Kowloon

As we all know, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. This is typically illustrated via descriptions of crowded streets in districts like Causeway Bay, Sham Shui Po and Mong Kok, or of the ubiquitous high-rise public housing estates around the territory. This latter aspect is indicative of the tendency, which began under colonial rule, to build upwards rather than outwards to meet the demands of a growing population. Ackbar Abbas, in Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (1997) writes:

"Hyperdensity is partly the result of limited space, but it is also the result of how this limited space could be exploited for economic gain. On the one hand, the colonial government deals with the problem of hyperdensity by constructing cheap housing estates. On the other hand, the government policy of releasing crown land bit by bit at strategic moments and its prerogative, which it duly exercises, of designating land as rural (where strict building restrictions apply) or urban, ensure that building space remains scarce and property prices remain high."

Man Cheong Street Housing Complex, a case study in hyperdensity.

Photo: Trevor Yeung.

Stuck in traffic conversations (Left: Mimi Brown and right: Nadim Abbas).

Although the experience of living in a hyperdense milieu is often talked about disparagingly, it has also been argued that the close proximity between the commercial and the residential actually encourages diverse, dynamic communities and a vibrant street culture (in contrast to the the bland homogeneity of suburban sprawl).

In the early 90s, a group of Japanese architects conducted an in depth survey of the city, extolling the virtues of hyperdense living, and going so far as to liken this still existing complex of apartment blocks off Man Cheong Street (another regular sight for me on weekly cross-harbour bus rides) to the infamous (now demolished) Kowloon Walled City:

Circulation inside the apparently solid block is not horizontal but vertical. Each slab-building is actually a grouping of towers, separated by slender slots. [...] Within these slots of space, like everywhere else in Hong Kong, however, residents have built illegal elements. Thus, although at first glance this highly ordered building complex looks nothing like the chaotic Walled City in Kowloon, it shares with it many features, such as its density of use and its vertical circulation.^²

Wiring, piping, washing and air-conditioning in the Man Cheong Street Housing Complex.

My own concerns regarding the phenomenon of hyperdensity have to do with the kinds of sub-cultures, or modes of (anti)sociability that emerge as a result of extended inhabitation. This has translated into research and immersion in otakuculture, which carries with it stereotypes of socially inept male subjects walled up alone in their apartments; as if the dense accumulation of cramped interior space encourages an introversion, or vacuum of mental space itself. Interestingly, the Chinese word for otakuis宅男 (zaak naam), where 宅 is short for housing (complex) or tenement (block), and 男 means male.

Nadim Abbas, I Would Prefer Not To (宅男) #9, 2009. Digital C-print photograph, 64 x 42cm.

Shanghai Street, Yau Ma Tei.

The final leg of this tour takes us down a number of well-known streets in Hong Kong, which are prime examples of the kind of vibrant street culture that characterizes a hyperdense city like Hong Kong. They also provide a historical cross section of architectural styles in the region, from pre-WW1 “Verandah” type buildings to modern-day podium towers. Each street is known for its specific cluster of specialized shops and/or stalls. Tung Choi Street, for instance, is affectionately known as “Goldfish Street” since it is almost exclusively lined with pet shops and aquarium suppliers. My choice of these 3 streets in particular reflect my own interests as a consumer as much as producer. In fact it is often the case that I get ideas via shopping, or window shopping - there is always an excuse to pick up another piece of useless junk...

Photo: Heman Chong.

Shanghai Street, Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon(Kitchen and restaurant supplies)

Meat cleavers and tea pots around Shanghai St.

Pots and pans galore.

Passing by the Kowloon Wholesale Yau Ma Tei Fruit Market.

Yau Ma Tei Fruit Market.

A durian fruit in the Kowloon Wholesale Fruit Market.

Tung Choi “Goldfish” Street, Prince Edward, Kowloon(Pet shops, aquarium supplies, bicycle shops)

Goldfish of all size and variety sold at Tung Choi “Goldfish” Street.

Aquarium supplies of all persuasions.

Aquarium supplies to decorate fish-tanks.

Mini red, blue and white lobsters, Tung Choi “Goldfish” Street.

Nadim Abbas, Marine Lover, 2011. Mixed media (Polyresin coral casts, fluorescent black lights, plywood, door frames, mirror), 300(h) x 100(w) x 1900(d) cm.

Ap Liu Street, Shum Shui Po, Kowloon(Electronic components, consumer electronics, camera accessories, hi-fi & AV equipment, hand/power tools & accessories, flea market)

Watches, lighting fixtures, cables, transformers, telephone chargers, wires, batteries, and all kinds of other hardware supplies.

...as well as fishing nets

...all sorts of magnets. Photo: Trevor Yeung.

...and mountains of second-hand drills in the Ap Liu Street market.

1 In his visual essay, On Marginal Spaces: Artefacts of the Mundane (2011), Peter Benz devotes a whole section to the discussion of concrete islands. For a fictional account, see J. G. Ballard’s Concrete Island (1974), a kind of Robinson Crusoe for the twentieth century.

