2019 in 10 monthly Cover Stories
Mon, Dec 23 2019Since our 10th anniversary in Spring 2015, Latitudes has published a monthly cover story on its website (www.lttds.org) featuring past, present or forthcoming projects, as well as research, texts, artworks, exhibitions, films, objects or travel related to our curatorial work.
2019 has been an active year of field trips. We have been lucky to visit ARCOmadrid, Buenos Aires (May 2019), Valencia (to research for an article and to participate in a conversation), Devon and Cornwall (September 2019), to Chicago and Detroit (hinted at in the September 2019 Cover Story), Helsinki (October 2019), Bilbao, Moscow (December 2019) and Amsterdam (and Reykjavík from the screen as featured in the April-May cover story).
Happy holidays and a joyful 2020!
→ RELATED CONTENT:
2019, art-agenda, Bilbao, Buenos Aires, Chicago, cover story, end of the year, field trip, Francesc Ruiz, Frieze, Joan Morey, Lara Almarcegui, latitudes, looking back, Mercedes Azpilicueta, Moscow, report
2019 has been an active year of field trips. We have been lucky to visit ARCOmadrid, Buenos Aires (May 2019), Valencia (to research for an article and to participate in a conversation), Devon and Cornwall (September 2019), to Chicago and Detroit (hinted at in the September 2019 Cover Story), Helsinki (October 2019), Bilbao, Moscow (December 2019) and Amsterdam (and Reykjavík from the screen as featured in the April-May cover story).
Happy holidays and a joyful 2020!
Cover Story—November 2019: ‘Fighting fires in Valencia: the 30-year story of the IVAM’.
Cover Story—October 2019: Mercedes Azpilicueta in Helsinki.
Cover Story—September 2019: ‘Polperro to Detroit’
Cover Story—Summer 2019: Francesc Ruiz’s Brexit Bristol sequel, ten years ago.
Cover Story—June 2019: ‘Thinking like a drainage basin: Lara Almarcegui’s ‘Concrete’.
Cover Story—May 2019: Buenos Aires in Parallel.
Cover Story—February 2019: Schizophrenic Machine.
Cover Story—January 2019: "Seesaw".
→ RELATED CONTENT:
- Cover Story—December 2018: "Treasures! exhibitionism! showmanship!" 1 December 2018
- Cover Story—November 2018: "Joan Morey—postmortem judgement reenactment" 1 November 2018
- Cover Story–October 2018: "I can’t take my eyes off you: Eulàlia Rovira and Adrian Schindler" 1 October 2018
- Cover Story–September 2018: Harald Szeemann’s travel sculpture, 10 September 2018
- Cover Story–August 2018: Askeaton Joyride, 2 August 2018
- Cover Story–July 2018: No Burgers for Sale 2 July 2018
- Cover Story—June 2018: Near-Future Artworlds Curatorial Disruption Foresight Group, 4 June 2018
- Cover Story – May 2018: Shadowing Roman Ondák, 7 May 2018
- Cover Story – April 2018: "Cover Story—April 2018: Dates, 700 BC to the present: Michael Rakowitz" 3 April 2018
- Cover Story – March 2018: "Armenia's ghost galleries" 6 March 2018
- Cover Story – February 2018: Paradise, promises and perplexities 5 February 2018
- Cover Story – January 2018: I'll be there for you, 2 January 2018
Cover Story—Summer 2019: Francesc Ruiz’s Brexit Bristol sequel, ten years ago
Mon, Jul 1 2019
Latitudes' homepage www.lttds.org
The July 2019 monthly Cover Story ‘Francesc Ruiz’s Brexit Bristol sequel, ten years ago’ is now up on Latitudes' homepage: www.lttds.org
“The British political system has collapsed… Once the high streets merely declined with their pound shops, gold traders, and bargain basements… Then they slumped as the "major downturn" began to bite… Yet as the economy finally plunged into the devastating recession, countless properties and businesses across the city of Bristol already lay in ruins… Widespread rioting and looting… Shortages of food and medicines… Spiralling inflation rates and a currency crash… The troops now struggle to enforce the state of emergency… The traitors flock to the southern ports, desperately seeking safe passage to Brussels…”
→ Continue reading
→ After this month it 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 CONTENT:
- Archive of Monthly Cover Stories
- Cover Story—June 2019: Thinking like a drainage basin: Lara Almarcegui’s ‘Concrete’ 1 June 2019
- Cover Story—May 2019: Buenos Aires in Parallel 1 May 2019
- Cover Story—March-April 2019: "Icelandic refraction" 3 March 2019
- Cover Story—February 2019: Schizophrenic Machine (1 February 2019)
- Cover Story—January 2019: “Seesaw” (7 January 2019)
Mariana Cánepa Luna review on Francesc Ruiz's 'Correos' exhibition for art-agenda
Fri, Mar 4 2016
View of Francesc Ruiz, “Correos,” garcía galería, Madrid, 2016. All images courtesy of garcía galería, Madrid. Photos by Roberto Ruiz.
garcía galería, Madrid
January 16–March 5, 2016
by Mariana Cánepa Luna
Francesc Ruiz’s second solo show at Madrid’s garcía galería delves into the visual communication of one of Spain’s most iconic institutions, the Sociedad Estatal Correos y Telégrafos—the national postal service, commonly known as Correos—whose graphic identity was created in 1977 by Spanish designer and artist José María Cruz Novillo (b. 1936). Ruiz’s interest is not limited to Cruz Novillo’s pervasive design, but more broadly includes Correos as an agent of distribution as well as the various commercial guises that come into play in this public service. Ruiz’s choice to focus this exhibition on the postal system, the pre-eminent pre-internet network, is not casual: through his characteristic strategy of “expanded comics” he has long been concerned with the potential of distribution and official versus alternative forms of circulation.
—> Continue reading...
Originally published on art-agenda.com on 25 February 2016.
View of Francesc Ruiz, “Correos,” garcía galería, Madrid, 2016.
View of Francesc Ruiz, “Correos,” garcía galería, Madrid, 2016.
Francesc Ruiz, Correos IV (Carton), 2015.
Francesc Ruiz, Correos IV (Carton), 2015.
Francesc Ruiz, Correos I (Bufanda), 2015.
Francesc Ruiz, THE MIDAS TOUCH, 2015.
Francesc Ruiz, MARCAR (6549/6567/6574/6547), 2015.
Francesc Ruiz, Correos III (Caja), 2015.
- Writing archive on Latitudes' website
- Latitudes hosts the MA Curating Contemporary Art students of the Royal College of Art in Barcelona, 7 October 2014
- art-agenda review of Andrea Büttner exhibition at NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona, by Latitudes, 21 July 2014.
- 'THE LAST REGISTER' AVAILABLE NOW! #3 issue of the 10 Latitudes-edited newspapers for 'The Last Newspaper' exhibition, New Museum 20 October 2010
- ‘Sequelism Part 3: Possible, Probable, or Preferable Futures’, Arnolfini, Bristol, United Kingdom, 18 July–20 September 2009.
Latitudes hosts the MA Curating Contemporary Art students of the Royal College of Art in Barcelona
Tue, Oct 7 2014 |
| Photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption). |
This morning we had an informal discussion with second-year students of the Royal College of Art's MA Curating Contemporary Art programme to present and reflect on our collaborations with three Barcelona-based artists – Martí Anson, Ignasi Aballí and Francesc Ruiz. It was an opportune moment to reconsider the old chestnut of "the artist-curator relationship" and the important role of artist advocacy and friendship in curatorial work.
Our first case study was with Martí Anson and was in the context of our participation in the 2010 iteration of 'No Soul for Sale – A Festival of Independents' at Tate Modern, coinciding with Tate's 10th anniversary. In our presentation we discussed how Martí's project "Mataró Chauffeur Service" began by the simple need for us to get to London and present our projects in the festival context, how we worked together with Martí in thinking which was the best format for the project to develop considering all the budget would have to be raised and that the invitation was limited to offering 25m2 at Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.
