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

Text on Crystal Bennes in the “Betwixt 2024” published by the Freelands Foundation

(Above and below) Betwixt 2024 publication. Photos by Andy Stagg, Courtesy of the Freelands Foundation.


In February 2023Latitudes was commissioned to write a text on the artistic practice of Crystal Bennes for “Betwixt 2024”, publication produced by the Freelands Foundation as part of their Freelands Artist Programme initiative supporting emerging artists across the UK since 2018.

The book has now launched, coinciding with the opening of an exhibition across four sites in central and north London between 17–23 February 2024, in which Bennes participates alongside 19 other artists based in Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, and Sheffield.

For the occasion, Bennes presents “When Computers Were Women” (2021), a project on the connections between the histories of computational and weaving technology, that stemmed from a residency at CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) in 2018 when she was struck by the formal similarities of the computer programming punchcards she saw in a cabinet and an older form of data-processing technology: the punch cards used to control the rods and hooks that raise the warp threads of looms fitted with Jacquard devices.

The artists featured in the “Betwixt 2024” publication are Adebola Oyekanmi, Adele Vye, Alaya Ang, Beau W. Beakhouse, Christopher Steenson, Crystal Bennes, Dorothy Hunter, Gail Howard, Jacqueline Holt, Kedisha Coakley, Kirsty Russell, Maria de Lima, Phoebe Davies, Rian Treanor, Sadia Pineda Hameed, Susan Hughes, Tara McGinn, Theresa Bruno, Thulani Rachia, Tyler Mellins and Zara Mader.

Writers in the publication are Alice Bucknell, Beth Hughes, Candice Jacobs, Cindy Sissokho, Colette Griffin, Ingrid Lyons, Jamie Sutcliffe, Jenny Richards, Kandace Siobhan Walker, Khanyisile Mbongwa, Lara Eggleton, Lucy A. Sames, Maria Howard, Mariana Cánepa Luna, Mark Peter Wright, Max Andrews, Precious Adesina, Rosalie Doubal, Sunshine Wong, Susannah Dickey, Theo Reeves-Evison and Zakiya McKenzie.

Published in 2024, 370 pages. Designed by Kristin Metho.

Available for £15 (plus shipping) here.

(Above and below) Crystal Bennes, “When Computers Were Women” (2021). Courtesy of the artist.


A month later, on March 16, 2024, Bennes will present her new project “O (Copper, cotton, cobalt, crude, naphtha, bauxite, palm)” (2023) at Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh, culminating her two-year residency there and at the Edinburgh College of Art on the Freelands Artist Programme. Involving tapestry, sculptural installation, video, and performance, her project addresses the rapaciousness and sophistry of commodities trading, an arena in which financial instruments are used to bet on the future value of raw materials and natural resources including crude oil, metals, coffee, and cotton.

Latitudes’ text will also be available on the Talbot Rice Gallery website and in the gallery booklets for £2 at the venue. 

Crystal Bennes, Fragment from “O (Copper, cotton, cobalt, crude, naphtha, bauxite, palm)”, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.

A Classicist with a PhD from King’s College London, Dr Crystal Bennes previously worked in the U.S. Senate, and as an architecture and design journalist before retraining as an artist. She studied for an MFA at Aalto University, Helsinki, and École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and obtained a practice-based PhD at Northumbria University, Newcastle.

Her practice is grounded in long-term projects that foreground archival research, durational fieldwork, and material experimentation. Recent bodies of work include an ongoing photographic exploration of an artificial island in Sweden created entirely out of radioactive waste from industrially-produced synthetic fertiliser and the experimental recreation of a nineteenth-century hay meadow based on a myth of unintentional plant migration from Italy to Denmark. 

Recent exhibitions include Platform: Early Career Artist Award, Edinburgh Art Festival (2023); Flora Italica, Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen (2023); Mauvaise Herbes, Centre Photographique d’Ile-de-France; No Island is an Island, Landskrona Foto International Festival; and Hermes and the Veil, Gallery North, Newcastle (all 2021).

