LONGITUDES

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

Archive of Cover Story (April): "Beneath the Connaught Road West flyover, Hong Kong, 19 January 2013"

 Mon, May 4 2015
This past March we launched our re-designed website, which includes improved features as well as new sections such as "cover story" on our home page: a monthly focus on one artwork, artist, book, site or trip we've experienced in our recent past, accompanied by a short text.

Our April Cover Story titled "Beneath the Connaught Road West flyover, Hong Kong, 19 January 2013" looked back at the first 'Incidents of Travel' tour led by artist Nadim Abbas, part of our month residency at Spring Workshop. 

 We recommend reading the text while listening to this field recording we made on the very same spot!

Related content:

 Cover Story #1: Wilfredo Prieto's work "Grease, Soap, Banana" (2 April 2015)
New re-designed website now online! (25 February 2015) 
Witte de With and Spring Workshop's 'Moderation(s)' publication 'End Note(s)' is out! (5 March 2015).
Nadim Abbas' "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" public tour (19 January 2013)
Archive of social media posts related to "Incidents of Travel" tours and photo-documentation.
Interview between Christina Li and Latitudes on 'Incidents of Travel' for Witte de With's 'Witness to Moderation(s)' blog (7 May 2013)
13 field recordings from 'Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong'

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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).
Work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
 2015, cover story, Heman Chong, Hong Kong, Incidents of Travel, Moderations, Nadim Abbas, soundcloud, Spring Workshop, website, Witte de With
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Witte de With and Spring Workshop's 'Moderation(s)' publication 'End Note(s)' is out!

 Thu, Mar 5 2015
'End Note(s)' published by Witte de With. Publication photos and design by Kristin Metho.


'End Note(s)' is finally out! The publication marks the conclusion of two years of residencies, discussions, editorial and exhibition projects within the framework of 'Moderation(s)', a multiform collaboration between Hong Kong's Spring Workshop and Rotterdam's Witte de With, steered by Singaporean artist and curator Heman Chong. 

 Latitudes participation took place in January 2013 with a month-long residency at Spring Workshop, Hong Kong, and with the production of "Incidents of Travel": an invitation extended to four Hong Kong-based artists – Nadim Abbas, Ho Sin Tung, Yuk King Tan, and Samson Young – to develop day-long tours, thus retelling the city and each participant’s artistic concerns through personal itineraries and waypoints. 

 As announced a few months ago, Latitudes has contributed to the publication with a visual essay documenting each of the artists' itineraries accompanying them with a revised and re-edited version of the May 2013 conversation with curator Christina Li (Moderation(s)' witness). 
  
 Section of the book (pp. 61–89) is dedicated to Latitudes' "Incidents of Travel". Here are the names of the artists and the locations visited during each of their tours.

Itinerary and photo-documentation of Nadim Abbas' tour on 19 January 2013.

(Above and below) Itinerary and photo-documentation of Yuk King Tan's tour on 24 January 2013.


 Itinerary and photo-documentation of Ho Sin Tung's tour on 29 January 2013.

(Above and below) Itinerary and photo-documentation of Samson Young's tour, 7 February 2013.


A re-edited version of a conversation with curator Christina Li – Moderation(s)' witness – originally published on Witte de With's blog dedicated to the project. 

 Here's an excerpt of our conversation with Christina:

Christina Li: The artists' tours were meant for you both to converse privately with each selected artist while getting to know their practices and the city. Did the public aspect of the Nadim Abbas' tour and your experience of the commercial tours suggest a different perspective of how the format could function from your initial perception? How has this attempt challenged your thinking in mediating and presenting the immediate experience and documentation of these tours to a larger audience?

Latitudes: Although the commercial tours were taking place regularly by prior arrangement, we happened to be the only participants on each of the days [Feng Shui tour and Tour of the Devil's Peak]. We tried to keep the artist tours casual and inconspicuous and to respect the notion of hospitality and privacy in the same way that if we came to your house for dinner, you would not expect us to bring a group of strangers with us. In fact, the day with Yuk King Tan concluded with a household of Filipina domestic workers making food for us – women whose trust and friendship she had earned through her personal affiliations and the concerns of her art. In this case, it would obviously have been completely inappropriate and something of a human safari to bring along an audience. 
Visiting Waterfall Bay with Nadim Abbas was part of the public tour on 19 January 2013. Photo: Trevor Yeung.

But we had no desire to make the days exclusive or private as if they were some kind of bespoke tourist service. Other people sometimes joined for parts of the days if the artist had suggested it, yet the main point of emphasis was our commitment to the tour in lieu of the typically brief studio visit and a situation in which the artist has had ownership of planning the whole day. If there would be definitely something like an audience present throughout (that might expect to be engaged or come and go) the dynamics and the logistics would have changed.

The artist tours were conceived from the point of view of research, and we have been reluctant to burden the artists or overload the format to the degree that they become durational artworks or somehow theatrical. We are not particularly focused on tidying up whatever their ontological status as art might be and likewise, we have deliberately not just invited artists whose work has a clear sympathy with performative, urban research or an obvious relation with sociability or place.  We feel it is important that the format is quite malleable to the personality of each artist and that in the same way that you might browse a newspaper or share a car journey with somebody, the tours do not require a wider audience to legitimize them. In the same sense, they have not necessarily required documentation to make them valid. However, we have been increasingly interested in the idea of reportage or live broadcast in terms of the ‘making of’ or ‘artist at work’ genre, while at the same time being really wary about our own positions as protagonists and photographs that might seem like they belong in a travel magazine.

The tours in Mexico City took place for five consecutive days right after our arrival, so the way we shared the photographic material was more direct via our Facebook page at the end of each day. The exhibition at Casa del Lago opened only two days after we concluded the last tour, so we had to come up with a straightforward display form. For each tour, the photographer Eunice Adorno accompanied us and in the end, we projected a selection of 200 of her images as a slideshow and displayed a few of them printed on the wall alongside a large map of the city with pins locating the sites we visited. We also had printed itineraries, written by the artists, so anyone could later follow the routes themselves if they so desired. 
Visiting the Espacio Escultórico at U.N.A.M. with Jerónimo Hagerman, one of the five tours around Mexico City in September 2012. Photo: Eunice Adorno.

In Hong Kong, we were using Twitter, Instagram, and Vine during the tours, so it was an experiment in documentation-on-the-fly and live journaling which was open to real-time responses. We also made a series of one-minute field recordings. The tweets were archived soon after alongside these recordings, as well as related Facebook posts. We also published blog posts about each of the tours which included many photographs (by us and others) alongside paragraphs from the artists’ itineraries. This might seem to highlight merely mundane technical aspects of the project but it also heightened our interest in further exploring the idea of the curatorial bandwidth beyond exhibition making, something we continued to investigate in following projects such as #OpenCurating.

'End Note(s)' Colophon:

Concept: Heman Chong
Editors: Defne Ayas, Mimi Brown, Heman Chong, Amira Gad, Samuel Saelemakers
Contributors: A Constructed World, Nadim Abbas, Defne Ayas, Oscar van den Boogaard, Mimi Brown, Heman Chong, Chris Fitzpatrick, Amira Gad, Travis Jeppesen, Latitudes, Christina Li, Guy Mannes-Abbott, Samuel Saelemakers, Aaron Schuster
Copy Editors: Janine Armin, Marnie Slater
Production: Amira Gad, Samuel Saelemakers, Heman Chong
Design: Kristin Metho
Printer: Koninglijke Van Gorcum
Publisher: Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art Rotterdam, the Netherlands
ISBN: 978-94-9143-529-4

 
RELATED CONTENT:
  
First week of the "Moderation(s)" residency at Spring Workshop, Hong Kong (17 January 2013) 

Nadim Abbas' "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" public tour (19 January 2013) 

 "Temple and Feng Shui Tour", a guided walk around Hong Kong Island & Kowloon (22 January 2013)

Ho Sin Tung "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" tour (30 January 2013)

Yuk King Tan's "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" tour (3 February 2013)

 Tour of Devil's Peak and the Museum of Coastal Defence (6 February 2013)

Samson Young's "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" tour (7 February 2013)

 Latitudes' Open Day at Spring Workshop on 2 February 2013 (9 February 2013) 

"Archive as Method: An Interview with Chantal Wong, Hammad Nasar and Lydia Ngai" of the Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong. Concluding #OpenCurating interview (1 May 2013)

"Digression(s), Entry Point(s): An interview with Heman Chong", Singapore-based artist, curator, and writer. Eighth in the #OpenCurating research series. (4 April 2013)

Archive of social media posts related to "Incidents of Travel" tours and photo-documentation.

13 field recordings from 'Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong' 

Witte de With opens the group show "The Part In The Story Where A Part Becomes A Part Of Something Else" on May 22, 2014 (21 April 2014)

 Interview between Christina Li and Latitudes on 'Incidents of Travel' for Witte de With's 'Witness to Moderation(s)' blog (7 May 2013)
 
–  
This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and @LTTDS.
All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption).
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
 2013, 2015, Christina Li, editorial, Heman Chong, Hong Kong, Incidents of Travel, interview, latitudes, Moderations, Publication, residency, Spring Workshop, Witte de With
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Latitudes "Out of office", 2013–2014 season

 Thu, Jul 31 2014
This 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. 
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!)

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. 
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.

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).


 
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.
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.
 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).

 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.
 2013, 2014, ARCOmadrid, art-agenda, Athens, Frieze, Glasgow, Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum, latitudes, Melbourne, Moderations, out of office, Paris, Reviews, Rotterdam, Singapore
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Witte de With opens the group show "The Part In The Story Where A Part Becomes A Part Of Something Else" on May 22, 2014

 Mon, Apr 21 2014
Anthony Marcellini, "The Object In And Of Itself", 2011. Courtesy the artist and Witte de With, Rotterdam.

The group exhibition "The Part In The Story Where A Part Becomes A Part Of Something Else", opening on 22 May at Rotterdam's Witte de With brings a conclusion to "Moderation(s)", the long-term multifarious programme that began in August 2012 with a teaser event at Spring Workshop, Hong Kong, co-partner of the initiative. 

The exhibition, curated by 'moderator' Heman Chong (artist and writer, Singapore) and Samuel Saelemakers (Associate Curator, Witte de With), will include works by +40 artists "gathered around key concepts such as time, duration and space (Douglas Gordon, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, On Kawara), memory and inscription (Ang Song Ming, John Cage, Sharon Hayes), transformation (Bik Van der Pol, Nicolás Lamas), pleasure (Ivan Argote, Chu Yun, Willem de Rooij, Haegue Yang), and encounters (Lee Kit, Narcisse Tordoir)." [from the website].
 
"Moderation(s)" began in January 2013 with Latitudes' month-long residency at Spring Workshop, Hong Kong, with its project "Incidents of Travel": an invitation to four Hong Kong-based artists – Nadim Abbas, Ho Sin Tung, Yuk King Tan and Samson Young – to develop day-long tours, thus retelling the city and each participant’s artistic concerns through personal itineraries and waypoints. 

Around Kwun Tong market and shops with Samson Young. Photo: Spring Workshop. More photo-documentation here.

On 31 January a group of "Moderation(s)" participants [Heman Chong, Latitudes (Mariana Cánepa Luna and Max Andrews), Nadim Abbas, Mimi Brown, Chantal Wong, and Yuk King Tan] spent eight hours consulting the Asia Art Archive and engaging in multiple discussions around collectivity, time and knowledge triggered by archival resources [see "Asia Art Archive Intervention"]. 

Latitudes will also contribute to the forthcoming publication to be released on the occasion of the "The Part In The Story...", with documentation from each of the "Incidents of Travel" tours and an interview with curator Christina Li, Moderation(s)' witness.  

Participants during the Asia Art Archive intervention on 31 January 2013. Photo: Spring Workshop.

Follow:  
#ThePartInTheStory

Related posts:
– 

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.
 2014, Christina Li, Exhibition, Heman Chong, Incidents of Travel, Moderations, Publication, Rotterdam, Spring Workshop, Witte de With
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Latitudes' "out of office" photo album, 2012–2013 season

 Wed, Jul 31 2013
This is the fifth consecutive year [see 2008-9, 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12] we say goodbye to the season with an 'out of office' post with some unseen and 'behind the scenes' moments lived in the past months. 

Regretfully, we're not exactly off to a beach-and-palmtree holiday, just slowing down our inbox activity as well as our posts on this blog, Facebook and Twitter. 

 So happy holidays/felices vacaciones dear readers!  

3 September 2012: The season started with the exciting publication of the first #OpenCurating interview with the web team of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, which became content partners of the interview series. "Beyond Interface: An Interview with Robin Dowden, Nate Solas and Paul Schmelzer" was the first of a series of ten publications which were released between September and April 2013. The compilation, gathers an array of voices and approaches around the challenges, expectations, and new possibilities that digital culture and social media present to contemporary art institutions. To what degree are curators, media teams, publishers and archivists concerned with a dialogue with their audiences? #OpenCurating has investigated these questions through how new forms of culture, participation and connectivity are being developed both on site and on line.

