Todi Circular Nº 5 - Ad meliora

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The Todi Circle 2016 (left to right, geographically speaking rather than politically): Roger Hargreaves, London; Massimo Vitali, Lucca; Mario Santoro, Todi; William Ewing, Lausanne; Mimi Chun, Hong Kong; Flora Ewing, Lausanne; Todd Brandow, Ibiza; Ambassador Santoro, our host at Todi castle, seen at rear; Michael Wilson, London; Max Kozloff, New York; Mary DelMonico, New York; Delphine Sims, Santa Barbara; Sandra Phillips, San Francisco; Lucas Blalock, New York; Thomas Zander, Cologne; Nathalie Herschdorfer, Lausanne / Le Locle; Darius Himes, New York; Philip Tinari, Beijing.
Photo courtesy Lucas Blalock

This mid-month Circular has reports from China, South Africa, India, Germany and America’s east and west coasts.

Not content with his fabulous space in Beijing, Phil Tinari announces two new Ullens sites opening elsewhere in China—one buried under a beach— and lets us in on a new biennale taking shape in the Middle East…
South African Federica Angelucci, one of the directors of the gallery Stevenson, talks of her struggles to keep projects moving, and invites those of us who can to visit Stevenson’s Amsterdam space…
Publisher Russet Lederman intrigues us with her ongoing reading room project, and talks about plans for the Gould Collection, which pairs writers with photographers…
Photographer Richard Misrach shares a film of his work along the US/Mexican border, and gives advance notice of an Aperture workbook…
Gallerist Thomas Zander pays homage to two great book makers, Gerhard Steidl and Walther König, while using his enforced immobility to get to things often pushed aside in better times…
Festival founder Prashant Panjiar gives us a capsule history of photo festivals in India, and laments a dangerous shift to the right in politics, threatening photographers’ freedoms….

PHILIP TINARI DIRECTOR/CURATOR BEIJING

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Position
Director and Chief Executive, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art. I haven’t gone anywhere since attending Todi in 2016, but things where I am have changed a lot. One week after my time in Todi ended (on the day of the Brexit referendum) our founder Guy Ullens decided to put UCCA up for sale. A rather chaotic year and a half ensued, culminating in October 2017 (on the day a show I co-curated, “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World, opened at the Guggenheim) with a new arrangement involving multiple, mainly Chinese partners. The past three years have been a whirlwind. I’ve taken on the operational side of things, and built the team to support a major renovation in Beijing as well as two new venues: UCCA Dune (buried under the beach in Beidaihe, 300 km from Beijing) and UCCA Edge (in a new tower in central Shanghai, opening Spring 2021).

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Recently
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking of new ways to keep our institution vital and solvent-revamping the patrons program, bringing in major exhibitions like last summer’s blockbuster with the Musée Picasso or next year’s with the Andy Warhol Museum, and developing ventures like UCCA Lab, our arm devoted to commercial collaborations, and UCCA Kids, our education platform for the two-to-ten set. And I’m still trying to finish up my Ph.D. at Oxford.

Currently
Working hard on the opening show for UCCA Edge, a meditation on Shanghai circa 2000 as the moment the Chinese art world started to understand itself as part of the global art world. With my team, have taken on a major biennale for 2021 in the Middle East to be announced shortly. This year was an exercise in improvisation. We were able to bang out an exhibition in response to the pandemic, Meditations in an Emergency, in the six weeks between receiving word that we could reopen and actually doing so on May 21.

Life during the pandemic
Though I’ve been living in Beijing full-time since 2006, I used to spend at least one-third of the year outside China. This year, of course, I’ve been here since early February, my longest uninterrupted stretch to date. It turns out an authoritarian surveillance state is not the worst place to wait out a global pandemic, as life has been more or less normal (ignoring the daily trappings of masks, mobile phone health codes, and temperature checks) since the hard lockdown began to loosen back in May. It’s been good for my running career, and has forced us to travel domestically to places we probably otherwise wouldn’t have gone, like southern Gansu and northern Yunnan.

Sending festive greetings to one and all, Phil.

FEDERICA ANGELUCCI GALLERIST CAPETOWN

Position
I am still one of the directors at Stevenson, as part of a collective of 13 shareholders: in 2018, year of my participation to the Todi Circle, we were 11. [For more on our model see.
https://news.artnet.com/market/new-models-stevenson-gallery-1892098]

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Recently
With all the changes in exhibition calendars, both at the gallery and internationally, it seems impossible to ‘move on’: luckily a few large projects involving artists I work with still saw the light in 2020.

In order of appearance:

After premiering in Versailles last year, Viviane Sassen’s “Venus and Mercury” was on show at Amsterdam’s Huis Marseille: the exhibition was meant to open when The Netherlands had the first lockdown in March. It was eventually accessible in the Summer months.

