Report from Madrid: Apertura 2014 gallery and museums programme in tweets, 11–13 September
Mon, Sep 15 2014More photos documenting the same shows we saw or others that didn't make it to the twitter for lack of time (or network):
"Antología del desajuste adverbial" by Abigail Lazkoz at Galería Bacelos.
Ángel Vergara at Marta Cervera.
"B. Wurtz.
Works 1972 - 2014" at Maisterravalbuena.
Dora García at Juana de Aizpuru.
Browsing one of the books that hanged from Thonet bentwood rocking chairs at Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's installation "Spendide Hotel" at the Palacio de Cristal, the venue run by the MNCARS located at the Parque del Retiro.
Related posts:
Report from Glasgow: Lecture at The Common Guild and studio and gallery visits (4 December 2013)
Report from Paris: FIAC week, 21–28 October 2013 (5 November 2013)
Report from Athens: "AGORA", 4th Athens Biennale 2013 (4 November 2013)
Report from New York: Gramcsi Monument, visiting critics at ISCP, Carol Bove at The High Line and galleries route (23 September 2013)
Report from Dublin and Derry-Londonderry: research trip to Ireland, 8–14 March 2013 (16 March 2013)
Report from Urdaibai: commission series 'Sense and Sustainability', Urdaibai Arte 2012 (22 July 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.
Looking back – Visiting Robert Smithson's 'Spiral Jetty' (1970) on 7 September 2004
Sun, Sep 7 2014
A decade ago today (!) we were lucky enough to visit Robert Smithson's most iconic earthwork 'Spiral Jetty' (1970). The water level of the Great Salt Lake was well down and the surface of the counterclockwise spiral was not only visible but also walkable. As we walked alone in the blazing heat we felt as if we were disappearing into the black basalt, pink salt and silent haze.
Our visit to the site was completed a few days later visiting his “Retrospective Works 1955-1973” at Los Angeles’ MOCA, curated by Eugenie Tsai with Connie Butler. Happy memories!
Related posts:
- Lecture by Max Andrews "From Spiral to Spime: Robert Smithson, the ecological and the curatorial", 13 March, 2pm, Lecture Theatre 1, Royal College of Art, London (12 March 2012)
- Publication "Robert Smithson: Art in Continual Movement" (Alauda Publications, 2012) includes an essay by Max Andrews (28 March 2012)
- Robert Smithson's 'Broken Circle/Spiral Hill Revisited' (1971–2011) and The Land Art Contemporary programme (14 September 2011)
- Portscapes: Jorge Satorre returns an ice-age boulder back to Sweden (18 January 2010)
–
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 post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Latitudes "Out of office", 2013–2014 season
Thu, Jul 31 2014This is the sixth consecutive year [see 2008-9, 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012–13] that we wave goodbye to the season as many of us say 'hello, holidays' by sharing what has become something of a Latitudes' tradition. Our yearly 'out of office' includes some unseen and 'behind the scenes' moments from the last season. This casual yearly report has always been a welcome opportunity to revise the many photographs that have been buried on hard drives, to reflect on the past year, the fantastic people we met, enriching things we have seen, and to recharge for future challenges.
This post heralds a short period of deceleration of our online activity (that is tending to our inbox, as well as this blog, Facebook and Twitter). We'll take a short break during August, but will be back in September with renewed energy. Until then, have a great summer break/Feliz verano dear readers!
11–16 October 2013: 'Agora', Athens Biennial 4, Greece. Read the full report here.
21–28 October 2013: As part of the Young Curators Invitational programme (YCI) coinciding with FIAC, we were invited to visit several institutions, gallery spaces and studios in Paris – Click here to read the full report of that week, or here for the archive of our tweets.
16 November 2013: Seminar for "Curating the present. Theory and practice of the contemporary art exhibition", organised by Tania Pardo, Sergio Rubira and Alberto Sánchez Balmisawith La Casa Encendida, Madrid.
20 November 2013: At the kind invitation of the wonderful The Common Guild in Glasgow, on 21 November we gave a lecture about the work of Roman Ondák – read the text here. We also took the opportunity to do some studio visits – see full Report from Glasgow (posted on 4 December) – including Lucy Skaer's exhibition at Tramway; see Max's Frieze review.
25 January 2014: Opening of "The Margins of the Factory" a solo show by Rotterdam-based Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum, at ADN Platform in Sant Cugat (Barcelona). Photos of the show here, reviews and exhibition leaflet here and all the social media posts archived here.
19–22 February 2013: Since November 2013, Latitudes had been guest Tweeting from @ARCOmeetings, advancing content and profiling the +70 participants of the seven Professional Meetings that took place during ARCOmadrid art fair. During the fair, we live-Tweeted each session as well as the 'III Meeting of Museums of European and Iberoamerica'. Our reportage and commentary spanned over 1200 Tweets – they're archived here.
18 March 2014: Max in conversation with Dutch artist Remco Torenbosch at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, in the context of his exhibition at NoguerasBlanchard.
On May 14, we gave a lecture and an afternoon seminar with PhD candidates in Curatorial Practice at MADA | Monash University in Melbourne, focusing on 2012–13 research project #OpenCurating, and in particular the published interviews with the web team from the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; with Badlands Unlimited in New York; with research curator Steven ten Thije of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven and with Dia Art Foundation Curator, Yasmil Raymond.
During
our Melbourne residency we made more than thirty studio visits, and also met curators,
graphic designers, writers, editors and University professors. We also paid visits to
galleries (Neon Parc, Sarah Scout, Sutton Gallery, Utopian Slumps, Tolarno Gallery, Anna Schwartz Gallery...), bookstores (the jewel-box that is World Food Books),
non-profits, curator-led projects and artist-run-spaces (West Space, Slopes) and of course museums
such MUMA at Monash, the Ian Potter Museum, the National Gallery Victoria, or the fantastic Heide Museum, which hosted a solo show of Emily Floyd (pictured below).
