Shop 'Til You Drop!
Installation. Alte Schweden & Poetic Robotism. With the participation of Vita Radziņa and Emilia Kannosto. 2014.
The idea of our piece is to prepare for a new era, for the total disappearance of public space in order to let consumption expand freely and without control. Where will this idea lead? Will we give up our right to a free public space which is open for all, in order to live the utopian dream of a free market, in the shape of casinos, shopping centres and galleries? What will this non-stop merry-go-round turn city dwellers into? Who is allowed to do what in a city when public space is devoured by corporations? Umeå, which is the partner city of Riga, European Culture Capital in 2014, recently received a new shopping mall named Utopia. We aim to use this extreme example of the decay of utopian visions and put it in relation to the urban reality of Riga. This piece can be considered as a poetic and subversive hymn, glorifying the fantastic possibilities of a totally free market beyond any control. Nothing is for free, there are no public spaces, there is only room for maximized consumption. Welcome to the new vision for Europe!
Artists' Bios:
The installation "Shop ‘til You Drop" is a collaboration between two artist groups – Alte Schweden and Poetic Robotism.
Alte Schweden (Joakim Hansson, Sebastian Mügge) focuses on projects with a participatory aspect. The projects are set in post-revolutionary societies with a focus on regaining identity and dreams of the future.
Poetic Robotism (Laura Prikule, Eva Vēvere) is a radical endeavour to establish a visual syntax based on reducing various aspects of reality, often binary opposites, down to the cube as a pictorial nominal and using it to build new experiences.