Curator Gundega Laiviņa
Rights to the city is something far more important than access to its resources: it is the right to change the city and thus to change ourselves. Survival Kit's public programme, in four episodes, intends to remind us of those rights and invites to see the city not as a fixed and completed environment in which we navigate, but rather as a porous and ever-changing space where anything becomes possible. Caring for a place, co-creating and re-creating a space, respecting its memory, materiality, inhabitants and knowledge, leads to new relationships and invites us to continuously reinvent ourselves. Each episode focuses on certain knowledges or practices that shape the city and are at the same time created by the city, while the last episode, which will focus on the city of the future, is taken care of by young inhabitants of the City of Riga.
THE FIRST EPISODE: ARTIST
Wednesday September 11 17.00-21.00 at various locations in Riga
The first episode of Survival Kit 15 public programme celebrates the artist's knowledge, which is often developed through close relationships with the city, its places and communities. In conversation with the experts from different fields, the festival artists Linda Boļšakova, Luīze Rukšāne, Līga Spunde and Konstantīns Žukovs will reveal how the city influences the creative process and where the unique knowledge that emerges during artistic exploration remains. The conversations will take place in different indoor and outdoor spaces, directly or in-directly related to the creative work of particular artist. Audience is invited to experience all of them by joining the collective walk, or choose specific conversations according to their interest.
17.00-17.40 on the roof terrace of the Latvian National Museum of Art
Artist Luīze Rukšāne and physicist Mārcis Auziņš in conversation about time
Meeting point: 16.45 at the Museum’s lobby
18.00-18.40 on Vilhelma Osvalda street between Sporta and Aleksandra Laimes streets in Skanste
Artist Linda Boļšakova in conversation with botanist Rūta Sniedze-Kretalova about the strawberry clover
19.00-19.40 at the future territory of the Contemporary Art Museum in Skanste (Mihaila Tāla Street 4)
Artist Līga Spunde in conversation with urban planner Mārtiņš Eņģelis about the unknown
20.00-21.00 at Paul Stradins Museum of the History of Medicine
Artist Konstantīns Žukovs in conversation with curator and museum’s director Kaspars Vanags about the underground
In Latvian
In case of rain the event will take place at Amatu street 4
THE SECOND EPISODE: PLACE
Saturday, September 21 13.00-17.00 at Amatu street 4
The second episode is dedicated to the memory, knowledge and practices that make a place unique and shape its materiality and spirit, or genius loci. At the centre of this episode is a presentation by Dutch researcher, curator and activist René Boer, who is going to explore ideas from his book Smooth City: Against Urban Perfection, Towards Collective Alternatives (Valiz 2023).
Boer calls for a critical approach to the global trend of the development of city centres, where control, order, homogeneous aesthetics and efficiency are replacing local practices, knowledge, conflicts, unexpected and informal strategies of place-making, gradually erasing the memory of a place and irreversibly changing its identity. How does this new version of the city threaten its freedom and democratic spirit?
René Boer will address the public in the heart of the Riga Old Town - a place that for decades has balanced between preserving its local identity and succumbing to the overwhelming force of global "ordering" processes. The presentation will be followed by a discussion with the participation of urban policy makers and activists from Riga.
René Boer, based in Amsterdam and Cairo, is an activist, researcher and critic of public space, focusing on spatial justice, urban imagination and radical legacies. Boer is one of the editors of Failed Architecture, a collection of electronic texts, podcasts and events, and he is a member of the Non-fiction Collective, a cultural innovation, heritage and urban planning office.
Boer has curated a number of exhibitions, public programmes and research projects, most recently Contemporary Commoning, on the relationship between art and the (urban)commons, as well as Transforming Indonesia, a land promotion programme with the ruangrupa collective, and Smooth City, a book about the obsession with creating perfect cities in all corners of the world.
The presentation and discussion devised by the students of the Latvian Academy of Culture will prelude Boer’s keynote focusing on the growing obsession with site-specificity in contemporary culture. A group of artists, curators, and philosophers will discuss how different places welcome, impact and collaborate with the artwork, and how intentional or unintentional experience of a site-specific artwork shapes our relationships with the place.