A year later, we invited Martí to present Joaquimandson, a project centred on researching and recuperating the fabrication of 1960s low-budget furniture designs his father produced for friends, family and clients in Mataró. A selection of the furniture was exhibited at Meessen de Clercq, Brussels, alongside works by Sarah Ortmeyer, Kasper Akhoj, Maria Loboda and Charlotte Moth
In the summer of 2009, Carol Yinghua Lu invited us to curate a new commission by Ignasi Aballí at the SUITCASE Art Project, the then project space of the Today Art Museum in Beijing. The resulting interventions in the eight display cases of the Yintai Centre, focused on absence, nothingness and invisibility, recurring concerns in Aballí's practice. A year after, we interviewed Ignasi for 'The Last Star-Ledger', the yellow issue of 'The Last Newspaper' publication we edited in the context of the New Museum show in 2010. The interview 'Rank and File' focused on his series of newspaper-cut outs from El País newspaper that he has been doing since 1997.
After a short presentation on the context of the 2009 exhibition "Sequelism part 3: Possible, Probable or Preferable Futures" at Arnolfini in Bristol, and Francesc Ruiz's stair-barrier commission, Ruiz discussed his Yayoi, Sukia and "The Green Detour" commission for Contemporary Image Collective in Cairo, and of course Francesc's weekly cartoons for the ten 'The Last Newspaper'. Here an interview with Francesc published in the third issue, 'The Last Register" and a profile of his work included in frieze magazine.
Thank you Galeria Estrany · de la Mota for the temporary gallery take over!
Related content:
- Ignasi Aballí's exhibition catalogue 'Nothing, or Something' available now, 26 October 2009
- flickr gallery with installation shots of "Sequelism Part 3..."
- Publication release: 'Mataró Chauffeur Service', a project by Martí Anson & Latitudes for 'No Soul for Sale', Tate Modern, London, May 2010, 11 March 2011
- Ignasi Aballí at ARTIUM and Latitudes' archive (Beijing & New York),20 May 2012
This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
At Last...'The Last Newspaper' catalogue!
Fri, Dec 10 2010
Latitudes' 10-week editorial residency at the New Museum has come to an end! Below photos of each of the 10 weekly newspapers we have published and that has been available every Wednesday from the museum galleries.
The Last Post (#1): See contents and learn about Dara Birnbaum's Media Habits here
The Last Gazette (#2): See contents and read a focus text by Julienne Lorz on Hans Haacke's News here
The Last Register (#3): See contents and read an exclusive interview with visual artist Francesc Ruiz here
The Last Star-Ledger (#4): See contents and read an exclusive interview with Portugal's newest newspaper's Creative Director, Nick Mrozowski here
The Last Monitor (#4): See contents and read an read about the history of newspapers' paperweights here
The Last Observer (#6): See contents and read an exclusive interview with Wolfgang Tillmans here
The Last Evening Sun (#7): Read contents and a text on Luciano Fabro's work 'Pavimento–Tautologia' here
The Last Journal (#8): See contents and read an exclusive interview with Rirkrit Tiravanija here 
The Last Times (#9): See contents and read Pablo Vargas Lugo's Picture Agent contribution here
The Last Express (#10): See contents and read the report on the 27 November talk between filmmaker Adam Chadwick and web veteran Jason Fry here.
Each of 'The Last...' has been edited and freely distributed from a micro-newsroom on the New Museum's third-floor gallery space.
The Last Post, The Last Gazette, The Last Register, The Last Star-Ledger, The Last Monitor, The Last Observer, The Last Evening Sun, The Last Journal, The Last Times and The Last Express comprise the catalogue of The Last Newspaper exhibition, curated by Richard Flood and Benjamin Godsill.
The final catalogue compilation includes over 100 contributors’ articles and exclusive interviews with participating artists as well as texts and special features concerning an expanded selection of individuals and organisations whose work addresses the news, the medium of the newspaper and their evolving form and function.
The catalogue will soon be available from the New Museum's Store for $15. More details to follow on the European distribution – see update here. The exhibition continues at the New Museum until 9 January 2011.
Table of contents of the 10 issues:
Issue 1: The Last Post
October 6, 2010
Cover: ‘Ink vs Link’. Press Room of The Richmond Planet, c. 1899
Editorial: ‘Welcome to The Last Post, The Last Gazette, The Last Register...’ by Latitudes
Picture Agent (Our singular picture agency): Kirstine Roepstorff
Media Habits: Dara Birnbaum
Exclusive Interview: ‘Double Trouble’, Lorena Muñoz-Alonso interviews TLN artist Pierre Bismuth
Feature: ‘Lights, Camera...Banality’, Kolja Reichert on Marie Voignier’s Hearing the Shape of a Drum (2010)
‘Working with Utopians’ by Richard Flood and Benjamin Godsill
The Next Newspaper (Profiling the organizations, projects, initiatives and individuals redefining ink-and-paper news): ProPublica
Fit to Print: ‘The (L.A.) Times it is A-Changin’ by Adam Chadwick
100 Years Ago…: The Salt Lake Herald-Republican
Cartoon: ‘The Woods: Teen Balls’ by Francesc Ruiz
Advertising: Ester Partegàs with Rob McKenzie
Issue 2: The Last Gazette
October 13, 2010
Cover: ‘Sorry for the Metaphor’. Special cover by Amalia Pica (and page 3)
Editorial: ‘34 People Like This’ by Latitudes
Focus: ‘A system is not imagined, it is real’, Julienne Lorz on TLN artist Hans Haacke’s News (1969/2008)
Dirt Sheet: Janine Armin on the newspaper-as-catalogue
Picture Agent: Ilana Halperin
The Next Newspaper: Clay Shirky
Photo essay: ‘Picture Mining’ by Ines Schaber
Obituary: ‘Sorry we’re dead’, Andrew Losowsky on TLN artist Adam McEwen’s Untitled (Caster) (2010)
Fit to Print: Adam Chadwick on hyperlocal citizen journalism
100 Years Ago…: Daily Public Ledger
In Brief: ‘Sac Bee Cuts’
Media Habits: Luis Camnitzer
Infographic: ‘U.S. Gazettes: Average Circulation’ by Irina Chernyakova
Cartoon: ‘The Woods: Money’ by Francesc Ruiz
Advertising: Ester Partegàs
Issue 3: The Last Register
October 20, 2010
Cover: ‘Exhibit: Exposed!’. Installing TLN wall text
Report: ‘Reaction Distraction’: Gwen Schwartz on the TLN talk with participating artists Nate Lowman, Aleksandra Mir and Sarah Charlesworth
Focus: Doryun Chong on TLN artist Adrian Piper’s Vanilla Nightmares (1986)
Media Habits: Dora García
Dirt Sheet: Janine Armin on truth and fiction
Picture Agent: Sergio Vega
The Next Newspaper: Paul Schmelzer on the American Independent News Network
Feature: ‘Broadcasting’, Joe Salzman on the representation of the journalists on TV
Exclusive interview: Latitudes with TLN cartoonist Francesc Ruiz
‘Patricia Esquivias on...The French Revolution’
100 Years Ago…: New York Tribune
Feature: ‘Hyphen-ated’ by Stephen Spretnjak
Photo essay: ‘Behind the Scenes’, Installing ‘The Last Newspaper’
Cartoon: ‘The Woods: Scratch Lottery’ by Francesc Ruiz
Advertising: Ester Partegàs with Adam Shecter
Issue 4: The Last Star-Ledger
October 27, 2010
Cover & Picture Agent: Special cover by Haegue Yang (and page 12)
Exclusive interview: ‘Rank and File’, Latitudes interviews Ignasi Aballí
Focus: ‘A Newspaper is Never Complete, Because News is Never Complete’, Interview with Ed Pierce from the archive of TLN partner organization StoryCorps + ‘StoryCorps Key Facts’
Focus: ‘Execution, Ejaculation, Exhibition’, Collin Munn on TLN artist Dash Snow’s Untitled (2006)
The Next Newspaper: Latitudes interviews Nick Mrozowsky about i
Dirt Sheet: Janine Armin on TLN artist François Bucher
‘Patricia Esquivias on... Communism’
100 Years Ago…: The Tacoma Times
Media Habits: Nicoline van Harskamp
Cartoon: ‘The Woods: Specialization’ by Francesc Ruiz
Advertising: Ester Partegàs with Rob McKenzie
Issue 5: The Last Monitor
November 3, 2010
Cover: ‘Today & Yesterday’. Gustav Metzger, Eichmann and the Angel, 2005
Exclusive interview: ‘Eating the Wall Street Journal’, Janine Armin with TLN artist William Pope.L
Feature: ‘Today and Yesterday’, Sophie O’Brien on Gustav Metzger
Picture Agent: Jordan Wolfson
The Next Newspaper: The San Francisco Panorama by Irina Chernyakova
Fit to Print: Adam Chadwick on the digital divide
100 Years Ago…: The Bisbee Daily Review
Media Habits: Mark von Schlegell
Focus: ‘Who Framed Sarah Charlesworth?’, Marcel Janco on TLN artist Sarah Charlesworth
Readers’ Lives: ‘Paper-Weight Champion’ by Harley Spiller
Feature: ‘Heralding the Gizmo’, Max Andrews on Kirstine Roepstorff
Readers’ Lives: ‘My Name is Marc D’Andre and I’m a Newspaper Addict’
Infographic: Facebook poll: where do @NewMuseum followers get their news?
