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

Cover Story, October 2022: Stray Ornithologies—Laia Estruch

 

October 2022 cover story.


The October 2022 monthly Cover Story “Stray Ornithologies—Laia Estruch” is now up on our homepage: www.lttds.org

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

After October 2022 this story will be archived here.

Cover Stories are published on a monthly basis on Latitudes’ homepage featuring past, present or forthcoming projects, research, texts, artworks, exhibitions, films, objects or field trips related to our curatorial projects and activities.


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Workshop with PUBLICS Youth for TODAY IS OUR TOMORROW 2022

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


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

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

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



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


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Cover Story, April 2022: Mix & Match: Laia Estruch at PUBLICS

  April 2022 cover story on www.lttds.org


The April 2022 monthly Cover Story “Mix & Match: Laia Estruch at PUBLICS” is now up on our homepage: www.lttds.org

“On 17 March 2022, the first event of a year-long “Parahosting” collaboration between Latitudes and PUBLICS took place in Helsinki. The Parahosting programme of PUBLICS began in 2018, and it has grown into a key method of decentering the authorship of the curatorial agency through a flexible, evolving, expanding, and sometimes messy, practice of working together.” Continue reading

→ After April 2022 this story will be archived here.

Cover Stories' are published on a monthly basis on Latitudes' homepage featuring past, present or forthcoming projects, research, texts, artworks, exhibitions, films, objects or field trips related to our curatorial projects and activities.


→ RELATED CONTENTS

  • Archive of Monthly Cover Stories
  • Cover Story, March 2022: The passion of Gabriel Ventura, 1 March 2022
  • Cover Story, February 2022: Rosa Tharrats’ Textile Alchemy, 1 Feb 2022
  • Cover Story, January 2022: “Rasmus’ Doubts”, 2 Jan 2022
  • Cover Story, December 2021: Between Meier and Meller: Toni and Pau at the Teatre Arnau, 1 Dec 2021
  • Cover Story, November 2021: Notes for an Eye Fire, 2 Nov 2021
  • Cover Story, October 2021: Fear and Loathing in Lebanon, 1 Oct 2021
  • Cover Story, September 2021: Erratic behaviour—Latitudes in conversation with Jorge Satorre, 31 August 2021
  • Cover Story–July-August 2021: Panorama: a wide view from a fixed point, 2 July 2021
  • Cover Story–June 2021: ‘Fitness food: Salim Bayri’s Amsterdam’, 1 June 2021
  • Cover Story–May 2021: RAF goes viral, 2 May 2021
  • Cover Story—April 2021: Cover Story – April 2021: Lara Almarcegui at La Panera, 2 Apr 2021
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Latitudes (Barcelona) and PUBLICS (Helsinki)

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


About PUBLICS

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

https://www.publics.fi


About Laia Estruch

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

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

https://laiaestruch.com


About Latitudes 

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


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

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              Report: Latitudes' participation in the festival TODAY IS OUR TOMORROW initiated by PUBLICS in Helsinki

              Poster announcing the festival in a street in central Helsinki. Photo: Latitudes.

              As partner organisation in the transdisciplinary festival ‘Today Is Our Tomorrow’ initiated by PUBLICS, Latitudes' participation consisted in inviting Argentinian-born, Amsterdam-based artist Mercedes Azpilicueta, to perform at Club Kaiku on September 13, 2019.

              Façade of Kaiku, Helsinki.

              A day earlier, on September 12, 2019, Latitudes and Mercedes maintained an open conversation introducing her artistic practice and, in particular advancing details of both her ‘Yegua-Yeta-Yuta’ performance taking place a day after, as well as her forthcoming solo exhibition at CentroCentro, Madrid, opening October 3, 2019, and her solo presentation as part of Van Abbemuseum's Positions #5’, a series of exhibitions presenting the work of artists working in the Netherlands.

              September 12, 2019, 5:30–6:30h: (Above and below) Mercedes, Mariana and Max (Latitudes) in conversation at Club Kaiku. Photo: Jonni Korhonen/PUBLICS.
              Photo: Jonni Korhonen/PUBLICS.
              Photo: Aman Askarizad/PUBLICS.