In 'Beyond Interface' Robin Dowden (Director of New Media Initiatives), Nate Solas (Senior New Media Developer) and Paul Schmelzer (Web Editor) of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, discuss the museum's new website, relaunched in December 2011 following a two-year conceptual reboot and complete redesign.


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 9 September 2012: Soon after publishing the first #OpenCurating interview, we participated in dOCUMENTA (13) series of readings based on their publications programme Readers' Circle: 100 Notes—100 Thoughts, for which we decided to read 'Lawrence Weiner IF IN FACT THERE IS A CONTEXT' (2011, Hatje Cantz). On the door steps of Fridericianum, we read Lawrence's book and played his voice reading some of the passages too. See our post on dOCUMENTA (13).
 Board announcing the 19h 'Readers Circle' event.

On the steps of the Fridericianum reading Lawrence Weiner.

11–15 September 2012: During the last week of dOCUMENTA (13) Latitudes facilitated the Nature Addicts Fund Travelling Academy, organised within the framework of the 100-days-long exhibition in Kassel, Germany. Here you can watch a summary of the week-long workshop that had 15 participants (Ackroyd & Harvey, Frédérique Aït‐Touati, Geir Backe Altern, Linus Ersson, Aurélien Gamboni, Fernando García‐Dory, Mustafa Kaplan, Zissis Kotionis, Julia Mandle, Clare Patey, Érik Samakh, Åsa Sonjasdotter, Elisa Strinna, and was punctuated by the partcipation of dOCUMENTA (13) artists Maria Thereza Alves, Toril Johannessen and Claire Pentecost.
 Im-port and Ex-port boat moared at Kassel's river Fulda. Photo: Nature Addicts Fund.

 Visiting Jimmie Durham's piece at the Karlsaue Park. Photo: Nature Addicts Fund.

Group discussion with Chus Martínez, Core Agent, dOCUMENTA (13) at the Import/Export boat. 
Photo: Nature Addicts Fund.

17 September–5 October: Installation and opening (27 September) of the two-part exhibition 'Latitudes Projects 2005–2012' and 'Incidents of Travel: Mexico City' as part of Casa del Lago's 'Sucursal' programme, for which self-organised, self-funded or non-profit organisations temporarily move their offices to Casa del Lago in order to expose the cultural strategies of such forms of organisation. 'Incidents of Travel: Mexico City', consisted of the invitation to Minerva Cuevas (19 September), Tania Pérez Córdova (20 September), Diego Berruecos (21 September), Terence Gower (23 September) and Jerónimo Hagerman (24 September), and to devise one-day-long tours throughout the city. More info and photos of the five tours.
E-invite to the opening of the exhibition "Latitudes. Proyectos 2005–2012 & Incidentes de viaje" at Casa del Lago.
 Around Lagunilla with Minerva Cuevas. Photo: Eunice Adorno.
 Visiting the Hemeroteca at the UNAM with Diego Berruecos. Photo: Eunice Adorno.

Lunch with Terence Gower at Sólo Veracruz es Bello!, Tlalnepantla Centro. Photo: Eunice Adorno.

Observing an overgrown ivy and an ash in Polanco. Photo: Eunice Adorno.

 Visiting the Espacio Escultórico in the UNAM with Jerónimo Hagerman. Photo: Eunice Adorno.

Installing one of the 200+ poster pannels that composed the exhibition 'Latitudes. Proyectos 2005–2012' gathering information on +30 projects presented over the last seven years. More on Latitudes' projects here.

 Post-opening chelas with artists Jerónimo Hagerman and Jorge Satorre at the social cathedral of the artworld in Mexico DF: the cantina Covadonga. 

8 October 2012: Release of the second #OpenCurating interview. 'Alguien dijo 'Adhocracy'?' with Barcelona-based architect, co-founder of the publishing project dpr-barcelona and blogger Ethel Baraona Pohl. Ethel was a member of the curatorial team of 'Adhocracy', the exhibition of the first Istanbul Design Biennial (13 octubre–12 diciembre 2012) which later toured to the New Museum's 'Ideas City' Festival (1–4 May 2013). Read here (in Spanish) or here (in English).

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 17 October 2012: Mariana Cánepa of Latitudes participates in the season of talks Cultural Professions: the Curator, at the Aula de Cultura CAM, in Murcia. An initiative of the curatorial collective 1er Escalón.

Foto: Obra Social Caja Mediterráneo.

 19–21 October 2012: Following on, we participated in a two-day meeting in Witte de With, Rotterdam, in preparation for Moderation(s), a year-long programme of residencies, performances, exhibitions, workshops and research initiated by Witte de With’s director Defne Ayas and Spring Workshop founder Mimi Brown, and presided over by artist, writer and curator Heman Chong.


Photos: Witte de With.

 6–9 November 2012: Trip to Munich, to see Haus der Kunst's 'Ends of the Earth – Land Art to 1974' exhibition and attend the opening of Haegue Yang's "Der Öffentlichkeit" commission.
 Façade of Haus der Kunst in Munich.


Haegue Yang's "Der Öffentlichkeit" commission in Haus der Kunst atrium.
 Haegue Yang with Max Andrews discussing the installation process.

 28 November 2012: Third #OpenCurating interview online. 'Itinerarios transversales' is the interview with Sònia López and Anna Ramos of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA). The new web of the museum, was launched at the beginning of 2012 and includes new features such as 'Recorridos' (Itineraries), a tool that allows visitors to create their own transversal itineraries selecting amongst the five thousand works that compose the MACBA Collection, besides videos, artist entries, podcasts, publications, amongst others. Read here (in Spanish) or here (in English).
 Testing the navigation on the iPad. Looking good.

 5 December 2012: Fourth #OpenCurating interview up. 'Democratizando la sociedad informacional' analyses the practice of visual artist, art theorist and web activist Daniel G. Andújar. Though the use of irony, his work has questioned the use of new communicative technologies, the democratic and egalitarian promises these media prophesy, critisising their real yet hidden intentions to control users. Read here (in Spanish).

