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Cover Story–May 2018: "Shadowing Roman Ondák"

Latitudes' home page www.lttds.org

The May 2018 Monthly Cover Story "Shadowing Roman Ondák" is now up on Latitudes' homepage: www.lttds.org

This month we revisit Roman Ondák’s exhibition ‘Some Thing’ at The Common Guild, Glasgow, in 2013, during which Latitudes was invited to give a talk. Roman’s show comprised a series of composite works in display cases. Early still-life paintings and pencil drawings from his student days in Slovakia in the 1980s were coupled with the actual objects depicted – a chair, a length of rope, a helmet, a vase (a detail of "Shadow, 1981/2013" is the work above), and so on, which were placed in a deadpan way on top of them.

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—> After May it will be archived here.

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



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Commentary text on Roman Ondák now available via The Common Guild' website


Compilation of commentary texts. Photo: The Common Guild.

The Common Guild regularly commissions artists, writers and curators a series of short texts to accompany their ongoing exhibitions programme. These commentaries are uploaded as pdfs on their website, and can be printed and easily compiled – see image as a suggestion for how to do this. 

Latitudes' commentary text on Roman Ondák's work and exhibiton "Some Thing" (12 October – 14 December 2013) has just been uploaded and can be found as a pdf here. The text follows Latitudes' talk on 21 November 2013 (audio here).

Commentary text can be downloadable as a pdf here.



This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. You can also 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.
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Report from Glasgow: Lecture at The Common Guild and studio and gallery visits

Late last month we made a trip to Glasgow at the invitation of The Common Guild to give a lecture about the work of Roman Ondák, who currently has an exhibition there (until 14 December). We took the opportunity to stay a few days in Glasgow to see exhibitions and do some studio visits with the many artists who call the city home. A big thank you to Kitty Anderson and Katrina Brown for the invitation and hospitality.

Tea and biscuits with our talk at The Common Guild.
In our lecture on the evening of 21 November we talked about some key works by Ondák – including SK Parking (2001) and The Stray Man (2006) – suggesting how fin-de-siècle Vienna provides a lens with which to focus on its negotiation of both the cliché of "life as art" and the grim stereotype of "the everyday" in the former Eastern Europe. 

Ondák's show at The Common Guild filled the galleries of its present home in a Victorian townhouse near Kelvingrove Park with a series of works in vitrines which couple early still-life paintings and drawings by the Slovakian artist alongside the actual objects depicted. A chair, a length of rope, a twig, a vase, and so on, become caught in a humorous riddle about reality and its representation and when the "real" work of an artist can be said to have begun.


Roman Ondák at The Common Guild.
The previous day we'd visited the studio of the amazing filmmaker Luke Fowler, who was about to go to Huddersfield for their Contemporary Music festival and a collaboration with David Toop. We also met with Corin Sworn, who was one of the three artists representing Scotland at the 2013 Venice Biennial, though in fact none of them was actually Scottish. Scotland + Venice 2013 – whose final week was during our visit to Glasgow – was conceived and produced by The Common Guild. (We were also delighted to be able to meet the great filmmaker Duncan Campell, another of the Venice artists later in the week).

We'd also had time to check out the eclectic Hunterian Museum (the oldest museum in Scotland), Aaron Angell & Jack Bilbo's show at SWG3 Gallery, as well as The Modern Institute's two venues. At the Aird's Lane branch was a show by furniture designer Martino Gamper while the Osborne Street HQ, a former bathhouse, has a show by Chris Johanson.


The Modern Institute Aird's Lane: Martino Gamper.
The Modern Institute at Osborne Street: Chris Johanson.
Aaron Angell & Jack Bilbo's show at SWG3 Gallery.
In the south of the city, we were glad to be able to visit Tramway, the multi-use arts venue that's been running since the late 1980s and now also hosts the Scottish Ballet, as well as a huge exhibition space with an important history of shows. It hosted an impressive show by Lucy Skaer entitled "Exit, Voice and Loyalty", as well as a "House Style" a series of commissions made in response to Roundabout a series of film from the 1960s and 1970s designed to promote Britain as a progressive world leader to south and south-east Asian audiences. 