We had one day to explore the stunning Great Ocean Road. We saw a couple of wild koalas as well as local-speciality birdlife including Rufous Bristlebird and Hooded Dotterel, plus many surfers waiting for the perfect wave, before driving back to the city.
26–31 May 2014: Visiting Sydney and the 19th Biennale of Sydney.
1 June 2014: Short trip to Hobart in Tasmania to pay a visit to professional gambler and philanthropist David Walsh's extravaganza, the Museum of Old and New Art (MoNA). Despite the tech-geek owner and the 'O' device (iPod devices which function as extended audio guides, digital captions and location trackers), photography is not officially allowed inside the galleries, although you can, in fact, find plenty of shots on social media. Here instead are some views from the museum while waiting for the Bond-villain ferry to take us back to Hobart.
11–14 June 2014: Singapore Curating Lab 2014 begins! This 9-month programme began with a 3h morning lecture by Latitudes, followed by an afternoon workshop in which we asked participants to imagine an institution by defining a succinct "about us" paragraph for three imaginary institutions. Following the root of word "institution" (to establish, to set up), the task involved considering what practices were to be initiated, how programmes were to be established, and for what public. Read more here. Below the Tweets published, explaining each group's task.
14 June 2014: Symposium "When does an exhibition begin and end?", National Library of Singapore. With the participation of Shabbir Hussain Mustafa (Curator, National Gallery Singapore), Charles Lim (artist); Anca Rujoiu and Vera Mey (Curators, CCA — Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore) and artist Shubigi Rao.
16–20 June 2014: Curating Lab 2004 Overseas Field Trip to Hong Kong, where participants were introduced to the programme and spaces of Spring Workshop, Asia Art Archive, Para/Site and M+. The many tweets published by ourselves and the participants are archived here.
In January 2014, Mariana wrote a text on Time/Bank for the digital catalogue of the exhibition "7.000.000.000" curated by Arlandis/Marroquí for the Espai d'art Contemporani Castelló (EACC).
17 July 2014: Jointly published an art-agenda review on Andrea Buttner's "Tische" show at NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona.
One of the most widely-read blog posts of the year has been the analysis of the 2013 report that the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports dedicated to the state of culture in Spain (La cultura en España (2a parte): estadísticas, cifras y porcentajes del 2013, a follow up to the 2012 analysis), quite symptomatic of what has been another difficult year for the cultural sector.
Related posts:
Latitudes' "out of office" photo album 2008-9, 30 July 2009
Latitudes 'out of office' photo album 2009–10 season, 30 July 2010
Latitudes 'out of office' photo album 2010–11 season, 1 August 2011
Latitudes' "out of office" photo album 2011–2012, 31 July 2012
Latitudes' "out of office" photo album, 2012–2013 season, 31 July 2013
–
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.
2013, 2014, ARCOmadrid, art-agenda, Athens, Frieze, Glasgow, Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum, latitudes, Melbourne, Moderations, out of office, Paris, Reviews, Rotterdam, Singapore
This post heralds a short period of deceleration of our online activity (that is tending to our inbox, as well as this blog, Facebook and Twitter). We'll take a short break during August, but will be back in September with renewed energy. Until then, have a great summer break/Feliz verano dear readers!
11–16 October 2013: 'Agora', Athens Biennial 4, Greece. Read the full report here.
| Beautiful Acropolis floor. |
Afternoon light over the façade of the National Archaeological Museum.
An astonishing exhibition presenting severely-eroded antiquities recovered from the legendary shipwreck off the islet of Antikythera, south of the Peloponnese. (Hello, Matthew Monahan and Thomas Houseago!)
Group photo of the Young Curators Invitational programme (YCI) 2013 participants nearby one of the massive and over-the-top fountains at Versailles. Some 1980s (or maybe 1880s?) dance moves going on for some reason.
We were looking forward to visiting this particular 18th-Century cabinet of curiosities, but only managed to take this one photo before we were told off. It's the Cabinet de Curiosités de Joseph Bonnier de La Mosson, at the Médiathèque of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle at the Jardin des Plantes. Quite a lot of fluff has been written about Cabinets de Curosités and exhibition-making, and some terrible art made in its name, but this slice of history is quite extraordinary, beautiful and shocking and 'very much of its time' to put it mildly. See some better photos here.
16 November 2013: Seminar for "Curating the present. Theory and practice of the contemporary art exhibition", organised by Tania Pardo, Sergio Rubira and Alberto Sánchez Balmisawith La Casa Encendida, Madrid.
About to begin our lecture...
During our Madrid visit, we visited Roman Ondák's intervention at Palacio de Cristal (above) which got a short mention in our Roman Ondák lecture in Glasgow a few days after.
20 November 2013: At the kind invitation of the wonderful The Common Guild in Glasgow, on 21 November we gave a lecture about the work of Roman Ondák – read the text here. We also took the opportunity to do some studio visits – see full Report from Glasgow (posted on 4 December) – including Lucy Skaer's exhibition at Tramway; see Max's Frieze review.
27 November 2013: Mariana Cánepa Luna gave an afternoon seminar on a range of Latitudes' projects for the course 'On Mediation – Theory and Curatorial Practice in Global Art’ at the Universitat de Barcelona.
