"Oestrus Youth" by Anni Puolakka and Marta Trektere at the festival Today is Our Tomorrow

In the framework of the festival Today is Our Tomorrow initiated by PUBLICS, the Latvian Centre for Contemporary (LCCA) Art will present a collaborative performance “Oestrus Youth” by Anni Puolakka and Marta Trektere. The performance will take place through Instagram stories of Publics, LCCA and the artists on 1 April, 2021 6pm EET (UTC+2 hours). “Oestrus Youth” explores collaboration, trust and hybridity as meaningful tools to cope with the human condition. 

To follow the performance please see Instagram accounts of the PUBLICS (@publicsfi), LCCA (@latviancentre4contemporaryart) and the artists (@annipuolakka & @pradagloves).

Puolakka and Trektere have been working jointly since 2018 supplementing, interacting, supporting and curating each other’s work. Their relationship explores different forms of interaction, character bending and shape shifting reacting to norms and tensions in our contemporary world. They share interest in topics like sex, kinship, roleplay, fiction, images and music, identifying these as experiences that can offer more fluid approaches not only to artmaking, but life overall.

“Oestrus Youth'' is a mash-up of two performances – “Oestrus” and “Painless Youth” - in which both artists are involved in each other's work as a visiting performer and a supporter. “Oestrus” is an evolving project by Anni Puolakka which tells a story about love involving physical distance and fantasies of transforming into those whom you love. The performance includes music made by ITU, a band Puolakka has with Miša Skalskis. “Painless Youth” is a performance by Marta Trektere with accompanying music by Kaspars Groševs. ''It seemed impractical to prefer a painless old age to a painless youth. There is no end toward which a painless old age is a better means than a painless youth. But it makes sense to say that attention to the place of pain in one's life should increase as one ages.” (Eugene Garver). “Oestrus Youth” features costumes made in collaboration with designer Karolina Janulevičiūtė.

Today is Our Tomorrow is an annual transdisciplinary festival, initiated by PUBLICS; the Helsinki-based curatorial agency and educational resource. The festival, taking a different form and location each year, supports intersectional ecologies and diversity of thoughts, of practices, of identities, and their experiences through its collaborative methodology and co-productive commissioning approach. Today is already our tomorrow, and now is the time when we need to take care of one another, to share our many dreams, and to look after our collective future imaginaries.

This year, three Baltic organisations The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Narva Art Residency and NAC of Vilnius Academy of Arts in collaboration with PUBLICS have co-commissioned new works with artists Agnė Jokšė, Sandra Kosorotova, Anni Puolakka and Marta Trektere. Each of these works explore cohabitational practices, and ways of living and being together, giving shape and form to a more cooperative, compassionate, and just world. The festival program takes place from 10 March to 10 April in various online forms and platforms and will feature works by artists. See schedule here. 

The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) is the largest institution of contemporary art in Latvia that curates and produces contemporary art events of national and international scale. LCCA is recognized for the annual international festival SURVIVAL KIT, regular exhibitions at the Latvian National Museum of Art, as well as Latvia's representation at the Venice Biennale, Manifesta, São Paulo Art Biennial, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Rauma Biennale of Contemporary Art, etc.

PUBLICS is a curatorial agency with a dedicated library, event space and reading room in Helsinki, Finland. The first edition of Today Is Our Tomorrow took place in 2019 and was co-organised in collaboration with 10 different institutions and included over 50 artists and collectives.

The project is co-funded by The Baltic Culture Fund.