I am Family
Videoinstallation
What have you learnt from the changes in Latvia and globally in the last few years?
In a way, life has become more comfortable and natural (literally) - growing vegetables, trips to the forest, handmaking presents - I’ve always liked these things. Now they have become legitimate and modern activities. This is important to me as through these activities you are able to return to childhood and cultivate nostalgic emotions. The desire to cling to ancient values and the desire to stay with one person are also signs of this era. Small circles of friends and family have become a survival strategy. Hopefully, the desire to experiment will also arise soon. Otherwise, in my opinion, this is a degrading trend. “Small” and “loving” are such key words in which danger hides, that “loving” cannot be large, that frugality is being enforced even more in Latvians who are already frugal. Is it possible to be even more frugal and submissive?
How does your project for SURVIVAL KIT 2 relate to the festival theme?
I’m interested in feelings, especially those related to past experiences – an accumulation of emotions. All types of nostalgia and family as a survival strategy. My work is a salute to the institution which is thousands of years old – family. There are so many emotions linked to the process of forming a family, so many doubts and fears, yet people continue to live in families, form couples and have children. The myth about family, where the family itself is like a myth; something from the rituals, something from reality, something from a dreamworld and from reality. Marriage. Serious, looking from the side, but tragicomic in details. A change in surname, passport, declared place of residence, making a home, cooking, cooking, cooking..Something artificial, something real and something inexplicable.
To be married is the most unusual status I’ve ever had. A relief about blending into the accepted order of things, but still unfamiliar, a way that I can justify myself more for certain actions. A club with rings. I don’t like the extreme sensations caused by all forms of jumping - with parachutes, bungees, from helicopters, with snowboards, but these emotions- of being married, are sufficiently extreme.
Why haven’t you left Latvia?
I’ve had the desire to travel, but I’ve never wished to move to another country. It is more beautiful and more comfortable here for me (including the various inconveniences). Latvia keeps me here without pressure. With a feeling of home.