Inspired by reflections on problematics of safety as we knew it before pandemics, the annual Contemporary Art Festival Survival Kit 11 theme is “Being Safe is Scary”. The festival will be held from September 4 to October 4, 2020, in Riga at the former building of the Museum of Literature and Music. The international exhibition and events programme with the participation of 29 artists from Latvia and abroad is curated by Katia Krupennikova.
Being Safe is Scary takes its title from a site-specific piece created in 2017 by artist Banu Cennetoğlu for documenta 14. The phrase comes from graffiti on a wall of the National Technical University of Athens, noticed by Cennetoğlu around the time of the signing of the EU-Turkey refugee deal in March 2016. Violating international law on refugee protection, the contract forced every irregular entrant to Greece to be handed over to Turkey, causing reception facilities and temporary camps on the Greek islands to be turned into detention centres. By adopting this heavily charged title, this edition of Survival Kit connects itself to wider, ongoing discussions around security and political violence.
The notions of safety and security are central to today’s political imagination. They are used to provide rationales for wars, nationalist agendas, racism and inequality, and to legitimise and normalise extensive surveillance and self-surveillance, aggression, hatred, insularity and other reactionary attitudes and policies. The politics of fear feeds upon precarity. Whole systems of domination are built upon the fierce illusion of protection, encouraging brutal competition and enforcing both financial and moral indebtedness.
It is usually the most marginalised members of society that are classified as threats: those stigmatised due to sexual identity, race, class, religion or gender. The figure of the migrant, as deployed in populist discourse, is one of the key phobic objects of our time. In addition, those who organise and participate in resistance against the status quo are often viewed by the state as security threats. If these people are threats, who are the endangered subjects that need protecting? And what are the real threats and dangers that are covered over and pacified by this construction of social dangers?
This exhibition aims to explore why it’s urgent and necessary to transform the suppositions that undergird such discourse and calls for safety to be reconnected to practices of love, intimacy, sharing, commonality, mutual support, attention, care for each other and for the environment, and social alliances.
Survival Kit 11 artists: Alexis Destoop, Alevtina Kakhidze, Anna Dasović, Apparatus 22, James Bridle, Emma Wolf-Haugh, Envija, Evita Goze, Evita Vasiļjeva, Imogen Stidworthy, Yazan Khalili, Johan Grimonprez, Katarina Pirak Sikku, Katrīna Neiburga, Klara Källström & Thobias Fäldt, Līga Spunde, Marta Tuomāla, Muhammads Ali, Omars Mismars, PEROU, Pilvi Takala, Polina Kanis, Roberts Gabris, Sabian Baumann, Sabian Baumann and Karina Mihalski, Saskia Holmkvist, Sauli Sirviö, Sigrid Viir, Silje Figenschou Thoresen.
The public programme of Survival Kit 11 will take place both as a series of events at the festival, and outside of it, as a series of broadcasts on Radio Naba.
The programme’s title, Kommunalka-Community, points to the questions and problems we in Latvia face in developing an inclusive society. It often seems that we are somewhere between the two terms that it combines.
About Survival Kit:
Established in 2009, International Contemporary Art Festival Survival Kit is one of the biggest contemporary art event in the Baltics, attracting more than 10 000 visitors every year. It arose in reaction to the economic crisis in Latvia with the aim of calling on society to respond to changes in the contemporary world and consider various survival strategies. Each year, a socially relevant and important theme is selected for the festival. Empty buildings in Riga are used as festival venues, bringing our attention to their potential future development.
Survival Kit is organised by Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA), the largest institution of contemporary art in Latvia that curates and produces contemporary art events of national and international scale. As of 1993, it has researched and curated contemporary art processes both in Latvia and abroad to provoke critical reflection on issues topical for contemporary society.
The project Kommunalka-Community has been realised by the LCCA in collaboration with the Goethe Institute in Riga. The project is supported by the Foreign Ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Supporters of the festival: State Culture Capital Foundation, Riga City Council, Goethe-Institut Riga, ProHelvetia, Mondriaan Fund, Frame, OCA, Foundation for Arts Initiatives, Radio NABA, Pastaiga, Delfi, Satori.lv, Punctum, Arterritory, IR, Clear Channel, Walters & Grapa, Malduguns, On Lemon, Kalve Coffee, Stenders, My Fitness, Kviller, LNMM