Lucy Skaer at Tramway: Exit, Voice and Loyalty takes its title from economist Albert O. Hirschman’s essay on how change comes about through dissent.
Lucy Skaer: tenmoku glazed ceramics.
Lucy Skaer: works based on ticket punch holes.
House Style, curated by Panel: film by Rob Kennedy.
Thanks to Kyla McDonald at Glasgow Sculpture Studios we visited their fantastic high-spec fabrication facilities – which include a ceramics studio, wood and metal-shop and media suites – and met with a number of artists based their. Claire Barclay had just completed a commission with Artlink commemorating the bicentenary of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. We talked with Lauren Gault about her show at Generator Projects in Dundee, and Sarah Forrest about her recent Margaret Tait Residency in Orkney. Alex Impey told us about his interest in Michael Baxandall's "Period Eye" and Sarah Tripp had just finished edited 24 Stops, a work commissioned by Camden Arts Centre. 

Claire Barclay's studio at GSS.
Lauren Gault's studio at GSS with blue-glazed ceramic forms.
Moreover, Glasgow Sculpture Studios have an exhibition space which was hosting a show by Haegue Yang entitled Journal of Bouba/kiki, the result of a residency and Haegue's evident delight in exploring some new fabrication techniques. 


Haegue Yang's exhibition at GSS included these macramé mobiles.
Haegue Yang at GSS. Yang's residency resulted in a number of new technical innovations, included a motorized system for a new Venetian-blind installation and these ceramic hand gestures.
Finally we were happy to spend time with Carles Congost, who by Catalan coincidence, opened an exhibition at CCA Glasgow on Friday 22 November. Curated by Emma Brasó with works by Congost and Henry Coombes, "Man of the Year" runs until 26 January next year.
Fear Your Talent: Carles Congost in the shadows!

This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. You can also 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.
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Lecture on Roman Ondák at The Common Guild, Glasgow, 21 November, 6pm.

Roman Ondák, 'Shadow', 1981/2013 (Detail). Oil painting on MDF, glass, display case; 141x50x50 cm; Courtesy of the artist.

| UK |
  
Lecture on Roman Ondák at The Common Guild, Glasgow, 21 November, 6pm.

Coinciding with Roman Ondák's (Žilina, Slovakia, 1966) exhibition 'Some Thing' at The Common Guild (12 October – 14 December 2013), Latitudes will offer its thoughts on the work of the artist. Latitudes has presented Ondák’s work and written about his practice for various publications including Tate ETC.

Latitudes will talk about some key work by Roman Ondák – including SK Parking (2001) and The Stray Man (2006) – suggesting how fin-de-siècle Vienna provides a lens with which to focus on its negotiation of both the cliché of "life as art" and the grim stereotype of "the everyday" in the former Eastern Europe.

The talk will be recorded and later available on the website of The Common Guild.

Places are free but limited. 

Call +44 (0)141 428 3022 or email to book: [email protected]
21 Woodlands Terrace, Glasgow, G3 6DF

Roman Ondák, SK Parking, 2001. Slovakian Skodas were parked behind the Secession building in Vienna for two months. Event and installation at Secession, Vienna. 
Courtesy of Martin Janda, Vienna.

| ES | 

Ponencia sobre Roman Ondák en The Common Guild, Glasgow, 21 noviembre, 18h.

Coincidiendo con la exposición 'Some Thing' de Roman Ondák (Žilina, Slovakia, 1966) en The Common Guild (12 October – 14 December 2013), Latitudes dará una charla sobre la obra del artista. Latitudes ha presentado su obra y escrito sobre su práctica artística en publicaciones como Tate ETC.


Latitudes hablará sobre algunos trabajos clave de Roman Ondák incluyendo SK Parking (2001) y The Stray Man (2006) que sugieren como el fin-de-siècle vienés ofrece un lente que nos permite analizar cómo su trabajo negocia constantemente el cliché de la "vida como arte" y el sombrío estereotipo de "lo cotidiano" en la antigua Europa del Este.

La conversación será grabada y disponible a través de la web de The Common Guild.

Acceso libre, aunque limitado. 
Reservas: +44 (0)141 428 3022 o [email protected]
21 Woodlands Terrace, Glasgow, G3 6DF



This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. You can also 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.
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dOCUMENTA (13) artists and Latitudes

dOCUMENTA (13) continues in Kassel until 16 September 2012. Over the years we've had the pleasure to work with many of the featured artists in various ways, from commissions to symposia, to interviews. Here's a partial view of dOCUMENTA (13) through the projects of Latitudes.

Amy Balkin's work in the Friedericianum documents her attempt to have the world's atmosphere added to the UNESCO World Heritage List. Latitudes presented an earlier iteration of this work, Public Smog (2004-ongoing), in Greenwashing. Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin in 2008. She also contributed to Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook with her This is the Public Domain Project (2003–ongoing).



Amy Balkin's 'The is the Public Domain', in Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook. Photo: Robert Justamante. Courtesy: Latitudes.


Both Greenwashing and Land, Art also included the work of Maria Thereza Alves (whose work about Lake Chalco in Mexico City is included in the Ottoneum), the latter with the text 'No Brazil Without Us' by Alves, together with another dOCUMENTA (13) artist, Jimmie Durham. Latitudes also presented Alves' work 'The Sun' (2006, 5'03") in the 2008 film programme ‘A Stake in the Mud, A Hole in the Reel. Land Art's Expanded Field 1968–2008', which began at the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City and toured to eight more venues between April and October 2008. The film features the story of Viganella in the Italian Alps, a small village surrounded by a steep valley that does not allow any direct sunlight during the winter months. Viganella's 200 inhabitants decided to place a large computer-operated mirror at a strategic angle on the south-facing slope on the mountainside in order to reflect the sun on the village’s main piazza.

Mariana Castillo Deball – as uqbar, with Irene Kopelman – was one of the four exhibitions in Latitudes' 2009 series Amikejo at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC), León, Spain: "a psychedelic chiral ecosystem, featuring hanging papier-mâché epiphyte sculptures and ... fables among non-humans and drawings of hybrid creatures”. Castillo Deball was also part of our film programme What are we going to do after we’ve done what we’re going to do next?, for The Uncertainty Principle, at MACBA, Barcelona in June 2009, a project which functioned as a 'trailer' for Sequelism Part 3: Possible, Probable, or Preferable Futures, the exhibition we curated with Nav Haq at Arnolfini, Bristol, 18 July–20 September 2009. Both the latter projects featured Castillo Deball's Nowhere was Tomorrow (2007) her film which weaves the stories of a defunct accelerating ageing machine, a sprawling fig tree and the remains of a Roman bath in Serbia. 


Mariana Castillo Deball, 'It rises or falls depending on whether you're coming or going. If you are leaving, it's uphill; but as you arrive it's downhill', 2006. 'Extraordinary Rendition', NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona, 22 March – 19 May 2007. Photo: Robert Justamante. Courtesy: Latitudes.

Extraordinary Rendition, which took place at NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona, 22 March–19 May 2007, included Castillo Deball's installation It rises or falls... (2006) in which she revisited a popular legend around the looting and transportation of the colossal stone statue of Tláloc to the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City in a series of lithographs. These were presented in parallel with a selection of audio interviews with antique dealers in Amsterdam and Barcelona, who discussed their profession's role in the creation of value, and the uncertainties of the market. Roman Ondák, whose work appears in the Neue Galerie at dOCUMENTA (13) was also part of Extraordinary Rendition with the work Untitled (Traffic), 2001, as was Natascha Sadr Haghighian (whose work in Kassel can be found on a slope of the Karlsaue park), here with the short video Embargo Embargo (2003) and the sound installation Elsewhere 3 (2005/7).

Mario Garcia Torres's film Abandoned and Forgotten Land Works That Are Not Necessarily Meant To Be Seen As Art (2004) was – alongside Francis Alÿs – a part of the Latitudes' film programme A Stake in the Mud, A Hole in the Reel. Land Art's Expanded Field 1968–2008, which premiered at the Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico, in April 2008, before a seven-venue tour in Europe. Judith Hopf & Deborah Schamoni's Hospital Bone Dance (2005) was part of X, Y, etc.! a video programme made for Artissima 15 in 2008 which was motivated by the methodological project of Charles Fort, while an article about Emily Jacir by Greg Barton featured in The Last Newspaper (The Last Express).

Renata Lucas's work at dOCUMENTA (13) imagines a fictional monument underneath Kassel. She was one of the four artist tutors who led a week-long workshop during Campus, the unaccredited art school directed by Latitudes for the Espai Cultural Caja Madrid Barcelona in summer 2011.


'Emergencies and Risk' seminar at the Sharjah Biennial 8 symposium. Michael Rakowitz with Susi Platt (Architecture for Humanity's leading post-Tsunami reconstruction designer, Sri Lanka) and Mehdi Sabet (Associate Professor, Architecture & Interior Design, School of Architecture and Design, AUS). Photo: Latitudes.

Michael Rakowitz
led a seminar on 'Emergencies and Risk' as part of the three-day symposium Latitudes organized for the 8th Sharjah Biennial, the United Arab Emirates in April 2007. An interview with Rakowitz by MoMA Ps1 curator Peter Eleey – entitled 'We Sell Iraqi Dates' – featured in UOVO/14 Ecology, Luxury & Degradation, which Latitudes guest edited in summer 2007. (UOVO/14 also includes an article by dOCUMENTA (13) Core Agent Chus Martínez on Arturas Raila).


Lawrence Weiner's work for dOCUMENTA (13) is inscribed on the glass wall in the Rotunda of the Fridericianum "brain". In 2008, Latitudes presented a new project with Weiner in Barcelona's Fundació Suñol entitled THE CREST OF A WAVE. On 9 September 2012, 7pm, Latitudes will be reading Weiner's "008: Lawrence Weiner: IF IN FACT THERE IS A CONTEXT" as part of dOCUMENTA (13) "Readers’ Circle: 100 Notes–100 Thoughts".


  Gustav Metzger's RAF/ Reduce Art Flights. Photo: Latitudes.

Gustav Metzger's RAF/ Reduce Art Flights project was implemented and presented as part of Greenwashing. Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin in 2008, and later included in the 2009 exhibition 'Gustav Metzger, Decades 1959–2009' at the Serpentine Gallery in London. Serpentine Gallery curator Sophie O'Brien wrote this feature on Metzger for Latitudes' project The Last Newspaper (The Last Monitor). 

During The Dutch Assembly at ARCOmadrid 2012, Kunstverein Amsterdam's 'KV Auction' event was hosted by Gabriel Lester, whose Music for Department Stores (2012) can be found (or rather listened to) in Kassel's Kaufhaus. Lester has a further work in the vast Karlsaue Park – Transition 2012 (2012) – which also hosts the work of Maria Loboda. Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes & des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, at Meessen De Clercq, Brussels, Belgium, 25 February–16 April 2011 included Loboda as one of its five artists. She presented two works which incorporated printed fabric patterns inspired by the designs of Sonia Delaunay, Lotte Frömmel-Fochler and Mitzi Friedmann-Otten. Furthermore, The Dutch Assembly at ARCOmadrid 2012 also featured Rabih Mroué as the guest of BAK, Utrecht.


Tue Greenfort, Untitled, installation of 3 transparent-sided Eurobins outside the exit ramp of Frieze Art Fair, Regents Park, London, October 2008. Photo: Latitudes

Also in the Karlsaue Park is The Worldly House, a multispecies archive project put together by Tue Greenfort. Latitudes collaborated with Greenfort on several occasions, notably for a public-realm commission in London in conjunction with the Royal Society of Arts, and through contributions to the magazine UOVO/14, the exhibition Greenwashing, and the publication Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook. The latter two projects also included works by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. (And in addition, dOCUMENTA (13) artists Francis Alÿs, Brian Jungen and Natascha Sadr Haghighian also featured in Land, Art.)

Haris Epaminonda and Daniel Gustav Cramer's work at dOCUMENTA (13) take over two floors and the attic of an office building behind the Hauptbahnhof. 'The Garden of Forking Paths', which Latitudes presented at Maisterravalbuena, Madrid, 28 May–31 July 2009, featured the duo's The Infinite Library (2007–ongoing), a seemingly arbitrary archive of spliced publications. Elsewhere in the Hauptbahnhof 'constellation' Lara Favaretto's Momentary Monument IV (2012) comprised a dramatic mass of scrap metal. Mariana Cánepa Luna's interview with Favaretto was published in UOVO 16, January 2008 (pdf here). Haegue Yang was the subject of an interview by Doryun Chong in UOVO/14, Ecology, Luxury & Degradation.