Cartoon: ‘The Woods: Tools’ by Francesc Ruiz
Advertising: Ester Partegàs with Holly Coulis and Ridley Howard
Issue 6: The Last Observer
November 10, 2010
Cover: ‘Truth Study?’. Installation view of Wolfgang Tillmans Truth Study Center (NY) (2010)
Exclusive interview: ‘Is this True or Not?’, Lorena Muñoz-Alonso with TLN artist Wolfgang Tillmans
Focus: ‘There’s not Enough Rage These Days’, Greg Barton & Collin Munn on TLN artist Judith Bernstein
Picture Agent: Renzo Martens
Media Habits: City-as-School Students
Feature: ‘Relationship Status’ by Manuel Segade
Focus: ‘‘Old News’ to me’ by Lars Bang Larsen + ‘Nothing New About Old News’
Feature: ‘Editorial Curatorial’ by Marcel Janco
The Next Newspaper: Patch. Andrew Losowsky interviews Warren Webster, company president
Report: Irina Chernyakova on the ‘Perpetual Peace Project’ of TLN partner the Slought Foundation
Fit to Print: Adam Chadwick on The Huffington Post
100 years Ago…: The News-Herald
Cartoon: ‘The Woods: Backcover’ by Francesc Ruiz
Advertising: Ester Partegàs
Issue 7: The Last Evening Sun
November 17, 2010
Cover: 'Without Rain Partial Nights Aerial Days'. Special cover by Julia Rometti & Victor Costales (and page 12)
Feature: ‘Translating Rubble’, Kathleen Ritter on Mark Manders
Focus: ‘Floor Tautology’, Simone Menegoi on TLN artist Luciano Fabro’s Pavimento–Tautologia (1967) + ‘Fabricating Fabro’ by Shannon Bowser
Special pull-out poster: Installation pictures, checklist of TLN + ‘Your week in Headlines’ by New Museum Facebook and Twitter followers
Feature: 'Thomas Hirschhorn ♥ Queens', Charity Scribner on TLN artist Thomas Hirschhorn
Feature: 'Red and black all over, again' Irina Chernyakova interviews The Last... newspapers’ designer Chad Kloepfer
Focus: TLN project Jeffrey Inaba/C-Lab’s Cloudy with a chance of Certainty (2010) + ‘C-What?’ by Greg Barton
Media Habits: Michael Rakowitz
The Next Newspaper: WikiLeaks
Dirt Sheet: Janine Armin at the Taipei and the Gwangju Biennials
Picture Agent: Maria Loboda
Cartoon: ‘The Woods: Flavor of the month’ by Francesc Ruiz
100 Years Ago…: Palestine Daily Herald
Advertising: Ester Partegàs
Issue 8: The Last Journal
November 24, 2010
Cover: ‘Le Petit Journal’. Fernando Bryce, from the series L'Humanité (2009–2010)
Feature: 'L'Humanité', Yasmil Raymond on Fernando Bryce
Report: 'Independent Gazette', Lorena Muñoz-Alonso on The Independent by Damián Ortega and Can Altay’s The Church Street Partners' Gazette + Damián Ortega talks with Alona Pardo
Media Habits: Ester Partegàs
Brazil Focus: 'The Imaginery Newspaper', Chris Dercon on Luciano Figueiredo + ‘Jornal da Cidade’, Ana Paula Cohen on 28b
Focus: 'Boetti e His Double', Christian Rattemeyer on TLN artist Alighiero e Boetti's Corriere Della Sera (1976)
The Next Newspaper: Crowd Sourcing – spot.us / emphas.is, by Irina Chernyakova
Exclusive interview: 'The Days of This Society...', Desiree B. Ramos interviews TLN artist Rirkrit Tiravanija
Focus: 'Paper view' Gwen Schwartz with New Museum visitors
Focus: 'What's CUP?', on TLN partner organization The Center for Urban Pedagogy, by Gwen Schwartz and Max Andrews
Picture Agent: Adrià Julià
Focus: '29 Days Later', Sarah Wang on Larry Johnson’s TLN work Untitled Green Screen Memory (2010) + ‘2009 California Fires’ by Collin Munn
Cartoon: 'The Woods: Creation' by Francesc Ruiz
100 Years Ago...: The Marion Daily Mirror
Advertising: Ester Partegàs
Issue 9: The Last Times
December 1, 2010
Cover: Peter Piller, Pfeile (Arrows), Archiv Peter Piller 2000-2006
Exclusive interview: ‘Bedeutungsflächen, In Löcher blicken, Ortsbesichtigungen...’, Julienne Lorz talks to Peter Piller
Focus: ‘Press Victim’, Collin Munn on TLN artist Mike Kelley's Timeless/Authorless Series (1995) + ‘Mike on Mike’, Mike Santistevan on Mike Kelley
Picture Agent: Pablo Vargas Lugo
100 Years Ago…: The Seattle Star
The Next Newspaper: Web aggregation, by Irina Chernyakova
Focus: ‘Sarah’s Sex Sport-Trait’, Lorena Muñoz-Alonso on Fat, Forty and Flab-ulous (1990) by TLN artist Sarah Lucas
Media Habits: Carey Young
Dirt Sheet: Janine Armin on Allen Ruppersberg’s TLN work Screamed from Life (1982)
Focus: 'Dutiful Scrivener', Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere on their work for TLN + Mark Twain’s ‘Amended Obituaries’ (1902)
Focus and exclusive interview: ‘Graphite Testimony’, Greg Barton on Andrea Bowers’ Eulogy to One and Another (2006) featured in TLN
Exclusive interview: ‘Having It All’, Latitudes talks with TLN co-curator Richard Flood about TLN artist Robert Gober
Cartoon: 'The Woods: Fahrenheit 451' by Francesc Ruiz
Advertising: Ester Partegàs
Issue 10: The Last Express
December 8, 2010
Cover: Hans Haacke, News (1969/2008)
Exclusive interview: ‘I’m still nostalgic vis-à-vis image-making’, Rodrigo Moura interviews Mauro Restiffe
Dirt Sheet: Janine Armin on TLN participant Dexter Sinister’s The First/Last Newspaper (2009)
Report: 'Fit to Print?: The newsroom reinvented', Latitudes reports on the New Museum talk between Adam Chadwick and Jason Fry
100 Years Ago...: Los Angeles Herald
Focus: ‘Blu Dot: What?’, Gwen Schwartz and Mariana Cánepa Luna on TLN partner organization Blu Dot
The Next Newspaper: The Daily, by Irina Chernyakova
Focus: ‘Do you like milk and honey?’, Greg Barton on TLN artist Emily Jacir’s Sexy Semite (2000-2)
Picture Agent: Simon Fujiwara
Media Habits: Michalis Pichler
Feature: ‘Embrace the Ambiguity’, TLN co-curators Richard Flood and Benjamin Godsill reflect on the exhibition
Focus: ‘Reading the Reader’, Greg Barton and Irina Chernyakova on TLN partner organisation NetLab’s the New City Reader
Exclusive interview: ‘The Wires’, Janine Armin interviews TLN artist Hans Haacke
Cartoon: 'The Woods: The End' by Francesc Ruiz
Advertising: Ester Partegàs
New Museum
235 Bowery
New York, NY 10002, USA
Wednesday 11-6 pm; Thursday 11-9pm; Friday-Sunday 11-6 pm;
Monday and Tuesday closed
http://www.newmuseum.org
All images: Latitudes | www.lttds.org
Wednesday 11-6 pm; Thursday 11-9pm; Friday-Sunday 11-6 pm;
Monday and Tuesday closed
http://www.newmuseum.org
All images: Latitudes | www.lttds.org
'THE LAST EXPRESS' AVAILABLE NOW! #10 and final issue of the Latitudes-edited newspapers for 'The Last Newspaper' exhibition, New Museum
Wed, Dec 8 2010
FINAL ISSUE! Issue 10: 'The Last Express'(READ IT ON ISSUU)
Table of contents:
Cover: Hans Haacke News (1968–2008)
Exclusive interview: Inhotim curator Rodrigo Moura talks to artist Mauro Restiffe
Dirt Sheet column: Janine Armin on TLN Dexter Sinister's 'The First/Last Newspaper (November 4–21, 2009)'
Report: 'Fit to Print?: The newsroom reinvented', conversation at the New Museum between ‘The Last...’ columnist Adam Chadwick and web veteran Jason Fry
100 years ago...: 'Los Angeles Herald' (Los Angeles, California) 1900-1911, December 8, 1910
Focus: Blu Dot's self-assembly office furniture for the ‘The Last Newspaper’ partner organizations
The Next Newspaper (Profiling the organizations, projects, initiatives and individuals redefining ink-and-paper news): The Daily
Focus: 'Do you love milk and honey?', Greg Barton on Emily Jacir's TLN work 'SEXY SEMITE' (2000-02)
Picture Agent-Our singular picture agency: Simon Fujiwara
Media Habits: Michalis Pichler
'Embrace the Ambiguity', ‘The Last Newspaper’ curators Richard Flood and Benjamin Godsill reflect on the project’s journey.
Focus: 'Reading the Reader', Greg Barton and Irina Chernyakova on TLN partner organisation the 'New City Reader'
Exclusive interview: 'The Wires', Janine Armin talks to TLN artist Hans Haacke
Cartoon: 'The Woods: The End' by Francesc Ruiz
Advertising Department: Ester Partegàs
Watch this and other issues on Latitudes' youtube channel.
REPORT
'Fit to Print?: The newsroom reinvented'
27 November 2010: Public gathered for the talk on the 4th floor's 'Peace Arena'.On November 27, Latitudes organized a conversation at the New Museum between ‘Fit to Print’ filmmaker (and ‘The Last...’ columnist) Adam Chadwick, and Jason Fry, an expert in the challenges faced by newspapers in the digital world.
Jason Fry: I started at The Wall Street Journal in 1995 when they were a single free section and after thirteen years I had seen it become a full paper and go beyond its roots of being a financial paper to become a source of general news. It became a subscription site far ahead of anyone else. One reason why so many jobs are disappearing in newspapers now is that some top publishing executives do not understand the business they are in and are only slowly realizing that is suicide. They have become very confused between the mission of journalism and the business of journalism. The business is decaying, leaving the mission looking for new financial backing.
Jason Fry during the talkAdam Chadwick: How did journalism come to this breaking point? It began in the early 1960s, starting with how television affected the newspaper industry as it became the media where most people got their information from. Newspapers started changing their priorities back then...
Adam Chadwick during the talkJF: Newspapers were mostly family-owned operations, others were true public servants. Soon after some became owned by corporations and that changed the calculus for the business and how they made money. They were depending on performance and shareholders. Even in the 1990s newspapers were making a profit margin of 30% year after year, without really understanding the business they were in. Television has certainly created a star mentality amongst reporters which is not entirely working to the benefit of journalism. Newspapers have been historically successful because publishers essentially had a localized monopoly on printing and distribution. Retail stores would communicate their products by placing ads in a newspaper – the publishers owned distribution mechanisms. In the last ten to fifteen years that has changed, as advertising has moved to the internet – everything from furniture to job listings. Advertising was the business that funded journalism – the financial underpinnings have been knocked down.
AC: 80% of the content that is broadcast on National Public Radio comes from newspapers. It’s the same with CBS News – Russell Mitchell, for instance, has told me they are pulling content from The New York Times and The Washington Post. So the erosion of the newspaper is also hugely affecting the TV.
Public watching the trailer of 'Fit to print' screened at the beginning for the talk.JF: Newspapers used to compete with whoever started a new one locally; now they try to compete with the entire world. There is way too much content out there. How many thousands of movie reviews can you find online of the latest Harry Potter movie? And how many do we actually need?
AC: Is the web an echo-chamber of news, particularly with search engine optimization and ‘content farms’ dragging traffic? Or, if you boil it down, is it all only coming from The New York Times or The Washington Post? What is being lost now that the business model is broken? Investigative reporting?
JF: I’m not worried about journalism, I am worried about newspapers. We cannot confuse the two. The web has been wonderful to open up voices and to demystify reporting while letting a lot more people use their own expertise. But yes, investigative journalism is missing and it takes a long time and it’s very expensive. If The New York Times wants to cover a story on the dodgy doings of an organization, they will continue doing it, even if the organization goes into battle with lawyers, they won’t be intimidated. But that won’t happen if you are a blogger or freelancer no matter how smart or committed you are. I wonder if that kind of reporting has to be done institutionally though.
The public gathered for the talk on the 4th floor's 'Peace Arena'.AC: ProPublica is one of the only models, they are a non-profit for investigative reporting organisation with about thirty reporters and editors. [See The Last Post, page 9] They have deep pockets which enable them to pay competitive salaries. Other smaller examples are Investigative Voice from Baltimore led by Stephen Janis, who started it with Alan Forman, a former Baltimore Sun journalist. It focuses on crime and corruption in west Baltimore, which if you’ve seen The Wire you’ll know about. They don’t compete with the Baltimore Sun, as they cover stories they wouldn’t. They also operate thanks to donations but don’t know for how much longer they can continue working like this. How sustainable this model is, nobody knows. Even with grant organisations like the Knight Foundation, there is only so much money they can throw in. Carmen, what is your experience at The Trenton Times?
