2020 in 11 monthly Cover Stories
Mon, Dec 28 2020Since Spring 2015, Latitudes has published a monthly cover story on its homepage www.lttds.org featuring past, present or forthcoming projects, as well as ongoing research, texts, artworks, exhibitions, films, objects or travel related to our curatorial practice. Here's how 2020 looked like on our homepage.
#Latitudes15Years, 2020, art-agenda, Barcelona Producció, cover story, Incidents of Travel, latitudes, looking back, Projects, things things say, writing
Episode #14 of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Kathleen Ditzig with Fyerool Darma and Nurul Huda Rashid from Singapore
Mon, Dec 21 2020
In the 14th dispatch, Singapore-based curator Kathleen Ditzig joins artists Fyerool Darma and Nurul Huda Rashid nearby ‘Safe Entry‘ (2020), a mural presented at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) by the artist Heman Chong that repeats a single, enlarged QR code, “the new digital skin of the city”, as Nurul points out. From there, they head towards the boardwalk connecting Harbourfront with Sentosa Island, the pleasure island home to many tourist attractions. Fyerool and Nurul weave in stories of past pirates and deities against the backdrop of the glass-green waters that stage the “blue aesthetics against the imported sands [from Indonesia] of reclaimed lands.”
Incidents (of Travel) site presents one continuous immersive read interwoven with images and short videos in a mobile-friendly format.
📲 TAP, SCROLL and SWIPE!
Incidents (of Travel) was conceived in 2012 when Latitudes commissioned 5 day-long artist-led tours around Mexico City in the framework of a short residency at Casa del Lago. The project had sequels in 2013 in Hong Kong with online dispatches published live via social media, including soundscapes (archived on Soundcloud), and in 2015 in San Francisco with daily posts as part of Kadist's Instagram take over “Artist Not In The Studio Curator Not At The Office”.
A year later, KADIST and Latitudes partnered in a new ‘distributed’ phase of Incidents (of Travel) extending the invitation to curators and artists working around the world and publishing their dispatches as part of KADIST's Online Projects.
Since 2016, fourteen conversations have taken place in Singapore (Singapore), Cabo Rojo (Puerto Rico), Tbilisi (Georgia), Panama City (Panama), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Reykjavík (Iceland), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Hobart (Tasmania), Yerevan (Armenia), Terengganu (Malaysia), Lisbon (Portugal), Suzhou (China), Jinja (Uganda) and Chicago (US).
The second dispatch came from Jinja in Uganda, where curator Moses Serubiri invited photographer Mohsen Taha to explore Jinja's Indian architectural legacy and Idi Amin's notorious expulsion of Uganda's Asian minority in 1972.
The third episode took place while curator Yu Ji and poet Xiao Kaiyu hiked on Dong Shan (East Mountain), 130 km west of Shanghai, on a peninsula stretching into Tai Hu lake near the city of Suzhou, China.
The fourth dispatch came from Lisbon, where Galician curator Pedro de Llano visited key locations that marked the life and work of Luisa Cunha.
The fifth episode took place in April 2016, when curator Simon Soon and artist chi too visited the Malaysian North Eastern state of Terengganu, where chi spent some time in 2013, surrounded by “men and women who work(ed) multiple jobs as fishermen, housebuilders, boat builders, farmers, coconut pickers, food producers, and everything else that matters.”
The sixth episode narrates a walking itinerary conducted by curator Marianna Hovhannisyan with Vardan Kilichyan, Gohar Hosyan, and Anaida Verdyan in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, documenting the transformed, disappeared, or permanently-closed art institutions in the city centre.
The seventh episode comes from Hobart, capital of Tasmania. It is narrated by curator Camila Marambio, following an itinerary devised by artist Lucy Bleach. They spent the day "encircling the outer limits of human understanding by visiting the histories, both past, and present, of attempts to reach beyond our sensory capacities through governance, technology, and reverie", and ended the day cooking at Lucy's home-sharing their mutual love for quinces.
In the eighth 'Incidents (of Travel)' dispatch Móvil co-founder and curator Alejandra Aguado followed the itinerary devised by the artist Diego Bianchi around Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Their exploration took them from the self-regulated community Velatropa to the buzzing commercial area of Once, identifying human and non-human flows and interactions. This became an entry point for discussing Bianchi's interests in how, as consumers, we define a particular zeitgeist and appropriate trends that enable us to affirm our identities.