Klara and the Bomb (2022) her first photobook—charting connecting threads between the U.S.’s nuclear weapons research, women programmers, the invention of modern computers, and nuclear colonialism—was published by The Eriskay Connection in 2022, and it was shortlisted for the Photo Text Book Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles in 2023. 

Between 2022 and 2024 she was a resident at Talbot Rice Gallery as part of a Freelands Foundation Artists programme. Together with Tom Jeffreys, she is the editor of The Peninent Review.


RELATED CONTENT:

  • Latitudes’ writing since 2005.
  • Text on Lara Almarcegui’s Graves (2021) in “Sketches of Transition. An Atlas on Growth and Decay” edited by Michele Bazzoli, 27 Oct 2023
  • Text on Crystal Bennes for the Freelands Foundation Artists programme, 31 May 2023
  • Latitudes’ essay “Un suelo para las historias del arte del futuro” [Soil for Future Art Histories] in TBA21’s catalogue “Futuros Abundantes”, 22 Jan 2023
  • Max Andrews reviews Bruno Zhu’s exhibition “I am not afraid”, Cordova, Barcelona, 30 Mar 2022
  • Nueva publicación: “Passió i cartografia per a un incendi dels ulls” (MACBA, 2022), 2 Mar 2022 
  • New publication: “Things Things Say” now available, 28 Feb 2022
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Text on Lara Almarcegui’s Graves (2021) in “Sketches of Transition. An Atlas on Growth and Decay” edited by Michele Bazzoli

Photo: @michele_bazzoli

Premièred at Onomatopee on October 25th, 2023, during the Dutch Design Week, t
he publication “Sketches of Transition. An Atlas on Growth and Decay” brings together the practices of five different artists in relation to the key concept of transition. 

Edited by Italian-born, Amsterdam-based artist 
Michele Bazzoli the book includes a reprint of Latitudes’ text on Lara Almarcegui’s project “Graves” originally commissioned to accompany her solo exhibition at Centre d’Art la Panera, Lleida, curated by Cèlia del Diego and on view between February and June 2021.

Gazing through various apertures of “Sketches of Transition”’s featured researches, each chapter could be considered a sketch of transition in itself, as an annotation on an alternative perspective on the material and visual spheres of our existences. With the same freedom of sketching on a blank paper sheet, the contributions investigate and probe new modes of production of beauty and wonder. 

Sketches of Transition. An Atlas on Growth and Decay
Editor: Michele Bazzoli
Designer: Kai Udema
Texts: Maria Barnas, Michele Bazzoli, Dagmar Bosma, Yana Naidenov, Lara Almarcegui’s text by Latitudes (Max Andrews & Mariana Cánepa Luna)
Publisher: Onomatopee project
Date of publication: October 2023
ISBN: 978-94-93148-98-7


(Above and two below) Views of Michele Bazzoli’s exhibition “Sketches of Transition. An Atlas on Growth and Decay” and namesake publication at Onomatopee, Amsterdam. Courtesy Michele Bazzoli.



Latitudes’ text presents the two new projects Almarcegui produced for her solo exhibition at Centre d'Art la Panera. “Rocas y Materiales de la Cordillera de los Pirineos” (2021) was an austere ordered list presented as a large wall text detailing the quantities of rocks and materials that constitute the Pyrenees (two images below). 

(Above and below) Installation view of “Graves” exhibition at the Centre d'Art la Panera, Lleida. Photos Jordi V. Pou.


The second work, “Gravera” (2021), was a large video projection documenting the industrial complex operated by Sorigué near the town of Balaguer, which temporarily stopped operations for a day (images of the public programme organised during the exhibition below). 

(Above and below) “Gravera aturada” was an event organised by the Centre d'Art la Panera, Lleida, on 19 February 2021, as part of Lara Almarcegui’s solo exhibition. For the occasion, citizens were able to take a tour around Sorigué’s gravel mining and processing plant near Balaguer, which stopped its activity for a day. Photos Jordi V. Pou.