Carmen Cusido: I’m a full-time reporter now, we have five members in the staff – it used to be more than twenty. It does get tougher because we don’t have the resources to cover investigative stories. I have to pull out the resources on my own. I cover education, county news, and immigration news because I’m the only Spanish speaking reporter. When we were a larger organisation, we used to have lunch breaks and discuss things as a group, but now you really need to prioritise. It’s hugely difficult as you have to take work home with you and there are no boundaries with your private life; it’s a 24/7 job. Before you could go out and talk to people, get their trust and understand their perspective. Now I cannot even leave the desk, as I have to cover three stories and have to do everything over the telephone.
Carmen Cusido during the talkQuestion: Do people really want hard news anymore? Do newspapers understand their readers?
JF: Take the recent health care discussion: a hugely complex issue to follow and one that matters to all of us. Newspapers would cover the most recent political victory, but never show the bones of the story. This isn’t easy stuff. To the shock of newspaper editors, a lot of people read Wikipedia to understand complex situations as you get a straight forward recitation of what’s going on. That’s a model newspapers haven’t done as they continue to follow a telegraph system for getting the news out. It’s not satisfying readers’ needs.
AC: Most people I’ve spoken to want the hard news, the meat and potatoes of good journalism. Readers have stopped trusting newspapers for various reasons, some felt they were not catering a certain demographic of people or literally because news organizations have removed the newspaper dispenser boxes from poorer communities, to reach out to richer ones that would potentially advertise with them.
Question from the audience: What is your view on paywalls?
JF: News organisations should realize they are competing with the web. The success of The Wall Street Journal’s paywall has been in that it is targeted mostly at business readers, yet The New York Times covers everything. You pay for something, therefore, you think it’s valuable. Paywalls are getting in trouble in two ways: the hassle of entering a password, finding a reliable payment method. It’s not very immediate. Secondly, in the way they are implemented. If you are seeing nothing of the content you are about to buy you’re taking a blind leap of faith in paying for something you are likely going to read only once.
AC: It’s not cheap to produce content for the iPad either. If you put up a paywall you are no longer part of the linking culture such as The Huffington Post.
IF: You cannot create a walled garden that nobody can get into. You have to tease readers and let them share.
Question from the audience: Is hyper-local journalism the way to go? Or to be more brutal, what will ultimately save journalism?
AC: Paying reporters and establishing a sustainable business model. Does the non-profit model work? It does right now – but for how long?
– Transcribed by Mariana Cánepa Luna
All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org
'THE LAST TIMES' AVAILABLE NOW! #9 issue of the 10 Latitudes-edited newspapers for 'The Last Newspaper' exhibition, New Museum
Wed, Dec 1 2010
1 December 2010
Cover: Peter Piller, Pfeile (Arrows), Archiv Peter Piller 2000-2006.
Exclusive interview: ‘Bedeutungsflächen, In Löcher blicken, Ortsbesichtigungen...’, Julienne Lorz talks to Peter Piller
Focus: ‘Press Victim’, Collin Munn on TLN artist Mike Kelley's Timeless/Authorless Series (1995) + ‘Mike on Mike’, New Museum Guard & Tour Guide Mike Santistevan on Mike Kelleys's work
Picture Agent: Pablo Vargas Lugo
100 Years Ago…: The Seattle Star (Seattle, Washington) 1899-1947, December 1, 1910
Next newspaper: Web aggregation
Focus: ‘Sarah Sex Sport-Trait’, Lorena Muñoz-Alonso on TLN work Fat, Forty and Flab-ulous (1990) by TLN artist Sarah Lucas
Media Habits: Carey Young
Dirt Sheet: Janine Armin on Allen Ruppersberg‘s TLN work Screamed from Life (1982)
Focus: 'Dutiful Scrivener' by TLN artists Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere + Mark Twain’s ‘Amended Obituaries’ (1902)
Focus and exclusive interview: ‘Graphite Testimony’, Greg Barton on Andrea Bowers’ work Eulogy to One and Another (2006) featured in TLN
Exclusive interview: ‘Having It All’, Latitudes talks with TLN co-curator Richard Flood about TLN artist Robert Gober’s work Newspaper (1992)
Cartoon: 'The Woods: Fahrenheit 451' by Francesc Ruiz
Advertising: Ester Partegàs
EXCLUSIVE CONTENT!
Picture Agent: Our Singular Picture Agency
Pablo Vargas Lugo, artist
In 1996, NASA released images of the probable remains of extraterrestrial life in a meteorite of Martian origin found in Antarctica. Back then I quickly latched on to the enthusiasm caused by this news, and rather opportunistically used this image as part of an ambitious newspaper project. However, shortly afterwards, scientists disputed the authenticity of these supposedly fossilized bacteria, citing the possibility of an inorganic origin. Obviously, the said newspaper project lost its edge once the findings were disproved, and was shamefully filed at the end of my portfolio.
Last year the original scientific team found traces of organically produced materials on their treasured meteorite, using more potent microscopes; but the cheers didn’t last for long, as their evidence was contradicted by another group working in a lab across the hall, and headed by the brother of the leader of the first team. As questions on the urgent matter of extraterrestrial life are appropriately resolved between siblings in close quarters, and hoping for further validation of the original findings, I file this picture in this other newspaper project, as a personal reminder of the troubled relationship between art, trustworthiness and whatever we choose to call news.
2010, Ester Partegàs, Francesc Ruiz, latitudes, New Museum, New York, newspapers, Pablo Vargas Lugo, Peter Piller, Richard Flood, The Last Newspaper
Cover: Peter Piller, Pfeile (Arrows), Archiv Peter Piller 2000-2006.
Exclusive interview: ‘Bedeutungsflächen, In Löcher blicken, Ortsbesichtigungen...’, Julienne Lorz talks to Peter Piller
Focus: ‘Press Victim’, Collin Munn on TLN artist Mike Kelley's Timeless/Authorless Series (1995) + ‘Mike on Mike’, New Museum Guard & Tour Guide Mike Santistevan on Mike Kelleys's work
Picture Agent: Pablo Vargas Lugo
100 Years Ago…: The Seattle Star (Seattle, Washington) 1899-1947, December 1, 1910
Next newspaper: Web aggregation
Focus: ‘Sarah Sex Sport-Trait’, Lorena Muñoz-Alonso on TLN work Fat, Forty and Flab-ulous (1990) by TLN artist Sarah Lucas
Media Habits: Carey Young
Dirt Sheet: Janine Armin on Allen Ruppersberg‘s TLN work Screamed from Life (1982)
Focus: 'Dutiful Scrivener' by TLN artists Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere + Mark Twain’s ‘Amended Obituaries’ (1902)
Focus and exclusive interview: ‘Graphite Testimony’, Greg Barton on Andrea Bowers’ work Eulogy to One and Another (2006) featured in TLN
Exclusive interview: ‘Having It All’, Latitudes talks with TLN co-curator Richard Flood about TLN artist Robert Gober’s work Newspaper (1992)
Cartoon: 'The Woods: Fahrenheit 451' by Francesc Ruiz
Advertising: Ester Partegàs
Watch this and other newspapers on Latitudes' YouTube Channel
EXCLUSIVE CONTENT!
Picture Agent: Our Singular Picture Agency
Pablo Vargas Lugo, artist
In 1996, NASA released images of the probable remains of extraterrestrial life in a meteorite of Martian origin found in Antarctica. Back then I quickly latched on to the enthusiasm caused by this news, and rather opportunistically used this image as part of an ambitious newspaper project. However, shortly afterwards, scientists disputed the authenticity of these supposedly fossilized bacteria, citing the possibility of an inorganic origin. Obviously, the said newspaper project lost its edge once the findings were disproved, and was shamefully filed at the end of my portfolio. Last year the original scientific team found traces of organically produced materials on their treasured meteorite, using more potent microscopes; but the cheers didn’t last for long, as their evidence was contradicted by another group working in a lab across the hall, and headed by the brother of the leader of the first team. As questions on the urgent matter of extraterrestrial life are appropriately resolved between siblings in close quarters, and hoping for further validation of the original findings, I file this picture in this other newspaper project, as a personal reminder of the troubled relationship between art, trustworthiness and whatever we choose to call news.