2 See architectural journal, SD (Space Design) Hong Kong: Alternative Metropolis No. 330, March 1992.

–

Nadim Abbas (Hong Kong, 1980) is a Hong Kong-based installation artist. His work explores the intricate role that memory-images play in the intersection between mind and matter. This has culminated in the construction of complex set pieces, where objects exist in an ambiguous relationship with their own image, and bodies succumb to the seduction of space.

Abbas studied sculpture (B.A.) at the Chelsea College of Art and Comparative Literature (M.Phil.) at the University of Hong Kong. He currently holds teaching posts at the Hong Kong Art School and City University of Hong Kong. Notable exhibitions and projects include: “No Longer Human”, Osage Kwun Tong, Hong Kong (2012); “Marine Lover”, ARTHK11, Hong Kong (2011); “Cataract”, EXPERIMENTA & Gallery Exit, Hong Kong, “FAX” Para/Site, Hong Kong (both 2010); and “Louis Vuitton: A Passion for Creation – The Hong Kong Seven”, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong (2009).

All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (Except noted otherwise in the photo caption)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

First week of the "Moderation(s)" residency at Spring Workshop, Hong Kong

2013-01-17T17:48:00.000+01:00

View of Hong Kong from Victoria Peak.

Wall text at Spring Workshop introducing Latitudes' month residency.

Moderation(s) team. Left to right: Athena Wu and Mimi Brown (Spring Workshop), Samuel Saelemakers and Defne Ayas (Witte de With, Rotterdam), artist and 'Moderation(s)' curator Heman Chong and Mariana Cánepa Luna and Max Andrews (Latitudes). Photo: Spring Workshop.

Lunch break at Spring Workshop.

As part of Latitudes' 'Moderation(s)' research residency in Hong Kong we will be looking into how the city is articulated through specialist tours and attractions – such as self-made or esoteric museums, museum-like retail spaces, or “marginal” sculptural displays – both phenomena at the edge of the cultural, tourism and leisure sectors. Our first visit took us to the Hobby and Toy Museum in Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon (below).

Hobby and Toy Museum entrance in Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon.

Hobby and Toy Museum galleries at Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon.

Dinner at Lin Heung Tea House in Wan Chai.

Divinities shop around Shanghai Road in Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon.

'The Palazzo' residential complex in Fo Tan.

View from Leung Chi Wo and Sara Wong's studio in the Wah Luen Industrial Centre.

MTR station Fo Tan.

French toast breakfast at Leung Chi Wo and Sara Wong's studio in Fo Tan.

Working table of Ho Sin Tung's studio at the Worldwide Industrial Centre in Fo Tan.

Detail of Ho Sin Tung's studio at the Worldwide Industrial Centre in Fo Tan.

Studying the map of Fotanian Open Studios 2013.

Fo Tan apartments looming over the forested hills.

Fo Tan industrial area.

On 15 January we made day to the New Territories to explore birds and biodiversity. Here's the bird list from the day:

Eurasian Wigeon, Mallard, Northern Shoveler, Northern Pintail, Eurasian Teal, Tufted Duck, Little Grebe, Great Crested Grebe, Oriental Stork, Black-faced Spoonbill, Yellow Bittern, Black-crowned Night Heron, Chinese Pond Heron, Grey Heron, Purple Heron, Great Egret, Intermediate Egret, Little Egret, Great Cormorant, Western Osprey, Black Kite, Eastern Marsh Harrier, Crested Goshawk, Eastern Buzzard, Eastern Imperial Eagle, Peregrine Falcon, White-breasted Waterhen, Common Moorhen, Eurasian Coot, Black-winged Stilt, Pied Avocet, Grey-headed Lapwing, Pacific Golden Plover, Grey Plover, Little Ringed Plover, Kentish Plover, Lesser Sand Plover, Greater Sand Plover, Greater Painted-Snipe, Pintail/Swinhoe's Snipe, Common Snipe, Black-tailed Godwit, Whimbrel, Eurasian Curlew, Spotted Redshank, Common Redshank, Marsh Sandpiper, Common Greenshank, Green Sandpiper, Wood Sandpiper, Terek Sandpiper, Common Sandpiper, Great Knot, Red-necked Stint, Temminck's Stint, Dunlin, Black-headed Gull, Saunders's Gull, Black-tailed Gull, "kamtschatschensis" Mew Gull, Caspian Gull, Heuglin's Gull, Caspian Tern, Domestic Pigeon, Spotted Dove, Asian Koel, Plaintive Cuckoo, House Swift, White-throated Kingfisher, Black-capped Kingfisher, Common Kingfisher, Pied Kingfisher, Grey-chinned Minivet, Scarlet Minivet, Long-tailed Shrike, Ashy Drongo, Azure-winged Magpie, Eurasian Magpie, Collared Crow, Large-billed Crow, Grey-headed Canary-Flycatcher, Cinereous Tit, Yellow-cheeked Tit, Red-whiskered Bulbul, Chinese Bulbul, Chestnut Bulbul, Red-rumped Swallow, Asian Stubtail, Dusky Warbler, Pallas's Leaf Warbler, Yellow-browed Warbler, Yellow-bellied Prinia, Plain Prinia, Common Tailorbird, Rufous-capped Babbler, Masked Laughingthrush, Silver-eared Leiothrix, Japanese White-eye, Velvet-fronted Nuthatch, Crested Myna, Red-billed Starling, Black-collared Starling, Blue Whistling Thrush, Grey-backed Thrush, Common Blackbird, Pale Thrush, Red-flanked Bluetail, Oriental Magpie Robin, Daurian Redstart, Stejneger's Stonechat, Red-throated Flycatcher, Orange-bellied Leafbird, Fork-tailed Sunbird, Eurasian Tree Sparrow, Scaly-breasted Munia, "taivana" Eastern Yellow Wagtail, "macronyx" Eastern Yellow Wagtail, Grey Wagtail, White Wagtail, Richard's Pipit, Olive-backed Pipit, Crested Bunting, Chestnut-eared Bunting, Black-faced Bunting.