              Azpilicueta performed ‘Yegua-yeta-yuta’ (2015-ongoing), an evolving solo performance that is part scripted, part improvised. Composed from a litany of hundreds of pejorative, abusive, and vulgar insults directed at women in Argentina, it transforms the everyday language of misogyny and harassment into a kind of tragicomic exorcism. Many of the words derive from the street slang of Buenos Aires, especially Lunfardo, a colloquial and cryptic dialect that first arose among working-class Italian-immigrant and tango communities in Argentina and Uruguay during the late 1800s. For example, yegua literally means a mare – a female horse, a slur for a “difficult” woman. A yeta is a person who brings bad luck, while a yuta is someone corrupt or unscrupulous, and slang for the police. Accompanied by a percussive beat, Azpilicueta reclaims the power to offend, distorting and distending the epithets into something powerful and playful rather than weak and degrading. Azpilicueta performed to the beat of a new soundtrack produced for the occasion in collaboration with Chilean choreographer Rodrigo Sobarzo de Larraechea

              See documentation on our photo gallery.

              Photo: Aman Askarizad/PUBLICS.

              Mercedes Azpilicueta during her performance ‘Yegua-Yeta-Yuta’ (2015-ongoing) for TODAY IS OUR TOMORROW festival, organised by PUBLICS, Helsinki. Photo: Latitudes.
              Photo: Jonni Korhonen/PUBLICS.

              Photo: Aman Askarizad/PUBLICS.


              Photo: Kush Badhwar/PUBLICS.


              Photo: Kush Badhwar/PUBLICS.
              Photo: Kush Badhwar/PUBLICS.

              Photo: Kush Badhwar/PUBLICS.

              Photo: Latitudes.


              Mercedes Azpilicueta is an Argentinian visual and performance artist based in Amsterdam. Her practice has spanned theatrical mises-en-scènes and video installations, textile sculptures and drawing, sound works and 3D animation. With a particular interest in notions of the vulnerable or collective body, and the primal or dissident voice, her works have drawn inspiration from sources as diverse as Baroque painting, text messaging, medieval tapestries, street slang, and literary fiction, as well as singular figures including the Italian art critic and feminist activist Carla Lonzi (1931–1982), the Argentine-French performance artist Lea Lublin (1929–1999), the French futurist Valentine de Saint-Point (1875–1953), and the Costa Rican-born Mexican ranchera singer Chavela Vargas (1919–2012). A major survey of Azpilicueta’s work to date, ‘Cuerpos Pájaros’ (Body-birds) was recently staged by the Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art (November 2018–April 2019 — see Latitudes' Buenos Aires report). On October 3, 2019, she presents ‘Bestiario de Lengüitas’ (Bestiaire of Tonguelets), curated by Virginie Bobin, at CentroCentro, Madrid, an exhibition which will then tour to Museion, Bozen, and CAC Brétigny in 2020. Later in 2019, she will have a solo presentation as part of ‘Positions #5’ at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.


              (Above) Mercedes during her performance ‘Oh, Eduarda!’ on April 14, 2019, presented at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires. Photo: Latitudes.

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              Cover Story—October 2019: Mercedes Azpilicueta in Helsinki

              Latitudes' homepage www.lttds.org

              The October 2019 monthly Cover Story ‘Mercedes Azpilicueta in Helsinki’ is now up on Latitudes' homepage: www.lttds.org

              “Buitre! burra! cabeza! cabezona! cabrona! cachivache! cachucha! cachufleta! cagada! cagadora! cagona! cajeta!…” Mercedes Azpilicueta’s performance ‘Yegua-yeta-yuta’ (2015–ongoing) is a part scripted, part improvised litany of hundreds of pejorative, abusive, and vulgar insults directed at women in Argentina. Performed on the inauspicious date of Friday 13th September, it was Latitudes’s contribution to the collectively-curated and inaugural Today is Our Tomorrow festival initiated by PUBLICS at Club Kaiku and neighbouring venues in Helsinki, Finland.”