25 January 2014: Opening of "The Margins of the Factory" a solo show by Rotterdam-based Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum, at ADN Platform in Sant Cugat (Barcelona). Photos of the show here, reviews and exhibition leaflet here and all the social media posts archived here.
 |
Photo via Facebook of Miguel Ángel Sánchez, posted with the caption: "Curators backing up the artist! The awesome outcome of this team effort at ADN Platform. On view from Saturday 25th".
Klaas installing the series of photos that form part of Producing time in between other things (2011).
 |
Exhibition guide designed and produced by Latitudes includes texts on each piece and an A3 sized fold-out poster. Download in English and in Spanish.
Nathaniel Mann's opening performance included his singing the Basque popular song “Oi Peio Peio” – a dialogue between a woman worker and her cruel boss, who insists that she carries on working throughout the night. Watch video of the performance here. Photo: Joan Morey
Photo published by Amanda Bernal in her exhibition preview at Tot Sant Cugat.
19–22 February 2013: Since November 2013, Latitudes had been guest Tweeting from @ARCOmeetings, advancing content and profiling the +70 participants of the seven Professional Meetings that took place during ARCOmadrid art fair. During the fair, we live-Tweeted each session as well as the 'III Meeting of Museums of European and Iberoamerica'. Our reportage and commentary spanned over 1200 Tweets – they're archived here.
Welcoming words by Joao Fernandes, Deputy Director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, before kicking off the 'III Meeting of
Museums of European and Iberoamerica'.
The "Biennials at the Periphery" session was masterfully moderated by the SITE Santa Fe team.
18 March 2014: Max in conversation with Dutch artist Remco Torenbosch at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, in the context of his exhibition at NoguerasBlanchard.
 |
| Photo by @priscilaclementti. |
12 May–7 June: Visiting Curator Programme of Gertrude Contemporary in Melbourne, Australia, in partnership with MADA: Monash School of Art Design and Architecture. Our month-long residency is documented in this Storify thread.
Central Melbourne.
On May 14, we gave a lecture and an afternoon seminar with PhD candidates in Curatorial Practice at MADA | Monash University in Melbourne, focusing on 2012–13 research project #OpenCurating, and in particular the published interviews with the web team from the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; with Badlands Unlimited in New York; with research curator Steven ten Thije of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven and with Dia Art Foundation Curator, Yasmil Raymond.
Photo: Courtesy MADA.
On May 23rd we shadowed a site visit to the fascinating Living Museum of the West (photo below) in Maribyrnong, a social history museum and former industrial site which will be the focus a forthcoming project by West Space with artists Susan Jacobs and Geoff Robinson, among others. Below their analogue archive over interviews, with plenty of cassettes, binders and filing cabinets.
26–31 May 2014: Visiting Sydney and the 19th Biennale of Sydney.
A great welcome to Sydney sunset by the Opera House.
Bianca Hester's 'fashioning discontinuities', 2013–14, at Cockotoo Island was one of the (frankly very few) highlights of the 2014 edition of the Sydney Biennale.
One of the best things we saw in Sydney was a one-room show dedicated to 'Tehching Hsieh: One-year performance 1980–1981' at Carriageworks.
Entrance to the artist-run space Alaska Projects, whose creative base camp is level 2 of Kings Cross Car Park.
1 June 2014: Short trip to Hobart in Tasmania to pay a visit to professional gambler and philanthropist David Walsh's extravaganza, the Museum of Old and New Art (MoNA). Despite the tech-geek owner and the 'O' device (iPod devices which function as extended audio guides, digital captions and location trackers), photography is not officially allowed inside the galleries, although you can, in fact, find plenty of shots on social media. Here instead are some views from the museum while waiting for the Bond-villain ferry to take us back to Hobart.
11–14 June 2014: Singapore Curating Lab 2014 begins! This 9-month programme began with a 3h morning lecture by Latitudes, followed by an afternoon workshop in which we asked participants to imagine an institution by defining a succinct "about us" paragraph for three imaginary institutions. Following the root of word "institution" (to establish, to set up), the task involved considering what practices were to be initiated, how programmes were to be established, and for what public. Read more here. Below the Tweets published, explaining each group's task.
14 June 2014: Symposium "When does an exhibition begin and end?", National Library of Singapore. With the participation of Shabbir Hussain Mustafa (Curator, National Gallery Singapore), Charles Lim (artist); Anca Rujoiu and Vera Mey (Curators, CCA — Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore) and artist Shubigi Rao.
 |
| Curatorial Intensive participants live-tweeting, mapping concepts discussed during talks, photo-documenting and taking notes for future posts on Curating Lab blog. Photo: @nusmuseum. |
Symposium moderators taking notes during the conference. Photo via @hemanchong
16–20 June 2014: Curating Lab 2004 Overseas Field Trip to Hong Kong, where participants were introduced to the programme and spaces of Spring Workshop, Asia Art Archive, Para/Site and M+. The many tweets published by ourselves and the participants are archived here.
Afternoon discussion at Spring Workshop.
Christodoulous Panayiotou and Philip Wiegard's exhibition at Spring Workshop.
Curating Lab 2014 group photo in Hong Kong airport before boarding to Singapore.
31 July 2014: Master Class for the 2014 Open Set Summer School at Witte de With, Rotterdam. After a lecture on the tour as an artistic/curatorial format, participants work towards developing prototype guided tours for Rotterdam. More photos here.
Also great to finally be able to visit "The Part In The Story Where A Part Becomes A Part Of Something Else" exhibition curated by Heman Chong and Samuel Saelemakers at Witte de With, the epilogue to Moderation(s). Here interacting with Haegue Yang's 'Sonic Nickel Dance' (2013).