Kam Tin river, looking for Grey-headed Lapwings.

Entrance to the Mai Po Nature Reserve.

Mai Po Marshes, the scrape.

Gate 107 through border fence towards the mangroves and Deep Bay, Mai Po Marshes.

Deep Bay (mudflat).

Fiddler crabs and mudskipper, Deep Bay, Mai Po Marshes.

Chinese Pond Heron and Great Egret, Deep Bay, Mai Po Marshes.

1km of floating boardwalks, Deep Bay, Mai Po Marshes.

'The Scrape', Mai Po Marshes.

Southern Mai Po Marshes.

We later visited Long Valley, the largest remaining tract of cultivated land in the Sheung Shui of the New Territories. Here a s oundscape with roosting Black-Collared Starlings and Crested Mynas, and a passing train.

Cultivated fields of lettuce at Long Valley.

Mix of lowland, cultivation, abandoned land and fishponds at Long Valley.

Farm worker collecting lettuce at Long Valley.

Packing greens, Long Valley.

Long Valley between baskets and sky-scrapers.

Very green lettuce, Long Valley.

Highly equipped bird photographers.

Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences in the Mid-levels of Hong Kong.

Visit starts here, don't get distracted.

Model of Kowloon tower block which suffered the worst outbreak of SARS in 2003.

Display of the Old Pathological Institute. "Medical students" c. 1912 examining rats for Bubonic plague.

Transitions in Midwifery display.

In the basement: traditional Chinese Herbalist shop 'Cun An Tan' Equipment.

Model of ear acupuncture points.

"Inoculation of calf with cowpox to produce vaccines against Smallpox" exhibit.

Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware in Hong Kong Park.

Display of tea pots introducing the history of Chinese tea drinking, from the Tang dynasty (618 – 907) to the 20th century.

Introducing the various styles in making tea beverage practiced in China at different times of the day and in different geographical points.

Compressed tea cake packaging.

All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Interview with Steven ten Thije, Research Curator, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, sixth in the #OpenCurating research series

2013-01-02T17:00:00.001+01:00

Play Van Abbe, Part 2: Time Machine (10 April–24 September 2010). Curated by Steven ten Thije (guest curator) and Diana Franssen, Curator and Head of Research. Exhibition view of: Raum der Gegenwart, (1930) 2009 scale 1:1, various materials. Installation: 430 x 860 x 610 cm. Collection Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Photo: Peter Cox, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

As Research Curator at the Van Abbemuseum, in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, Steven ten Thije is part of the team of one the first public museums for contemporary art to be established in Europe. Under the directorship of Charles Esche since 2004, the museum has defined itself through "an experimental approach towards art’s role in society", where "openness, hospitality and knowledge exchange are important". Ten Thije is also a lecturer and researcher at the University of Hildesheim, Germany, where he is studying for a doctorate in the genealogical analysis of the exhibition curator. He was co-curator of the Spirits of Internationalism (Van Abbemuseum, 2012), and alongside Esche, with curators Christiane Berndes, Annie Fletcher, and Diana Franssen, he was guest curator of Play Van Abbe (2011). Subtitled The museum in the 21st Century, this was a four-part multifaceted programme of exhibitions, research and events in which the Van Abbemuseum reflected on the meaning and role of the art museum. Using its collection to articulate questions about the public's reaction to art and its contexts, the Van Abbemuseum probed its own history and purpose alongside how cultural production has reflected the social and political dynamics of the last twenty years.

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ABOUT #OPENCURATING

Drawing on the emerging practices of so-called 'Open Journalism' – which seek to better collaborate with and use the ability of anyone to publish and share – #OpenCurating is a research project that investigates how contemporary art projects may function beyond the traditional format of exhibition-and-catalogue. #OpenCurating is concerned with new forms of interaction between publics – whether online followers or physical visitors – with artworks and their production, display and discursive context.