RELATED CONTENT:
    • Cover Story – April 2021: Lara Almarcegui at La Panera, 2 Apr 2021
    • 18 marzo 2021, 18:30h: Mesa redonda “Transformación geológica y construcción artificial” con Lara Almarcegui y Juan Guardiola, 8 Mar 2021
    • 11 de julio 2019, 19h: Conversación con Lara Almarcegui en el Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM), 25 June 2019
    • ‘Thinking like a drainage basin’ essay in the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Lara Almarcegui. Béton’, 8 April 2019
    • Works by Lara Almarcegui included in the exhibition “4.543 billion. A Matter of Matter”, CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, 2017
    • Report from Urdaibai: commission series ‘Sense and Sustainability’, Urdaibai Arte 2012 22 July 2012
    • Launch of the monograph ‘Lara Almarcegui. Projects 1995–2010’, edited by Latitudes at 'The Dutch Assembly', ARCOmadrid, 15 February, 19-20h 14 February 2012
    • Photos 'In conversation with Lara Almarcegui', 19 May 2011, TENT, Rotterdam 6 June 2011
    • Portscapes bus tour: Lara Almarcegui wasteland tour and Christina Hemauer & Roman Keller's 'Postpetrolistic Internationale' choir performance 10 November 2009
    • Text on Lara Almarcegui's project for Expo Zaragoza 2008 and exhibition at Pepe Cobo, Madrid 28 October 2008
    • Catálogo 'Estratos', texto sobre Lara Almarcegui, PAC Murcia 2008, 28 Mayo 2008
    • Lara Almarcegui, “Wastelands” in “LAND, ART: A Cultural Ecology Handbook”, Royal Society of Arts and Arts Council England, 2006
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    Profile on Crystal Bennes for the Freelands Foundation Artists programme

    Detail of Crystal Bennes’ Jacquard piece in progress, 2023. Produced in the context of the Freelands Artist Programme. Courtesy of the artist.

    In February 2023, Latitudes was commissioned to write a text on the artistic practice of Crystal Bennes“Betwixt 2024”, the next iteration of publications of the Freelands Artist Programme, will be out in February 2024, coinciding with an exhibition of Bennes’ work alongside 19 other artists based in Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Sheffield.

    Involving tapestry, sculptural installation, video, and performance, Bennes’ new project will be exhibited at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, in March 2024. It addresses the rapaciousness and sophistry of commodities trading, an arena in which financial instruments are used to bet on the future value of raw materials and natural resources including crude oil, metals, coffee, and cotton. 

    The Freelands Artist Programme supports and grows regional arts ecosystems by fostering long-term relationships and collaborations between emerging artists and arts organisations around the UK. Between 2022–24, Freelands is working with four organisations – g39 in Cardiff, PS2 in Belfast, Site Gallery in Sheffield, and Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh. Over the two years, each of these venues is supporting a cohort of five artists to take part each year – each artist participating in the programme receives an annual grant of £5k, as well as the opportunity to take part in talks, workshops and other programmed events and a budget for travel, additionally, some organisations offer studio space and/or exhibitions. 


    (Above and below) Stills from Crystal Bennes’ film that will accompany her forthcoming work produced in the context of the Freelands Artist Programme (2023). Courtesy of the artist.


    Dr Crystal Bennes is an American artist, researcher, writer, and educator based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her practice is grounded in long-term projects that foreground archival research, durational fieldwork, and material experimentation. Recent bodies of work include an ongoing photographic exploration of an artificial island in Sweden created entirely out of radioactive waste from industrially-produced synthetic fertiliser and the experimental recreation of a nineteenth-century hay meadow based on a myth of unintentional plant migration from Italy to Denmark.