'THE LAST JOURNAL' AVAILABLE NOW! #8 issue of the 10 Latitudes-edited newspapers for 'The Last Newspaper' exhibition, New Museum
Wed, Nov 24 2010
Issue 8: 'The Last Journal'(READ IT ON ISSUU)
24 November 2010
Cover: Fernando Bryce, from the series L'Humanité (2009–2010)
Feature: 'L'Humanité', Yasmil Raymond on Fernando Bryce
Feature: 'Independent Gazette', Lorena Muñoz-Alonso reports from London on two newspaper-inspired exhibitions: 'The Independent' (Damián Ortega at The Curve, Barbican) and ‘Can Altay: The Church Street Partners' Gazette’, The Showroom. Plus Damián Ortega exchanges impressions with curator Alona Pardo on his show.
Media Habits: Ester Partegàs, TLN advertising department artist
Brazil Focus: 'The Imaginery Newspaper', Chris Dercon on Luciano Figueiredo & Ana Paula Cohen on 'Jornal 28b', the newspaper produced during the 28th Bienal de São Paulo.
Focus: 'Boetti e His Double', Christian Rattemeyer on TLN artist Alighiero e Boetti's Corriere Della Sera (1976)
The Next Newspaper (Profiling the organizations, projects, initiatives and individuals redefining ink-and-paper news): CROWD-SOURCING – SPOT.US / EMPHAS.IS
Exclusive interview: 'The Days of This Society...', Desiree B. Ramos interviews TLN artist Rirkrit Tiravanija
Focus: 'Paper view' Gwen Schwartz asked New Museum visitors about their experiences of TLN
Focus: 'What's CUP?' by Gwen Schwartz and Max Andrews
Picture Agent-Our singular picture agency: Adrià Julià
Focus: '29 Days Later', Sarah Wang on TLN work Untitled Green Screen Memory (2010) by Larry Johnson + 2009 California Fires by Collin Munn
Cartoon: 'The Woods' by Francesc Ruiz
Advertising Department: Ester Partegàs
Browse this and other newspapers on Latitudes' Youtube channel.
'THE DAYS OF THIS SOCIETY...' New Museum curatorial fellow Desiree B. Ramos meets ‘The Last Newspaper’ artist Rirkrit Tiravanija
Above and below: Rirkrit Tiravanija, Untitled (the days of this society is numbered/September 15–October 12, 2008), 2010. Acrylic and newspaper on linen. 13 parts, all measuring 86 1/8 x 84 1/8 x 1 inch each. Courtesy the artist and Gavin Brownʼs enterprise.
There I am; it’s 5pm sharp, and I have just arrived at Gavin Brown’s newly-expanded Meatpacking District art gallery. I’m checking out the new space while I wait for Rirkrit, who suddenly pulls up around the back door with a few groceries; turns out he’s cooking a paella dinner for a few friends. We walk around the space for a few minutes and before heading towards the kitchen in the back of the gallery. There I see a few art handlers setting up pots, tables, and chairs for Rirkrit’s guests. “We don’t have much time, fire away,” he says, looking at the recorder and the paper I am holding in my hands. We sit on a wooden bench and start our conversation. I have met with Rirkrit several times, and besides being a great artist he is really down to earth and approachable. Every time I talk to him it is quite a busy scenario all around.
Desiree B. Ramos: How did you become an artist?
Rirkrit Tiravanija: By accident! I actually wanted to be a photojournalist and then mistakenly took some art history classes and became curious about art. I left the university from the history department, and I went to art school and I went to talk to the counsellor about the idea of studying art. So I had an appointment, I went to the meeting and I had to wait in this kind of lobby library. I was just standing there, looking around the shelf, and there was a book that stood out from the shelf from the Ontario College of Art, so I just pulled it out, took down the address and left. So it was kind of accidental.
DB: What was your first art piece?
RT: Umm, that’s a debate. It was actually an image that my father took of me; I made this plasticine sculpture on my ear, it was like an ear extension so that I looked like a Vulcan. So I would say that was my first sculpture.
DB: Do you still have it, or a record of it?RT: I have a picture that my father took, but I don’t have the actual plasticine. I guess I could always remake it.
DB: That would be fun...
RT: Yeah, that would be fun. Wow, you just gave me a new idea!
DB: What was your first political work?
RT: Well, it depends on what is political, you know, if personal is political. The first work I made in art school, officially made in art school, was about identity, about me being in the West and trying to figure out what that was. It was the first letter of the Thai alphabet drawn on cardboard, and then it had a Thai dictionary explanation with this alphabet in English. So in a way, that had a kind of cultural politics in it. I would say my work is always asking those kinds of personal political questions, I mean, about the self and about identity.
DB: What got you into cooking?
RT: It was the simplest thing I could do. I was working in Chicago on questions of, about, cultural artefacts. I worked on this conceptual work with the idea that these artefacts were displays, again, about identity also, and that they were missing; they were fragmented in a kind of gap, or there was a gap that I thought needed to be questioned.
DB: So it was natural for you to mix cooking with art?
RT: Exactly, because I was looking at pots, bowls and plates, and Buddha statues, and these were all objects of everyday use in my culture, so first I basically decided to just cook so that these things would always be in play and from that it became, well, it was always about the people. Of course, these are things that were used every day, which have been taken out of context, put onto display because they were valued in a different situation, and looked at through the Western eye as if they were somehow valuable in relation to the idea of culture. But for me, it was really about the life around the object.
DB: What’s your favorite thing to cook?
RT: I don’t have a favorite thing to cook.
DB: Nothing that gets you more into the act of cooking and engaging with people?
RT: It’s not so much about the cooking, not about the food or any particular dish; it’s about the act and then ... I think it’s always more communal to cook a big pot of curry than to make a piece of steak. But I actually just recently cooked a lot of steak for 2,000 people so I’m actually wrong, I could cook steak for a lot of people but, of course, it’s about the activity of cooking. When we made this kind of barbecue grill, Argentinean style, the asado, it’s a communal activity in itself. So, it was just a matter of scale. People normally do it with families but here we extended it so we could involve even more people at the same moment, so it became something else.
DB: Where do you get your ideas from? Are you inspired by something in specific or do they randomly come to you? Do you get them from looking at things, reading, or conversing with people?
RT: I think it’s all of that. It’s an ongoing process that I have and I think many artists have, which is like you’re always thinking, looking and everything that you experience becomes a question or a possibility. It’s a combination; I’m looking at certain things that I’m interested in but, on the other hand, I’m always very receptive to what is happening around me, and that becomes a trigger for other things.
DB: I’m wondering how you go on varying so much in terms of media when it comes to your work. Is it difficult to manoeuvre all these different types of expression, ranging from cooking to investigations about architecture...?
RT: I’m not interested in style, I’m interested in content and if all the elements make sense, they all have certain roots or they all certainly have a relation to each other. It could be an eight-hour video or a ten-hour cooking session, yet they all bring people to the same place.
DB: Do you consider your piece now on view in The Last Newspaper at the New Museum, Untitled (the days of this society are numbered/September 21, 2009), part of a series along with other text works you have recently produced?
RT: I consider them like signage, like stop signs, road signs. They form a series but they can make you pay attention to a certain place and a certain moment when you are confronted by them. I think about that layering of the newspaper, which is an activity I’m very interested in, and in the activity of information being gathered. There are just a lot of layers there for me, from the ads to the typeface of the newspaper itself. There’s a lot of coincidence – or accidents, or maybe even intentions – in the way that certain things get laid out on these pages. The sign makes you stop and pay attention to the other things happening behind it.