The night before the workshop, a great catch up a picnic with 'Portscapes' collaborators (Liesbeth Bik & Jos van der Pol, better known as Bik van der Pol, Lara Almarcegui, Nienke Terpsma and Rob Hamelijnck of Fucking Good Art and graphic designer Samira Ben Laloua). Ahhh, good memories!
During the past weeks we've been proofreading layouts with documentation of our 2013 residency and four "Incidents of Travel" tours we realised in Hong Kong, our contribution to the forthcoming publication "Terms & Conditions" published by Witte de With, Rotterdam as part of the Moderation(s) project steered by Heman Chong.
In the past months, Max Andrews has published the following texts in frieze magazine: Exhibition review of Pablo Helguera's ‘Librería Donceles’ (Donceles Bookshop, 2013) at Kent Fine Art, New York, issue 160, January–February 2014; Review of Lucy Skaer's solo show at Glasgow's Tramway, issue 161, March 2014; Postcard "On a Shoestring. Institutions in Catalonia", issue 158, October 2013; and a Focus, Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum, Issue 157, September 2013. Max has also contributed to the publication that will accompany the forthcoming Frieze Art Fair, London (out in October 2014).
Also great to finally be able to visit "The Part In The Story Where A Part Becomes A Part Of Something Else" exhibition curated by Heman Chong and Samuel Saelemakers at Witte de With, the epilogue to Moderation(s). Here interacting with Haegue Yang's 'Sonic Nickel Dance' (2013).
Photo: @ymessen.
The night before the workshop, a great catch up a picnic with 'Portscapes' collaborators (Liesbeth Bik & Jos van der Pol, better known as Bik van der Pol, Lara Almarcegui, Nienke Terpsma and Rob Hamelijnck of Fucking Good Art and graphic designer Samira Ben Laloua). Ahhh, good memories!
During the past weeks we've been proofreading layouts with documentation of our 2013 residency and four "Incidents of Travel" tours we realised in Hong Kong, our contribution to the forthcoming publication "Terms & Conditions" published by Witte de With, Rotterdam as part of the Moderation(s) project steered by Heman Chong.
In the past months, Max Andrews has published the following texts in frieze magazine: Exhibition review of Pablo Helguera's ‘Librería Donceles’ (Donceles Bookshop, 2013) at Kent Fine Art, New York, issue 160, January–February 2014; Review of Lucy Skaer's solo show at Glasgow's Tramway, issue 161, March 2014; Postcard "On a Shoestring. Institutions in Catalonia", issue 158, October 2013; and a Focus, Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum, Issue 157, September 2013. Max has also contributed to the publication that will accompany the forthcoming Frieze Art Fair, London (out in October 2014).
In January 2014, Mariana wrote a text on Time/Bank for the digital catalogue of the exhibition "7.000.000.000" curated by Arlandis/Marroquí for the Espai d'art Contemporani Castelló (EACC).
17 July 2014: Jointly published an art-agenda review on Andrea Buttner's "Tische" show at NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona.
| View of Andrea Büttner, Tische, NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona, 2014. Courtesy of NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona. All photos by Roberto Ruiz. |
One of the most widely-read blog posts of the year has been the analysis of the 2013 report that the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports dedicated to the state of culture in Spain (La cultura en España (2a parte): estadísticas, cifras y porcentajes del 2013, a follow up to the 2012 analysis), quite symptomatic of what has been another difficult year for the cultural sector.
Related posts:
Latitudes' "out of office" photo album 2008-9, 30 July 2009
Latitudes 'out of office' photo album 2009–10 season, 30 July 2010
Latitudes 'out of office' photo album 2010–11 season, 1 August 2011
Latitudes' "out of office" photo album 2011–2012, 31 July 2012
Latitudes' "out of office" photo album, 2012–2013 season, 31 July 2013
–
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.
art-agenda review on Andrea Büttner show "Tische", at NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona
Mon, Jul 21 2014 |
| View of Andrea Büttner, “Tische,” NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona, 2014. All images courtesy of NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona. All photos by Roberto Ruiz. |
Andrea Büttner’s “Tische”
NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona
May 30–July 11, 2014
Published on art-agenda on 17 July 2014.
Pursuing a clearly spiritual approach within a Christian cultural
and ethical context, Andrea Büttner is one of the few contemporary
artists who could plausibly cite St. Francis of Assisi, the
twelfth-century Catholic friar who committed himself to a life of
poverty, as a key influence. Her work Tische [Tables] (2013),
which addresses notions of the “blessed poor” (those who disavow
material possessions as a way of being closer to God) and the prehistory
of farm-to-table dining, is a carefully constructed homily on what art
can bring to the table on poverty, without ever lapsing into austerity
chic. Büttner’s meager solo presentation at Barcelona’s
NoguerasBlanchard forms part of a year-long exhibition series entitled
“The Story Behind,” organized by in-house curator Direlia Lazo. In it,
the artist exhibits four out of the original thirteen tabletop
compositions she created for a dinner held at the Museum für Moderne
Kunst Zollamt in Frankfurt last year. At Büttner’s invitation, five
talks were given at dinner and recorded. Entitled Tischreden
[Dinner speeches] (2013), the resulting extended audio recordings of
the speeches and the ebb and flow of dinner conversation now serve as
prime stimulants for the discursive appetites of the Barcelona gallery’s
visitors.