    Klara and the Bomb, her first photobook—charting connecting threads between the U.S.’s nuclear weapons research, women programmers, the invention of modern computers, and nuclear colonialism—was published by The Eriskay Connection in 2022. She recently completed an AHRC-funded practice-based PhD in fine art at Northumbria University researching the histories and uses of gendered representations of nature in the sciences and exploring feminist critiques of physics. Between 2022 and 2024 she is a resident at Talbot Rice Gallery as part of a Freelands Foundation Artists programme. Together with Tom Jeffreys, she edits The Peninent Review.

    Detail of Crystal Bennes’ Jacquard piece in progress, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.

    Freelands Foundation is a London-based non-profit organisation set up in 2015 by Elisabeth Murdoch, supporting UK-based artistic practice through residencies, workshops, screenings, and resources for teachers and educators; an annual Freelands Award to an organisation championing mid-career women artists. 

    Title: “Betwixt 2024”

    PublisherFreelands Foundation

    Release date: February 2024

    Writers: include Precious Adesina, Alice Bucknell, Susannah Dickey, Rosalie Doubal, Lara Eggleton, Colette Griffin, Maria Howard, Beth Hughes, LatitudesIngrid Lyons, Khanyisile Mbongwa, Zakiya McKenzie, Theo Reeves-Evison, Jenny Richards, Lucy A. Sames, Cindy Sissokho, Jamie Sutcliffe, Kandace Siobhan Walker, Sunshine Wong, and Mark Peter Wright.


    RELATED CONTENT:

    • Latitudes’ writing since 2005.
    • Latitudes’ essay “Un suelo para las historias del arte del futuro” [Soil for Future Art Histories] in TBA21’s catalogue “Futuros Abundantes”, 22 Jan 2023
    • Nueva publicación: “Passió i cartografia per a un incendi dels ulls” (MACBA, 2022), 2 Mar 2022
    • New publication: “Things Things Say” now available, 28 Feb 2022
    • Mariana Cánepa Luna’s Amsterdam Roundup for art-agenda, 17 December 2019
    • Max Andrews’ Valencia Feature in frieze magazine, November-December 2019, 2 November 2019
    • Max Andrews’ text for Rasmus Nilausen's solo exhibition ‘Bluetooth’ at Copenhagen's Overgaden, 16 September 2019
    • “Thinking like a drainage basin” essay in the catalogue of the exhibition “Lara Almarcegui. Béton”, 8 April 2019
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    Cover Story, February 2023: Soil for Future Art Histories

    February 2023 cover story on www.lttds.org


    The February 2023 monthly Cover Story “Soil for Future Art Histories” is now up on our homepage: www.lttds.org

    “Latitudes’ essay ‘Un suelo para las historias del arte del futuro’ (Soil for Future Art Histories) is included in the newly-released catalogue of Futuros Abundantes (Abundant Futures), an exhibition of works from the TBA21 Collection curated by Daniela Zyman that took place at the C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía in Córdoba last year. → Continue reading (after February 2023 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, January 2023: Claudia Pagès’ ‘Gerundi Circular’, 2 Jan 2023
    • Cover Story, December 2022: “The Melt Goes On Forever. David Hammons and DART Festival, 1 December 2022
    • Cover Story, November 2022: Jorge Satorre’s Barcelona, 1 Nov 2022
    • Cover Story, October 2022: Stray Ornithologies—Laia Estruch, 3 Oct 2022
    • Cover Story, September 2021: Erratic behaviour—Latitudes in conversation with Jorge Satorre, 31 August 2021
    • Cover Story, July–August 2022:  Incidents (of Travel) from Seoul, 1 July 2022
    • Cover Story, June 2022: Cyber-Eco-Feminist Incidents in Attica, 1 June 2022
    • Cover Story, May 2022: Things Things Say in print, 2 May 2022
    • Cover Story, March 2022: The passion of Gabriel Ventura, 1 March 2022
    • Cover Story, February 2022: Rosa Tharrats’ Textile Alchemy, 1 Feb 2022
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