  17 December 2013: Reached the equator with #OpenCurating. Five out of ten interviews are up and running. The fifth, 'books_expanded_field' is the interview with Badlands Unlimited, a New York-based publishing house whose motto is “books in an expanded field”. Its publications and editions in paper or digital forms (e-books for iPad or Kindle) acknowledge that “historical distinctions between books, files, and artworks are dissolving rapidly”. Read here (in English).
The Walker Art Center's web continues to support the project re-publishing the interviews on their site. Read 'books_expanded_field'.


 2 January 2013: Happy New Year and happy reading. Seventh #OpenCurating interview with Steven ten Thije, Research Curator at the Van Abbemuseum, in Eindhoven. In 'From One History to A Plurality of Histories', Latitudes conversed with the researcher from one the first public museums for contemporary art to be established in Europe. Under the directorship of Charles Esche since 2004, the museum has defined itself through “an experimental approach towards art’s role in society”, where “openness, hospitality and knowledge exchange are important”. Read here (in English).
OC6_issuu
Read 'From One History to A Plurality of Histories'.

 7 January–11 February 2013: Curators-in-residency at Spring Workshop, Hong Kong, as part of the above mentioned 'Moderation(s)' programme. Our residency continued the artist-led tour format we initiated in Mexico City a few months earlier. Hong Kong-based artists Nadim Abbas, Yuk King Tan, Ho Sin Tung and Samson Young were invited to develop day-long itineraries, thus retelling the city and each participant’s artistic concerns through personal references and waypoints. More info and more photos of the four artist tours.

First 'Incidents of Travel' public tour with Nadim Abbas, 19 January. Photo: Spring Workshop.

Visiting Chung King Mansions and the nearby Mirador Mansions on Nathan Road with Yuk King Tan, 24 January. Photo: Mimi Brown.
 Navigating Tai Po with Ho Sing Tung, 29 January. Photo: Spring Workshop.

 Sound tour around the Kwun Tong Industrial district, with Samson Young, 7 February.
  
The residency included participating in the workshop "A Day at the Asia Art Archive" organised in collaboration with Spring Workshop and Witte de With, Rotterdam, on 31 January and concluded on February 2, with an Open Studios during which Latitudes and Heman Chong mantained a conversation about their experience in Hong Kong and their curatorial practice. [Related posts: Read the May 2013 interview between Christina Li and Latitudes here.]
Concentrating in the archives, "A Day at the Asia Art Archive". Photo: Mimi Brown.
2 February: Open Day at Spring. Conversation between Heman Chong and Latitudes. Photo: Spring Workshop.
 During an interview and photo session for Ming Pao Weekly. Photo: Athena Wu.

 19 February 2013: Public event of the #OpenCurating research at the Auditorium of MACBA, Barcelona. Latitudes in conversation with Yasmil Raymond, Curator of the Dia Art Foundation in New York. The conversation was later transcribed and published at the #7 of the series.
Yasmil Raymond during the conversation at MACBA's Auditorium. Photo: Joan Morey.

 8–14 March 2013: Research trip in Dublin. Invited by Dublin City Council: The Arts Office, Latitudes visited art spaces, artists' studios and galleries in Dublin and Derry-Londonderry throughout the week. The diary included participating in the round table 'Within the public realm', alongside artist Sean Lynch and curator Aisling Prior at the Hugh Lane Dublin City Gallery [video of the talk here]; and a Curatorial talk at CCA Derry-Londonderry. During the week we were hosted by artists, curators and studio managers who took us around the Red Stables Studios; Temple Bar Gallery + Studios; Fire Station Artists' Studios; Green On Red Gallery; Kevin Kavanagh Gallery and the Project Arts Centre - Visual Arts.
Visiting Fire Station Artists' Studios. Photo: Liz Burns.
 Walk with our hosts Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh, co-directors of CCA Derry–Londonderry, around Kinnagoe Bay in Donegal, site of 1588 shipwreck of one of the Spanish Armada ships.
 Gathered plenty of material during studio visits, lunches and dinners. How do we deal with this, Ryanair?
20 March 2013: Mariana Cánepa of Latitudes visits A*Desk's HQ and talks to A*Study's partipants about some of the practical challenges that came up in recent projects, how they were negotiated and ultimately, presented.

Photo: Oriol Fondevila.

2 April 2013: Publishing the eight #OpenCurating interview, "Digression(s), Entry Point(s): An interview with Heman Chong", Singapore-based artist, writer and curator of 'Moderation(s)'. 

18–22 April 2013: Attended the first International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art (IKT) congress, this year celebrated in Madrid. See more photos of the three-day event.
(Above) Symposium at the Cineteca in Matadero and (below) visit to the newly opened MediaLab Prado.

24 April 2013: Since mid-2010 we been members of the Programme Committee of Hangar Production Center in Barcelona, and have extended our mandate one more year until a new board is formed. Below a tweeted photo of a studio visit to Rasmus Nilausen' working space, during one of our periodic visits alongside other members of the Committee Joan Vilapuig, Jordi Mitjà and Àlex Mitrani.
27 May–2 June 2013: Venice Biennale week galore. We published three posts on our blog on 'The Encyclopedic Palace', the National Pavilions and Collateral Events and of the ubiquitous biennale tote bags.
After the art overdose, Venice rewarded biennale visitors with incredible sunsets between the several storms and showers that plagued the opening week.

 4 June 2013: In Madrid for an in conversation with New York-based artist Alejandro Cesarco on the occasion of his solo exhibition "La noche agranda su silencio”, Parra & Romero, Madrid. 
Photo: Parra & Romero.

 As far as press coverage, Stephanie Cardon of Boston's Big Red & Shiny featured a profile in September 2012 titled 'Meanwhile in Barcelona: Latitudes and #OpenCurating'. In the Autumn issue of D'ARS, Italian writer Saul Marcadent mentioned the (out of print, unfortunately) publication "LAND, ART: A Cultural Ecology Handbook", Latitudes edited in 2006 in the context of other ecological-oriented projects. During our March visit to Dublin, we chatted with Anne Mullee about the (then ongoing) #OpenCurating research, the conversation was soon after published in the International section of the May-June 2013 issue of The Visual Artists' News Sheet. Also in May, writer and curator Christina Li, interviewed us for the Moderation(s) blog Witness to Moderation(s), an opportunity to look back at our January residency in Hong Kong.

In the past months, Max Andrews of Latitudes has published the following texts in frieze: 'Utopia is possible' (October 2012 issue); review of Julia Montilla's exhibition "El «cuadro» de la Calleja" at Espai 13, Fundació Miró; and forthcoming, an interview with Rotterdam-based artists Klaas van Gorkum and Iratxe Jaio also for frieze, as well as two texts on the 1979 documentary film 'The Secret Life of Plants' for the final issue of the Dutch journal Club Donny!

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This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter. 
All photos: Latitudes (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)
 #OpenCurating, 2013, Casa del Lago, conversations, Dublin, Heman Chong, Mariana Cánepa Luna, Max Andrews, Moderations, out of office, Spring Workshop, talk, Yasmil Raymond
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A day at Hong Kong's Asia Art Archive, 31 January 2013

 Mon, Jul 8 2013
A few months ago, on January 31, an 8-hour internet-free workshop took place at the Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong. The workshop had the objective of harvesting quotes from amongst the thousands of books, artists correspondence, articles, exhibition invitations that are available at the archive, that made reference to three main subjects: "Influence" (on references, legacy, canalisation), "Itinerary" (on events, time, place, location) or "Moderation" (on collaboration, group dynamics, strategies for participation, partnerships).  

The workshop was led by artist/writer and Moderation(s) moderator Heman Chong, together with curatorial duo Latitudes, and counted with the participation of two Incidents of Travel artists' Nadim Abbas and Yuk King Tan, as well as with Spring Workshop founder Mimi Brown and Chantal Wong, Head of Strategy & Special Projects at Asia Art Archive.

 The results of these processes or 'entry points' will be presented later this year (date TBA) on a temporary shelf within the Asia Art Archive, where a host of bookmarks, Post-it notes, and jottings placed within books and documents will reveal the traces of an extended interpersonal conversation. 

On a related note, and following on from that experience, Latitudes mantained a conversation with the above mentioned Chantal Wong, as well as with Hammad Nasar (Head of Research and Programmes) and Lydia Ngai (Head Librarian) of the Asia Art Archive in the context of Latitudes' #OpenCurating research project. The conversation was published at the end of April, as the concluding chapter of a series of ten interviews conducted since August 2012 with artists, editors, curators, archivists and new media specialists on how the internet and the ongoing expectation for new forms of interaction between publics is changing contemporary art museums programmes. 

 
Workshop participants (left to right) Artist Nadim Abbas; curators Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna of Latitudes; artist, writer and Moderation(s) moderator Heman Chong, artist Yuk King Tan, Spring Workshop founder Mimi Brown; Head of Strategy & Special Projects at Asia Art Archive, Chantal Wong; and Athena Wu, Programme Manager at Spring Workshop.





View of Sheung Wan area from the Asia Art Archive. Photo: Latitudes.
A quick database search before jumping onto the bookshelves.
Reading, selecting, highlighting, noting down... Photo: Mimi Brown.
Workshop participants amongst Asia Art Archive's library stacks.
Related contents:


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All photos: Spring Workshop (except when noted otherwise).
 2013, archive, Asia Art Archive, collaboration, Heman Chong, Hong Kong, Moderations, Nadim Abbas, publications, quotes, Spring Workshop, Workshop, Yuk King Tan
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Interview between Christina Li and Latitudes on 'Incidents of Travel' for Witte de With's 'Witness to Moderation(s)' blog

 Tue, May 7 2013
From April 2013 onwards, writer and curator Christina Li (HK/NL) takes up the role of a designated Witness to Moderation(s) the year-long programme of exhibitions, performances and residencies that unfolds between Witte de With in Rotterdam and Spring in Hong Kong. As such, Li is invited to post regular blog entries responding to the multi-faceted projects part of Moderation(s).
Christina Li has been a part of Moderation(s) since its inception, and participated in the research and development workshop that took place at Witte de With in October 2012. Li will also be one of the four curators –together with Lee Ambrozy, Amira Gad, and Xiaoyu Weng– organising the day-long conference Stories And Situations: The Moderation(s) Conference to take place on 5 October 2013 at Witte de With.

The interview published below between Li and Latitudes was originally published on Witte de With's website on May 2, 2013.

Christina Li: “Incidents of Travel” in Hong Kong is the second iteration of a project that you started in Mexico D.F in 2012, could you talk a little bit about how the idea of inviting artists to plan an itinerary functioning as both an artistic encounter an alternative studio visit came about?

Latitudes: The idea of the tour guide is of course not new. Back in 2009 while we were doing a year-long project in the Port of Rotterdam, we organised a series of bus tours to the port where we would present projects by Jan Dibbets, Lara Almarcegui or Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller, etc. Listening to the feedback of the group that took part during those tours, we realised there was something very valuable about the idea of being (kindly) trapped in a bus for a day and to be taken around with a group of people whom you shared interests or even friendship with. Some were co-workers and took the day to talk about non-work related issues, to admire the landscape, to listen to the soundtrack that accompanied the bus tour and basically to enjoy a day away from the keyboard. We wanted to repeat what we thought was a successful format and thought our trip to Mexico DF was a perfect occasion for that.


Tour with Lara Almarcegui and botanist Remko Andeweg around the Port of Rotterdam, 8 November 2009. Photo: Latitudes. More images of the tour here. 

While preparing a small exhibition of our eight years of practice for Casa del Lago in México DF, we felt we needed to add a ‘here and now’ contribution, and suggested inviting five artists (Minerva Cuevas, Tania Pérez Córdova, Diego Berruecos, Terence Gower and Jerónimo Hagerman) to develop a day-long tour for us. The choice of artists was mixed, some we had met before (Jerónimo or Terence) but didn’t know their work in much detail, and others (Tania, Minerva and Diego) we had been following their work for a while, but never met them in person. Our invitation was very open, our idea was for them to develop an itinerary that helped us understand their creative world, and that included them taking us to their favourite (or hated!) museums, libraries, markets, monuments, housing states, shops, restaurants, etc. that were special to their lives or to their artistic practice. We offered all artists a fee, covered all food and tickets-related expenses and had a car to take us around 9am–6pm, after that, we used public transport. Experiencing any city accompanied by a local friend always offers a much deeper insight into any city, but navigating it with an artist whose work you admire, is even more meaningful as each site amplifies a personal connection.


Photo: Eduardo Loza 


Li: Did you choose to adopt a different approach in your invitation to the artists in the Hong Kong edition? As far as I understood, Nadim Abbas’ tour was open to the public, while Yuk King Tan’s, Ho Sin Tung’s and Samson Young’s were conducted in a more intimate manner within a smaller group; what was the reason behind this decision? What were the responses to Nadim Abbas’ tour?