Büttner’s four dining tables—and their blue, green, red, and yellow linens—are not simply performance relics or dining assemblages à la Hong Kong and Taipei-based artist Lee Kit or Swiss Nouveau Réalist Daniel Spoerri, but rather something between gambling baize (typically found covering poker tables) and altar cloths. These intensely precise, high-stakes surfaces allow for unusual symbolic investment. Accordingly, what at first could be mistaken for dun-colored gaming counters are actually zebra droppings and straw that were collected at the Frankfurt Zoo and cast in bronze. These metal objects (Tischschmuck [Table decorations], 2013) not only connect alchemy with fecal value—placed as they are atop a single table covered in the same colored paper that German banks use to wrap Euro coins—but they also have a perverse resemblance to earthy tubers and clusters of Paleolithic potato chips. Büttner assembles such materials in an elusive manner, giving them a just-on-the-tip-of-the-tongue quality, and she then juxtaposes the objects with images, which function like pictorial hyperlinks that are either readily apparent, or just one Google search away. These include reproductions of Realist and early modernist works, including Gustave Courbet’s The Stone Breakers (1850), Vincent van Gogh’s dismal The Potato Eaters (1885), and Ernst Barlach’s Veiled Beggar Woman (1919), as well as more recent pieces, like Sigmar Polke’s Cologne Beggars (1972), and what appears to be a photographic portrait of Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Although Büttner’s amalgamations undoubtedly have intuitive affinities with German art historian Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas (1924–29), she does not necessarily generate new theoretical principles in terms of art’s consideration of poverty. Listening to the recordings of Büttner’s dinner becomes more like consuming thoughtful fiber while ruminating on its conceptually peristaltic menu. Documenta 13’s artistic director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev deliberately offered no new insights in her talk on the figures she identifies as Arte Povera’s “dropouts,” yet their very rejection of novel production was precisely her point. In addition, speeches by scholar of German literature Liliane Weissberg, organizer of the artist-rights group Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) Lise Soskolne, and Chicago-based artist and writer Claire Pentecost similarly focused on duty, humility, and justice. The overall effect of her guests’ fibrous discussion addresses what might be described as our symbolic health and serves as a kind of relief from the intellectual constipation that the intersection of morality and contemporary art can induce.
Büttner’s interest in poverty stems from her recently completed doctoral research on art and shame at the Royal College of Art. And she herself chooses to avoid the limelight by withdrawing as a visible protagonist from her own work. By giving the floor to her dinner guests, Büttner subtly avoids what might otherwise have come across as a kind of evangelical relational aesthetics. Over the course of their speeches, we not only learn about tzedakah (the Jewish conception of charity without pity), but also some non-profit art institutions’ shameful failure to pay honorariums to their artists. In cultural theorist Franco “Bifo” Berardi’s talk (delivered by artist Adrian Williams)—in which we encounter his term “Un-growth,” which describes a form of politics without capitalist expectations—we are familiarized with a “frugal way of being happy with the richness that we have.” We also learn in the recording about Wall Street’s orchestration of the deregulated food futures markets that emerged in the 1990s and the expropriation of subsistence farmers from their ancestral lands.
Nevertheless, given the reality of Spain’s persistent unemployment, austerity measures, and corruption scandals, many of these well-intended words begged for local specificity. Given the monastic tone of Büttner’s work, polemical Benedictine nun and Catalan social activist Teresa Forcades, for example, would have made a fascinating, if improbable, contribution to a discussion especially tailored for the issues that concern contemporary Barcelona. Much like having to imagine Pentecost’s dinner menu—which included bone marrow, beetroot, and potatoes, among other dishes—instead of actually being able to savor it ourselves, we were left hungry for a more hearty presentation of Büttner’s project in a city with a starkly different economic context from that in which her work was first conceived.
– Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna are Co-directors of the curatorial office Latitudes in Barcelona.
Büttner’s four dining tables—and their blue, green, red, and yellow linens—are not simply performance relics or dining assemblages à la Hong Kong and Taipei-based artist Lee Kit or Swiss Nouveau Réalist Daniel Spoerri, but rather something between gambling baize (typically found covering poker tables) and altar cloths. These intensely precise, high-stakes surfaces allow for unusual symbolic investment. Accordingly, what at first could be mistaken for dun-colored gaming counters are actually zebra droppings and straw that were collected at the Frankfurt Zoo and cast in bronze. These metal objects (Tischschmuck [Table decorations], 2013) not only connect alchemy with fecal value—placed as they are atop a single table covered in the same colored paper that German banks use to wrap Euro coins—but they also have a perverse resemblance to earthy tubers and clusters of Paleolithic potato chips. Büttner assembles such materials in an elusive manner, giving them a just-on-the-tip-of-the-tongue quality, and she then juxtaposes the objects with images, which function like pictorial hyperlinks that are either readily apparent, or just one Google search away. These include reproductions of Realist and early modernist works, including Gustave Courbet’s The Stone Breakers (1850), Vincent van Gogh’s dismal The Potato Eaters (1885), and Ernst Barlach’s Veiled Beggar Woman (1919), as well as more recent pieces, like Sigmar Polke’s Cologne Beggars (1972), and what appears to be a photographic portrait of Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Although Büttner’s amalgamations undoubtedly have intuitive affinities with German art historian Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas (1924–29), she does not necessarily generate new theoretical principles in terms of art’s consideration of poverty. Listening to the recordings of Büttner’s dinner becomes more like consuming thoughtful fiber while ruminating on its conceptually peristaltic menu. Documenta 13’s artistic director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev deliberately offered no new insights in her talk on the figures she identifies as Arte Povera’s “dropouts,” yet their very rejection of novel production was precisely her point. In addition, speeches by scholar of German literature Liliane Weissberg, organizer of the artist-rights group Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) Lise Soskolne, and Chicago-based artist and writer Claire Pentecost similarly focused on duty, humility, and justice. The overall effect of her guests’ fibrous discussion addresses what might be described as our symbolic health and serves as a kind of relief from the intellectual constipation that the intersection of morality and contemporary art can induce.