13.00-14.20
Specific site for contemporary art. What happens in the wild?
Presentation of the research project held at the Latvian Academy of Culture, Visual and Conceptual Strategies of Space in Exhibiting Contemporary Artwork, followed by the discussion with participation of philosopher Rūdis Bebrišs, artist and curator Aleksejs Beļeckis, artist Krišjānis Beļavskis, set designer Dace Ignatova, poet Artūrs Punte, and curator Māra Žeikare. Moderators: Anete Liepiņa and Valters Valts Kronbergs
In Latvian
15.00-17.00
René Boer’s lecture Smooth City: Against Urban Perfection, Towards Collective Alternatives, followed by a discussion with participation of policy makers, activists and residents of Riga
In English
THE THIRD EPISODE: NATURE
Saturday, September 28 18.00-21.00
Sunday, September 29, 6.30-9.30
Meeting place: Gallery Smilga at Eduarda Smiļģa street 34a
In our consciousness and communication, the city and the country seem to be two separate spaces. The third episode of the public programme will break down this invisible boundary and reveal the inextricable, complex, and fluid relationship between the city and nature.
The episode will focus on the idea of the city as a habitat for diverse organisms and communities. How to build a city that respects every being, and its right to space and life? Who is destined and allowed to survive in the city? The answer to this question will be sought not in theory, but in a collective ritual - in two cricketing sessions, during which the voice and the body will be used to get closer to the knowledge of more-than-humans. We will gather at sunrise and sunset to listen to the city and gradually become a choir of grasshoppers, cicadas, crickets, and locusts.
The sessions will be led by Berlin-based improviser and producer Mat Pogo and Myriam van Imschoot, a Flemish artist who works with sound, exploring yodelling, crying, nature sounds and new polyphonies created by the fusion of human and more-than-human sounds, with the city humming in the background.
In this session we will develop a particular sounding and listening practice that Myriam Van Imschoot developed over the last ten year based on studies of sonic ecology and biomimicry. Inspired by the stridulation of insects (the rubbing of wings and other body parts), the artists developed a set of techniques for humans to ‘chorus’ together like insects. Cricketing proposes to practice as a ‘sonic community’ the subtleties of vibrational listening, the complexities of rhythmical pulsations and the pleasure of diving in and out of noise within an environmental dialogue with nature. The overall collective composition emerges from the many small interactions that happen on site amongst the participants. The Session encompasses warm-ups, listening moments, cricket practice and improvisational scores.
Open for anyone who is a nature lover, a keen listener, a person who loves sound or has a curiosity for new sound techniques. Enlist by sending your prefered Session time, a couple of sentences about yourself and how this Session speaks to you to the e-mail: info@lcca.lv.
Depending on the weather conditions the Session will happen outdoors or as a mixture of indoor and outdoor moments.
Participants will be guided in English.
THE FOURTH EPISODE: FUTURE
Saturday, October 5, 14.00-20.00, various locations in Riga
The last episode will be dedicated to the future city and will engage young curators - Dīvs Jankavs, Valters Valts Kronbergs, Violeta Kokoreviča, Anete Liepiņa, Katrīna Purviņa, Kate Rune, Karīna Šumkova in its creation and implementation.
In collaboration with a larger group of youngsters as their creative collaborators and assistants and artist Gundega Evelone as their mentor, the young curators will offer four artistic interventions reflecting on types of knowledge that will constitute the future city. They will focus on the role of a younger generation, as well as agency of water – living and life-sustaining entity that connects the sky and the deepest layers of the earth, the past and the future.
The theoretical/critical framework to their proposal will be provided by Debra Benita Shaw, a scholar of critical posthumanism and future urbanism from London, UK.
Audience is invited to experience all events of this episode by joining the collective walk, or choose a specific activity according to their interest.
14.00-14.50 at Amatu street 4
Dīvs Jankavs
Water does not change because of humans – humans do because of water
Urban planning workshop and discussion on the watery future of Riga led by the generation Z
In Latvian
15.00-15.50 on the Daugava riverbank between Akmens and Vanšu bridges
Violeta Kokoreviča
Water Telegram
Processual performative writing workshop – conversation with the river involving Survival Kit audience and passers-by
No text
16.00-16.50 in the meadow adjacent to the Latvian National Library
Karīna Šumkova
Is Riga ready?
