Curating in the web of life. A lecture by Latitudes (Max Andrews & Mariana Cánepa Luna) during the Public program for The Coming World: Ecology as the New Politics 2030–2100.

Modern art and modernist art history largely assented to the ontological and epistemological lie which imagined humanity and the humanities making their own history by themselves, while hiding the fact that their productions, relations, and economy were always teeming with biophysical processes.

The increasing violence by which the limits of the planet, its feedback loops and tipping points, are forcing themselves into world events has profound consequences for how we narrate (art) history and curate exhibitions in the web of life.

New disciplines are broaching the separation between human activities and Earth systems— environmental law, political ecology, ecological economics, and so on. Likewise, what is at issue when artists, curators, exhibitions, and museums venture into new formations and shared rather than adjacent perspectives? What is at stake in a curatorial ecology, an environmental art history, or in integrating socio-natural processes into an institution’s account of itself, and so on?

Turning to a world-systems approach as well as the insights of micro-history, Max Andrews & Mariana Cánepa Luna presented a series of curatorial and artistic perspectives on such questions, drawing from “uncomfortable objects” and “dishonest research” across their exhibitions 4.543 billion. The matter of matter (2017–2018), Greenwashing. Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities (2008) and related projects.

Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna are curators based in Barcelona, Spain. In 2005 they cofounded Latitudes, a curatorial office that has worked internationally across contemporary art practices, encompassing more than 50 projects including exhibitions, public realm commissions, film screenings, pedagogical and discursive programs. Latitudes has commissioned and curated projects at the Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona – Fabra i Coats (2018), CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux (2017), Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2016), Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2017), Barcelona Gallery Weekend (2015, 2016), Spring Workshop, Hong Kong (2013), Kunsthall Århus (2011), New Museum, New York (2010), Port of Rotterdam (2009), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2008), amongst others. Latitudes current research focusses on material narratives, biographies of objects, and a world-ecological perspective on art histories. Since 2016 Latitudes has edited “Incidents (of Travel)”, an online series produced by KADIST documenting an offline day between curators and artists, and mentor the Barcelona Producció artistic production grants awarded each year by the Barcelona City Council.

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