In the ninth dispatch, Canadian curator Becky Forsythe and Icelandic artist Þorgerður Ólafsdóttir navigate Reykjavík's surroundings considering Þorgerður's “current interest in Icelandic Spar (a form of transparent calcite), its double refraction and light-polarizing properties. In a race with daylight, they travel between sites collecting moments and considering the ways in which geologic time surfaces in the context of human time.”
The tenth dispatch begins with an itinerary proposed by Barcelona-born, Rio de Janeiro-based artist Daniel Steegmann Mangrané and is followed by images and videos recording a day roaming Rio's natural and artistic landscapes with Bogotá-born, Mexico City-based curator Catalina Lozano, who narrates their day spent together.
In the 11th episode, Swiss curator Sandino Scheidegger (Random Institute) visits Panama City in preparation for a solo exhibition by Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker at Casa Santa Ana in 2021. Conlon and Harker collaboration since 2006 (while also pursuing their own individual art practices) has resulted in seventeen video works to date. The places Sandino, Donna and Jonathan visited together pointed to the origin of some of their video works, the ideas behind them, or simply served as stages in their pieces, turning into “an exercise in sneaking through fences to reach former recycling plants, imagining how things looked before the skyscrapers took over, and navigating the complex social fabric of Panama City — all while getting a taste of local food between every stop.”
The 12th episode from Tbilisi, Georgia, set a different tone in the online series as it was programmed to take place in late May 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic. The itinerary set by Tbilisi-based artist Nino Kvrivishvili to lead Melbourne-based Associate Professor Tara McDowell became a WhatsApp video tour/conversation around Nino's artistic practice and the Georgian silk industry — a production that began in Tbilisi in the 5th century and continued until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.
In the 13th dispatch, and on week 23 of lockdown, Sofía Gallisá and Marina Reyes begin their day together driving to the Cabo Rojo Salt Flats where Sofía researched her 2018 film ‘Assimilate & Destroy I’. They later end up in Poblado de Boquerón, the queer capital of Puerto Rico's south where a large public beach and a usually busy street still show traces of 2017’s devastating Hurricane Maria.
→ RELATED CONTENT:
Episode #13 of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Marina Reyes and Sofía Gallisá from Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, 27 Sep 2020
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=7159211982397983135/episode-12-of-incidents-of-travel
Episode #11 of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Sandino Scheidegger and Donna Conlon & Jonathan Harker from Panama City, 9 April 2020
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=4425215029591365006/11-episode-of-incidents-of-travel
Tenth episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Catalina Lozano and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané from Rio de Janeiro,
29 January 2020
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=144735152408473327/tenth-episode-of-incidents-of-travel
The ninth episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Becky Forsythe and Þorgerður Ólafsdóttir, 8 February 2019
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=6371927610418460689
The eighth episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Alejandra Aguado and Diego Bianchi, 6 September 2019
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=8721104601538735691
Seventh episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Camila Marambio and Lucy Bleach from Hobart, Tasmania, 28 June 2018
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=1055853895543348027
The sixth episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Marianna Hovhannisyan and students from the National Center of Aesthetics from Yerevan, Armenia, 1 March 2018
http://www.lttds.org/blog/blog.php?id=5887133486742947361
The fifth episode of 'Incidents (of Travel)' – Dispatch by Simon Soon and chi too from Terengganu, Malaysia, 26 April 2017
http://www.lttds.org/blog/blog.php?id=4083951540089486920
The fourth episode of 'Incidents (of Travel)' – Dispatch by Pedro de Llano and Luisa Cunha from Lisbon, Portugal, 2 March 2017
http://www.lttds.org/blog/blog.php?id=4185860148466062617
The third episode of 'Incidents (of Travel)' – Dispatch by Yu JI and Xiao Kaiyu reporting from Suzhou, China, 6 September 2016
http://www.lttds.org/blog/blog.php?id=1437935620149738144
Second 'Incidents (of Travel)' dispatch by Moses Serubiri and Mohsen Taha reporting from Jinja, Uganda, 30 June 2016
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=2504250800654900933
Kadist and Latitudes present 'Incidents (Of Travel)' online, 31 May 2016
http://www.lttds.org/blog/blog.php?id=1076947282278624159
Jurado de los premios de la 4a edición del Dart Festival de cine documental sobre arte contemporáneo 2020
Thu, Dec 3 2020
La programación de la 4a edición del Festival de Cine Documental sobre Arte Contemporáneo 2020 (26 de noviembre al 8 de diciembre) se ha mostrado por primera vez en la plataforma online Filmin, manteniendo una sesión presencial con el estreno en España de "Keith Haring: Street Art Boy" en los cines Girona en Barcelona. Esta edición ha presentado 20 documentales: 15 largometrajes –9 de los cuales se estrenan en España y 5 en Barcelona– y 5 cortos, todos estrenos en España.