Büttner’s interest in poverty stems from her recently completed doctoral research on art and shame at the Royal College of Art. And she herself chooses to avoid the limelight by withdrawing as a visible protagonist from her own work. By giving the floor to her dinner guests, Büttner subtly avoids what might otherwise have come across as a kind of evangelical relational aesthetics. Over the course of their speeches, we not only learn about tzedakah (the Jewish conception of charity without pity), but also some non-profit art institutions’ shameful failure to pay honorariums to their artists. In cultural theorist Franco “Bifo” Berardi’s talk (delivered by artist Adrian Williams)—in which we encounter his term “Un-growth,” which describes a form of politics without capitalist expectations—we are familiarized with a “frugal way of being happy with the richness that we have.” We also learn in the recording about Wall Street’s orchestration of the deregulated food futures markets that emerged in the 1990s and the expropriation of subsistence farmers from their ancestral lands.
Nevertheless, given the reality of Spain’s persistent unemployment, austerity measures, and corruption scandals, many of these well-intended words begged for local specificity. Given the monastic tone of Büttner’s work, polemical Benedictine nun and Catalan social activist Teresa Forcades, for example, would have made a fascinating, if improbable, contribution to a discussion especially tailored for the issues that concern contemporary Barcelona. Much like having to imagine Pentecost’s dinner menu—which included bone marrow, beetroot, and potatoes, among other dishes—instead of actually being able to savor it ourselves, we were left hungry for a more hearty presentation of Büttner’s project in a city with a starkly different economic context from that in which her work was first conceived.
– Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna are Co-directors of the curatorial office Latitudes in Barcelona.
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This is the blog of 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. |
Workshop for Curating Lab 2014: Imagining an institution
Tue, Jul 1 2014Participants took into account the parameters we described for each of three art-institution typologies – a residency/studio programme; an annual festival and a commissioning body. After a one-hour brainstorm within each group, participants came up with a paragraph that concisely communicated the "vision and values" of the new entities, responding to "what we do, how do we do it and why we do it that way".
The task wasn't oriented towards building a "business plan", though an integral part involved consideration of funding models, and who or what has a stake in the imagined organisation – city/state, philanthropists/donors, users/members/tickets, prizes/open calls, etc. We didn't expect job descriptions, but participants were encouraged to consider what kind of roles the staff within the imaginary institution might take up – would it have a core full-time team or occasional collaborators? What skills or roles would be taken up across curating, producing, publishing, researching, hosting, leadership, and so on?
"Amanda is an event-based format and is based in a major densely-populated prosperous city with a strong corporate and media culture as well as several world-renowned museums, contemporary art centres and universities. The events take place in a specific block of time and involve organised, extended presentations and places for viewing them."
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The exercise was not to come up with a pitch to potential supporters (i.e. in future tense), but to exercise imagination in the present and to define what an organisation stands for and actually does in a succinct way. The aim was to think holistically about their "pet" organisation, its different programme strands and its relation to its local/international network.
1. CRISTINA – A residency/studio programme
"Cristina provides residential, and studio facilities for national and international artists. It is based in several live/work spaces and as yet undefined rooms in a former school building in a small town on a remote island in an area of outstanding natural beauty. It is a day's travel to the nearest city. The local community of 800 people are mostly involved in fishing and farming."
2. AMANDA – An annual festival
2. AMANDA – An annual festival
3.
BORIS –
A
commissioning body
"Boris invites artists to make temporary artworks in public spaces and locations that are not galleries or museums. It is based in a provincial port city that used to have a thriving economy based on heavy industry. The city is suffering from high unemployment, there are many abandoned buildings and wastelands."
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.
Report of the symposium "When Does an Exhibition Begin and End?", National Library of Singapore, 14 May 2014
Wed, Jun 25 2014
During the presentation of Shabbir Hussain Mustafa and Charles Lim. Photo: Latitudes.
The public symposium "When Does an Exhibition Begin and End?" (14 May 2014) was part of this year Curating Lab 2014 programme organised by NUS Museum. The event, convened and moderated by Heman Chong and Latitudes, counted with the participation of Shabbir Hussain Mustafa (Curator, National Gallery Singapore), Charles Lim (artist); Anca Rujoiu and Vera Mey (Curators, CCA — Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore) and artist Shubigi Rao.
Addressing the format of the exhibition in terms of duration and process, the public symposium "When Does an Exhibition Begin and End?" consisted of two complimentary sessions that reflected on exhibitions' capacity to articulate its own making and incorporate its own history. In the same way that the Internet has untethered television from fixed schedules and newspapers from print deadlines, the symposium will further ponder on how the exhibition and today's art institutions are undergoing similar transformations. Should exhibitions embrace or resist becoming more like broadcasting or live-publishing? "When Does an Exhibition Begin and End?" considered how exhibitions produce knowledge through the format of conversations between curators and artists.
The first panel with Shabbir Hussain Mustafa and Charles Lim. Photo: Luca E.C.
Charles Lim and Shabbir Hussain Mustafa during the Q&A. Photo: Luca E.C.
Audience. Photo: Luca E.C.
Vera Mey, Anca Rajoiu and Shubigi Rao during the Q&A. Photo: Luca E.C.
The event was an occasion to reflect on the role of a symposium and its public within curatorial practice, and counted with the
engagement of Curatorial-Intensive participants who live-tweeted proceedings, a second group mapped concepts of the discussions (see photos below), and a final group will soon publish a blog post documenting and reporting the day for those
not physically present.
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Curatorial Intensive participants live-tweeting the proceedings. Photo: Luca E.C. |
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Group working on the mapping of concepts throughout the symposium. Photo: Luca E.C. |
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Map 1 by Curatorial Intensive participants. Photo: Latitudes. |
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| Map 2 by Curatorial Intensive participants. Photo: Latitudes. |
Related links:
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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.
- Workshop for Curating Lab 2014: Imagining an institution, 1 July 2014.
- "Hauntological trajectories in “When Does An Exhibition Begin And End?”" by Amanda Lee Koe on Art Asia Pacific's blog, 23 July 2014.
- "Curating Lab: When Does an Exhibition Begin and End?" by Bruce Quek on Radian, 18 August 2014.
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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.
Storify of Curating Lab 2014 Overseas Field Trip to Hong Kong, 16–20 June 2014
Tue, Jun 24 2014
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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.
Public Symposium "When Does an Exhibition Begin and End?" on 14 June 2014 at the National Library, Singapore
Wed, Jun 4 2014Saturday 14 June 2014
3–5pm
Level 5 - Possibility, National Library Building, Singapore
Free admission with registration, please write to museum@nus.edu.sg
Addressing the format of the
exhibition in terms of duration and process, the public symposium "When Does an Exhibition
Begin and End?" on June 14th, will consist
of two complimentary sessions with the participation of curators and artists who will reflect on exhibitions'
capacity to articulate its own making and incorporate its own history.
In the same way that the Internet has untethered television from fixed
schedules and newspapers from print deadlines, the symposium will
further ponder on how the exhibition and today's art institutions are
undergoing similar transformations.
Is an ongoing production of discourse and research accountability increasingly expected of curators? Are artists engaging differently with new channels for the documentation and distribution of their work and what contextualises it? Should exhibitions embrace or resist becoming more like broadcasting or live-publishing? "When Does an Exhibition Begin and End?" will consider how exhibitions produce knowledge through the format of conversations between curators and artists.
In the first session Shabbir Hussain Mustafa (Curator, National Gallery Singapore) and artist Charles Lim will talk about their ongoing professional collaboration including Lim's long-term SEA STATE project and the related solo exhibition In Search of Raffles’ Light (NUS Museum, 24 October 2013–27 April 2014). Mustafa and Lim will address these projects' engagement with the maritime history of Singapore in its intersection with the present while speculating about their approach to future exhibitions, including their forthcoming collaboration for the Singapore Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale.
In the second session Anca Rujoiu and Vera Mey (Curators, CCA — Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore) will discuss their recent project "The Disappearance" (CCA, 5–6 April 2013), which took place during the dismantling of a previous exhibition "as a durational event unfolding over two days including a continuous series of manifestations". Rujoiu and May will be joined by participating artist Shubigi Rao to discuss her project "Visual snow" (2014), presented during "The Disappearance" as an ongoing part of her biographical study of "the reclusive S. Raoul".
Within the context of Curating Lab 2014, "When Does An Exhibition Begin and End?" will be treated as an occasion to reflect on the role of a symposium and its public within curatorial practice. It will count on the engagement of Curatorial-Intensive participants who will be live-tweeting proceedings, mapping concepts of the discussions, and devising an approach to documenting and reporting the day for those not physically present.
The symposium is convened and moderated by artist, curator and writer Heman Chong and Barcelona-based curatorial office Latitudes (Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna).
Organised by: NUS Museum
Institutional Partner: Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore
Supported by: National Arts Council
Venue Sponsor: National Library Board, Singapore
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Is an ongoing production of discourse and research accountability increasingly expected of curators? Are artists engaging differently with new channels for the documentation and distribution of their work and what contextualises it? Should exhibitions embrace or resist becoming more like broadcasting or live-publishing? "When Does an Exhibition Begin and End?" will consider how exhibitions produce knowledge through the format of conversations between curators and artists.
In the first session Shabbir Hussain Mustafa (Curator, National Gallery Singapore) and artist Charles Lim will talk about their ongoing professional collaboration including Lim's long-term SEA STATE project and the related solo exhibition In Search of Raffles’ Light (NUS Museum, 24 October 2013–27 April 2014). Mustafa and Lim will address these projects' engagement with the maritime history of Singapore in its intersection with the present while speculating about their approach to future exhibitions, including their forthcoming collaboration for the Singapore Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale.
In the second session Anca Rujoiu and Vera Mey (Curators, CCA — Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore) will discuss their recent project "The Disappearance" (CCA, 5–6 April 2013), which took place during the dismantling of a previous exhibition "as a durational event unfolding over two days including a continuous series of manifestations". Rujoiu and May will be joined by participating artist Shubigi Rao to discuss her project "Visual snow" (2014), presented during "The Disappearance" as an ongoing part of her biographical study of "the reclusive S. Raoul".
Within the context of Curating Lab 2014, "When Does An Exhibition Begin and End?" will be treated as an occasion to reflect on the role of a symposium and its public within curatorial practice. It will count on the engagement of Curatorial-Intensive participants who will be live-tweeting proceedings, mapping concepts of the discussions, and devising an approach to documenting and reporting the day for those not physically present.
The symposium is convened and moderated by artist, curator and writer Heman Chong and Barcelona-based curatorial office Latitudes (Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna).
Organised by: NUS Museum
Institutional Partner: Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore
Supported by: National Arts Council
Venue Sponsor: National Library Board, Singapore
–
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.
Lead Facilitators, Curating Lab 2014–Curatorial Intensive, National University of Singapore (11–14 June), symposium (14 June, 15–17h) and field trip to Hong Kong (16–20 June)
Fri, May 30 2014 |
| Curating Lab 2012. Courtesy: NUS Museum. |
Alongside artist, curator and writer Heman Chong, Latitudes will lead the first phase of Curating Lab 2014 (11–14 June), a curatorial intensive in which 15 participants engage with the practice of exhibition-making through lectures and tutorials concluding with a field trip to Hong Kong (16–20 June).
