Ieva Epnere. Green School. 2017
The largest annual contemporary art festival in the Baltics SURVIVAL KIT was born in 2009 as a reaction to the austerity caused by the economic crisis and has since continued to invite people to respond to changes taking place in the modern-day world and to reflect on various survival strategies. Every year, artists are invited to explore a socially significant theme whilst also considering alternative scenarios of survival. The festival is attended by approximately 10,000 visitors and takes place each year at a different empty building in Riga, manifesting the potential of and possible development strategies for each new location.
This year, the contemporary art festival SURVIVAL KIT 9 is directed towards broadening perceptions of the world and learning from nature, and proposes future ecologies in which equality and rightsare not limited to humankind. The venue for SURVIVAL KIT 9 is the former building of the Faculty of Biology of the University of Latvia at Kronvalda bulvāris 4, which after its completion in 1901 became a laboratory where significant discoveries were made by many researchers of the natural sciences and their students.
“Can we develop a more holistic understanding of the world by avoiding human-centred learning processes and empathizing with other forms of existence? We live in a time characterized by populism, shortsighted nationalism and the ongoing exploitation of nature, therefore the 9th edition of the contemporary art festival Survival Kit begins from tactile and tacit experiences in order to seek the potential of alternative ways of learning and perceiving,” the festival's curators Solvita Krese, Inga Lāce and Jonatan Habib Engqvist explains.
The participants of this year's international art exhibition will include Maria Thereza Alves, Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, Britta Marakatt-Labba, James Webb, Ehsan Ul Haq, Jim Holyoak, Andris Eglītis, Ieva Epnere, Krišs Salmanis, Laurie Anderson, Jonathas de Andrade, Lotta Antonsson, Hildur Bjarnadóttir, Juris Boiko, Annika Eriksson, Andris Grinbergs / Laima Žurgina, Nona Inescu, Christine Ödlund, Jean Painlevé, Wong Kit Yi and Andrej Polukord.
This year, inside the SURVIVAL KIT 9 exhibition you can meet art mediators, who are happy to have conversations about the exhibition. The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art mediators are people from different professions who engage with visitors based on their own experiences and understandings of the exhibition. If you want to talk about the exhibition and its works, share your impressions, and hear their opinion or have a discussion, do not hesitate to approach them. A conversation always makes a visit to the exhibition more rewarding!
SURVIVAL KIT 9 is supported by Valsts Kultūrkapitāla fonds, Rīgas Dome. Gētes institūts Rīgā, Kanādas vēstniecība Latvijā, Francijas institūts Latvijā, Zviedrijas vēstniecība Rīgā, Latvijas Universitāte, Le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Icelandic Art Center, STEP Beyond, Latvijas Nacionālais arhīvs, AUGA group, NP Properties, Valmiermuižas alus, Kino Bize and AKVA D LIFE.