The project is articulated around a series of ten new interviews with curators, artists, writers and online strategists published as a free digital edition [read here the published ones so far], a Twitter discussion moderated around the hashtag #OpenCurating and a finissage event in Barcelona (date TBA).

#OpenCurating is a research project by Latitudes produced through La Capella. BCN Producció 2012 of the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona.

Content partners: Walker Art Center

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Latitudes research residency in Spring Workshop, Hong Kong, 7 January–10 February 2013, as part of the year-long programme Moderation(s)

2012-12-27T15:00:00.000+01:00

Moderation(s) is a year-long programme occurring throughout 2013 between Witte de With, Rotterdam, and Spring, Hong Kong. It's ‘moderator’, Singaporean visual artist and writer Heman Chong, will steer a program involving more than fifty artists, curators and writers, and engender a conference, three exhibitions, three residencies and a book of short stories.

Moderation(s) begins by hosting the Barcelona-based curatorial office Latitudes for a month residency in Hong Kong (7 January–10 February 2013). During this time, Latitudes will investigate the urban territory from a curatorial perspective by looking into how it is articulated through specialist tours and attractions, both phenomena at the edge of the cultural, tourism and leisure sectors.

As part of this – and elaborating on the approach of their recent project Incidents of Travel [see here] at Casa del Lago, Mexico City – the duo invited Hong Kong-based artists Nadim Abbas, Y uk King Tan, Ho S in Tung and Samson Young to develop day-long tours, thus retelling the city and each participant’s artistic concerns through personal itineraries and waypoints. Alongside these ventures into the city, research around local forms of vernacular collection display and eccentric attractions will be made. This will encompass self-made or esoteric museums, museum-like retail spaces, or ‘marginal’ sculptural displays.

Incidents of Travel Mexico City. Day 3: Tour with Diego Berruecos. Visiting the Biblioteca Nacional Lerdo de Tejada. Photo: Eunice Adorno.

In October 2012, a working group of artists, curators, and Witte de With staff members came together in Rotterdam. Comprised of A Constructed World (Geoff Lowe and Jacqueline Riva), Nadim Abbas, Defne Ayas, Mimi Brown, Amira Gad, Natasha Ginwala, Latitudes (Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna), Michael Lee, Christina Li, Pages (Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi), Vivian Sky Rehberg, and Samuel Saelemakers, the group took part in a two-day workshop developed by Heman Chong to explore and identify materials that will drive the content of Moderation(s). The first project to surface from this workshop is Bibliotheek (Library), a list of books identified by the group to function both as a bibliography for Moderation(s), as well as a planned physical library that will be installed both at Witte de With and Spring.

In speaking about this project, moderator Heman Chong proposes “to make ‘soft’ the practices of both artist and curator, so that one becomes easily soluble in the other, while retaining their unique forms and patterns of working. The participants will be encouraged to indulge in the pleasures of exchanging knowledge and tools without any pressure to collaborate.”

The 2013 programme includes:

Latitudeswill produce Incidents of Travel(Spring, January 2013), for which the duo will invite four artists in Hong Kong to develop day-long tours that articulate the city and their artistic practice through routes and waypoints. Artist Michael Lee will join the project to develop a series of maps and charts that trace the larger constellation of Moderation(s). Performances by artists including Benjamin Seror, Anthony Marcellini, Koki Tanaka, and many more will occur in and around Rotterdam inA Thing At A Time (Witte de With, April 2013). In June, fifteen artists, curators, and writers will produce short stories during A Fictional Residency (Spring, June 2013). Additionally, a conference in four parts led by various moderators involving twelve guests will be staged (Witte de With, October 2013). A Constructed World will produce The Social Contract (Spring, October 2013), a work in which audiences are asked to sign a legal contract restraining them from speaking about what they saw inside the exhibition. The Part In The Story Where A Part Becomes A Part Of Something Else (Witte de With, December 2013), a large-scale show mounted at Witte de With that will sublimate many of the conversations and gestures found within Moderation(s).

Twitter: #Moderations / @WdWcentrum / @SpringHK / @HemanChong / @LTTDS

Moderation(s) is initiated by Witte de With’s Director Defne Ayas and Spring Workshop Founder Mimi Brown.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

"books_expanded_field: An Interview with Badlands Unlimited", fifth interview of the #OpenCurating research

2012-12-17T10:00:00.000+01:00

'How To Download A Boyfriend' group exhibition as interactive e-book, 58 pp (Badlands Unlimited, 2012).

Founded in 2010 by artist Paul Chan – best known for his cycle The 7 ~~Lights~~ (2005–8) and Waiting for Godot in New Orleans, realised in collaboration with Creative Time and The Classical Theatre of Harlem – Badlands Unlimited is a New York-based publishing house whose motto is “books in an expanded field”. Its publications and editions in paper or digital forms (e-books for iPad or Kindle) acknowledge that “historical distinctions between books, files, and artworks are dissolving rapidly”. Badlands aspires to reimagine the activity of reading as it encompasses the artist book, choreography and poetry, 3D, experimental typography, historical translations as well as the format of the group show.

