Research project ‘Naming, possessing Critique of taxonomic practice’ by Agustín Ortiz Herrera, Barcelona Producció 2019–2020
Wed, Oct 21 2020
Photo: Agustín Ortiz Herrera
As part of Agustín Ortiz Herrera's research project ‘Naming, possessing Critique of taxonomic practice’, awarded the grant Barcelona Producció 2019-2020 from La Capella (and one of the three projects mentored by Latitudes throughout the 2019–20 season), and organised in collaboration with Hangar's Fictions of Dis-order programme, Ortiz Herrera presents a series of guided tours and reading sessions where queer strategies will be questioning the narratives agreed upon by the modern scientific construct, introducing a decolonial narrative, and thus unveiling the secrets of plant species such as Sparrmannia, Washingtonia or Tulbaghia.
‘The colonial garden. Deconstructing the narratives of modern taxonomy’
Agustín Ortiz Herrera
To Name, To Own. Critique of Taxonomic Practice
Research Project
1 Linnaeus was the first to use it consistently throughout his book, although the system now known as binomial nomenclature was partially developed by the brothers Gaspard and Johann Bauhin 200 years earlier.
2 Linnaeus published 12 editions of Systema Naturae during his lifetime. The 10th edition from 1758 is considered the starting point of zoological nomenclature.
3 Sir James Edward Smith purchased Linnaeus’s botanical, zoological and library collections for 1,000 guineas to found The Linnean Society of London in 1788. It was at a meeting of the Society in 1858 that papers from Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace outlining the theory of evolution by natural selection were first presented. https://www.linnean.org
4 The Salvador family were a dynasty of apothecaries and naturalists from Barcelona that between the 17th and 19th centuries collected over 14,000 specimens. The Gabinet Salvador is the most important example of a Cabinet of Curiosities or wunderkammer in the country, a presentation format which predates the invention of the modern museum and the separation between the sciences and the humanities. https://museuciencies.cat/es/area-cientifica/colecciones/coleccion-salvador/
5 With its origins in the 17th century, the Gabinet Salvador includes the oldest known herbarium in Spain, as well as books, documents, collections of molluscs, fossils, and stuffed animals. The Zoology Museum of Barcelona was located in the Modernista building known as the ‘Castle of the Three Dragons’ between 1920 and 2010 when it was relocated and changed its name to Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona (Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona, aka the ‘Museu Blau’).
6 Teresa Castro, The Mediated Plant, e-flux Journal #102, September 2019, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/102/283819/the-mediated-plant/
7 Emanuele Coccia, The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture, Polity Press, 2018.
‘The colonial garden. Deconstructing the narratives of modern taxonomy’
Activity: Urban Route around the streets of Poblenou
Date: Friday 23 October 2020, 6–7:30 pm
Ortiz Herrera invites us to join him on a tour that aims to bring to light forgotten episodes in the development of botanical knowledge during the modern project while experimenting with queer/cuir confrontation strategies.
Meeting place to be confirmed. Participants will be notified.
Capacity: 20 people.
Date: Friday 23 October 2020, 6–7:30 pm
Ortiz Herrera invites us to join him on a tour that aims to bring to light forgotten episodes in the development of botanical knowledge during the modern project while experimenting with queer/cuir confrontation strategies.
Meeting place to be confirmed. Participants will be notified.
Capacity: 20 people.
Booking essential: lacapella@bcn.cat
Activity: Guided tour of the Barcelona Botanical Gardens
Date: Saturday 24 October 2020,11.30–13:30 am
During this second dérive, historical events will be explained using a methodology of situated knowledge that exposes the scale of the strategy of the cabinet of curiosities in botanical gardens.
Meeting place to be confirmed. Participants will be notified.
Capacity: 20 people.
Activity: Guided tour of the Barcelona Botanical Gardens
Date: Saturday 24 October 2020,11.30–13:30 am
During this second dérive, historical events will be explained using a methodology of situated knowledge that exposes the scale of the strategy of the cabinet of curiosities in botanical gardens.
Meeting place to be confirmed. Participants will be notified.
Capacity: 20 people.
Booking essential: lacapella@bcn.cat
Activity: Modern Nature: a tribute to Derek Jarman
Date: Thursday 5 November 2020, 6–8 pm
Activity: Modern Nature: a tribute to Derek Jarman
Date: Thursday 5 November 2020, 6–8 pm
Location: Hangar (Sala Ricson)
Reading group and discussion around Derek Jarman’s book Modern Nature. We will also be talking about Jarman’s film The Garden (1990) and his design for his garden at Prospect Cottage in the south-east of England.
Capacity: 40 people.
Reading group and discussion around Derek Jarman’s book Modern Nature. We will also be talking about Jarman’s film The Garden (1990) and his design for his garden at Prospect Cottage in the south-east of England.
Capacity: 40 people.
Booking essential: https://forms.gle/4MQQXy72SwBxpV6V7
Organised by Hangar. With the support of Caja Negra Editorial.
Organised by Hangar. With the support of Caja Negra Editorial.
Agustín Ortiz Herrera (Barcelona, 1970) works between moving image and performance. He studied Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona (1998), film-making in New York (2003) and obtained an MA in Fine Arts at the Konstfack College of Arts, Stockholm (2016). Recent exhibitions include Oblivion at K.R.O.P.P., Uppsala Konsert & Kongress, Uppsala (2019), Konst tar plats at Österbybruk, Sweden (2018), Potenciación a largo plazo at Paratext 24, Hangar, Barcelona (2017) and El umbral de primavera, Madrid (2018). He is currently resident at Hangar – Visual Arts Production and Research Centre in Barcelona.