Curating Lab 2014 is an eight month-long programme offering final year students, recent graduates and young curators exposure into contemporary curatorial perspectives and practices. Organised by NUS Museum with support from Singapore's National Arts Council, participants are firstly involved in a week-long curatorial intensive completed with an overseas field trip to Hong Kong. This first phase is followed by internship assignments to contemporary art spaces in the city (July–December 2014), and concludes with a final exhibition project in January 2015.
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| Courtesy: NUS Museum. |
Curating Lab 2014 will focus on contemporary art and curatorial practices that engage with the exhibition as a site of knowledge production; one that is multifarious, relational and participatory providing scopes for intents and slippages, opened to interpretative articulations and re-articulations, subjected to varying contexts of exhibition-making and the very audiences that perform and shapes its production. Lectures and workshops will be led by Heman Chong and Latitudes to explore concepts of knowledge production in the realms of art, fiction, journalism, theory and other possibilities.
As part of Curating Lab 2014's curatorial-intensive, the public symposium "When Does an Exhibition Begin and End?" on 14 June (3–5pm, Level 5 of the National Library Building), will bring together Singapore-based artists and curators Shabbir Hussain Mustafa (Curator, National Gallery Singapore), artist Charles Lim; Anca Rujoiu and Vera Mey (Curators, CCA — Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore) and artist Shubigi Rao, to discuss their recent and ongoing projects. Addressing the format of the exhibition in terms of duration and process, the symposium will consist of two complimentary sessions that will reflect on the exhibition's capacity to articulate its own making and incorporate its own history. In the same way that the Internet has untethered television from fixed schedules and newspapers from print deadlines, the symposium will further ponder on how the exhibition and today's art institutions are undergoing similar transformations.
"When Does an Exhibition Begin and End?" will count on the engagement of Curating Lab 2014 participants who will be live-tweeting proceedings, mapping concepts of the discussions, and devising an approach to documenting and reporting the day for those not physically present.
The symposium is convened and moderated by Heman Chong and Latitudes.
|
Follow:
#CuratingLab2014
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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.
Lunchtime Art Forum and seminar with PhD candidates in Curatorial Practice, MADA | Monash Art Design & Architecture, Melbourne, 14 May 2014
Tue, May 6 2014 |
| Announcement on MADA | Monash University Art Design & Architecture's website. |
Lunchtime Art Forum: Latitudes (Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna)
14 May 2014
12:30h
Lecture Theatre G1.04, MADA | Monash Art Design & Architecture
900 Dandenong Road / Caulfield East / Victoria 3145 / Australia
Free entry / all welcome
On May 14 Latitudes will present an overview of the projects they have commissioned, participated in or self-initiated as curators, such as the series of new public projects Portscapes (Port of Rotterdam, 2009), the two iterations of No Soul for Sale: A Festival of Independents (New York in 2009 and London in 2010), or the exhibition series Amikejo (MUSAC, León, Spain, 2011).
The lecture will be followed by an afternoon seminar with candidates from the Curatorial Practice PhD [download course pdf] during which Latitudes will present two of its recent projects that are the basis of ongoing research since 2010. Firstly, its involvement as a partner organisation of The Last Newspaper exhibition at the New Museum, New York (2010–11) and secondly, its self-initiated research #OpenCurating (2012–13) formed by ten published interviews with curators, artists and editors that focused on digital strategies, new forms of interaction between publics with artworks, and their production, display and discursive context. To conclude, Latitudes will moderate a debate around the responses to four of the interviews.
This lecture is framed within Latitudes's Visiting Curators Programme residency at Gertrude Contemporar until June 7th.
Related content:
Visiting Curator Program, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 12 May–7 June 2014 (28 April 2014)
| ES |
Lunchtime Art Forum: Latitudes (Max Andrews y Mariana Cánepa Luna)
14 mayo 2014
12:30h
Lecture Theatre G1.04, MADA | Monash Art Design & Architecture
900 Dandenong Road / Caulfield East / Victoria 3145 / Australia
Entrada libre
El 14 de Mayo Latitudes presentará varios de los proyectos que se le han comisionado, en los que ha participado o ha iniciado de motu proprio como comisarios, tales como la serie de nuevos proyectos en el espacio público Portscapes (Port of Rotterdam, 2009), las dos iteraciones de No Soul for Sale: A Festival of Independents (Nueva York en 2009 y Londres en 2010), o el ciclo expositivo Amikejo (MUSAC, León, 2011).
La conferencia será complementará con un seminario con los candidatos del doctorado en Curatorial Practice [descargar pdf del curso] durante el cual Latitudes presentará dos de sus proyectos que forman la base de su investigación en curso desde 2010. En primer lugar, su participación como organización asociada en la exposición The Last Newspaper en el New Museum, Nueva York (2010–11) y en segundo lugar, la investigación #OpenCurating (2012–13) formada por diez entrevistas publicadas online con comisarios, artistas y editores, enfocadas en el análisis de las estrategias digitales y las nuevas formas de interacción entre los públicos y las obras de arte, su producción, exhibición y su contexto discursivo. A continuación Latitudes moderará un debate en torno a los contenidos de cuatro de las entrevistas de #OpenCurating.
La conferencia se enmarca dentro de la residencia como parte del Visiting Curators Programme en Gertrude Contemporary, del que Latitudes participa hasta el 7 de junio.
Contenido relacionado:
Visiting Curator Program, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 12 May–7 June 2014 (28 abril 2014)
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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.
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.