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ABOUT #OPENCURATING

Drawing on the emerging practices of so-called 'Open Journalism' – which seek to better collaborate with and use the ability of anyone to publish and share – #OpenCurating is a research project that investigates how contemporary art projects may function beyond the traditional format of exhibition-and-catalogue. #OpenCurating is concerned with new forms of interaction between publics – whether online followers or physical visitors – with artworks and their production, display and discursive context.

The project is articulated around a series of ten new interviews with curators, artists, writers and online strategists published as a free digital edition [read here the published ones so far], a Twitter discussion moderated around the hashtag #OpenCurating and a finissage event in Barcelona (date TBA).

#OpenCurating was awarded the first BCN Producció 2012 Research Grant of the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona.

Content partners: Walker Art Center

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The Indianapolis Museum of Art's transparency initiatives

2012-12-12T17:06:00.002+01:00

Part of our interest in the #OpenCurating research we are currently carrying out is to look at how museums and curatorial departments are engaging in new ways with their audiences and the means through which "open" initiatives are being promoted and implemented in exhibition-making and via other types of programming.

The Indianapolis Museum of Art has created two really dynamic initiatives which promote transparency throughout the museum's operations: a real-time statistics "Dashboard" including data such as the museum's energy consumption, works of art currently on display, the value of the museum's endowment, their operating expenses, average time of visits to the website, etc.

Indianapolis Museum of Art Dashboard page.

The data can be compared to previous years (stats for 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011), filtered by museum departments (Buildings, Education, Conservation, Curatorial, Finance...) as well as by topics (Art, Greening the IMA, Attendance...).

Dashboard data of the curatorial.

However admirable this tool is, the curatorial dashboard falls rather short on the depth of information, only offering statistics for the "number of acquisitions" and the "number of works with gaps in WWII-Era Provenance". They do not reveal full data sets of their departmental operational budget, for instance. Does this show there is still resistance to really open up the initiative to other kind of cost data (shipping, insurance, exhibition display, fees paid to artists (or not?)...) or even interesting insights such as (air)miles travelled by the curatorial staff, or the amount of paper used for their publications, just to mention a few.

Some of these topics (how to articulate institutions and organisations complex needs in seeming transparent, responsible and benevolent) were addressed in Latitudes' 2008 exhibition "Greenwashing. Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities" (Archive Books, 2008) and in its catalogue essay "Shades of Green: a conversation between the curators", as well as in the essay by Stephanie Smith "'Alas for the dreams of a Dreamer!': Art Museums and Sustainability" included in the Latitudes-edited publication "Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook' (RSA, 2006).

A second initiative we find quite relevant is the "Deaccessioning database", which classifies pieces that have been deaccessioned at the museum since 2007 (following IMA's policy, see pdf here), explaining provenance, the reasons for its deaccession, listing the recipient and the day of sale, etc.

Deaccessioned Artworks page www.imamuseum.org/art/collections/deaccession

Take for instance "Houses in the Snow", a 1929 canvas by Maurice de Vlaminck sold via Sotheby's in 2009 for $173700; or the 1889 suite of prints "Les Misères Humaines" by Gaugin, which were transferred to the Musée de Pont-Aven in 2009.

Deaccessioned file for Maurice de Vlaminck's 1929 canvas.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

"Democratizando la sociedad informacional", cuarta entrevista de #OpenCurating con Daniel G. Andújar

2012-12-05T11:00:00.000+01:00

Daniel G. Andújar, Democraticemos la democracia, “A vuelo de pájaro, Barcelona–Badalona”, 22 de mayo 2012.

Cortesía de Daniel G. Andújar estudio / TTTP.

La práctica del artista visual, activista en la red y teórico del arte Daniel G. Andújar cuestiona, mediante la ironía y la utilización de estrategias de presentación de las nuevas tecnologías de la comunicación, las promesas democráticas e igualitarias de estos medios y critica la voluntad de control que esconden detrás de su aparente transparencia. En 1996 Andújar funda la empresa virtual Technologies To The People (TTTP) “dedicada a acercar los avances de la tecnología a los más desfavorecidos, una especie de imprecisa corporación que reproducía el lenguaje disuasorio, los tics de identidad y los arquetipos visuales asociados a las compañías comerciales del ámbito digital”.

"Democratizando la sociedad informacional" es la cuarta entrevista en la investigación #OpenCurating – leer la primera con el equipo del Walker Art Center aquí (inglés), la segunda con Ethel Baraona Pohl (español e inglés); y"Itinerarios transversales" con Sònia López y Anna Ramos del Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA).

El documento se puede visualizar en IS SUU, y también se puede descargar como pdf desde la web del proyecto y por de ahí leerlo en vuestro iPad (visualización optimizada para la pantalla Retina).

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ACERCA DE #OPENCURATING

Partiendo de las preocupaciones exploradas por Latitudes durante el proyecto editorial realizado durante 'The Last Newspaper' (New Museum, Nueva York, 2010), y basándose en las prácticas del denominado 'periodismo abierto' (Open Journalism) – que trata de mejorar la colaboración y utilizar la habilidad de cualquier persona para publicar y compartir – #OpenCurating es un proyecto de investigación que indaga en las nuevas formas de interacción entre los públicos – sean seguidores en red o visitantes físicos – con obras de arte, su producción, exhibición y su contexto discursivo.

El proyecto se estructura a partir de tres elementos: una serie de diez entrevistas a comisarios, artistas, escritores y expertos web publicada en una edición digital gratuita (véase aquí), una discusión en Twitter moderada por el hashtag #OpenCurating y por último, un evento (fecha por determinar).

#OpenCurating es el proyecto ganador de la primera convocatoria BCN Producció 2012 en la categoría de investigación, otorgada por el Institut de Cultura de Barcelona.

Síguenos en Twitter: #OpenCurating

Content partners : Walker Art Center

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

"Itinerarios transversales", tercera entrevista de la investigación #OpenCurating, con Sònia López y Anna Ramos del Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)

2012-11-28T13:09:00.000+01:00

El estudio radiofónico de Ràdio Web MACBA en el Auditorio del MACBA.

Foto: Gemma Planell / MACBA, 2012. Some rights reserved.

La entrevista "Itinerarios transversales" con Sònia López y Anna Ramos del Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), es la tercera en la investigación #OpenCurating – leer la primera con el equipo del Walker Art Center aquí (inglés), y la segunda con Ethel Baraona Pohl aquí (en inglés aquí).

El Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) abrió sus puertas en el Raval de Barcelona en el 1995, aunque su fundación se remonta a 1987 cuando miembros representantes de la sociedad civil catalana y empresas privadas crean Fundación MACBA, una de las cuatro entidades que integran el Consorcio junto con la Generalitat de Catalunya, el Ayuntamiento de Barcelona y el Ministerio de Cultura. La nueva página web del museo (macba.cat), se lanzó a principios del 2012 tras un periodo de rediseño y reconceptualización, e incluye novedades como los Recorridos (permite al visitante crear itinerarios transversales seleccionando entre las cinco mil obras que componen la Colección MACBA, además de vídeos, fichas de artista, podcasts, publicaciones, etc.) y la unificación de bases de datos de la colección y el Archivo del Centro de Estudios y Documentación, entre otras muchas. Ràdio Web MACBA, el proyecto radiofónico del museo iniciado en el 2006, cuenta con su propia web rwm.macba.cat e incluye una selección de más de 250 podcasts sobre arte, filosofía, música experimental y material documental con la voluntad de fomentar una aproximación crítica a la producción sonora y el pensamiento contemporáneo.

Sònia López es la responsable de la web y las publicaciones digitales del MACBA desde el 2001. Ha participado en diversos proyectos artísticos y pedagógicos en el MACBA y otras instituciones culturales de Barcelona. Activista crafter a tiempo parcial.

Anna Ramos es la coordinadora del proyecto radiofónico online Ràdio Web MACBA, y co-responsable del sello ALKU, plataforma pluridisciplinar que opera desde 1997. Bajo ambos paraguas desarrolla publicaciones, proyectos, instalaciones y ciclos en torno a la música por ordenador, el audio generativo, la síntesis, el pensamiento contemporáneo y otras áreas relacionadas. Asimismo, acaba de co-editar el libro del artista danés Goodiepal, El camino del hardcore (ALKU, 2012).

El documento se puede visualizar en ISSUU, y también se puede descargar como pdf desde la web del proyecto y por de ahí leerlo en vuestro iPad (visualización optimizada para la pantalla Retina).

Foto: Latitudes.

–

ACERCA DE #OPENCURATING

Partiendo de las preocupaciones exploradas por Latitudes durante el proyecto editorial realizado durante 'The Last Newspaper' (New Museum, Nueva York, 2010), y basándose en las prácticas del denominado 'periodismo abierto' (Open Journalism) – que trata de mejorar la colaboración y utilizar la habilidad de cualquier persona para publicar y compartir – #OpenCurating es un proyecto de investigación que indaga en las nuevas formas de interacción entre los públicos – sean seguidores en red o visitantes físicos – con obras de arte, su producción, exhibición y su contexto discursivo.

El proyecto se estructura a partir de tres elementos: una serie de diez entrevistas a comisarios, artistas, escritores y expertos web publicada en una edición digital gratuita (véase aquí), una discusión en Twitter moderada por el hashtag #OpenCurating y por último, un evento que tendrá lugar en Barcelona (fecha por determinar).

#OpenCurating es el proyecto ganador de la primera convocatoria BCN Producció 2012 en la categoría de investigación, otorgada por el Institut de Cultura de Barcelona.

Síguenos en Twitter: #OpenCurating

Content partners : Walker Art Center

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La cultura en España: estadísticas, cifras y porcentajes

2012-11-20T13:52:00.000+01:00

El Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte acaba de publicar el Anuario de Estadísticas Culturales 2012. El estudio ha sido realizado por la Subdirección General de Estadísticas y Estudios de la Secretaría General Técnica y está disponible aquí.

Detalle de la estadística "1. EMPLEO CULTURAL". Descargar aquí.

El estudio se estructura en tres partes: incluye estimaciones relacionadas con diferentes sectores culturales (empleo y empresas, financiación pública y privada, propiedad intelectual, comercio exterior, turismo, enseñanza y hábitos culturales), información sectorial (patrimonio, museos, archivos, bibliotecas, libro, artes escénicas, música, cine y video), y análisis del impacto de la cultura en la economía española (con indicadores sobre su aportación al Producto Interior Bruto (PIB) español).

La nota de prensa resume el estudio a cinco puntos, que es lo que ha recogido la prensa (El M undo, rtve.es, Fa ro de Vigo, El País (Valencia), Ara.cat...):

El sector cultural aportó un 3,6% al Producto Interior Bruto (PIB) en 2009
Un 19,7% de los turistas vienen a España por motivos culturales
El empleo en el ámbito cultural ascendió en el segundo trimestre de 2012 a 452.700 personas, lo que supone un 2,6% del empleo total de nuestro país
El gasto medio de los hogares españoles en bienes y servicios culturales fue de 828,3 euros anuales
Escuchar música, leer e ir al cine son las actividades culturales realizadas con mayor frecuencia por la población española

Pero hay material para entretenerse con 17 capítulos por desengranar:

Empleo cultural
Empresas culturales
Financiación y gasto público en cultura
Gasto de consumo cultural de los hogares
Propiedad intelectual
Comercio exterior de bienes culturales
Turismo cultural
Enseñanzas del ámbito cultural
Hábitos y prácticas culturales
Patrimonio
Museos y Colecciones Museográficas
Archivos
Bibliotecas
Libro
Artes escénicas y musicales
Cine y vídeo
Cuenta Satélite de la Cultura

Para los que quieran una foto rápida de la situación, se puede descargar un "Cuadro resumen" en formato pdf aquí. En él se ofrecen cifras de las actividades comprendidas entre el 2000 hasta el 2011 en relación a cada uno de los capítulos mencionados anteriormente, desde "Empleo cultural" (con cifras según sexo, edad, nivel estudios), a "Cuenta Satélite de la Cultura" (porcentajes de la aportación al PIB y al VAB de las actividades culturales).

Detalle del "Cuadro resumen" que se puede descargar aquí como pdf.

En lo que se refiere a las artes visuales, destacamos los porcentajes de visitas a museos, monumentos, exposiciones:

Datos del 2003: 27,5% (visita museos), 28,8% (visita monumentos), no hay datos de visitas a exposiciones
Datos del 2007: 31,2% (visita museos); 34,1% (visita monumentos); 24,7% (visita exposiciones)
Datos del 2011: 30,6% (visita museos); 39,5% (visita monumentos); 25,7% (visita exposiciones)

Y sigamos con las cifras:

En el 2009, la cultura generó un 2,8% del PIB español, ascendiendo al 3,6% si se le suman las actividades económicas vinculadas a la propiedad intelectual. Por sectores, destaca el de Libros y Prensa con una aportación total del 1% (36,9% en el conjunto de actividades). Las artes plásticas suponen un 9,6% del PIB. Nos parece curioso que no se tengan datos del PIB en el 2010 o en el 2011, y que éste porcentaje (2,8% y 3,6% total) se mantenga estable en el 2007, 2008 y 2009.

Detalle de la estadística "17. CUENTA SATÉLITE DE LA CULTURA". Descargar aquí.

Hay algo muy revelador en estas cifras: ponen de manifiesto (cita textual) "el significativo peso de las actividades culturales en el conjunto de la economía española, destacándose que equivale al generado en 2009 por el sector de la Energía (2,9%) y superior al de Agricultura, ganadería y pesca (2,6%)." No obstante la cultura recibe menos del 1% de su presupuesto anual español. La mayoría de datos preceden al 2012 y por tanto no recogen la entrada en vigor del reciente aumento del IVA al 21% sobre actividades culturales como el cine y el teatro.

Más cosas: el gasto medio por persona en bienes y servicios culturales de 312,9 euros anuales (en 2006 esa cifra era de 372 euros por persona, es decir que ha dismunuido un 15% desde entonces). El cine sigue liderando encuestas, con una tasa de asistencia anual del 49,1% (de nuevo, está por ver cómo serán estas cifras el próximo año cuando sí se contará con datos sobre la repercusión del aumento IVA).

Se estima que en 2010, los 1530 museos españoles recibieron 57,492 millones de visitantes.

Expandiendo los datos aportados sobre el turismo cultural: en 2011, el 15,2% del total de viajes (13,2 millones de viajes) fueron iniciados principalmente por motivos culturales (un aumento de 2,5 puntos porcentuales respecto al 2010). En el 47,5% de los viajes realizados por residentes en España se realiza algún tipo de actividad cultural. El estudio "resalta que el 52,2% de los turistas internacionales realizan algún tipo de actividad cultural."

Más datos que se desprenden de la Encuesta de Población Activa (INE), elaborada para
el Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte:

Detalle de la estadística "1. EMPLEO CULTURAL". Descargar aquí.

Datos del segundo trimestre de 2012 muestran que el sector cultural da trabajo a 452.700 personas, esto es el 2,6% del empleo total en España (una cifra en contínuo descenso con respecto a años anteriores: 488,7 en 2011; 508,7 en 2010; o los 544,8 en 2009). El 64,3% de los trabajadores tiene educación superior o equivalente.

Paridad por sexos: de los 488,700 trabajadores del 2011, 290,900 eran hombres frente a un 197,800 que eran mujeres, reflejando lo mucho que queda por hacer en cuanto a la igualdad de género en el mercado laboral.

Más datos curiosos sobre el empleo en el 2012: el 17,6% desarrolló su actividad a tiempo parcial. El 72,3% son asalariados frente a un 27,7% no asalariados, de los cuales 54,7% tiene contrato indefinido y 17,6% un contrato temporal – de lo cual se deduce que hay un 27,7% restante sin contrato (?).

Para quien se quiera entretener más, se pueden consultar los gráficos correspondientes a los 17 capítulos del Anuario de Estadísticas Culturales 2012 (desde Empleo Cultural a Cuenta Satélite de la Cultura).

Ahí queda eso.

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Haegue Yang "Der Öffentlichkeit" commission and 'Ends of the Earth – Land Art to 1974' at Haus der Kunst, Munich

2012-11-11T22:10:00.000+01:00

Haegue Yang has been the first artist to be commissioned for the DER ÖFFENTLICHKEIT – VON DEN FREUNDEN HAUS DER KUNST [To the Public – from the friends of Haus der Kunst] series, which will take place on a yearly basis in the 800 square-metre Middle Hall of Münich's Haus der Kunst.

Her installation 'Accommodating the Epic Dispersion – On Non-cathartic Volume of Dispersion', organised by Haus der Kunst curator Julienne Lorz, and related to her dOCUMENTA 13 contribution, "consists of Venetian blinds suspended from the ceiling. These elements are structured in three autonomous, yet united parts: A massive towering structure, which is confrontationally located at the hall's entrance; a flat vertical grid wall, and a voluminous rectangle on top, which is gradually fragmented toward the floor. Depending on the angle of approach, the blinds overlap in a varying number of layers, and the interplay of light and shadow changes depending on the location. At times, the installation appears completely opaque, and at others, completely translucent." (text from the website).

On view until 22 September 2013. More info and photos here.

Also on view at Haus der Ku nst is the much awaited 'Ends of the E arth – Land Art to 1974' (until 20 January 2013) organised in collaboration with The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA – see website of the exhibition). The show is notable for its careful and thoroughly-researched reconsideration of the idea of Land art, and the way in which it incorporates many artists outside of the usual American white male practicioners associated with the term. (And also through its inclusion of three part-reconstructions of seminal exhibitions/projects: "Earthworks" at Virginia Dwan Gallery, Willoughby Sharp's "Earth Art" as well as Gerry Schum's "Fernsehgalerie Land Art" ). Unfortunately, this is its only iteration on its European tour.

Exhibition poster with an image of the 1967-74 film "Athmospheres: Duration Performances" by Judy Chicago.

Hans Haacke's "Grass Grows" (1969–2012) at the entrance to the museum.

Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" (1970) film projected in the background and "A Nonsite (Pine Barrens)" from 1968 in the foreground.

Robert Morris' "Earthwork aka Untitled (Dirt)" (1968–2012) a 2000-pound pile of earth, grease, peat moss, brick, steel, copper, aluminum, brass, zinc and felt – urban debris gathered from the surrounding New York environs, originally made for the 1968 exhibition at Virginia Dwan Gallery.

Two views (above and below) of Joshua Neustein's 1970 "Road Piece", originally presented in the Tel Aviv Art Museum and remade for the first time for 'Ends of the Earth' exhibition.

All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)

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"Der Öffentlichkeit – Von den Freunden Haus der Kunst", begins on November 9

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"Der Öffentlichkeit – Von den Freunden Haus der Kunst",

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As announced in May, this installation is the first in a series of commissioned work that will be exhibited in the museum's 800 square-meter Middle Hall over a period of one year. The series, "Der Öffentlichkeit – Von den Freunden Haus der Kunst", begins on November 9.

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"Accommodating the Epic Dispersion – On Non-cathartic Volume of Dispersion", 2012.

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