Latitudes: No, the invitation was the same in both occasions, though in Hong Kong we mostly used public transport. We also had more time to prepare and digest information, as were a month in residence at Spring. In the end it worked out as one tour per week as that suited best the artists’ schedule. Nadim’s tour was the first and was indeed open to the public, it has been the only tour so far with this aspect, although it was still a small group, initially of around fifteen people. We were interested in pushing the format and of course this meant that Nadim had to consider practical issues like distances and locations more carefully (ie. avoiding long walking distances, accessibility for groups, food availability…) in order to be realistic with the timings. A few people joined on and off, some engaged more actively than others. It was wonderful to see that Hong Kongers were also discovering sites they had never been to, like the Waterfall Bay Park or the nearby Waterfall Bay. Somehow we were all tourists for a day.


Nadim Abbas tour, 19 January 2013. Waterfall Bay Park's waterfall. Photo: Trevor Young 

Li: Since these tours have always been meant for you both to converse privately with each selected artist and to get to know their practices and the city, has opening these tours up conjure a different perspective of how these tours could function for you both initially? How has this attempt challenge your thinking in mediating and presenting the immediate experience and documentation of these tours to a larger audience?

Latitudes: The tours were conceived from the point of view of research, and we haven’t wanted to necessarily burden the artists or the format with the expectations that they were participatory performances or some kind of touristic spectacle. We’ve tried to keep them quite casual and inconspicuous in this sense, and to respect the notion of hospitality in the same way that if we came to your house for dinner, you wouldn’t expect us to bring a group of strangers with us! Indeed this was literally the case in the day with Yuk King Tan, which concluded with a household of Filipina domestic workers making dinner for us – women whose trust and friendship she had earned through her personal affiliations and the concerns of her art. It is really not a question of us making the tours exclusive or private – we have not actually prohibited anyone else from coming along if the artist suggested it or was anyway okay with it. Yet it somehow seemed important to be able to commit to spending an entire day with them, and as soon as there is definitely something like an audience present (that might expect to be entertained or decide to leave) the dynamics and the logistics change.

The tours in México DF took place during five consecutive days right after our arrival, so the way we shared the photographic material was more direct via our Facebook at the end of each day. The exhibition at Casa del Lago opened only two days after we concluded the last tour, so had to come up with a fast solution to present our explorations: we projected a selection of 200 images as a slideshow, and displayed a selection of printed photos on the wall alongside a large map of the city with pins that located the sites we visited and the actual itineraries we followed written by the artists, which contained short descriptions of each site (we printed extra copies of these and made them available in the exhibition so one could pick them up and follow the route. These are now available to download from our website.)


Photo: Adrián Villalobos 

In Hong Kong we were able to tweet during the tours, so it was an interesting process of documentation-on-the-go, of keeping a live diary of one’s journey, and to receive real-time responses from colleagues all over the world – the tweets have now been archived alongside some thirteen sound recordings, Facebook and blog posts. We also published blog posts of each of the tours which include extensive photo-documentation (by us and colleagues who took part) of the day interconnecting each photo with paragraphs of the itineraries are written by the artists and our own impressions.

Li: You also have been to some other more specialised tours on offer during your stay in Hong Kong, were there more specific aspects of Hong Kong you were hoping to explore which guided your choices in attending these tours as a sightseer and a cultural tourist?

Latitudes: We were interested in studying what kind of readings the city offered away from the usual tourist sites (the Tian Tan Buddha, Victoria Peak, shopping tours, a day in Macau,…). We wanted to see if we could find more ‘marginal’ sculptures or sites that presented vernacular displays far from the polished and pre-packaged tourist experience.


1km of floating boardwalks, Deep Bay, Mai Po Marshes. Photo: Latitudes. 


We picked up hundreds of leaflets in the information office and found a couple interesting ones offered by the Walk Hong Kong company we thought were somehow out of the usual menu. We have always been interested in environmental issues and wanted to approach the high density of Hong Kong from another angle, from its relation to the surrounding nature. We visited the Mai Po Nature Reserve in the New Territories, a wetland on the Australasia migratory route, and ended the day in Long Valley in Sheung Shui, observing birds and farmers collecting large amounts of lettuces and watercress. This also tied in with another wetland we visited later with Ho Sin Tung, the Nam Sang Wai area, in the northwest of Hong Kong. This is to say that our own interests ended up tying in nicely with the sites, we visited with the artists. Samson Young took us to a nearby area on his tour, to the border fence that separates Hong Kong with mainland China where we listened to “Liquid Borders”, a soundtrack he has been recording placing contact microphones in the wired fencing and mixing it with the sound of water of the Shenzhen River.

Another tour we joined was the Feng Shui tour led by Susan Braun. We started visiting Norman Foster’s Hong Kong HSBC building in Admiralty built according to strict Feng Shui principles and finished at the Chi Lin Nunnery. The final one was with Martin Heyes, a former British Army officer and passionate World War II specialist, who took us to Devil’s Peak at the eastern extremity of Kowloon and to the Museum of Coastal Defence, to learn everything about the 1941 Japanese invasion of Hong Kong.


A group of Japanese tourists visit the battery on Devil's Peak. Photo: Latitudes 


Li: As a whole, what would you say about the kinds of insights you have gained about the city from these tours, which might be seen as complements to the knowledge produced from the more casual encounters you have had through “Incidents of Travel”?

Latitudes: The Walk Hong Kong tours were an opportunity for us to specifically learn about birds, marshlands, Feng Shui and the 1941 Japanese invasion, but most importantly it was an opportunity to discuss with our tour leaders issues that went beyond the tour script so to speak, issues like immigration, recent historical events such as the 2003 SARS outbreak, the current economic climate, the relationship to mainland China, etc. Curiously, all of the tour leaders were expats that had lived in Hong Kong for many years, so for us it was very interesting to hear how it was to live there today. The same goes for the artists, we absorbed a great wealth of information from each other beyond discussing the sites we were taken to. We talked about books, films, about the art world, what it is to be an artist and a curator today, etc.

‘Incidents of Travel’ and our residency was very much in line with what Heman Chong, moderator of the Moderation(s) the program, explained during the January press conference: Moderation(s) is about stretching time. Not surprisingly, the image he chose to illustrate the long term collaboration between Spring Workshop and Witte de With was a clock. That image stood out very clearly during our time there. The offered time gave us the chance to generate conversations with the artists, to find a common ground, to generously share and exchange some kind of knowledge, and to engage in multiple and repeated dialogues with locals and expats, a rare luxury one is not often given.


Latitudes' talk on 'Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong' and their curatorial practice during 'Open Day' at Spring Workshop, 2 February 2013. 