Jo Ractliffe’s retrospective show ‘Drives’ went up at the Art Institute of Chicago in October, after 4 months delay: however the museum is temporarily closed. The exhibition is meant to be on until the 26^th of April 2021 and I hope that there will still be the chance for me/the artist to see it. Jo’s survey book “Photographs:1980s to now”, published by Steidl and The Walther Collection is out: conceived independently from the exhibition, it is the perfect companion to the show.

Zanele Muholi’s survey finally opened last week at Tate Modern, and it will be up until June 2021. This is another exhibition which had to be rescheduled, with an effect on the dates of the tour. I hope those of you in London can see it soon, and the others next year (including me!). Going through the mock-up of the installation via Zoom with Co-curator Sarah Allen in the days prior to the actual set-up was one of the highlights of my year.

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© Tate (Andrew Dunkley)

Currently
Exploring ways of creating connections and making the work accessible in a period of prolonged isolation has become an ongoing project. Like many colleagues we have embarked into the adventure of the ‘online viewing rooms’, accompanying exhibitions at the gallery. Interesting experiments have been Guy Tillim latest show “Hotel Universo”– three artists’ books that were installed at the gallery with gloves and browsing stations at adequate distance from each other; online, a video showed the pages of the books with an audio commentary. I also gave my first filmed walkabout last week, for Mame-Diarra Niang current exhibition: I had not been so anxious since my graduation and thesis discussion many years ago! I am a very nervous about what might come next . I have also started working on the second volume of “Somnyama Ngonyama” by Z. Muholi, publication date to be confirmed.

Like help with?
It would be great if “Drives” travelled after Chicago, although understandable that it is difficult to make plans in the current situation. I thoroughly enjoyed taking part to MEET* and despite the Zoom fatigue that surely plagues us all I was reminded of how our realm is one of imagination and relationships, and exchanging ideas in more or less casual conversations is vital. How can one get the benefit minimizing the side effects of digital dependence?

Life during the pandemic
Professionally, I found myself much more involved in the ‘running of the gallery’: there are many of us, and making sure everyone was set to work from home, we still felt a human connection and the artists could continue to have a platform (real or digital) was not small feat. We somehow made/ continue to make it work following the motto ‘we will make it up as we go along’. To counterbalance our isolated geographical position in these times we have also made our Amsterdam office a more active exhibition space, and my colleague Joost has temporarily moved there (I hope he will come back at some point!) if you are in the neighbourhood please pop by Prinsengracht 371B 1016HK Amsterdam

Personally: at the end of 2019 I moved back to Cape Town from Johannesburg with my family; we left our house with garden and landed in an apartment (with no garden) just a couple of months before lockdown: happy to report that I am still married to my husband and that home-schooling has not prevented our child from being admitted to grade 3. I think our regular walks along Table Mountain can take the credit for these positive developments.

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RICHARD MISRACH PHOTOGRAPHER SAN FRANCISCO

Recently
As we move past this election, as well as the fires that plagued the western U.S. and start to see promises of Covid vaccines on the horizon, one begins to imagine a more hopeful world. Thankfully, I have been slammed with work during this brutal 2020 which has proven a necessary distraction.

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Here’s a summary:
Just released is a beautifully made fourteen-minute film about my work on the U.S./Mexico border:

https://art21.org/watch/art-in-the-twenty-first-century/s10/richard-misrach-in-borderlands-extended-segment/

If you watch the film, there is a follow-up conversation with MoMA curator, Sarah Meister (Please note the first 10 minutes are roughly Art 21 business and a little tech difficulty, so you can fast forward to about 9-10 minutes into the actual back-and-forth.) You will need the password, see below:

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https://art21.org/watch/specials/conversation-with-richard-misrach-and-sarah-meister/
Password: misrach

Currently
An Aperture workbook, “Richard Misrach: On Landscape and Meaning“, is out this month; a posthumous collaboration with Nancy Holt (and the Holt-Smithson Foundation) is scheduled for publication spring of 2021; a current collaboration with a great writer on a project shot and completed this year about the state of our country. In addition, I made about 6000 images following the BLM protests in Oakland, California. (I’m editing that body of work down to about 50-60 key images and putting those away for 20 years, with five sets to go into 5 museums.) I am also in the middle of a commission to fill a new, under construction, five-story UCSF Mental Health Clinic in San Francisco with my work in 2021. And finally, I’m working on a show for Pace in New York for Fall 2021, and possibly a European exhibit (which would be my first exhibit there in years).

Life during the pandemic
Some things that were in the works before Covid are now on hold, including other publications and a traveling museum retrospective (2022-23). Probably will know more about their status in the next 2-3 months.

