Map Of Riga's Corners
Digital print, 150 x 93 cm, 2014
1) Suppose, the place, the city, where you live becomes your home. Meanwhile, the routes at home are determined by its contents. Walk around the table, pass the wardrobe, get a knock on the bed corner. The body remembers these corners: wardrobe corners, table corners, bed corners. Their impressions on skin are the body’s memory, bruises are the map of your home transferred to the body. A journey through your home – stops, turns, stops, turns. A journey – a stop, a stop on the corner.
2) Will the corners be named? In its communicative function the language strives for the economy of resources. The poetic language, meanwhile, leans towards abundance. At the crossroads of these two tendencies the corners acquire names. Is it not easier naming the "corner of Nebuchadnezzar and Sardanapalus" somehow shorter, in one word? Purest economy. Admittedly, many entirely new words are created, and this abundance is good for language in its poetic aspirations. The project of naming the corners is being prepared for submission to the Riga City Council.
Artists' Bios:
Alekdsandrs Zapoļs is a Russian poet and translator. Born in 1970 in Riga he studied Russian language and literature at Tartu University, Estonia and at the University of Latvia. An active member of the multimedia text-group "Orbita," he translates Latvian poetry into Russian. Since 1998, using the pseudonym Semjons Haņins, he has had his work published in various literary journals and almanacs in Latvia and abroad.
Born in 1984, Līva Rutmane acquired a Master’s degree from the Department of Graphic Art of the Latvian Academy of Art and has participated in exhibitions since 2002. In 2013, together with Aleksandrs Zapoļs, she curated the exhibition "Peldus" at the Istaba Gallery in 2013.