Una edición más, Latitudes ha tenido el placer de ser miembro del jurado del festival junto al crítico de cine Quim Casas y el artista visual Jordi Colomer.
Dart Festival 2019 en Cinemes Girona.
Dart Festival 2020 el primer festival de cine documental dedicado al arte contemporáneo cuyo principal objetivo es entrelazar la cultura y el conocimiento con el gran público, y lo hace a través de documentales sobre fotografía, comisariado de arte, pintura, performance, arquitectura, movimientos artísticos y, en general, sobre arte contemporáneo, prestando especial atención a los artistas, sus procesos de creación y las historias que hay detrás de sus trabajos.
La convocatoria para participar en la edición 2021 ya está abierta en filmfreeway.com
El jurado ha decidido que los documentales premiados en esta edición sean ‘Tierras Construídas’ del director de cine Arturo Dueñas como mejor producción nacional, y ‘The Proposal’ de la artista Jill Magid, como mejor producción internacional:
"El jurado ha elegido por unanimidad, como ganadora de la Competición Nacional, ‘Tierras construidas’ [Trailer], porque es capaz de retratar con honestidad el proceso artístico riguroso del artista Félix Cuadrado Lomas, verdadero cimiento de la película gracias a su personalidad cautivadora. Una íntima mirada cinematográfica que reflexiona sobre los paisajes castellanos con el mismo cuidado y la misma idea de construcción expresados en la pintura del protagonista."
"El jurado ha elegido por unanimidad, como ganadora de la Competición Internacional, ‘The Proposal’ [Trailer], porque su ritmo seduce durante todo el metraje, porque se aleja radicalmente de la narrativa documental tradicional y porque es capaz de profundizar en cuestiones importantes dentro del arte contemporáneo, como los derechos de autor y el legado cultural entre la contribución al discurso internacional y el contexto territorial donde tiene su origen. Una película nada convencional que es a su vez una obra artística audaz y provocadora."
España, 2019. Dir: Arturo Dueñas. 81 min. Castellano.
A finales de los años 60 un grupo de artistas decide establecerse en un pueblo de la España profunda y convertirlo en un foco cultural. Hoy allí solo queda Félix Cuadrado Lomas, que en 2017 decidió rechazar el Premio Castilla y León de las Artes por coherencia con su carrera artística. Su vida abarca una infancia de posguerra, una juventud bohemia y de resistencia, y una madurez de reconocimiento, cuando ya todos sus compañeros de generación han desaparecido. Félix sigue fiel a su estilo, empeñado en reflejar el paisaje que lo rodea: las tierras construidas por quienes las trabajan.
México, 2019. Dir: Jill Magid. 82 min. Inglés.
Conocido como «el artista entre los arquitectos», Luis Barragán es uno de los arquitectos más famosos del siglo XX. A su muerte en 1988, gran parte de su obra fue encerrada en un búnker suizo, escondida de la vista del mundo. En un intento por resucitar la vida y el arte de Barragán, la artista Jill Magid crea una propuesta audaz que se convierte en una obra de arte en sí misma, un acto de negociación que explora hasta dónde llegará un artista para democratizar el acceso al arte.