DB: Would you be able to explain further how that text, in particular, explores the social role of the artist?
RT: ‘The days of this society is numbered’ is attributed to the situation in 1968; obviously, at that time it was a provocation within the context of a manifestation against the society, or rather of society against a particular group of people, the institution, people in control. And I would say that, of course, those moments reoccur, those conditions can still exist.
DB: I’m sure everybody asks about the grammar…
RT: Yes, well, it’s a bad translation of French. The mistake makes people react.
DB: And the dates on the newspaper…
RT: Well some in the series do make a reference to, for example, the market crash of 2008, just at the end of George Bush’s presidency. It has all been commentary about the Bush years and certainly in conjunction with the market crash.
DB: What will we see from you in the near future? What are you working on now?
RT: I’m working on a film which will be about a retired Thai farmer in the countryside, and I hope that people will get to see it, or that it’s good enough for people to see it.
'THE LAST EVENING SUN' AVAILABLE NOW! #7 issue of the 10 Latitudes-edited newspapers for 'The Last Newspaper' exhibition, New Museum
Wed, Nov 17 2010
Issue 7: 'The Last Evening Sun'(READ IT ON ISSUU)
Table of contents:
Cover: 'Without Rain Partial Nights Aerial Days', a special cover by Julia Rometti & Victor Costales (continues page 12)
Feature: Artist and writer Kathleen Ritter misreads the incomprehensible newspapers of Mark Manders
Focus: Simone Menegoi on Pavimento, Tautologia (1967) by Luciano Fabro; plus notes on 'Fabricating Fabro' by the New Museum Chief Preparator, Shannon Bowser
Special pull-out poster: Installation pictures and a checklist of 'The Last Newspaper' and New Museum's Facebook fans and Twitter followers reporting a sentence of personal news
Feature: 'Thomas Hirschhorn ♥ Queens' Charity Scribner on Thomas Hirschhorn
Feature: 'Red and black all over, again' Irina Chernyakova follows the design and production of 'The Last Evening Sun'
Focus: Inaba/C-Lab's 'Cloudy with a chance of Certainty'
Media Habits: Michael Rakowitz
The Next Newspaper (Profiling the organizations, projects, initiatives and individuals redefining ink-and-paper news): WikiLeaks
Dirt Sheet column: Janine Armin at the Taipei and the Gwangju Biennials
Picture Agent-Our singular picture agency: Maria Loboda
100 years Ago…: 'Palestine Daily Herald' (Palestine, Texas) 1902-1949, November 17, 1910
Cartoon: 'The Woods: Flavor of the month' by Francesc Ruiz
'Advertising Department': Ester Partegàs
Browse this and other newspapers on Latitudes' Youtube channel.
EXCLUSIVE CONTENT!
Joshua Edwards, Exhibitions Manager at the New Museum, mops the floor and lays the previous day’s New York Times to create Fabro’s Pavimento, Tautologia (1967). Photos: Latitudes
Curator and writer Simone Menegoi on Luciano Fabro’s ‘Pavimento–Tautologia’, the earliest work in ‘The Last Newspaper’
My grandfather had a sports car, a Lancia Fulvia coupé. He always kept it polished and would only use it on certain occasions. He was so afraid of getting it dirty that he never took off the plastic wrapping that covered the seats when he bought it, even after years of use. His zeal was not particularly unusual in Italy those years (the 1970s), as many people left on the protective plastic film that brand new sofas or chairs would have when purchased. This habit came from two decades earlier when memories of war and poverty were still lurking. The first consumer goods purchases were the result of laborious saving, so things had to last for as long as possible.
Pavimento–Tautologia (Floor–Tautology) by Luciano Fabro is based on the same logic that drove people like my grandfather to keep the car seats wrapped: a logic that gave up the pleasure of being able to touch the leather or the fabric of the seat in exchange for the satisfaction of knowing that, beneath the protective plastic, the surface was kept intact. In Fabro’s work, a portion of the floor (sometimes an entire surface) is cleaned, polished with wax and then covered with newspapers. Beyond the ephemeral protection of paper – “a cheap and lightweight Carl Andre” as Jörg Heiser has written – the floor disappears, we cannot appreciate its lustre, but we know it’s being kept immaculate, and we know this will be preserved, even if we walk on the papers.
In 1978, a decade after presenting the work for the first time in Turin, Fabro wrote "in my town... the floor is cleaned and then covered, at least for the first day, with papers, newspapers or rags to avoid getting it dirty... on that first day, in those two or three days that it was covered with paper, no one saw the floor clean. This particular way of accounting for the labour and its preservation, not for ostentation but as a private affair, seeks to ensure that the effort made doesn’t end up in anything too quick.”
Newspaper placed on top of the mopped floor. Photo: LatitudesThe comparison between the newspapers on the floor and plastic on the new car seats, however, applies only within certain constraints. There is a fundamental difference between the work required for you to buy a car and the work involved in cleaning the floor. In Italy, in those years, the second had a clear gender dimension: it was a domestic job regarded as part of the housewife’s duties. Fabro was fully aware of this and it is no accident that he presented Pavimento for the first time in a gallery inside a private apartment, a space that preserved a domestic environment. Fabro was also aware of the position he was adopting as a male artist presenting it as a piece. The sculptor sided with the housewife, with her modest and under-appreciated task that was repeated daily. "We experience seeing our work destroyed daily" Carla Lonzi, a friend and admirer of Fabro, wrote in 1970 in the Manifesto di rivolta femminile (Manifesto of feminist revolt), a key text of Italian feminism.
Forty years onwards, what is the effect of Pavimento in the context of an American museum, one so different from when the work was presented for the first time? Is it still effective? The vernacular appearance of the work, its provincial and quotidian dimension is probably hard to grasp today, particularly outside Italy. The political aspect – gender politics – is certainly less visible now than it was in the late 1960s, although its historical importance cannot be questioned. Pavimento remains current with the idea of "care", caring as an essential dimension of the relationship with a work. Pavimento consists only of this: in taking care. "Every experience related to this handmade piece is linked to maintenance," Fabro wrote in 1967. A piece that is not to be contemplated, but to be done. Its only legitimate spectator is the one who realised it and looked after it. In short, perhaps it is its only spectator. (Since to the rest of us, the polished floor remains invisible.) Fabro referred to caring in a material sense, as a symbol of all the other ‘cures’ that a piece would require: of a critical or political kind, for instance. In this sense, Pavimento was for him a sort of manifesto, as he stated that a work can never be taken for granted, but must be constantly redefined, reiterated, and defended. In its ‘infrathin’ layer of paper and floor wax, Pavimento–Tautologia guards a surprising depth of meaning.
– Translated from Italian by Mariana Cánepa Luna.
(sidebar) FABRICATING FABRO
Installation view of Luciano Fabro's Pavimento-Tautologia (1967) on the 4th floor of the New Museum.Courtesy of the Luciano Fabro Estate. Photo courtesy: Katie Sokolor / Gothamist.
Shannon Bowser: "I've been installing the piece every weekday since the exhibition opened in October. The layout uses all the pages of an issue yet the arrangement can be a little haphazard. We can lay the pages facing different directions and it doesn't need to be too precise or follow a set dimension, even though the barriers that surround the piece help as a guide to square it up to the wall. I throw down extra sheets here and there but it usually works out to be the same size each day overall no matter how many pages there were in the previous day's issue.
We have a specific subscription for the New York Times for this piece. Every morning I pick up a copy to keep it for the following day and I have with me the one from yesterday ready to go. I find myself reading the news while installing the work and so sometimes I have to pause to read properly, and I end up finding out about stuff that I would normally wouldn't. I wish I had time to read the New York Times every day because there are so many good articles. Sometimes I flip through pages when I'm laying them down, so if there's an annoying full page with glaring women facing upwards I can choose to turn it around. It's really interesting to see yesterday's newspaper all laid out on the floor and realize the actual physical size of it because you cannot really read The New York Times on the subway for example, because it's so big – it's so impractical!
