Meet Latitudes at Midway Contemporary Art tonight

After leaving their temporary home of Minneapolis several years ago, curators Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna relocated to Barcelona where they've been running their "curatorial office" Latitudes ever since. This week, I'm glad they're coming back.

Latitudes' projects are often, but not always, ecological in theme, and they tend to be boundrary-blurring site-specific public artworks. In recent weeks, for example, they've been producing a weekly newspaper within the New Museum exhibition The Last Newspaper (issue 3, just out, includes a short bit I was invited to write about my employers at the nonprofit American Independent News Network, plus an essay by former Walker curator Doryun Chong on the artwork Vanilla Nightmares by Adrian Piper). Previous projects include Portscapes, a series of commissioned projects using and responding to the expansion of Rotterdam's seaport; No Soul For Sale: A Festival of Independents at Tate Modern this May; an upcoming exhibition in Arhus, Denmark, of energy-related work by Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller; and the 2006 book (edited by Andrews), Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook, which I'm proud to say includes my interviews with Winona LaDuke, Cameron Sinclair and Rirkrit Tiravanija; to name just a few.
Documentation of the Jan Dibbets' Portscapes project, 6 Hour Tide Object with Correction of Perspective

Tonight at 7 pm the pair will give a talk at Minneapolis' Midway Contemporary Art about their work and the project, Vic Cambrils Barcelona / Verges Cervera Barcelona / Viladamat Castelldefels Barcelona / Vilafranca Cornella Barcelona / Valls Collserola Barcelona... A Library Project:

In response to Midway Contemporary Art Library’s holdings of museum catalogues and from publishing houses in Barcelona, Latitudes has assembled a counter-accession of approximately 50 self- and micro-published books and paper editions by artists. Each publication is the work of an artist, designer, curator, or publishing initiative based in Barcelona or Catalonia since 2005. Although some were produced in conjunction with exhibitions, the books – or in some cases CD editions, newspapers, etc. – tend not to be traditional accompanying catalogues per se, but rather editorial propositions in themselves.

The title of the initiative presents various playful corruptions of the title of Woody Allen’s movie Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) by substituting place names from Catalonia, suggesting a local alternative to the hackneyed cultural construction of Barcelona, as well as the depiction of the star artist.

Details about Midway here.