→ CONTENIDO RELACIONADO:
- Premios de la 3a edición del Dart Festival de cine documental sobre arte contemporáneo 2019, 1 Dec 2019
- Mariana Cánepa Luna vocal del jurado del Premi Ciutat de Barcelona 2017 en el ámbito de las Artes Visuales 1 Febrero 2018
- Antoni Hervàs's exhibition "El Misterio de Caviria" awarded the Visual Arts prize of the Premis Ciutat de Barcelona 2016 1 February 2017
- Jurado y equipo tutorial de Barcelona Producció 2017 – Anuncio de los proyectos ganadores 25 Mayo 2017
- Jurado y equipo tutorial de BCN Producció 2016, La Capella, Barcelona. 2 Febrero 2016
- Latitudes-nominee artist Annette Kelm shortlisted for the Aimia | AGO Photography Prize 2015 24 June 2015
Resolución Convocatoria 2012 de Artes visuales y Tutorial de la Sala d'Art Jove 7 Diciembre 2011 - Fallo Jurado Premios Casablancas 2008, 20 Junio, 20h 16 junio 2008
- Otros jurados – véase sección "About"
Cover Story—December 2020: ‘Things Things Say’: ‘This Action Lies’
Tue, Dec 1 2020
Latitudes' homepage www.lttds.org
“One Taste and You’ll Understand. That was Dunkin’ Donuts slogan in 2001. A year earlier: Loosen Up a Little. Then a bit later: Just the Thing. 2002–2004. Bring Yourself Back. 2004–2006. Now it’s America Runs on Dunkin’, but you get the point.”
→ Continue reading
→ After December 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 projects and activities.
→ RELATED CONTENTS:
→ After December 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 projects and activities.
→ RELATED CONTENTS:
- Archive of Monthly Cover Stories
- Cover Story—November 2020: ‘Things Things Say’: Stuart Whipps’, 1 Nov 2020
- Cover Story—October 2020: Incidents (of Travel) Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, 2 Oct 2020
- Cover Story—September 2020: States of emergency—Lola Lasurt’s ‘Children’s Game’, 1 Sept 2020
- Cover Story—August 2020: ‘Màquina possible’: going viral at Can Balaguer, 1 Aug 2020
- Cover Story—July 2020: Nino Kvrivishvili’s silk roads: Incidents (of Travel), Tbilisi, 1 Jul 2020
- Cover Story—June 2020: Mataró Chauffeur Service, since 2010, 1 June 2020
- Cover Story—May 2020: Panama, back through the lens, 4 May 2020
- Cover Story—March-April 2020: The Bolós Cabinet, 3 March 2020
- Cover Story—February 2020: Carioca Incidents, 3 February 2020
- Cover Story—January 2020: Safeguarding Gestures, 2 January 2020
Trailer and photo documentation of the exhibition ‘Things Things Say’
Wed, Nov 4 2020→ Exhibition trailer 📽
(CAST) https://youtu.be/XI5ftjWUjVo
→ Exhibition Guide 🗺
‘Things Things Say’ is an exhibition at Fabra i Coats: Contemporary Art Centre of Barcelona (17 October 2020–17 January 2021) presenting sculpture, photography, films, text and voice by Adrià Julià, Annette Kelm, James N. Kienitz Wilkins, Sarah Ortmeyer, Eulàlia Rovira, Francesc Serra i Dimas, Stuart Whipps, Haegue Yang, as well as meaningful things from the Friends of Fabra i Coats archive.
The exhibition springs from the past of Fabra i Coats—an industrial complex once dedicated to the manufacturing of cotton thread. Taking on the genre of the ‘it-narrative’ in 18th century English literature—as well as the approaches of object journalism and microhistory—the exhibition tacks back-and-forth between “exceptionally normal” things and the extraordinary global narratives of labour, obsolescence, and the industrialisation of nature, that they trigger.
Curated by Latitudes
#CosesQueLesCosesDiuen
#CosasQueLasCosasDicen
#ThingsThingsSay
c/ Sant Adrià, 20
08030 Barcelona, Spain
⏰ Tuesday to Saturday 12–8pm, Sunday 11am–3pm
→ RELATED CONTENT:
- ‘Things Things Say’ in social networks
- 6 de noviembre, 17:45h: Proyección ‘Popcorn’ [Palomita] (90', 2012) de Adrià Julià en el Zumzeig Cinema, 29 Oct 2020
- Exhibition ‘Things Things Say’, Fabra i Coats: Contemporary Art Center of Barcelona, 17 October 2020–17 January 2021, 9 Oct 2020
Cover Story—November 2020: ‘Things Things Say’: Stuart Whipps’
Sun, Nov 1 2020“Another car strike. Marvellous, isn’t it? The taxpayers pay ’em millions each year, they get the money, go on strike. It’s called socialism. If they don’t like making cars, why don’t they get themselves another bloody job—designing cathedrals or composing violin concertos. The British Leyland Concerto—in four movements, all of them slow, with a four-hour tea-break in between...”
→ Continue reading
→ After November 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 projects and activities.
→ RELATED CONTENTS:
→ After November 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 projects and activities.