Related contents:
13 Soundscapes of "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong";
Social media archive"Incidents of Travel";
Flickr album of the four tours of "Incidents of Travel".



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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, Casa del Lago, Christina Li, Heman Chong, Hong Kong, Incidents of Travel, interview, latitudes, Moderations, México, Spring Workshop, tours, Witte de With
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"Digression(s), Entry Point(s): An interview with Heman Chong", Singapore-based artist, curator and writer. Eighth in the #OpenCurating research series

 Tue, Apr 2 2013
 Cover of the interview. Photo: Joan Kee.
Interview available for download as a pdf or readable on ISSUU via Latitudes' web.

Heman Chong’s art practice is comprised of “an investigation into the philosophies, reasons and methods of individuals and communities imagining the future”. His ongoing project, The Lonely Ones, looks at the representation of solitude and the “last man on earth” genre in art, film and literature, and is the basis for a forthcoming novel entitled Prospectus. Chong’s recent solo exhibitions include LEM 1, Rossi & Rossi, London (2012), Calendars (2020–2096), NUSMuseum, Singapore (2011) and The Sole Proprietor and other Stories, Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou (2007). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions including the Asia Pacific Triennale 7 (2012), Performa 11 (2011), Momentum 6 (2011), Manifesta 8 (2010), Busan Biennale (2004), and the 50th Venice Biennale (2003) representing Singapore. Amonograph of his work entitled "The Part In The Story Where We Lost Count Of The Days", edited by Pauline J. Yao, will be published in June 2013 by ArtAsiaPacific. 

 The interview was initiated at Spring Workshop, Hong Kong, in the context of Chong’s invitation to Latitudes to make a curatorial residency as part of Moderation(s), a year-long series of programming between Spring and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam. "Digression(s), Entry Point(s): An interview with Heman Chong" also includes a guest spot with Gotherburg-based artist and writer Anthony Marcellini.

 Follow:
@LTTDS 
#OpenCurating 
@HemanChong
#Moderations

 ABOUT #OPENCURATING

 Drawing on the emerging practices of so-called 'Open Journalism' – which seek to better collaborate with and use the ability of anyone to publish and share – #OpenCurating is a research project that investigates how contemporary art projects may function beyond the traditional format of exhibition-and-catalogue. #OpenCurating is concerned with new forms of interaction between publics – whether online followers or physical visitors – with artworks and their production, display and discursive context.

 The project is articulated around a series of ten new interviews with curators, artists, writers and online strategists published as a free digital edition [read here the published ones so far], a Twitter discussion moderated around the hashtag #OpenCurating and an public conversation with Dia Art Foundation curator which took place at MACBA on the 19 February.

 #OpenCurating is a research project by Latitudes produced through La Capella. BCN Producció 2012 of the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona. 








Content partners: Walker Art Center

  
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Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
 #OpenCurating, 2013, BCN Producció, collaboration, exhibition-making, Heman Chong, Hong Kong, interacción, interview, Moderations, negotiation, OpenJournalism, Singapore, Spring Workshop, Witte de With
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Latitudes' Open Day at Spring Workshop on 2 February 2013

 Sat, Feb 9 2013
On February 2nd, 2013 Spring Workshop hosted an Open Day during which Latitudes discussed, together with Moderation(s) moderator Heman Chong, their month-long residency in Hong Kong. The contribution to the project consisted in realising the second iteration of "Incidents of Travel",  with tours by Hong Kong-based artists Nadim Abbas (19 January), Yuk King Tan (24 January), Ho Sin Tung (29 January) and Samson Young (7 February) – amongst other explorations around the city, such as to Mai Po marshes, Feng Shui tour or to Devil's Peak. 

The evening began tracing "Incidents of Travel"'s origins with itineraries and tours organised in previous projects such as the seminar-on-wheels for the 8th Sharjah Biennial (2007) as well as during Portscapes (2009) in the Port of Rotterdam. After introducing "Incidents of Travel" in Mexico City and the four tours in Hong Kong, we fielded questions from the audience and discussed the ongoing research project #OpenCurating and its origins with the editorial project realised for The Last Newspaper (2010) exhibition at the New Museum in New York.


 Moderation(s)' moderator: artist, writer and curator Heman Chong.
 Food time! Thai food from the neighbouring Cooked food Market on Nam Long Shan Road, Aberdeen.

Related contents:
Soundscapes of "Incidents of Travel" Hong Kong;
Storify "Incidents of Travel";
Flickr album of the four tours of "Incidents of Travel".

All photos: Spring Workshop.
 2013, Ho Sin Tung, Hong Kong, Incidents of Travel, latitudes, Moderations, Nadim Abbas, Samson Young, Spring Workshop, talk, Yuk King Tan
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Samson Young's "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" tour

 Thu, Feb 7 2013
As part of Moderation(s), the year-long collaboration in 2013 between Witte de With, Rotterdam, and Spring Workshop, Hong Kong, curators-in-residence Latitudes have invited artist Samson Young to develop a day-long tour of Hong Kong retelling the city and artistic concerns through personal itineraries and waypoints.  

 To complement the tour, please check the archive of twitter and facebook and SoundCloud posts.

 #IncidentsOfTravel #Moderations 

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"Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong"
by Samson Young
7 February 2013  
I am very envious of artists who are able to describe their practices in a manner that is concise, succinct, and consistent. To tell one’s life story is also to confess. I purge my catalogue of works and rebuild my identity (as told by images, sounds, and self-descriptions) every couple of years. Moderation(s) asks that I create a tour that “articulates the city and (my) artistic practice through routes and waypoints.” Are routes and waypoints more authentic than a studio visit? Are the vernacular, the eccentric and the marginal more “real,” in the same way that punk is real and techno apparently isn’t? The pressure to define the unique and the authentic is perhaps growing more urgent with globalization, but behind each assiduous defence of the authentic lies what Regina Bendix calls “unarticulated anxiety of losing the subject” (Bendix 1997). 

 During this tour, I eavesdrop on my own works in the presence of six others. We take an early morning sound-walk around the Kwun Tong industrial district, visit a site near the City Hall in Central where the now-demolished Queen's Pier was once located, and trespass the frontier closed area near the Hong Kong-China border. In between locations, we listen to recordings of music and/or read texts that have informed my work one way or another.
 The sound walk begins at 75 Hung To Road in the industrial district of Kwun Tong.


Sound-walk: 75 Hung To Road, Kwun Tong 

 We begin the tour at 75 Hung To Road. I will conduct again a sound walk that I created back in 2009. Participants of the sound-walk follow me on a route through the Kwun Tong industrial district. To create this work I walked the same route a number of times at different dates and times, generating one full recording in each walkthrough. I then edited these recordings into a single soundtrack, to which the participants listen during the sound-walk. During the sound-walk, I follow my own footstep by listening to the sound marks in the soundtrack, to ensure that I am in sync with my recorded presence.

 Samson Young leads us while listening to the 44 min. soundtrack "Kwun Tong Soundwalk" on mp3 players.

 Young takes us through the bus station.
  Photo: Spring Workshop.


 Condemned industrial buildings around Kwun Tong.
Around Kwun Tong's shops and markets. Photo: Spring Workshop.
More condemned buildings. When Young recorded the soundtrack in 2009 these places were still open, a proof of the swift gentrification of Kwun Tong.
A short pause at Yue Man Square Rest Garden. Photo: Spring Workshop.
Soundwalk-ing in a bus terminus. Photo: Spring Workshop.
Tsim Bei Tsui, Frontier Closed Area 

 I was born in Hong Kong but mostly educated in Australia. I’ve always felt that children of Mainland Chinese parents had an easier time answering the question, “Where are you from?” They simply say, “I’m Chinese.” I always feel more natural saying I’m from Hong Kong, rather than plainly stating that I’m Chinese. Or, if I say I’m Chinese, I feel the need to add the footnote that I was born in Hong Kong. I am frankly confused by all of this. For the longest time, I avoided identity politics in my work, but the national education saga in 2012 prompted me to revisit this issue.

 Hong Kong and Mainland China are physically separated by the ShenzhenRiver and a great wall of wired fencing, and south to the border are restricted zones known as the Frontier Closed Area. Entry into the Frontier Closed Area without an official permit is strictly forbidden. In October 2005, the then chief executive Donald Tsang announced a proposal to drastically reduce the Frontier Closed Area. In February 2012, 740 hectares of land were initially opened up for public access. The proposal will be implemented in phases, and other areas will soon follow suit. Since July 2012, I had been systemically collecting the sound of places and/or objects that separate the two regions. I recorded the vibration of the wired fencing with contact microphones and the water sounds of the Shenzhen River with hydrophones. I rearranged these recordings into sound compositions. I then re-transcribed these sound collages into graphical notations.

 
Frontier Closed Area.
  Walking through the fields that border China.
 Nearby Kaw Liu Village.

 Pig farm guarded by angry dogs.
 New development to house relocated villagers following highway construction.
En route. Photo: Spring Workshop
 Self-build constructions/storage along the way.
Young introducing the making of the soundtrack "Liquid Borders" we are about to listen to.

Since early 2012, 740 hectares of land have been opened up for public access, and buildings have been constructed nearer the fence which runs along the Shenzhen River.


 Bordering the fence while listening to the "Liquid Border" soundtrack.

Sound recording. Photo: Spring Workshop

Queen’s Pier in Edinburgh Place.
 Queen's Pier was a public pier in central in front of the City Hall. For decades it served not only as a public pier but also as a major ceremonial arrival and departure point. The pier witnessed the official arrival in Hong Kong of all of Hong Kong's governors since 1925; Elizabeth II landed there in 1975, as did the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1989. On 26 April 2007, the pier officially ceased operation. The government’s plan to demolish the pier to make way for a new highway was met with fierce opposition by conservationists. Despite the public outcry, Queen's Pier was demolished in the February of 2008.

 I was living in New York when all of this happened. In 2009 I composed and directed a music theatre work entitled “God Save the Queen.” The work started out as a requiem for the Queen’s Pier. It evolved into a hymn to the structures, both physical and symbolic, of my teenage days – which were also the last of the colony’s. The performance was accompanied by a mixture of live footage from five theatre-based CCTV cameras, and pre-recorded clips of screen icon Helena Law Lan (who often played royalty for TV), dressed as the Queen.

 1956 City Hall building that connected with the now-demolished Queen's Pier in Edinburgh Place.
Photo: Spring Workshop

The lotus pond, University of Hong Kong 

 I was what you might call a “straight-down-the-center” composer to begin with. For over a decade I operated only in the concert in the capacity of a composer of the Western classical tradition. Now I do all kinds of weird things in all sorts of weird places. Chan Hing-yan, my mentor during my years at HKU, had a looming influence on me. I think a lot of what I do today is a reaction against what (I imagine that) I’d learnt during those formative years – a sort of a “creative misreading” as Harold Bloom would put it.

 To end the tour Samson reads a passage of his dissertation about his approach to music composition and cultural politics.
Talking nearby the lotus pond at "Hong Kong U". Photo: Spring Workshop


Samson Young (1979) is a composer, sound artist and media artist. Young received training in computer music and composition at Princeton University under the supervision of computer music pioneer Paul Lansky. He is currently an assistant professor in sonic art and physical computing at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. Young is also the principle investigator at the Laboratory for Ubiquitous Musical Expression (L.U.M.E), and artistic director of the experimental sound advocacy organization Contemporary Musiking. 
In 2007, he became the first from Hong Kong to receive the Bloomberg Emerging Artist Award for his audio-visual project “The Happiest Hour”. His brainwave non-performance “I am thinking in a room, different from the one you are hearing in now” received a Jury Selection award at the Japan Media Art Festival, and an honorary mention at the digital music and sound art category of Prix Ars Electronica.

Festival presentations and honours include Prix Ars Electronica (Austria 2012); Japan Media Art Festival (Japan 2012); Sydney Springs International New Music Festival (Australia 2001), the Canberra International Music Festival (Australia 2008), ISCM World Music Days (Australia 2010), MONA FOMA Festival of Music and Art (2011); the Bowdoin International Music Festival (US 2004), Bang on a Can Music Summer Music Festival (US 2005), Perspectives International Festival of Media Art (US 2009); Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt (Germany 2006); Dark Music Days (Iceland 2008); Kuala Lumpur Contemporary Music Festival (Malaysia 2009); amongst others. His music received performances by Hong Kong Sinfonietta, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, London NASH Ensemble, City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong, Bang on a Can and summer institute fellows, Network for New Music, New Millennium Ensemble, SO Percussion, Sydney Song Company, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, MIVOS Quartet, among others.

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 All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)
Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
 2013, Heman Chong, Hong Kong, Incidents of Travel, Moderations, Samson Young, Spring Workshop, tour, Witte de With
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