Stay safe everyone…just another 5-6 months…

RUSSET LEDERMAN PUBLISHER NEW YORK

Position
I am still running 10×10 Photobooks, a nonprofit organization in New York City with a mission to share photobooks with a global community. In addition, I publish books that pair photographers with writers under The Gould Collection imprint.

Recently
Over the past 18 months, 10×10 ’ How We See: Photobooks by Women (200-2018) concluded its international tour at MEP (Maison Européenne de la Photographie) in Paris during Paris Photo 2019. Public programming for the event included a panel discussion on women’s involvement with photobook publishing. A podcast of the talk is available on the MEP website: https://www.mep-fr.org/2020/07/16/past-present-future-women-photography-publishing.

The reading room tour included: New York Public Library, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Mass College of Art in Boston, PGH Photo at Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Fototeca Latinoamericana in Buenos Aires and MEP in Paris. At the end of the tour, all the books in the touring section of the reading room became part of the permanent collection of the photography department at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The tour was accompanied by the How We See: Photobooks by Women publication, which went into 3 printings, and was awarded Best Book Winner by AIGA’s 50 Books 50 Covers, shortlisted by Les Rencontres d’Arles Photobook Award and a Jury Special Mention from Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation Photobook Awards.
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In 2019, The Gould Collection launched two books: It Don’t Mean a Thing: Photographs by Saul Leiter with a Story by Paul Auster (reprint edition) and On Keeping a Notebook: Photographs and Drawings by Jamie Hawkesworth with an Essay by Joan Didion. The Saul Leiter/Paul Auster book was a reprint of our highly successful volume 2, while the Jamie Hawkesworth/Joan Didion book (volume 4 in The Gould Collection) sold out within 3 months and is now the inspiration for a men’s jacket in the forthcoming Spring 2021 collection by Jun Wannabe for Comme des Garcons. Who knew, fashion designers could find inspiration in photobooks!

Currently
With the Covid lockdown 10×10 has pivoted its salon series to an online format. We host curators, publishers, photobook-makers and photographers via our online INSTAsalons on Instagram Live.
These happen weekly and are archived on our IGTV channel for later viewing for those who miss the live events.
https://www.instagram.com/10x10photobooks/channel/.

10×10 is currently preparing its next reading room and publication, which is an historical survey of photobooks by women from 1843 to 1999. This project, which will launch in Fall 2021 at the New York Public Library in association with The Wallach Division, is currently seeking tour venues for 2022 and 2023.

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Accompanying the launch of the Historical Photobooks by Women: 1843-1999 Reading Room will be a comprehensive publication documenting all of the books within their historical, political and cultural context.

Presenting a diverse geographic and ethnic selection has been a mandate for this project from its inception. Photobooks included in the project will interpret the concept of the photobook in the widest sense possible: classic bound books, portfolios, personal albums, unpublished books, zines and scrapbooks. Some of the books documented will be well known publications such as Anna Atkins’ Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843-1853), Germaine Krull’s Métal (1928) and Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph (1972), while other books may be relatively unknown, such as Alice Seeley Harris’ The Camera and the Congo Crime (c. 1906), Varvara Stepanova’s Groznyi smekh. Okna Rosta (1932), Eslanda Cardozo Goode Robeson’s African Journey (1945), Fina Gomez Revenga’s Fotografías de Fina Gomez Revenga (1954), Eiko Yamazawa’s Far and Near (1962) and Gretta Alegre Sarfaty’s Auto-photos: Série transformações — 1976: Diário de Uma Mulher — 1977 (1978). Also addressed in the project will be the glaring gaps and omissions in current photobook history—in particular the lack of access, support and funding for photobooks by non-western women and women of color. (An aside: I believe one or two Todi Fellows are essay contributors to our publication.)
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Meanwhile, The Gould Collection will launch its fifth volume in early 2021.
The book is entitled: Two Men Arrive in a Village: Photographs by Jo Ractliffe with a Story by Zadie Smith. As with all volumes in The Gould Collection, the book will be a bilingual edition in English and Japanese.

Help with?
Yes, we are looking for potential 2022 and 2023 tour venues for the above- mentioned historical photobooks by women: 1843-1999 Reading Room.
Please contact info@10x10photobooks.org

Life during the pandemic
I’ve found the lack of social distractions that has come with the pandemic as a good period to focus on research. I do enjoy visiting museums at half-capacity. A recent visit to the MET to see the 3 photography shows there was so pleasant without the usual crowds. I know this is not good for the institutions, but it is quite nice for the visitor ;-).

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THOMAS ZANDER GALLERIST COLOGNE

Currently
We are currently presenting a special exhibition at the gallery called BOOKS (through 30 January 2021), an exhibition of books about art and art about books. Since we publish three to four books a year ourselves, we decided to dedicate a gallery show to this subject. Gerhard Steidl and Walther König are seminal figures in the world of books and publishing, and we’ve collaborated with both of them regularly and closely. So we invited both publishers to create pop-up stores for the exhibition with their personal selection of titles.

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Life during the pandemic
Due to the pandemic and its effects on the art world, we all need to think of new approaches to reach a wider audience. As part of this endeavor, an interview series with artists, authors, curators, and friends of the gallery accompanies the exhibition, exploring the significance of books in their life and work. We’re posting two or three interviews a week on the gallery website, on Instagram and Facebook. These are complemented by short clips about the gallery’s past publications.

Digital formats and content have surely become more important during the pandemic. However, they will never be able to replace the experience of looking at art. At the moment there are numerous online viewing rooms, largely due to the fact that arts fairs were cancelled. While these may offer alternative platforms for art, it is also crucial for us to reconsider the elusive and often short-lived character of social media. We are aiming to produce virtual gallery tours that provide a more concrete impression of the actual installation space. In addition, we are working on films of our gallery artists that are of more long-lasting quality and invite viewers and collectors to delve into the artists‘ work more deeply.

Eventually we are forced to use this period without art fairs and events to focus on things that we spend too little time on in our fast paced daily gallery business.

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PRASHANT PANJIAR CURATOR/PHOTOGRAPHER NEW DELHI/GOA

Position
Immediately after returning from the Todi Circle in 2017 I curated and presented an exhibition “The Music Stopped, But We Were Still Dancing” about the Jazz musicians from Goa, India, at the Serendipity Arts Festival. More about this show at https://www.prashantpanjiar.com/saf-2017.
And in the years that followed I have also continued photographing for my long-term projects:
Ayodhya – The Eye Of The Storm
Amongst The Believers – The Kumbh Mela At Prayag
Indianisms, images from which I had shown at Todi.

Since 2014 I had been dividing my time between homes in New Delhi and Goa. The biennial Delhi Photo Festival (DPF), which I co-founded and was Co-Creative Director of along with photographer Dinesh Khanna, kept me back in Delhi while new art projects and a “less anxious life” drew me increasingly to Goa. Finally in 2018 I made a complete break and now live permanently in Goa. Though this move has been good for me personally, it contributed to the indefinite suspension of DPF that was floundering after its 3rd edition in 2015.

DPF was the first-ever international photo festival in India founded in response to the demand of young Indian photo practitioners who wanted a democratic public space to show work, free from the shackles of gatekeepers. DPF was very successful, giving voice to many new talents, forging a community and also spawned a large number of new photo festivals across the country. Where we failed was in sustainability.

Each edition of DPF was put together by a band of young and committed independent photo-practitioners who felt they had a stake in its success and volunteered their time for it. We worked from the seat of our pants, putting all our energies into producing that edition of the festival but none into building an organization. Yes there were the usual problems of finding money, partners and venues, but eventually it was just that there was no one left to carry DPF on! We, the two co-founders, had been keen right from the start that the leadership should pass into the hands of these younger team members, who would eventually ‘own’ it, while we moved into more advisory roles. But since we had neglected to build a sustainable enterprise model that could adequately reimburse them, our younger team members, being at the cusps of their professional careers, were unable to take on the responsibility.

With my relocating to Goa and my co-founder having moved on to devote himself to his own projects, the chances of revival of DPF look slim despite our open offer to support and mentor a new younger committed leadership that may want to take over and run DPF. But now there is another difficulty. India took a right turn in 2014 and today we have an authoritarian central government that cannot stand any dissent or criticism. In such a scenario it is becoming increasingly difficult to find public spaces to show art without curbs, especially in Delhi, the epicentre of this intolerance!

Recently
A very large number of creative people have made Goa their home. And though Goa recently had started becoming a cultural hub, the resident artists continued to be isolated, living and practising in their small respective bubbles. Last year, in 2019, I partnered with artist and graphic designer Gopika Chowfla to create the Goa Open Arts Festival primarily to bring together all kinds of creative practitioners based in Goa. And in February 2020, with a team of like-minded artists, we launched the first edition. Though executed on a shoestring budget and a DIY approach, the Goa Open Arts Festival was received very well and we hope to continue it as a biennial event. More about the festival at https://www.goaopenarts.com/

Also earlier this year I served on the jury of the Pictures of the Year International (POY I) photojournalism contest at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Life during the pandemic
Though the pandemic hasn’t been good for photography assignments it has given me time to pay attention to my archive and work on projects based on it.

A while back I had begun posting the back-stories of images made during my career as a photojournalist, and the issues they represented, on social media. This caught the interest of a publisher and while forced to stay home during the pandemic I was able to finish work on the book. If all goes well the book titled That Which Is Unseen will be ready in early 2021.