Summer School 2026: Open Lecture Programme

The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) invites to attend the open lectures and workshops of the LCCA Summer School Re-Enchanted Worlds: Contemporary Practices and Traditional Knowledge, taking place at the Madona Local History and Art Museum from 6–10 August.

The detailed Open Lecture Programme is available here.
Participation is free of charge. Working language: English.

The LCCA Summer School is an annual international non-academic educational programme that offers young and emerging artists, as well as art and culture professionals, the opportunity to engage with current developments in contemporary art, foster discussions, and develop collective creative practices in an informal and interdisciplinary setting. The Summer School's Open Lecture Programme is open to everyone, offering a wider audience the opportunity to explore contemporary art processes and contexts.

Programme Overview

The 2026 LCCA Summer School programme opens with Toms Ķencis and Jana Kukaine, whose lecture Keys to the Underworld explores several interpretative keys to unlock the meanings hidden in artworks informed by chthonic mythology and dark folklore in Baltic contemporary art, while reflecting on feminist sensibilities, the ethics of care, and new relationships between humans, non-humans, and the environment. Philosopher Juhan Hellerma will present Matches Struck in the Dark. Wonder and Resonance in a Disenchanted World, drawing on the ideas of Max Weber, Hartmut Rosa, and Jane Bennett to examine the concepts of wonder, disenchantment, and resonance. Anne Sauka's lecture Re-enchantment of the World: Philosophical Contexts explores the philosophical context of situated knowledge, discussing the significance of re-enchanting the world for fostering resilience and facilitating a more sustainable future.

The programme also includes practice-based workshops. Artist Liene Rumpe will lead Fungal Ecologies as Compositional Models, inviting participants to explore fungal ecologies as models for artistic thinking and composition. Curator Marta Kudelska, through the fictional curator Ernesta Thot, will guide participants through hidden currents of modern and contemporary art related to alchemy, esotericism, magic, spirituality, and feminist art history. Dance and movement therapist Simona Orinska will lead Mapping the Inner World: Dream Analysis and Embodied Experience, introducing Jungian dream analysis, authentic movement, and performance as methods of self-exploration, embodied experience, and creative expression.

The final day of the programme is dedicated to sound, folklore, and collective memory. Vocalist and writer Vaim Sarv will present Oral Frictions: Sounding the Remainder, Listening for Medicine, exploring Baltic oral traditions, runosong, animism, decolonial thought, and listening as a healing and ecological practice. The Summer School concludes with the workshop Dark Folklore and Embodied Performance: Landscape as an Archive of Knowledge by Gundega Evelone and Eva Vēvere, inviting participants to reinterpret Latvian mythology and dark folklore through rituals, performance, and collaborative artistic practice.

Organisers & supporters

The curators of the Summer School programme are Andra Silapētere (LCCA) and the UNART team (Toms Ķencis, Jana Kukaine, Ieva Melgalve and Maija Rudovska). 

LCCA Summer School is organised in partnership with the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia through the Latvian Council of Science funded project “Contemporary Art and Folklore: Unlocking the Underworld (UNART)” (lzp-2024/1-0479), and in cooperation with the Madona Museum of Local History and Art. Financial support has been received within the framework of the “Vidzeme Cultural Programme 2025,” implemented by the Vidzeme Planning Region as part of the State Culture Capital Foundation target programme “Development Programme of Latvian Historical Lands” and the State Culture Capital Foundation.