Co-produced in the context of the “Fictions of Dis-order” programme of Hangar's Research and Transfer of Knowledges activities.
Co-produced in the context of the “Fictions of Dis-order” programme of Hangar's Research and Transfer of Knowledges activities.
Agustín Ortiz Herrera, Laboratori de Natura, Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona, Video Still, 2020.
To Name, To Own. Critique of Taxonomic Practice
Research Project
Barcelona Producció 2019–2020
→ Download this text as a pdf
Agustín Ortiz Herrera’s research project To Name, To Own. Critique of Taxonomic Practice focuses on taxonomy and the modern classification system for natural species developed by Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778). Linnaeus’s most notable contribution to science was his invention of a system of binomial nomenclature for naming organisms. For example, the two-term name Homo sapiens describes the only living species of the genus Homo: humans. This convention became universally accepted and the nested hierarchy became quickly consolidated as the dominant cognitive basis of the Western worldview of nature.[1] Linnaeus’s 1735 volume Systema Naturae not only classified the natural world, it also gendered it and thereby conditioned an understanding of natural history as a highly patriarchal structure. This condition has transcended science and come to dominate other fields of culture and knowledge.[2]
Ortiz has carried out his research in botanical collections, academic centres, and libraries specialising in Linnaeus’s scientific work located in Uppsala, Sweden (where Linnaeus ultimately became rector of the city’s university) and London (where the world’s oldest active biological society, The Linnean Society of London, was established in 1788).[3] Honouring the Society’s motto “Naturae Discere Mores” (To Learn the Ways of Nature), Ortiz furthermore connects Linnaeus’s legacy with two key nodes of research in Spain: the Gabinet Salvador at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona and the former Museum of Zoology in Barcelona’s Ciutadella Park.[4] In doing so he aims to bring taxonomic paradigms into the present and to critique them against recent and emerging post-human, queer, feminist and decolonial theories.[5]
Taking up Teresa Castro’s call for “queering nature” and “queering botanics”, Ortiz’s research refuses the anthropocentric and dualistic conception that has separated humans from non-humans in order to go beyond the constraints of Western exceptionalism and its colonising grip.[6] Castro has identified a “plant turn” in current fields of knowledge and creation, where philosophers including Emanuele Coccia are inviting us to think about and with vegetation or fungi and to consider herbivorous or fungal relations and non-hierarchical modes of being. Such an approach chimes with the Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s call for “decolonising thought” and to contest the hierarchical relationships between “our” thoughts and those of others.[7]
Another important point of Ortiz’s research has been foregrounding the scientific work of Lynn Margulis (1938–2011), the unorthodox scientist whose theories around evolution and symbiosis were often mocked and ignored by the male establishment for appearing to contradict Charles Darwin’s dogma of natural selection. As a proponent of the endosymbiotic theory, Margulis posited that simple life forms merged, forming cell organelles, like mitochondria. Life, she believed, is a symbiotic and cooperative union that allows those who associate to succeed, a theory that later has been widely accepted and substantiated.
Ortiz’s research introduces queer epistemologies through a series of gatherings, an urban walking tour and a collective reading. The first will be a two-hour guided tour around Poblenou to identify and discuss plant taxonomy and its colonial provenance. A similar tour will take place the following day in Montjuïc’s Botanical Garden, where Agustín will lead a discussion within the framework of a man-made “natural” environment.
A third activity, developed in collaboration with Hangar – Visual Arts Production and Research Centre in Barcelona as part of its Fictions of Dis-order programme, will consist of a collective reading of Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature. Published in 1991, this biography is a diary of the British film-maker, artist and activist on his late years at Prospect Cottage, on the arid Kent coast in south-east England. Jarman purchased this fisherman’s house in Dungeness in 1986 shortly after being diagnosed as HIV positive, with the aim of withdrawing in the years before his death (in 1994). The now-iconic black timber cottage with yolk yellow window frames is overlooked by the imposing Dungeness nuclear power station and surrounded by a vast shingle beach and a noteworthy garden, the boundaries of which he described as the horizon.
— Latitudes
Agustín Ortiz Herrera’s research project To Name, To Own. Critique of Taxonomic Practice focuses on taxonomy and the modern classification system for natural species developed by Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778). Linnaeus’s most notable contribution to science was his invention of a system of binomial nomenclature for naming organisms. For example, the two-term name Homo sapiens describes the only living species of the genus Homo: humans. This convention became universally accepted and the nested hierarchy became quickly consolidated as the dominant cognitive basis of the Western worldview of nature.[1] Linnaeus’s 1735 volume Systema Naturae not only classified the natural world, it also gendered it and thereby conditioned an understanding of natural history as a highly patriarchal structure. This condition has transcended science and come to dominate other fields of culture and knowledge.[2]
Ortiz has carried out his research in botanical collections, academic centres, and libraries specialising in Linnaeus’s scientific work located in Uppsala, Sweden (where Linnaeus ultimately became rector of the city’s university) and London (where the world’s oldest active biological society, The Linnean Society of London, was established in 1788).[3] Honouring the Society’s motto “Naturae Discere Mores” (To Learn the Ways of Nature), Ortiz furthermore connects Linnaeus’s legacy with two key nodes of research in Spain: the Gabinet Salvador at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona and the former Museum of Zoology in Barcelona’s Ciutadella Park.[4] In doing so he aims to bring taxonomic paradigms into the present and to critique them against recent and emerging post-human, queer, feminist and decolonial theories.[5]
Taking up Teresa Castro’s call for “queering nature” and “queering botanics”, Ortiz’s research refuses the anthropocentric and dualistic conception that has separated humans from non-humans in order to go beyond the constraints of Western exceptionalism and its colonising grip.[6] Castro has identified a “plant turn” in current fields of knowledge and creation, where philosophers including Emanuele Coccia are inviting us to think about and with vegetation or fungi and to consider herbivorous or fungal relations and non-hierarchical modes of being. Such an approach chimes with the Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s call for “decolonising thought” and to contest the hierarchical relationships between “our” thoughts and those of others.[7]
Another important point of Ortiz’s research has been foregrounding the scientific work of Lynn Margulis (1938–2011), the unorthodox scientist whose theories around evolution and symbiosis were often mocked and ignored by the male establishment for appearing to contradict Charles Darwin’s dogma of natural selection. As a proponent of the endosymbiotic theory, Margulis posited that simple life forms merged, forming cell organelles, like mitochondria. Life, she believed, is a symbiotic and cooperative union that allows those who associate to succeed, a theory that later has been widely accepted and substantiated.
Ortiz’s research introduces queer epistemologies through a series of gatherings, an urban walking tour and a collective reading. The first will be a two-hour guided tour around Poblenou to identify and discuss plant taxonomy and its colonial provenance. A similar tour will take place the following day in Montjuïc’s Botanical Garden, where Agustín will lead a discussion within the framework of a man-made “natural” environment.
A third activity, developed in collaboration with Hangar – Visual Arts Production and Research Centre in Barcelona as part of its Fictions of Dis-order programme, will consist of a collective reading of Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature. Published in 1991, this biography is a diary of the British film-maker, artist and activist on his late years at Prospect Cottage, on the arid Kent coast in south-east England. Jarman purchased this fisherman’s house in Dungeness in 1986 shortly after being diagnosed as HIV positive, with the aim of withdrawing in the years before his death (in 1994). The now-iconic black timber cottage with yolk yellow window frames is overlooked by the imposing Dungeness nuclear power station and surrounded by a vast shingle beach and a noteworthy garden, the boundaries of which he described as the horizon.
— Latitudes
1 Linnaeus was the first to use it consistently throughout his book, although the system now known as binomial nomenclature was partially developed by the brothers Gaspard and Johann Bauhin 200 years earlier.
2 Linnaeus published 12 editions of Systema Naturae during his lifetime. The 10th edition from 1758 is considered the starting point of zoological nomenclature.
3 Sir James Edward Smith purchased Linnaeus’s botanical, zoological and library collections for 1,000 guineas to found The Linnean Society of London in 1788. It was at a meeting of the Society in 1858 that papers from Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace outlining the theory of evolution by natural selection were first presented. https://www.linnean.org
4 The Salvador family were a dynasty of apothecaries and naturalists from Barcelona that between the 17th and 19th centuries collected over 14,000 specimens. The Gabinet Salvador is the most important example of a Cabinet of Curiosities or wunderkammer in the country, a presentation format which predates the invention of the modern museum and the separation between the sciences and the humanities. https://museuciencies.cat/es/area-cientifica/colecciones/coleccion-salvador/
5 With its origins in the 17th century, the Gabinet Salvador includes the oldest known herbarium in Spain, as well as books, documents, collections of molluscs, fossils, and stuffed animals. The Zoology Museum of Barcelona was located in the Modernista building known as the ‘Castle of the Three Dragons’ between 1920 and 2010 when it was relocated and changed its name to Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona (Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona, aka the ‘Museu Blau’).
6 Teresa Castro, The Mediated Plant, e-flux Journal #102, September 2019, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/102/283819/the-mediated-plant/
7 Emanuele Coccia, The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture, Polity Press, 2018.
→ RELATED CONTENTS:
Latitudes’ “Out of office”: wrap up of the 2019–20 season
Mon, Aug 3 2020
Seen in l'Hospitalet de Llobregat. Photo: @marianacanepaluna
In what has now become something of a Latitudes’ tradition we wrap up the season with a retrospective glance behind the scenes of some of our projects and activities of the previous twelve months (see the 2008-9, 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012–13, 2013–14, 2014–15, 2015–16, 2016–17, 2017–18 and 2018–19 posts). This last year has of course been unprecedented in so many ways. From mid-March, the Covid-19 pandemic meant that everything that had been in place was suddenly thrown into permanent doubt, delayed, or simply cancelled. As a healthcare crisis now precipitates an economic crisis, and with things we once took for granted (among them international travel, and visiting physical art exhibitions) completely changed for the foreseeable future, it is with more than a little trepidation that we even dare to look back at what once seemed normal.
Keep well, keep safe.
#DistanciaManosMascarilla
#DistànciaMansMascareta
September 1, 2019: New season, new month, new cover story. ‘Polperro to Detroit’ tracked the improbable connection between Polperro, a small town Latitudes passed through on its summer sojourn, and an American Rust Belt metropolis we would be visiting later this September as participants of the Red Bull Arts Global Curatorial Initiative: Detroit.
September monthly Cover Story on https://www.lttds.org/coverstory
September 9–15, 2019: Beginning of the 2019–2020 season. This was our first trip to Helsinki where we were participating in two events. Firstly Latitudes was a partner organisation in the arts festival ‘Today Is Our Tomorrow’, a three-day event (12, 13 and 14 September) initiated by PUBLICS that presented a collaboratively curated program of temporary public art commissions, live performance, music, dance, theatre, literature and symposia. Latitudes invited Mercedes Azpilicueta to present her performance ‘Yegua-yeta-yuta’ (2015) at Club Kaiku, an underground music venue renowned for hosting an innovative lineup of DJs.
We were also guests of Frame Contemporary Art Finland’s Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities’, a week composed of talks, performative dialogues, interventions and screenings developed in collaboration with a number of local partners.
‘Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities’ organised by Frame Contemporary Art Finland, hosted at the Museum of Impossible Forms.
September 12, 5:30h: Mercedes Azpilicueta during her talk in Helsinki.
Inga Lace’s Instagram Stories documenting the conversation between Mercedes and Latitudes on September 13, 2019.
Mercedes during her rehearsal at Club Kaiku.
Mercedes and Max in the ferry to Suomenlinna Island to visit HIAP and a film installation by Marjolijn Dijkman and & Toril Johannessen.
With Jussi Koitela (Head of Programme, Frame Contemporary Art Finland) and curators Anne-Sophie Springer and Sofia Lemos in HIAP's office space in Suomenlinna island.
Listening to Wet Code, a sound piece by Myriagon at Suomenlinna Island. Photo by Ida Enegren / Frame Contemporary Art Finland.
On top of the Temppeliaukion Kirkko (A church built into rock) with Anne-Sophie Springer and Sofia Lemos.
Our October 2019 cover story featured Azpilicueta's performance programmed during TODAY IS OUR TOMORROW.
PUBLICS' Library in Helsinki incorporated Latitudes-edited publications to their beautiful shelves in Vallila, Helsinki.
September 18–23, 2019: Joined the 2019 EXPO CHICAGO/Red Bull Arts Global Curatorial Initiative participating in a range of events and visits in Chicago (18–21 September) and Detroit (21–23 September).
→ Read the photo report here.
→ Read the photo report here.
Caught purchasing books during our visit to ExpoChicago's section Index Art Book Fair. Photo: Casa Bosques.
Morning session with the participating curators in the EXPO CHICAGO/Red Bull Arts Global Curatorial Initiative together with the Art Institute curatorial staff at the Art Institute Chicago. Photo: Expo Chicago.
The first stop in Detroit was visiting Dabls’ African Bead Gallery where we met its creator, Olayami Dabls led by our fantastic host Scott Campbell, Artist Liaison at Red Bull Arts Detroit, accompanied also by curator Maria Inés Rodríguez.
Laura Mott (Senior Curator of Contemporary Art and Design) leading a tour of her curated exhibition ‘Landlord Colors: On Art, Economy, and Materiality’ at the Cranbrook Art Museum. Painting by Yoan Capote.
September 20, 2019: Meanwhile in Copenhagen, Rasmus Nilausen's solo exhibition ‘Bluetooth’ opened at Overgaden. Institut for Samtidskunst, Copenhagen, for which Max contributed an essay.
→ Exhibition views and text (pdf).
→ Exhibition views and text (pdf).
(↑↓) Views from Nilausen's exhibition at Overgarden, Copenhagen. Photos: Anders Sune Berg.
October 7, 2019: artfridge.de published the interview Helene Romakin conducted with us over the summer.
→ Read the interview.
→ Read the interview.
artfridge.de
October 9, 2019: The artist Céline Mathieu (and former BAR TOOL #2 participant) published an article in the Belgian magazine HART on the Barcelona art scene mentioning Latitudes and our three closed-door sessions ‘Barcelona / Such a beautiful horizon: Critical social infrastructure to promote art scene health resilience’ Latitudes led with BAR Tool's 2018–19 participants.
October 17-19, 2019: Lecture ‘4.543 billion and abstract social nature’, Jornadas Eremuak, AzkunaZentroa, Bilbao. Taking as a reference point one of the ten galleries hosting the 2017 group exhibition ‘4,543 billion. The matter of matter’ at the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, we expanded on the notion of ‘abstract social nature’ coined by environmental historian and geographer Jason W. Moore through the work of four exhibiting artists: Lara Almarcegui, Pep Vidal, Lucas Ihlein and Amy Balkin.
→ Video presentation here (Spanish, 24'45'')
→ Q&A session here (Spanish, 19'52'').
October 23, 2019: First meeting with Joan Morey to discuss the adaptation of his retrospective exhibition COLLAPSE for Casal Solleric in Palma de Mallorca, opening at the end of January. Time is of the essence.
November 1, 2019: Max Andrews’s feature-length article ‘The Rise, Fall and Reinvention of Spain’s First Modern Art Museum’ on Valencia’s IVAM was published in the November–December 2019 (issue 207) of frieze magazine. The article focuses on the city’s trailblazing Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM) through the cultural and (often notorious) political agents that have forged its institutional history since it opened in 1989.
→ Featured as our November 2019 Cover Story.
October 17-19, 2019: Lecture ‘4.543 billion and abstract social nature’, Jornadas Eremuak, AzkunaZentroa, Bilbao. Taking as a reference point one of the ten galleries hosting the 2017 group exhibition ‘4,543 billion. The matter of matter’ at the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, we expanded on the notion of ‘abstract social nature’ coined by environmental historian and geographer Jason W. Moore through the work of four exhibiting artists: Lara Almarcegui, Pep Vidal, Lucas Ihlein and Amy Balkin.
→ Video presentation here (Spanish, 24'45'')
→ Q&A session here (Spanish, 19'52'').
Photo: Eremuak.
October 23, 2019: First meeting with Joan Morey to discuss the adaptation of his retrospective exhibition COLLAPSE for Casal Solleric in Palma de Mallorca, opening at the end of January. Time is of the essence.
November 1, 2019: Max Andrews’s feature-length article ‘The Rise, Fall and Reinvention of Spain’s First Modern Art Museum’ on Valencia’s IVAM was published in the November–December 2019 (issue 207) of frieze magazine. The article focuses on the city’s trailblazing Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM) through the cultural and (often notorious) political agents that have forged its institutional history since it opened in 1989.
→ Featured as our November 2019 Cover Story.
November 2019 Cover Story www.lttds.org/coverstory
November 7, 2019: Latitudes presents the lecture ‘Curating in the Web of Life’ as part of the public programme for the group exhibition ‘The Coming World: Ecology as the New Politics 2030–2100’, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 7 November 2019. This was our first trip to Russia.
→ Video of the lecture (1h 28min including Q&A).
→ Video of the lecture (1h 28min including Q&A).
(↑↓) Latitudes during the lecture ‘Curating in the Web of Life’. Photo: Anton Donikov. © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.
Hello from Moscow's Red Square.
The lobby of the heartbreaking zoological Museum in Moscow, the second largest zoological museum in Russia in Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street.
(↑↓) The most beautiful, cleanest and ad-free metro network we've ever seen.
November 20-25, 2019: Trip to Amsterdam Art Weekend (AAW). Mariana was writing a Roundup review on the event for art-agenda (published on December 13). Since we’ve already published a post in December 2020 about what we saw during the week, we’re now remembering on the always beautiful flower arrangements the Rijksakademie displays in their welcoming areas!
→ Earlier iterations of the AAW 2014, 2016 and 2018.
November 28, 2019: Inaugural screening of DART Festival of Contemporary Art Documentaries (28 November–1 December). Latitudes was a jury member this year together with film critic Quim Casas and visual artist Núria Güell, and awarded the film ‘Barbara Rubin & the Exploding NY Underground’ (USA, 2018, 78 min) by Chuck Smith as the best international documentary and ‘Elliott Erwitt – Silence Sounds Good’ (Spain-France, 2019, 61 min) by Adriana López Sanfeliu as the best national documentary.
The inaugural session of the 3rd edition of the festival took place at cinema Phenomena with the 1974 film ‘A bigger splash’ by Jack Hazan, and a welcome intro by TV host Laura Sangrà and DART Festival co-directors Enrichetta Cardinale and Marc Gomariz. Below one of the sessions at the always busy Cinemes Girona. Photo: DART Festival.
December 1, 2019: December gloom was compensated on our homepage by a feature on Edward Steichen’s 1936 exhibition ‘Delphiniums’, at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
September monthly Cover Story https://www.lttds.org/coverstory/
December 3, 2019: Press presentation of the 2019-20 season of Barcelona Producció coinciding with the opening of Martin Llavaneras’s solo show.
(Left to right) Alexandra Laudo (Barcelona Producció 2019-20 jury member and tutor of Martin Llavaneras’ project), Oriol Gual (Capella director), David Armengol (Tutor coordination), and Jordi Ferreiro (artist in charge of the newly created mediation grant).
We-fie with the three artists Latitudes tutored this season (left to right): Lola Lasurt, Consol Llupià, Agustín Ortiz (and Lola's baby Margot).
December 13, 2019: art-agenda publishes Mariana's Amsterdam Roundup, expanded with more photos on this Longitudes' post.
→ Read the review.
December 20, 2019: Mariana attends the last (official) meeting as secretary and board member of the Fundació Privada AAVC, the organisation governing HANGAR Centre de Producció i Recerca d'Arts Visuals. The board has met on a regular basis between December 2015 and December 2019 in order to discuss all aspects regarding its daily running—overseeing expenditure, approving financial forecasts or more philosophical yet pressing issues over its daily governance. A new board begins the next four-year term 2020–24.
Christmas 2019: Slow inbox days dedicated to writing and editing artwork captions, finalising an essay and the press release for the new iteration of Joan Morey's retrospective adapted to Casal Solleric in Palma de Mallorca.
Max editing Joan Morey's texts for its new iteration at Casal Solleric.
January 2, 2020: New Year, New Decade, New Month, New Cover Story. Featuring Adrián Villar Rojas’s ‘Poems for Earthlings’ transformative installation at Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, and featured in Mariana’s recent art-agenda Roundup.
January 2020 Monthly Cover Story on www.lttds.org, archived here.
January 21, 2020: Publish a refreshed Reduce Art Flights website (first published in 2008!) now including an exhibition history and a transcript of the interview with RAF’s instigator, the late Gustav Metzger.
→ https://reduceartflights.lttds.org
January 22, 2020: First meeting with Clara Renau, Miriam Soms and Joana Hurtado, the team of the Fabra i Coats: Centre of Contemporary Art of Barcelona to begin work on a group exhibition for the Autumn 2020...
January 28, 2020: Launch of the 10th dispatch of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ with contributions from Catalina Lozano and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
→ http://incidents.kadist.org
→ http://incidents.kadist.org
January 31, 2020: Opening of the solo exhibition by Joan Morey ‘COLLAPSE. Bachelor Machine’ at Casal Solleric, Palma de Mallorca. The exhibition is an adaptation of the first two parts of the project COLLAPSE presented in three concurrent venues in Barcelona between September 2018 and January 2019.
February 21, 2020: Max joins Agustín Ortiz Herrera (whose research ‘Naming, Possessing. Critique of Taxonomic Practice’ is mentored by Latitudes as part of the Barcelona Producció 2019–20 season) the Cabinet of Curiosities of Francesc Bolós in Olot.
→ Featured in Latitudes' March cover story.
Bringing one of the seven vitrine-coffins exhibiting materials related to Morey's performances. Photo: @joanmorey via Instagram.
Exhibition vinyl placed at the entrance of the exhibition.
Installing ‘COS SOCIAL’ (2017) film. Photo: Joan Morey.
Joan Morey guided tour on the opening night.
Celebratory coques i espinagades with Joan at the unbeatable Fornet de la Soca.
February 21, 2020: Max joins Agustín Ortiz Herrera (whose research ‘Naming, Possessing. Critique of Taxonomic Practice’ is mentored by Latitudes as part of the Barcelona Producció 2019–20 season) the Cabinet of Curiosities of Francesc Bolós in Olot.
→ Featured in Latitudes' March cover story.
Agustín browsing through one of the copies of Linnaeus' "Species plantarum".
February 24, 2020: Ahead of ARCOmadrid art fair, Max (Contributor Editor, frieze magazine) selected some institutional and gallery shows to see in Madrid this week.
Frieze magazine organised evening drinks during ARCOmadrid at the legendary Bar Cock near Gran Via.
March 10, 2020: Attended the opening of Pere Llobera's solo show at La Capella, the second of the Barcelona Producció 2019-20 season. This became the last opening before the state of alarm was declared in Spain (eventually extended until June 21) triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and we had to remain at home until June.
View of Pere Llobera's exhibition ‘Faula Rodona. Sols i embogits. Entre la precisió total i una cancó de Sau’ (Circular Fable. Alone and Maddened; Between Total Accuracy and a Song by Sau). Photo: Pep Herrero / La Capella.
March 13, 2020: Confinement. Projects on hold, conversations postponed. One of them was the three-day seminar Agustín Ortiz Herrera was preparing in the context of his ongoing research project ‘To name, to own. Critique of taxonomic practice’. Agustín’s research is one of the three projects mentored by Latitudes as part of the Barcelona Producció 2019–20 production grant. More on this and other ‘frozen’ projects, hopefully soon.
Photo: Agustín Ortiz Herrera, 2019.
April 2020: This month marks Latitudes’ 15 anniversary, celebrated during a strict lockdown.
April 9, 2020: . Launch of the 11th dispatch of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ with an itinerary by the artist duo Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker and report and photos by curator Sandino Scheidegger (Random Institute) from Panamá City, Panama.
→ incidents.kadist.org
May 2, 2020: After more hours than we'd like to know or admit (and one of the few good side effects confinement allowed) we finally launched our rebuilt and redesigned website.
→ https://www.lttds.org
May 22, 2020: Consol Llupià, one of the three artists we have been tutoring this year as part of the visual arts grant scheme Barcelona Producció, launched her online initiative ‘Vibraera’, part of her long-term ongoing project ‘La Balena de El Prat a El Prat’ [The El Prat Whale to El Prat]. On this day, during the migratory season of Whales around the Mediterranean coast and coinciding with a new moon, Llupià invited collaborators to join her in “an energetic rebellion, a call for collective immaterial action”, as she described it. This unfolding chapter was conceived as a symbolic communicative dialogue between humans and whales and consisted of an energetic global gathering intended to activate the vibrational capacity of humans to generate interspecies connections.
June 1, 2020: Jitsi catching up with the tutors of Barcelona Producció (Antònia Folguera missing) to discuss the results of the co-signed Open Letter (in Catalan) requesting the Barcelona Institute of Culture to immediately launch the 2021 Open Call, a petition that thankfully became effective a week later.
Photo: David Armengol.
June 24, 2020: The of our contributions to Questions and Appearances, an initiative by Kadist, is Fermín Jiménez Landa’s response to our question “What is your advice, or warning, to the government?”, followed on the 8th by a second one (“What is importantly non-essential?”) which we posed to Arash Fayez.
→ https://www.instagram.com/questionsandappearances/
July 1, 2020: New cover story and a new episode of Incidents (of Travel) from Tbilisi, Georgia. A spring itinerary through the city’s former silk industry and the heart of Nino Kvrivishvili’s practice, the tour took place via a screen in Australia as Georgia emerged from the Spring lockdown.
→ incidents.kadist.org
→ https://www.instagram.com/questionsandappearances/
June 29, 2020: Technical meeting in preparation of Lola Lasurt’s forthcoming show at La Capella. David Armengol (Barcelona Producció 2019-20 coordinator, affectionally known as the ‘Tutor of tutors’) picked up an old-fashioned drawing table from Massana art school.
→ incidents.kadist.org
Latitudes’ July 2020 homepage.
July 21, 2020: After a month's of postponement, Lola Lasurt’s exhibition ‘Children’s Game’ opens at La Capella. It’s been a long process since it was announced as one of the three selected shows to be produced and presented at La Capella.
Lasurt’s exhibition looks back at the 1968 retrospective exhibition ‘Miró. Barcelona 1968-69’ with which La Capella was inaugurated as a venue dedicated to contemporary art. Through a new series of paintings, photos, videos, and ceramics, Lasurt addresses the socio-political turmoil at the end of the 1960s. She depicts imagery related to childhood published in the national press during the two-month state of exception declared in Spain just a few days after the Miró exhibition had ended.
→ Exhibition sheet (pdf)
→ Exhibition publication (pdf)
Publication designed by Carles Murillo.
July 23, 2020: Joan Morey presented the performance “COLLAPSE. Possible Machine” at the house museum Can Balaguer as part of his retrospective exhibition ‘COLLAPSE. Bachelor Machine’ at Casal Solleric (now extended until 6 September 2020). The performance took his 2017 performance ‘TOUR DE FORCE’ as a departing point but situated it in the present SARS-CoV-2 global pandemic.
Lasurt’s exhibition looks back at the 1968 retrospective exhibition ‘Miró. Barcelona 1968-69’ with which La Capella was inaugurated as a venue dedicated to contemporary art. Through a new series of paintings, photos, videos, and ceramics, Lasurt addresses the socio-political turmoil at the end of the 1960s. She depicts imagery related to childhood published in the national press during the two-month state of exception declared in Spain just a few days after the Miró exhibition had ended.
→ Exhibition sheet (pdf)
→ Exhibition publication (pdf)
August 2019 meeting discussing layout and production calendar.
(↑↓) During the Spring lockdown, we continued to check on each other and share the work-in-process. Lola was working on her ceramics and paintings in a garage-turned-studio nearby her house in Manresa and we were writing the text for the exhibition sheet.
(↑↓) 14–16 July 2020: Lotema team during the installation.
Due to the pandemic health measures, there was no opening event and visitors RSVPd in groups of 10. Photo: Pep Herrero/La Capella.
Lola Lasurt during one of the guided visits. Photo: Pep Herrero/La Capella.
July 23, 2020: Joan Morey presented the performance “COLLAPSE. Possible Machine” at the house museum Can Balaguer as part of his retrospective exhibition ‘COLLAPSE. Bachelor Machine’ at Casal Solleric (now extended until 6 September 2020). The performance took his 2017 performance ‘TOUR DE FORCE’ as a departing point but situated it in the present SARS-CoV-2 global pandemic.
(↑↓) July 9, 2020: Rehearsals with the actresses Anna Sabaté and Candela Capitán, protagonists in ‘COLAPSO. Máquina posible’ alongside Nadal Roig. Photo: @joanmorey
(↑↓) Poster produced for the performance with an essay by Latitudes. Photos: Joan Morey.
Latitudes’ August 2020 Cover Story.
Looking forward to (hopefully) attending some Autumn activities for Lasurt’s recently opened exhibition at La Capella, to publicly present Agustín Ortiz’s ongoing research and publication in October, as well as Consol Llupià’s publication. And, most importantly, to open on October 17, the group show ‘Things Things Say’ we have been working on since January, to be presented at Fabra i Coats: Contemporary Art Center of Barcelona’s ground floor. Things will be revealed in due course.
→ RELATED CONTENTS:
→ RELATED CONTENTS:
- Latitudes’ "out of office" 2018–19 season, 1 August 2019
- Latitudes' "out of office" 2017–18 season, 2 August 2018
- Latitudes' "out of office" 2016–17 season, 1 August 2017
- Latitudes' "out of office" 2015–16 season, 1 August 2016
- Latitudes' "out of office" 2014–15 season, 7 August 2015
- Latitudes' "out of office" 2013–14 season, 31 July 2014
- Latitudes' "out of office" 2012–13 season, 31 July 2013
- Latitudes' "out of office" 2011–12 season, 31 July 2012
- Latitudes' "out of office" 2010–11 season, 1 August 2011
- Latitudes' "out of office" 2009–10 season, 30 July 2010
- Latitudes' "out of office" 2008-9 season, 30 July 2009
Cover Story—March-April 2020: The Bolós Cabinet
Tue, Mar 3 2020
Latitudes' homepage www.lttds.org
The March-April 2020 monthly Cover Story ‘The Bolós Cabinet’ is now live on our homepage: www.lttds.org
‘‘To name, to own. Critique of taxonomic practice’: Agustín Ortiz Herrera’s current project focuses on the modern system of naming and classifying organisms which was first superimposed onto the natural world in 1735 with the advent of Carl Linnaeus’s "Systema Naturae". Tutored by Latitudes as part of Barcelona Producció 2019–2020, Agustín’s research has to date involved visits to study centres in Uppsala and London, alongside investigations around the notion of ‘queering nature’.”
→ After April 2020, this story will be archived here.
Cover Stories are published on a monthly basis on Latitudes' homepage featuring past, present or forthcoming projects, research, texts, artworks, exhibitions, films, objects or field trips related to our curatorial activities.
→ RELATED CONTENTS:
- Archive of Monthly Cover Stories
- Cover Story—February 2020: Carioca Incidents 3 February 2020
- Cover Story—January 2020: Safeguarding Gestures 2 January 2020
- Cover Story—December 2019: Cover Story—December 2019: Curating in the Web of Life 3 December
- Cover Story—November 2019: ‘Fighting fires in Valencia: the 30-year story of the IVAM’ 1 November 2019
- Cover Story—October 2019: Mercedes Azpilicueta in Helsinki 1 October 2019
- Cover Story—September 2019: ‘Polperro to Detroit’ 4 September 2019
Jurado y tutoría de Barcelona Producció 2019–2020: Proyectos ganadores
Mon, Jun 3 2019
Después de tres intensas semanas de proceso —una dedicada a la lectura de las 259 solicitudes recibidas, otra al debate con los cinco miembros del jurado (formado por Alexandra Laudo, Antònia Folguera, Joan Casellas, Mireia Sallarès y Latitudes, junto a Oriol Gual (director de La Capella) y David Armengol (coordinador de la comisión), ambos últimos con voz pero sin voto), y una tercera semana entrevistando a 32 finalistas— el jurado y equipo de tutores de Barcelona Producció ha decidido premiar a los siguientes 15 proyectos para su producción y presentación a lo largo de la temporada 2019-2020 (fechas por confirmar):
PROYECTOS EXPOSITIVOS
Sala Grande – Exposición individual
- "Kyklos" de Martín Llavaneras (29 octubre 2019—16 febrero 2020)
- "Faula rodona / Sols i embogits / Entre la precisió total i una cançó de Sau" de Pere Llobera (10 marzo 2020—31 mayo 2020)
- "Joc d'infants" de Lola Lasurt (16 junio 2020—4 octubre 2020)
- "Esdevenir inmortal i després morir" de Caterina Almirall (20 octubre 2020—31 enero 2021)
- "La balena del Prat al Prat / Retorn" de Consol Llupià,
- "Serps d'aigua. Les rieres ocultes i la construcció simbòlica de Barcelona" de Sitesize (Joan Vila Puig y Elvira Pujol),
- "Nomenar, posseir. Crítica de la pràctica taxonòmica" de Agustín Ortiz Herrera;
- "Correspondències simbòliques entre folklore catòlic i música màkina al Casc Antic de Barcelona" de Marc O'Callaghan;
- "Hem de trobar un lloc on trobar-nos" de Cloe Masotta,
- "Sobre la revolució" de Laura Torres Bauzà,
- "Actos de memoria: Barcelona" de Nieves Correa,
- "Ara les imatges brollaran com flors" de Adrià Aparicio,
- "Sindicato virtual de Mods" de Guim Camps,
- "MySpace Dragon Hoard (Lost WorldWW Music)" de Daniel Moreno Roldán,
Proyecto educativo y de mediación
- "εξέδρα (Exedra). L'Art com a eina d'equiparació social" de Jordi Ferreiro.
Latitudes tutorizará los proyectos de Lola Lasurt, Consol Llupià y Agustín Ortiz Herrera. Más información y calendario 2019–2021 se irá publicando y actualizando en nuestra web.
Exposición "El Misterio de Caviria" de Antoni Hervàs, parte de la programación de Barcelona Producció 2016 en La Capella. Su proyecto fue galardonado con el Premi Ciutat de Barcelona 2016 y el Premio ACCA al Proyecto Artístico 2016. Proyecto tutorizado por Latitudes. Fotos: Pep Herrero, Barcelona Producció/La Capella.
Si en la anterior convocatoria se habían doblado el número de categorías pasando de nueve a dieciocho y se sumaron tres nuevos tutores, en esta ocasión la sala pequeña ha sido eliminada aunque se ha introducido un proyecto de educación y mediación destinado a la realización de acciones educativas dirigidas al público general sobre la base de las actividades programadas. Los proyectos para "Entornos digitales" han pasado a denominarse "Proyectos de creación transdisciplinar y medios digitales" y serán tutorizados por Antònia Folguera.
Los proyectos deslocalizados, los de publicación, los proyectos de creación transdisciplinar y medios digitales, y los de investigación, se producirán y presentarán a lo largo de la temporada según el calendario de cada una de las propuestas. Los de acción en vivo tendrán lugar tres días consecutivos en Septiembre (fechas por confirmar) y Joan Casellas se encargará de tutorizarlos.
Publicación ‘The Drowned Giant’ realizada por Anna Moreno producido con el apoyo de Barcelona Producció 2017, La Capella, Institut de Cultura de Barcelona. Proyecto tutorizado por Latitudes. Foto: Anna Moreno.
Vista de la exposición ‘La disidencia nostálgica’ comisariada por Joana Hurtado Matheu, parte de la programación Barcelona Producció 2017, La Capella. Proyecto tutorizado por Latitudes. Foto: Pep Herrero, Barcelona Producció/La Capella.
CONTENIDO RELACIONADO:
- Cover Story—January 2018: I’ll be there for you 2 January 2018
- 22 de noviembre, 19h: Presentación de la publicación “The Drowned Giant” de Anna Moreno 16 noviembre 2017
- Cover Story—September 2017: Dark disruption: David Mutiloa’s "Synthesis" 1 September 2017
- Cover Story – August 2017: Walden 7; or, life in Sant Just Desvern 1 August 2017
- "La XI edición de Barcelona Producció mostrará 17 propuestas artísticas”, elperiodico.com 13 julio 2017
- Barcelona Producció – Anuncio de los proyectos ganadores temporada 2017–2018 25 mayo 2017
- Jurado y equipo tutorial de BCN Producció 2016, La Capella, Barcelona. 2 febrero 2016
- 25 de enero 2017, 19h: Presentación de la publicación
"El misterio de caviria" de Antoni Hervàs en el Antic Teatre (13 Enero 2017) - Actividades programadas durante la exposición "El misterio de caviria" de Antoni Hervàs en La Capella 7 novembre 2016
- Documentación de la exposición "El Misterio de Caviria" de Antoni Hervàs 23 septiembre 2016
- Exposición “El misterio de Caviria” de Antoni Hervàs en La Capella, 16 septiembre–13 noviembre 16 septiembre 2016
- Documentación de la exposición de Pau Magrané/PLOM en La Capella, BCN Producció 2016 28 junio 2016
- Jurado y equipo tutorial de BCN Producció 2016, La Capella, Barcelona 2 febrero 2016.