→ RELATED CONTENTS:
- Archive of Monthly Cover Stories
- Cover Story—October 2020: Incidents (of Travel) Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, 2 Oct 2020
- Cover Story—September 2020: States of emergency—Lola Lasurt’s ‘Children’s Game’, 1 Sept 2020
- Cover Story—August 2020: ‘Màquina possible’: going viral at Can Balaguer, 1 Aug 2020
- Cover Story—July 2020: Nino Kvrivishvili’s silk roads: Incidents (of Travel), Tbilisi, 1 Jul 2020
- Cover Story—June 2020: Mataró Chauffeur Service, since 2010, 1 June 2020
- Cover Story—May 2020: Panama, back through the lens, 4 May 2020
- Cover Story—March-April 2020: The Bolós Cabinet, 3 March 2020
- Cover Story—February 2020: Carioca Incidents, 3 February 2020
- Cover Story—January 2020: Safeguarding Gestures, 2 January 2020
6 de noviembre, 17:45h: Proyección ‘Popcorn’ [Palomita] (90', 2012) de Adrià Julià en el Zumzeig Cinema
Wed, Oct 28 2020
Adrià Julià, ‘Popcorn’ [Palomita], (2012). Vídeo HD, color, sonido. 90 min. Cortesía del artista.
❌ Actividad cancelada debido a las restricciones para frenar el incremento de casos de COVID-19 en Catalunya. Nueva fecha: 8 de enero 2021, a las 18h. ❌
6 de noviembre 2020, a las 17:45h
Proyección ‘Popcorn’ [Palomita] (90', 2012) de Adrià Julià
Entrada gratuita por orden de llegada. Sesión única.
Sin inscripción previa. Aforo limitado.
El largometraje ‘Popcorn’ de Adrià Julià fue realizado en el 2012 a partir de una grabación pre-existente realizada para demostrar la capacidad de una cámara ultrarápida. El estallido a velocidad reducida de un grano de maíz ha sido prolongado extendiendo la película original de doce segundos hasta una duración de noventa minutos. ‘Popcorn’ es también una película de terror en que la violencia industrial y la supremacía cultural asoman más allá de un gesto aparentemente tan trivial como tomarse un aperitivo relajante y poco calórico.
La proyección en el Zumzeig forma parte de la exposición ‘Cosas que las cosas dicen’ comisariada por Latitudes en Fabra i Coats: Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona y que, además de la obra de Julià incluye escultura, fotografía, film y voz de Annette Kelm, James N. Kienitz Wilkins, Sarah Ortmeyer, Eulàlia Rovira, Francesc Serra i Dimas, Stuart Whipps, Haegue Yang, además de cosas significativas procedentes del fondo de los Amigos de la Fabra i Coats. Se puede visitar hasta el 17 de enero 2021.
Adrià Julià (Barcelona, 1974) vive y trabaja en Los Angeles y Bergen, donde es profesor en la facultad de KMD de la Universidad de Bergen. A través de instalaciones, cine, vídeo, fotografía, performance y publicaciones Julià examina los medios de representación y recepción de eventos con una dimensión personal y colectiva, y los modos en los que estos negocian la memoria, la resistencia, el desplazamiento y la supervivencia. Sus exposiciones individuales más recientes han tenido lugar en Pinacoteca de São Paulo (2019); Tabakalera, San Sebastián (2017–18); Fundació Miró de Barcelona (2017); Project Art Center, Dublín (2011) y ha participado en exposiciones colectivas en el Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2016–17); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nueva York (2015–16); Witte de With, Rotterdam (2011); Seoul Museum of Art, Seúl, Corea (2010); 7th Mercusur Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brasil (2009); Lyon Bennial, Lyon (2007). Ha presentado performances en Current LA (2019) y la 29º Bienal de São Paulo (2010); y recibido becas de la Fundación Botín (2015), de la American Academy de Berlín (2015), de California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2010), de American Center Foundation (2007) y en 2002 recibió el Premio Altadis.
