Fri, Feb 19 2016
Latitudes in the international
Summit 'Synapse 1' at New Rex of the National Theatre of Greece. 'Session
II: Rethinking Institutions', November 18, 2015. Photo: Athens Biennale.
Documentation of two recent presentations by Latitudes in Athens and Donostia–San Sebastián is now online.
Entitled Omonoia (‘concord’ in Greek), the Athens Biennale 2015–17 is directed by Massimiliano Mollona
and will grow over the next two years with the help of anthropologists,
researchers, activists, academics, artists and civic organisations. In
November 2016, Omonoia launched with the summit Synapse 1: Introducing a laboratory for production post-2011. Latitudes
participated in the “Rethinking Institutions” session alongside Maria
Hlavajova (founder and artistic director of BAK, Utrecht); political
economist Leo Panitch; Emily Pethick, director of The Showroom, London;
Documenta 14 Artistic Director Adam Szymczyk; public services expert
Hilary Wainwright, and Amalia Zepou, Athens Vice Mayor for Civil Society
and Municipality Decentralization.
By way of introduced we discussed the “Near-Future Artworlds Curatorial Disruption Foresight Group”, the forum for megatrends and the future of institutions of contemporary art that has taken place in May 2015 at the Vessel / MADA (Monash Art Design and Architecture) 2015 International Curatorial Retreat in Bari, Italy; in August at Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco, and in November at Eastside Projects, Birmingham, UK. We followed this with some geological speculation that in “digging deeper” both literally and figuratively, we perhaps find new institutional models. How do we think about artworks and institutions in terms of tens of thousands of years, for example.
See the video here (in English).
Public
lecture organised by consonni as part of LaPublika. Tabakalera,
Donostia–San Sebastián. Wednesday, November 11, 2015. Photo: Consonni. |
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Also in November, Latitudes led the workshop “Beyond The Roundabout, or How Public Is Public Art?” for consonni/LaPublika at Tabakalera. As part of this Latitudes gave a public lecture. The workshop addressed the work of artists who conceptualize or actualize their works against a backdrop of vast stretches of time or topological change. In the public lecture we made various transects through our curatorial projects determined by the public sphere, raw materials and their transformation. “From the zinc which led to an Esperanto micro-nation, to the air of a Beijing shopping centre, or the dead trees of printed news, Latitudes will join some traits and ideas around ‘human resources’, extractive modernity, obsolescence and the carbon cycle.”
Hear the audio here (in Spanish).
Related content:
2016, Athens Biennale, Near Future Artworlds, public art, report, rethinking institutions, seminar, video documentation