Haegue Yang on the cover of 'The Last Star-Ledger' as part of 'The Last Newspaper', New Museum, New York, 2010. Photo: Latitudes
Yang was also our cover star for The Last Newspaper's The Last Star-Ledger, as well as presenting a major installation as part of Sequelism Part 3: Possible, Probable, or Preferable Futures, Arnolfini, Bristol. (You can download a pdf of Max Andrews's 2009 essay for 'Towards Haegue Yang’s Blind Rooms', published in Haegue Yang. Symmetric Inequality / Desigualdad Simétrica, Sala Rekalde, in English or Español. Sticking with writings, you can check out Andrews's essay on Dora García for Frieze here).


Ines Schaber, Picture Mining. In The Last Newspaper's The Last Gazette, 2010. Photo: Joel Stillman.

Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri – as eXplo – spoke at the symposium Latitudes put together for 'Art, Ecology and the Politics of Change', Sharjah Biennial 8, United Arab Emirates, in April 2007. Last but not least, Ines Schaber's work at dOCUMENTA (13) explores the history of the former monastery, workhouse, and correctional facility at Breitenau. For The Last Newspaper's The Last Gazette, Schaber presented Picture Mining, her research into Lewis Hine in the context of the Corbis archive, housed in a former mine in Pennsylvania.

Read our report dOCUMENTA (13), with photos and critics' comments. Full photo tour here.



All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (unless credited otherwise in the caption)

Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Articulo sobre 'Rendición Extraordinaria' en ABCD por Arnau Puig


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SAVE THE DATE: Latitudes-curated 'Extraordinary Rendition' opens 22 March, NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona

above: Wilfredo Prieto, Grease, Soap and Banana, 2006
Private collection, Brussels; Courtesy NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona

'Extraordinary Rendition'
22 March – 19 May 2007
NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona


Artists: Mariana Castillo Deball (MX/DE), Gardar Eide Einarsson (NO/US), Rainer Ganahl (AT/US), Carsten Höller (BE/SE), Christopher Knowles (US), Josephine Meckseper (DE/US), Roman Ondák (SK/DE), Wilfredo Prieto (CU) and Natascha Sadr Haghighian (DE)

Curated by Latitudes


Extraordinary Rendition brings together the work of nine international artists in response to notions of risk, frictionlessness and the abstraction of potentialities. It includes work in video, sculpture, audio, painting and drawing.

Following a pre-modern discourse of danger, the emergence of risk – alongside the invention of insurance – proposed a world governed by immaterial markets that were no longer regulated by order, but by fundamental uncertainty, threat and insecurity. For its contextual backdrop, the exhibition attempts to think of the present as a cultural mythology through manifestations and elaborations of this principle. One could cite the orchestration of illusory energy and finance markets, the manipulation of governance and property, or the clandestine rendition of terror suspects. (Correspondingly, the Enron scandal, corruption uncovered by operation Malaya in Marbella, or CIA stop-offs in Palma de Mallorca, for example.) Furthermore, there are the unpredictable mega-weather events or reckless insurgencies that are also symptomatic of an ever more stochastic and violent reality which similarly escapes an ordinary logic of probabilities or worth. Social sensitivity to issues of security are rapidly changing our society. Alongside this global picture, our everyday lives – especially with respect to children – are increasingly subject to a suffocating psychology of risk aversion.

Attempts to render risk – notoriously, the US Department of Homeland Security's colour-coded threat advisory system – are necessarily unspecific and speculative to an extraordinary degree. In an attempt to explore this territory, the exhibition conceives of a platform that is both purely fictional and yet perfectly real, that is completely banal while exceptional, and is potentially valuable yet utterly worthless. Extraordinary Rendition explores multivalent artistic modes – from the journalistic to the comical, the literal to the allusive – within a set-up (the commercial art trade) that is, after all, itself a paradigmatic immaterial/dematerialised market.

For more information, please contact:
Rebeca Blanchard,
[email protected]
T +34 93 342 57 21
F +34 93 342 57 22
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