→ Guía de la exposición (pdf)
→ Audioguía narrada por la artista Eulàlia Rovira (CAT, ES, ENG)
c. Béjar, 56
08014 Barcelona
c. Sant Adrià, 20
08030 Barcelona
→ RELATED CONTENTS:
- Cosas que las cosas dicen, Fabra i Coats: Centre d'art contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona, 17 octubre 2020–17 enero 2021
- CAMPUS: Semana #4, 25–29 Julio. Sesión de trabajo final con Adrià Julià e inauguración exposición (29 Julio, 19.30–21h), 25 Jul 2011
- Campus, Espai Cultural Caja Madrid, Barcelona, 2011
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
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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:
Exhibition ‘Things Things Say’, Fabra i Coats: Contemporary Art Center of Barcelona, 17 October 2020–17 January 2021
Fri, Oct 9 2020
The group show ‘Things Things Say’ (Coses que les coses diuen) and the solo exhibition ‘Tone Tongue Mouth’ (‘to llengua boca’) by Dutch artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh open concurrently at Fabra i Coats: Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona on Saturday 17 October 2020 from 12 pm.
‘Things Things Say’
Fabra i Coats: Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona
17 October 2020 – 17 January 2021
Curated by Latitudes
An exhibition with works by Adrià Julià (1974, lives in Barcelona and Bergen), Annette Kelm (1975, lives in Berlin), James N. Kienitz Wilkins (1983, lives in New York), Sarah Ortmeyer (1980, lives in Vienna), Eulàlia Rovira (1985, lives in Barcelona), Francesc Serra i Dimas (1877–1967, Barcelona), Stuart Whipps (1979, lives in Birmingham), Haegue Yang (1971, lives in Berlin and Seoul), as well as meaningful things from the Friends of Fabra i Coats archive.
Do you trust things to write human history? Do things’ lives matter? Can a pebble destroy an empire if the emperor chokes at dinner? Would the pebble stand accused? Do you really think that if you stare at something long enough, it will reveal its secrets? Have you ever wondered why there is a hole in a donut? Did you ever own a pair of dungarees? Does a desire to write about a small car indicate some fear of its inadequacy? Does popcorn hold firm opinions? Is the key key? Are you familiar with the Luddites? Have you heard the expressions “how long is a piece of string?”, or “exceptional typical”?
The exhibition ‘Things Things Say’ springs from the past of Fabra i Coats as an industrial complex once dedicated to the manufacturing of cotton thread. The factory represented the first merger between a Catalan company and a foreign multinational and the first in Spain to offer its workers paid holidays. The exhibition evokes this novel and curious kind of place, a place comprised of many places and people, vastly different scales, temporalities, and values. Things, and spectres of things, that might at first seem exceptionally normal, apparently obsolete, or inert, each bring often-extraordinary stories or offer telling evidence, temporarily becoming new protagonists in the art centre community.
In the setting of the bygone factory, the works in the exhibition introduce a perspective on how the modern world has been shaped through complex and contentious relationships between humans and the web of life. Taking on the popular XVIII century genre of the ‘it-narrative’ in English literature and the approach of ‘object journalism’ against a background of world history and ecology, ‘Things Things Say’ and the exhibition ‘4.543 billion. The Matter of Matter’ (CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, 2017–18) are imagined as a diptych: two folds with the same hinge that tacks back-and-forth between deep time and microhistory, natural history and the history of capitalism.
Fabra i Coats: Contemporary Art Center of Barcelona
c. Sant Adrià 20
08030 Barcelona
(+34) 932 566 155
centredart@bcn.cat
https://www.barcelona.cat/fabraicoats/centredart
Opening hours:
Tuesday to Saturdays, 12 to 8 pm
Sunday and Holidays, 11 to 3 pm
Free guided tours every Saturday at 18 pm and Sundays at 12:30 pm
Limited capacity. Pre-registration at centredart@bcn.cat
→ RELATED CONTENT:
‘Things Things Say’
Fabra i Coats: Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona
17 October 2020 – 17 January 2021
Curated by Latitudes
An exhibition with works by Adrià Julià (1974, lives in Barcelona and Bergen), Annette Kelm (1975, lives in Berlin), James N. Kienitz Wilkins (1983, lives in New York), Sarah Ortmeyer (1980, lives in Vienna), Eulàlia Rovira (1985, lives in Barcelona), Francesc Serra i Dimas (1877–1967, Barcelona), Stuart Whipps (1979, lives in Birmingham), Haegue Yang (1971, lives in Berlin and Seoul), as well as meaningful things from the Friends of Fabra i Coats archive.