              Continue reading
              → After this month 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:

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              PUBLICS' Library in Helsinki incorporates Latitudes-edited back catalogue of publications


              We are glad to announce that PUBLICS in Helsinki now has all of Latitudes publications available for consultation in their library (with the exception of the monograph "Lara Almarcegui, Projects 1995–2010" which is out of print). Our first publication, "LAND, ART: A Cultural Ecology Handbook" (RSA/Arts Council England, 2006, also out of print), was already available in their library

              PUBLICS library is the third location where the whole back catalogue of Latitudes' publications resides, together with the Library of the MACBA Study Centre, Barcelona, and the Paul D. Fleck Library & Archives, The Banff Centre, Canada.

              We also donated a few books we have contributed to with essays or interviews, such as "Antoni Hervàs. ‘The Mystery of Cabiria" (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2016), "C-H-R-I-S-T-O-P-H-E-R-K-N-O-W-L-E-S SO LISTEN UP" (NoguerasBlanchard, 2017), Rasmus Nilausen, ‘Soups & Symptoms, Paintings 2011–2016’ (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2016) and "Lara Almarcegui. Béton" (SilvanaEditoriale, 2019).





              PUBLICS library is located at Sturenkatu 37-41 4b 00550 Helsinki.

              Latitudes' publications available at PUBLICS Library (bibliography online):

              Joan Morey: COLLAPSE
              Various locations, Barcelona
              September 2018–January 2019
              Exhibition guide/programme guide, opuscule, poster


              4.543 billion. The matter of matter
              CAPC musée d'art contemporain, Bordeaux
              June 2017–January 2018
              Exhibition guide & symposium guide

              Amikejo
              Catalogue of the exhibition series, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC), León
              April 2012

              United Alternative Energies
              Christina Hemauer & Roman Keller
              Catalogue of the exhibition, Aarhus Art Building, Centre for Contemporary Art, Århus
              January 2012

              Campus
              Catalogue of the project, Espai Cultural Caja Madrid, Barcelona
              July 2011

              Also available online.

              Portscapes
              Catalogue of the commission series and exhibition 'Portscapes', Port of Rotterdam / Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
              February 2010

              Martí Anson, Mataró Chauffeur Service
              Catalogue of the project, 'No Soul For Sale', Tate Modern, London
              January 2011

              The Last Newspaper
              Catalogue of the exhibition 'The Last Newspaper', New Museum, New York
              October–December 2010

              Lawrence Weiner: THE CREST OF A WAVE
              Booklet of the exhibition, Fundació Suñol, Barcelona
              October 2008

              Simon Fujiwara: The Incest Museum–A Guide
              Artist book, 'Provenances', Umberto di Marino Arte Contemporaneo, Naples
              May 2009

              Ignasi Aballí: 没有,有 Nothing, or Something
              Catalogue of the exhibition, Suitcase Art Projects, Beijing
              July 2009

              Ecology, Luxury & Degradation
              UOVO #14
              Summer 2007

              Greenwashing. Ambiente: Pericoli, Promesse e Perplessità 

              (Greenwashing. Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities)
              Catalogue of the exhibition, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin
              February 2008



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              Partner organisation in ‘Today Is Our Tomorrow’, participation with Mercedes Azpilicueta, PUBLICS – club Kaiku, Helsinki, 12–14 September 2019

              Graphic identity of the art festival. Design: julia.studio.


              Today Is Our Tomorrow’ is a collaborative, collective, and transdisciplinary festival initiated by Helsinki-based curatorial agency PUBLICS, produced in partnership with local and international organisations, initiatives and institutions. The programme will include a co-commissioned and collaboratively curated programme of temporary public art commissions, live performance, music, dance, theatre, literature and symposia, and will pilot in Club Kaiku complex in Kallio, an underground music venue renowned for hosting an innovative lineup of DJs, and the neighbouring spaces Kieku and Stidilä.

              The 2019 edition of ‘Today Is Our Tomorrow’ is curated, commissioned, organised in collaboration with the Finnish partners: Academy of Fine Arts, Baltic Circle, Globe Art Point, IHME Helsinki, Kohta Gallery, Live Art and Performance Studies (LAPS), and Museum of Impossible Forms, and the international partners Index Foundation from Stockholm, osloBIENNALEN from Oslo, the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art from Riga, and Latitudes from Barcelona.

              The programme looks at ‘other’ versions of the present already being lived in Finland and globally: from Alternative futures to Indigenous-futures, to Afro-futures, to Asian-futures, to Eco-futures, to Bio-futures, to Queer and Feminist futures, and to non-hegemonic futures.

              Graphic identity of the art festival.


              At the invitation of PUBLICS to participate in the festival, Latitudes has invited Buenos Aires-born, Amsterdam-based artist Mercedes Azpilicueta to present her performance ‘Yegua-yeta-yuta’ at Kieku (ground loor, next to Stidilä) on Friday 13 September, 11–11:30pm. A day earlier, on Thursday 12 September, Latitudes will be in conversation with the artist at 5:30h also at Kieku.

              Yegua-yeta-yuta’ (2015-ongoing) is an evolving solo performance by Azpilicueta that is part scripted, part improvised. Composed from a litany of hundreds of pejorative, abusive, and vulgar insults directed at women in Argentina, it transforms the everyday language of misogyny and harassment into a kind of tragicomic exorcism. Many of the words derive from the street slang of Buenos Aires, especially Lunfardo, a colloquial and cryptic dialect that first arose among working-class Italian-immigrant and tango communities in Argentina and Uruguay during the late 1800s. For example, yegua literally means a mare – a female horse, a slur for a “difficult” woman. A yeta is a person who brings bad luck, while a yuta is someone corrupt or unscrupulous, and slang for the police. Accompanied by a percussive beat, Azpilicueta reclaims the power to offend, distorting and distending the epithets into something powerful and playful rather than weak and degrading. Azpilicueta will perform to the beat of a new soundtrack produced for the occasion in collaboration with Chilean choreographer Rodrigo Sobarzo de Larraechea


              Mercedes Azpilicueta performing ‘Yegua-yeta-yuta’ during the 2017 CA2M Picnic Sessions, Móstoles (Madrid). Photo: Arantxa Boyero.


              Mercedes Azpilicueta is an Argentine visual and performance artist based in Amsterdam. Her practice has spanned theatrical mises-en-scènes and video installations, textile sculptures and drawing, sound works and 3D animation. With a particular interest in notions of the vulnerable or collective body, and the primal or dissident voice, her works have drawn inspiration from sources as diverse as Baroque painting, text messaging, medieval tapestries, street slang, and literary fiction, as well as singular figures including the Italian art critic and feminist activist Carla Lonzi (1931–1982), the Argentine-French performance artist Lea Lublin (1929–1999), the French futurist Valentine de Saint-Point (1875–1953), and the Costa Rican-born Mexican ranchera singer Chavela Vargas (1919–2012). A major survey of Azpilicueta’s work to date, ‘Cuerpos Pájaros’ (Body-birds) was recently staged by the Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art (November 2018–April 2019). In October 2019 she will present ‘Bestiario de Lengüitas’ (Bestiaire of Tonguelets), curated by Virginie Bobin, at CentroCentro, Madrid, an exhibition which will then tour to Museion, Bozen, and CAC Brétigny in 2020. Later in 2019, she will have a solo presentation as part of ‘Positions #5’ at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.



              (Above) ‘Bestiario de lengüitas’ (2017-ongoing) pieces included in Mercedes Azpilicueta's solo show ‘Cuerpo pájaros’ recently programmed at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires. Photo: Latitudes.

              Running parallel during the same week (9–14 September), Latitudes will attend the ‘Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities’, a six-day event organised by Frame Contemporary Art Finland in which artists, curators, researchers, and audiences in the field of contemporary art ‘are invited to rehearse and debate hospitality towards diverse ways of knowing and challenging of dominant knowledges’. Alongside the public programme, Frame will arrange studio visits, one-on-one meetings and networking situations.

              (Two Above) Moments from the performance ‘Oh, Eduarda!’ on April 14, 2019, also presented at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires. Photos: Latitudes.


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