Doing it definitely adds time to my morning routine so I've been coming in early every morning to be able to install the Fabro and then get everything else sorted as all these shows require a lot of maintenance. But it has been really interesting, I definitely feel like I'm participating in an artwork."
Watch a 'making of' video of the piece here.
Shannon Bowser (Chief Preparator) installs Pavimento–Tautologia on Wednesdays, Thursday and Fridays.
Victoria Manning (Registrar) takes charge on Saturdays and Joshua Edwards (Exhibition Manager) on Sundays.
'THE LAST MONITOR' AVAILABLE NOW! #5 issue of the 10 Latitudes-edited newspapers for 'The Last Newspaper' exhibition, New Museum
Sat, Oct 30 2010
Issue 5: The Last Monitor
(READ IT ON ISSUU)
November 3, 2010
Cover: ‘Today & Yesterday’. Gustav Metzger, Eichmann and the Angel, 2005.
Exclusive interview: Janine Armin on 'The Last Newspaper's work 'Eating the Wall Street Journal' by William Pope L.
Cover Story: Sophie O’Brien on Gustav Metzger
‘Picture Agent: Our singular picture agency’: Jordan Wolfson, artist
The Next Newspaper: Irina Chernyakova on ‘The San Francisco Panorama’
Fit to Print: Adam Chadwick on the digital divide
100 Years Ago…: ‘The Bisbee Daily Review’, 1901–1971, November 3, 1910
Media Habits: Mark von Schlegell, science-fiction novelist and art essayist
Focus: Marcel Janco on Sarah Charlesworth
‘Readers’ Lives’: 'Paper-Weight Champion', Inveterate collector Harley Spiller – who recently completed a masters thesis, ‘On Newsstands Now! A History of Paperweights and Newsstand Advertising’ – weighs up the ‘pisapapeles’, ‘Papierbeschwere’, and 鎮紙 of the world.
Feature: ‘Heralding the Gizmo’ Max Andrews on Kirstine Roepstorff
‘Readers’ Lives’ by Marc D’Andre
Infographic: Facebook poll: where does the New Museum's audience get their information?
Cartoon: ‘The Woods: Tools’ by Francesc Ruiz
‘Advertising Department’: Ester Partegàs with Holly Coulis and Ridley Howard
EXCLUSIVE CONTENT!
All images courtesy Harley Spiller. Photos: Micki SpillerInveterate collector Harley Spiller – who recently completed a masters thesis, ‘On Newsstands Now! A History of Paperweights and Newsstand Advertising’ – weighs up the ‘pisapapeles’, ‘Papierbeschwere’, and 鎮紙 of the world.
Newsstand paperweights – the usually cast-iron weights that saw their heyday in the 1950s on newsstands across the world – bear the insignia of newspapers and magazines like the New York Times, Toronto Star, Saturday Evening Post, Time, Life, and Newsweek. The Mortimer Spiller Company, Inc., my parents’ advertising and sales promotion business, manufactured and sold these weights from the late 1940s through the mid-1980s. A century of their concerted collecting and documentation efforts has resulted in an archive of 151 unique international newsstand weights, plus the original carved mahogany prototypes, news-dealer aprons and caps, business correspondence, photographs, almost 1,000 news clippings, and more.
Advertising and the media have always been linked. The nation’s first mass-market newspapers and magazines arrived in the 1890s and 1900s, their very existence made possible by advertising fees collected from large corporations and retailers. The first weights to hold down newspapers may have been well-worn horseshoes, which were readily available at the onset of the 20th century, about the time automobiles started replacing horses. Paperweights forged expressly for newsstand use started appearing shortly thereafter, and by mid-century, they were a fixture on the urban scene.In the 1950s and 1960s, some of the thousands of weights Spiller was making were shipped overseas by Life, Time, and the Herald Tribune. These weights were deployed on the handful of major newsstands that sold international publications in London, Paris, and other European capitals. Of the 45 total weights my father collected overseas, from the 1970s until 2005, there are 37 in languages other than English.
The weights Spiller collected on Barcelona’s Las Ramblas, where throngs of people go shopping, sit in public, people-watch, and while away the time, run the gamut from a rudimentary and well-used bent-steel ingot with its painted name La Visión, almost completely obliterated, to gorgeous heavily lacquered enamel and polished metal specimens from periodicals like ABC and El Mundo.
One of the heaviest weights in the collection is a 3 1/4 pound (1.5 kg) metal and plastic rectangle for the German weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel, its colors reminiscent of Germany’s national flag. Less sophisticated weights made from blocks of wood in countries like Thailand and Venezuela reflect these nations’ less-industrialized position in the world, yet the New York Times has also used wooden weights, and other American publications, such as The National and BackStage have found it cost-effective to produce low-end particle board models.
In the late 20th century people in the United States bought, according to Thomas C. Leonard, “less than half as many newspapers per capita than the Japanese, the Finns, and the Swedes; the British and the Germans also were better customers”. According to the United Nations Development Programme’s 2009 Human Development Report, these six nationalities have the same 99% adult literacy rate, but New York City, perhaps because it is a great city for walking, seems to have the most newsstands and weights per capita in the world. Literacy is but one crucial factor in the sale of print media. Three other important factors in the prominence of newsstands and weights are a well-established culture of media advertising; locations within swarming transportation hubs where people have time to kill, or near heavily trafficked pedestrian areas (or in the case of Los Angeles, near slow-moving traffic jams); and a lively competition among an abundant array of publications. Despite the fact that Cubans are voracious consumers of news and boast an adult literacy tied for first in the world at 99.8 per cent, for example, politics on La Isla are such that news dealers are few and far between. One scantily stocked Havana news shanty opens on Sunday mornings only. Its lines are long, its newspapers are much in demand.In Japan, newspapers and magazines are commonly sold at train stations and other relatively wind-free indoor or semi-sheltered locations. Publications are ordinarily kept in pristine condition until they are handed over to the customer. Outdoor newsstands are uncommon but some Japanese dealers put their publications in outdoor wire racks specially designed to obviate the need for weights.
The paperweight for The China Press (which goes by the name ‘Overseas Chinese Newspaper’ in Chinese) claims its “rich content” can “heal the homesickness of overseas Chinese” by allowing readers to “contact the feeling” of the mainland. No matter where they are published or distributed, newspapers and magazines provide a link to their land of origin.
Back in Manhattan, for many years, the place to find print journalism from near and far was Hotalings, also known as the Out of Town Newspaper Agency. Hotalings was often the only link between people in New York and their lands of birth. For many others, it was the best place to look for jobs and news from outside Gotham. Its huge selection meant customers could find everything from Pravda to Paris Match to Polish Engineering. Founded in 1905, Hotalings newsstands were located over the years in various parts of Times Square, from teeming street corners to the former New York Times Building to a tourist information kiosk on Broadway and 46th Street. New York City’s ever-shifting demographics have long been paralleled by Hotalings’ clientele. “We don't get the crowds from the theater district anymore. People don't roam in Times Square like they used to. It used to be mostly Western Europeans or people interested in Europe,” said Arthur Hotaling, the founder’s grandson, in 1988. “Now we get a lot more people from Latin America and the third world.” Despite efforts in the 1990s to spruce up the store and expand its offerings, the 105-year-old business is today a wholesale-only operation.
The pageantry of print media is in flux. Single-copy sales are down and impulse purchases are more sporadic. Will newspapers and magazines go the way of buggy whips and coin-operated telephones? No one knows, but one thing’s certain – the cast-iron cameos known as newsstand paperweights will last a long time.Submit your story by emailing ‘The Last Monitor’: [email protected]