Do you trust things to write human history? Do things’ lives matter? Can a pebble destroy an empire if the emperor chokes at dinner? Would the pebble stand accused? Do you really think that if you stare at something long enough, it will reveal its secrets? Have you ever wondered why there is a hole in a donut? Did you ever own a pair of dungarees? Does a desire to write about a small car indicate some fear of its inadequacy? Does popcorn hold firm opinions? Is the key key? Are you familiar with the Luddites? Have you heard the expressions “how long is a piece of string?”, or “exceptional typical”?
The exhibition ‘Things Things Say’ springs from the past of Fabra i Coats as an industrial complex once dedicated to the manufacturing of cotton thread. The factory represented the first merger between a Catalan company and a foreign multinational and the first in Spain to offer its workers paid holidays. The exhibition evokes this novel and curious kind of place, a place comprised of many places and people, vastly different scales, temporalities, and values. Things, and spectres of things, that might at first seem exceptionally normal, apparently obsolete, or inert, each bring often-extraordinary stories or offer telling evidence, temporarily becoming new protagonists in the art centre community.
In the setting of the bygone factory, the works in the exhibition introduce a perspective on how the modern world has been shaped through complex and contentious relationships between humans and the web of life. Taking on the popular XVIII century genre of the ‘it-narrative’ in English literature and the approach of ‘object journalism’ against a background of world history and ecology, ‘Things Things Say’ and the exhibition ‘4.543 billion. The Matter of Matter’ (CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, 2017–18) are imagined as a diptych: two folds with the same hinge that tacks back-and-forth between deep time and microhistory, natural history and the history of capitalism.
Fabra i Coats: Contemporary Art Center of Barcelona
c. Sant Adrià 20
08030 Barcelona
(+34) 932 566 155
centredart@bcn.cat
https://www.barcelona.cat/fabraicoats/centredart
Opening hours:
Tuesday to Saturdays, 12 to 8 pm
Sunday and Holidays, 11 to 3 pm
Free guided tours every Saturday at 18 pm and Sundays at 12:30 pm
Limited capacity. Pre-registration at centredart@bcn.cat
→ RELATED CONTENT:
- Save the date: 19 September 2018 at 7 pm, opening Joan Morey ‘COLLAPSE. Desiring machine, working machine’, Centre d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona - Fabra i Coats 3 September 2018
- Photo report: Trip to Berlin Gallery Weekend 2018 and Cologne 9 May 2018
- Works by Stuart Whipps in the exhibition ‘4.543 billion. The matter of matter’, CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, 2017–18.
- Work by Stuart Whipps at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux
- Work and performance by Eulàlia Rovira and Adrian Schindler included in ‘Cream Cheese and Pretty Ribbons!’, Galerie Martin Janda, Vienna, 2018.
- Latitudes in conversation with Haegue Yang, Fundació Tàpies, Barcelona, 3 May 2017.
- Tote by Haegue Yang for Latitudes' 10º anniversary, 2015.
- Work by Sarah Ortmeyer in the exhibition 'Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes & des arts et techniques dans la vie moderne', Meessen de Clercq, Brussels, 2011.
- Work by Haegue Yang in the exhibition ‘Sequelism Part 3: Possible, Probable, or Preferable Futures’, Arnolfini, Bristol, 2009.
Cover Story—October 2020: Incidents (of Travel) Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico
Fri, Oct 2 2020
Latitudes' homepage www.lttds.org
“Cabo Rojo and the south-westernmost part of Puerto Rico wasn’t the first area that artist Sofía Gallisá Muriente and Marina Reyes Franco, Curator at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (MAC), spoke about exploring for the latest, and 13th, episode of Incidents (of Travel).”
→ Continue reading
→ After October 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 projects and activities.
→ RELATED CONTENTS:
→ After October 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 projects and activities.
→ RELATED CONTENTS:
- Archive of Monthly Cover Stories
- Cover Story—September 2020: States of emergency—Lola Lasurt’s ‘Children’s Game’ 1 Sept 2020
- Cover Story—August 2020: ‘Màquina possible’: going viral at Can Balaguer 1 Aug 2020
- Cover Story—July 2020: Nino Kvrivishvili’s silk roads: Incidents (of Travel), Tbilisi 1 Jul 2020
- Cover Story—June 2020: Mataró Chauffeur Service, since 2010 1 June 2020
- Cover Story—May 2020: Panama, back through the lens 4 May 2020
- Cover Story—March-April 2020: The Bolós Cabinet 3 March 2020
- Cover Story—February 2020: Carioca Incidents 3 February 2020
- Cover Story—January 2020: Safeguarding Gestures 2 January 2020