Mon, Mar 8 2021
Lara Almarcegui, ‘Rocas y materiales de la Cordillera de los Pirineos’ (2021). Cálculo realizado por Javier Ramajo y Carlos Galé, IDEYA RED PROFESIONAL S. L. L. con el apoyo de Alejandro Robador del Instituto Geológico y Minero de España. Una producción del Centre d'Art la Panera con la colaboración de Centro de Arte y Naturaleza, Huesca, y Espacio Portalet, Sallent de Gallego. Foto: Jordi V. Pou. Cortesía de la artista.
A continuación un fragmento del texto de la exposición escrito por Latitudes (descargar pdf):
A través del ejercicio un tanto inverosímil de medir una cordillera, Almarcegui aborda la paradoja que las prácticas de estandarización, cuantificación y matematización que han dado lugar a un extraordinario valor y conocimiento a lo largo de los últimos siglos también representan el avance de una perspectiva que ha permitido la mercantilización y la gestión de la naturaleza. Durante los siglos XVIII y XIX se volvió a imaginar el planeta cartografiando, midiendo y haciendo prospecciones. Estos procesos métricos revolucionarios aceleraron la apropiación de la riqueza de la naturaleza, poniéndola bajo un control sistemático y facilitando su rentabilidad.
(...)
La exposición de Almarcegui busca nada menos que una convergencia de estos marcos temporales rotos a través de la fuerza del arte y un vaivén de escalas y temporalidades entre grava y edificios, el aparente “reloj detenido” de la extracción durante todo un día y la masa absoluta de un macizo montañoso “intemporal” de millones de años. Tanto la industria de La Plana del Corb como la que se ocupa de calcular la masa de los Pirineos, pretenden extraer valor y de alguna manera computar fenómenos que son, significativamente, inconmensurables e inexplicables y que van más allá de la falsa creencia que tenemos suficiente conocimiento.
Lara Almarcegui, ‘Gravera’ (2021), vídeo, 10 min. Cámara: Daniel Lacasa. Editor Pablo Gil Rituerto. Una producción del Centre d'Art la Panera con la colaboración de la Fundación Sorigué. Foto: Jordi V. Pou. Cortesía de la artista.
→ CONTENIDO RELACIONADO:
- 11 de julio 2019, 19h: Conversación con Lara Almarcegui en el Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM), 25 June 2019
- ‘Thinking like a drainage basin’ essay in the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Lara Almarcegui. Béton’, 8 April 2019
- Works by Lara Almarcegui included in the exhibition “4.543 billion. A Matter of Matter”, CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, 2017
- Report from Urdaibai: commission series 'Sense and Sustainability', Urdaibai Arte 2012 22 July 2012
- Launch of the monograph 'Lara Almarcegui. Projects 1995–2010', edited by Latitudes at 'The Dutch Assembly', ARCOmadrid, 15 February, 19-20h 14 February 2012
- Photos 'In conversation with Lara Almarcegui', 19 May 2011, TENT, Rotterdam 6 June 2011
- Editing the forthcoming publication 'Lara Almarcegui. Projects 1995–2010' 18 March 2011
- Portscapes bus tour: Lara Almarcegui wasteland tour and Christina Hemauer & Roman Keller's 'Postpetrolistic Internationale' choir performance 10 November 2009
- Text on Lara Almarcegui's project for Expo Zaragoza 2008 and exhibition at Pepe Cobo, Madrid 28 October 2008
- Catálogo 'Estratos', texto sobre Lara Almarcegui, PAC Murcia 2008 28 Mayo 2008
- Lara Almarcegui interviewed by Florence Grivel in UOVO magazine, 2007
Mon, Apr 8 2019
(Above and below) Installation views of the exhibition ‘Béton’ by Lara Almarcegui at the CAIRN centre d'art, Digne-les-Bains, 2019. All photos: François-Xavier Emery.
Lara Almarcegui's exhibition ‘Béton’ opened on April 5 at CAIRN Centre d'art, in Digne-les-Bains, France, and will be on view until June 30th, 2019.
Latitudes has collaborated in the bilingual catalogue ‘Lara Almarcegui. Béton’ (French/English) recently published by Silvana Editoriale on the occasion the exhibition, with the new essay ‘Thinking like a drainage basin’. The publication includes an introduction by Giulia Pagnetti (curator of the exhibition and director of CAIRN Centre d'art), a second essay titled ‘Lara Almarcegui's building sites’ by Natacha Pugnet, and a conversation between the artist and Winfried Dallmann (Associate Professor, Department of Geosciences, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø) titled ‘Earth Calculation’.
As Latitudes' writes in the essay (...) ‘As part of her most recent project for CAIRN Centre d’art, Almarcegui has produced ‘Roches et Materiaux du Bassin de la Bléone’ (2019), an inventory of the different types of geological matter comprising the entire drainage basin of the Bléone river from its source near Prads-Haute-Bléone to its confluence with the Durance at Chateau-Arnaux, a terrain of some 906 km2.
In discussing how storytelling might integrate with environmental science, anthropologist Julie Cruikshank poses the rhetorical question, “are glaciers ‘good to think with’?”[1] She suggests that glaciers and glacial stories be allowed to disrupt and exceed conceptual fields and dominant frameworks of knowledge. Ecologist Aldo Leopold coined the term “to think like a mountain” in his 1949 book ‘A Sand County Almanac’, proposing that history could be narrated, or indeed art could be made, from the point of view of non-human actors. Are drainage basins good to think with? What might it entail to think like the rocks and topological forms that funnel water into a river in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence département in southeastern France?’
‘Lara Almarcegui. Béton’
April 2019, 48 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Texts by Natacha Pugnet, Latitudes and an interview between the artist and Winfried Dallmann.
French/English
Published by Silvana Editoriale
March 2019
Edited by CAIRN centre d'art
ISBN 9788836640904
Purchase here for 10 Euros.
RELATED CONTENT:
- Writing archive on Latitudes' website;
- Review – ‘Domènec. Y la tierra será el paraíso', adn galería, Barcelona, frieze.com, 13 March 2019
- Opinion – ‘Frank Zappa’s Genre-Defying ‘Civilization Phaze III’’, frieze, January-February 2019, Issue 200, and frieze.com, 14 January 2019
- Review – ‘Te toca a tí’ [It's your turn], Espai d'art contemporani de Castelló, art-agenda, 7 January 2019
- art-agenda review of Frieze week 2018 15 October 2018.
- Catalogue essay – ‘The Kørner Problem’, in the monograph ‘John Kørner', ed. by Maria Nipper. Published by Roulette Russe, 2017. 19 February 2018
