From 9 to 13 August 2024, in Valmiera, the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) will host its annual Summer School, this year entitled "Social and Political Contexts of Language". Everyone interested is invited to attend the Summer School's open lecture programme.
The 11th edition of the LCCA Summer School will focus on language and its social and political contexts, in order to explore both our shared living space and the meaning of social and communicative environments within and between different groups of people.
Lectures workshops and discussions will be led by Francisco Martínez, Haralds Matulis, Maria Kapajeva, Anna Kin, Dens Dimiņš, Patricia Couvet, Niels Van Tomme, Jussi Koitela, Malin Arnell & Mar Fjell.
Offering interdisciplinary perspectives, this year's Summer School will delve into the experiences of the recent past, as well as the contexts of the present-day realities in the Baltic Sea region and Eastern Europe. The various aspects of language will be explored through considering the social-political, cultural and historical contexts, especially Russia's war in Ukraine and its impact on the region. The school will explore the processes of adaptation, evolution and hybridization in the face of geopolitical change, for example, as communities regain self-determination in the context of imperial languages, or as they develop specific gestures, secret languages and codes to ensure mutual communication and security. Central to the school will be addressing the issues of language accessibility for different groups of people and the ways in which we can mediate these questions in culture and art.
Together with the lecturers, the participants will explore the questions: How do political and social environments influence changes in language expressions and conditions? How does language reflect identity and processes of change? How looking back at the past can help to understand the social and political contexts of language today? How does language reflect processes of coexistence and interaction? Can language be an instrument of social as well as sexual emancipation? What happens when communication is interrupted? What are the innovative forms of language and communication today and how can we think about language beyond the usual assumptions in communication?
The participants of the Summer School are Master's and PhD students in the humanities and social sciences, young artists, art historians, curators and cultural researchers, but the Summer School's open lecture programme is open to anyone interested ( registration for the open lectures by emailing silapetere@lcca.lv). The open lecture programme of the Summer School can be found on the website of the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art here. Programme will be held in English.
The LCCA Summer School is organised in cooperation with the Valmiera Municipality and supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation, Nordic Council of Ministers' Office in Latvia, Goethe-Institut Riga, Contemporary Art Space "Kurtuve", Museum of Valmiera and Valmiera Gauja bank secondary school - development center.