Photo installation and performance on rapid changes in the city skyline caused by large-scale development projects
No text
17.00-18.00 at the gallery Noass on AB Dambis
Lecture by Debra Benita Show
The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art Volunteer Programme is supported by the Society Integration Fund (SIF).
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In addition to the programme curated by Gundega Laiviņa, the following events will take place during the Survival Kit 15 public programme
September 6
Caffè Young Italy. A conversation with artists
4 Amatu Street, 18.00
A conversation with the festival artists Līga Spunde and Monia Ben Hamouda, moderated by the exhibition “Measures” curator Jussi Koitela, and made as part of the Caffè Young Italy project in collaboration with the Embassy of Italy in Latvia.
September 7
White Night programme “Night Measures”
4 Amatu Street, 34a E. Smiļģa Street, 18.00 - 2.00
As part of the Contemporary Culture Forum "White Night" programme, on September 7th, 2024, Survival Kit 15 will offer a special programme of events – "Night Measures" – at two festival addresses - 4 Amatu Street and 34a E. Smiļģa Street. The programme will include performances by international artists, creative workshops for children and dances. The actor and director Gerds Lapoška will carry out a performance "Night Measures" at 4 Amatu Street, specially created for the festival.
Survival Kit 15 exhibition “Measures” is open from 18.00 until 23.00 at all three festival venues – 4 Amatu Street, 34a E. Smiļģa Street, and 4 Strazdu Street.
The programme of the “Night Measures” events takes place as part of the Contemporary Culture Forum “White Night”. It is organised by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art and it is supported by the Riga Municipality. All of the “White Night” events can be found on the website baltanakts.lv. Entrance is free.
September 7
Poster workshop with artist Luīze Rukšāne
Part of the Contemporary Culture Forum “White Night”
4 Amatu Street, at 18.00
In the poster workshop, we will learn how to make glue from simple kitchen ingredients, which we will later use to stick posters to the walls. In this workshop, we will also focus on the role of posters in Riga's urban environment and the development of poster design in Latvia, looking at various examples. After that, under the guidance of the artist Luīze Rukšāne, the children will create their own posters - tributes to a room at the venue of the Survival Kit exhibition at 4 Amatu Street. By making posters and pasting them on the walls, we will reflect on the history of the building, the possible future, as well as offer our own versions of what needs to be added to the premises.
Luīze Rukšāne obtained a bachelor's degree from the Latvian Academy of Arts and has been creating and participating in exhibitions since 2016. In her drawing technique, the young artist tries to "mark" specific events, strengthen them and draw attention to the superficiality and subjectivity of memories, studying the relationship between personal past experiences, society's collective memories and history. Luīze's works are included in the collection of the Latvian National Art Museum and in various private collections.
Audience: Families with children under 12 years of age
Duration: up to 1.5 hours
Entrance is free.
Applying to the workshop in advance is required by writing to andris@lcca.lv
September 27
INTER*DE*PENDENT: Central Asian and Caucasian artists evening
4 Amatu Street, 17.00
Since Russia's attack on Ukraine, the issue of (non-)dependence on Russia for the Baltic States, as well as the Caucasus and Central Asia has become more pressing than ever.
What could Latvia's future, one that was not defined against the backdrop of the Soviet past, look like, without ignoring history? What could an inclusive society look like, integrating people from all cultural traditions, backgrounds and languages, without allowing parallel societies to emerge that would glorify the repressive past of the Soviet Union and the neo-colonialist attitudes of contemporary Russia? How can freedom of expression and freedom of the press be guaranteed without giving way to Russian disinformation? The project seeks to explore these questions by providing an opportunity for Latvian creative and arts professionals, researchers and civil society representatives to reflect on these issues in close cooperation with partners from Lithuania, Estonia, and through experience exchange with partners from Central Asian and Caucasus countries such as Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Armenia, as well as Ukraine.
INTER*DE*PENDENT is realised by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Riga. The project is supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany.