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| Altar paintings or a piece of bitten-off chicken Jana Kukaine, Art critic | |
| The Corner House.... I write these words and shudder. it seems that i belong to those people who are labelled ‘sensitive’. in every respect, i doubt if you can compare me with the person on duty at the museum of the occupation of latvia’s exposition or our excursion guide for the chekha basement, who in the second minute of our conversation quite cold-bloodedly notified us that right here around the corner in this building was the shooting gallery, where “people were shot”, and also invited us to watch a fragment of andrzej wajda’s film Katyn. a group of young girls came along immediately after me and received exactly the same information, and we all came together in a darkened room. some lively conversation ensued, with one of the girls telling us that this film had been compulsory viewing for them at school in 2010 after the smolensk aeroplane crash. she came from the rēzekne polish school. and two thoughts came to mind while observing the scenes from the film eerily reflecting on the glass dividing off the shooting gallery. the first, that our attempts to display evidence of inhumane crimes tend to at times be expressed quite cold-heartedly (the exposition is not recommended for children younger than seven years of age); the second, that in looking at the glass shards with red-coloured edges, the played-up drama of the exposition actually creates a comic effect, in contrast to what was planned. but, this may also be the only way to...(perhaps i’m exaggerating a little) “not lose your mind”? I’m not surprised that all of the exhibitions prepared for the corner house have a similar thematic trend – intuitively, logically and historically this seems self-evident. each group of authors working here has prepared a similar view of the events – as there is only one historical truth here, which nobody doubts – but they provide different ways of looking at them. along with the great narratives and official chronologies (which have been used mainly in the occupation museum’s exposition and can be seen elsewhere as well), subjective mini-messages, children’s drawings, fragments, memories and their loss can be found as well (for example, the In Spite of everything and a Latvian’s Suitcase exhibitions). it’s also significant that the majority of the exhibitions’ organisers have selected various tems from the era to tell the story, so as to avoid taking the position of being an authoritative messenger, or perhaps to diversify the experience of visitors and escape the usual ‘historical showcase’ framework. on the one hand, they provide a free hand to the imaginations of viewers to imagine that, see, this accordion really was held by such and such a person in this or that year, or that a hair from the former owner of this typewriter may have fallen into its depths. on the other hand, the stories that accompany the exhibits put everything in its place, and a peculiar trend appears, namely, that some ‘shelves’ are full, while at the same time others have been left almost empty. the residents of latvia – specific individuals – have been mostly shown as the victims of some impersonal ‘foreign power’, bravely trying to oppose ‘injustice’ but, unfortunately, not always with success. i’m not trying to deny the victims of repression and the extent of their loss; however, the invocation of the role of victim in the discussions about treason, torture, deportation and the implementation of other similar things appears strikingly often. the exception is the suit belonging to the soviet puppet augusts kirhenšteins, the inclusion of which (in the Stories about Man and Power in 10 Objects exhibition) alludes to the fact that this ‘foreign power’ wasn’t anonymous and impersonal, that this wasn’t an eruption of a volcano or frost in spring but rather the handiwork of specific people, including residents of latvia. in this respect, it is interesting to read liāna langa’s memories in the corner house’s newspaper of a little shop that was located opposite the mentioned institution. good quality coffee was sold there, attracting representatives from the corner house ‘apparatus’ – “men in fine suits with faces that were difficult to remember”. the taste of good-quality coffee turned out to be more enduring than the facial features of the people who implemented the regime’s policies. this is surprising, isn’t it? would it also be apt to mention the ‘banality of evil’ here – hannah arendt’s idea that grey and mundane personalities become the levers in the mechanisms of cruel and remorseless powers? | |
 Culture project KGB Building. File No. 1914/2014 Publicity photo Courtesy of the artists and Riga 2014 foundation | |
| The artists in The (re)construction of Friendship exhibition are also faced with a choice, which could be postulated as a choice between an altar painting and a piece of bitten-off chicken,1 namely, what to remember and how? maybe this historical trend has urged the many artists to use the same methods – photographs, documentation, interviews and other ‘historical showcase’ strategies – as have been widely employed in the other exhibitions at the corner house. but, without being tied to a single specific ‘object of reflection’, the artists start becoming more like travellers and treasure hunters. the ‘treasures’ in this case are historical excesses, curiosities and exotic odds and ends, which pique the curiosity of the public. That’s what the Stasi – Secret rooms installation by daniel and geo fuchs is like, documenting interiors and individual items from institutions that used to be under the control of the state security ministry of the former german democratic republic (gdr), or helena wikström’s work Facility D-0, which provides photographic evidence of tito’s secret bunker. completed in 1979, the bunker was built so that people close to tito could take refuge there in case of nuclear war. the room in which wikström’s work is located has no wallpaper on the walls and cracks can clearly be seen – exactly the same kind that can be seen on the wall in a photograph of the bunker. this unexpected ‘perfusion’ effect significantly enlivens the impression of the overall work. the Družba installation, created by lithuanians nomedas and Ģediminas urbonas, follows the same scenario: material has been found, there’s a journey to the chosen destination, notes have been made in the artist’s diary (fragments of it can be read on the walls), ‘authentic materials’ have been used – soviet-era cinema newsreels dedicated to the gigantic oil pipeline that connected russia with the baltic and other eastern european countries. i think that the value of this and the other works created according to this similar algorithm is first of all in its historical documentation, not in its aesthetics. i wouldn’t want to try to judge whether this is the easiest or hardest path (for the artist). but neither should aesthetic and artistic criteria be completely dispensed with in evaluating these works, to the extent that they are looked at in the context of art and, if removed from this, are doomed to inescapable devaluation – impressions created by political demonstrations or an economic event will always be much more powerful than those that various art activities and interventions are able to achieve. a few hundred documentary photographs cannot be compared with, for example, the collection of the museum of the occupation of latvia. Among other things, it is specifically the urbonas pair’s work that has obviously given the impulse for the title of the exhibition (i haven’t tested this hypothesis, though), but it cannot really be considered successful. firstly, because it was clear right from the startthat we can speak here about friendship only in a figurative sense, and in the context of the corner house such mild euphemisms sound quite naive. secondly, games with brackets, colons and hyphens, as well as the small ‘re’, especially in the word ‘reconstruction’, are like a toothache to someone who isn’t completely indifferent to linguistic expressions. but as a consolation, one can say that at least it sounds somewhat unusual and intriguing in comparison with the titles of the other corner house exhibitions (Museum of Fateful Objects is possibly the weakest of all). Artists sandra krastiņa and kristaps epners have focussed on events most closely associated with the corner house’s history, and to a certain degree the “orbīta” group has as well, whose work Scheme a. Scheme B refers to the state security committee in quite an abstract way: a hospital bed with a light blanket, a poetic composition, drawings on the wall, someone saying something (exactly what is said cannot quite be grasped). it’s impossible to say what this “orbīta” artwork is about, and this ambiguity becomes a significant advantage against the background of the directness of the other works. whereas, the uprising that took place at the kengir camp in 1954 is at the core of the joint work by sandra krastiņa and kristaps epners. the artists haven’t confined themselves to just collecting information, as has been done by other participants in the exhibition, but have allowed themselves the luxury of giving it an artistic interpretation, which means that the discussion is not just about one specific thing but many. i won’t hide that this semantic polysemy – let’s call it that – in works of art has always seemed fascinating to me. even though a visit to a cultural institution is usually connected with pedagogic goals, i must admit that i don’t go to art exhibitions just to learn something. in fact, this aspect is to a large degree secondary, because i can’t deny that other methods, which are easier and also free of charge (the internet and the library), exist for getting information that interests me. i concede that the greatest temptation of contemporary art exhibitions is still the effect of the presence of the artistic gesture, and, even though the borrowing of methods and terminology from other disciplines is widespread in contemporary art practice, the glimmer of an artist’s subjectivity in the great filing cabinet of art is like unexpectedly finding a love letter in a parcel of documents that is comprised mainly of invoices and bills. | |
 Sandra Krastiņa, Kristaps Epners. Uprising. Installation. 2014 Publicity photo Courtesy of the artists and Riga 2014 foundation | |
| Kristaps Epners’ work encounter merges historical events (four swans landing at the camp) with a poetic image (the swan as something clean and noble) as well as the theme of supervision and control, which is connected to a gliding aircraft above the courtyard of the corner house. the boundary between a child’s toy and a prison guard’s instrument is sometimes indiscernible. a screen, which is composed of data from four surveillance cameras, is located in the upper corner of the room in which epners’ installation is found. maybe it’s a coincidence that the window in the room is opaque, so that one can’t peek out into the courtyard to clarify where these cameras/swans have been placed? sandra krastiņa’s painting on the wall, Collection Unit, announces a similarly broad range of themes, portraying a number of episodes of one and the same situation in a rust colour. however, the image reveals something else each time, making one sense that the understanding of each situation is relative and dependent on distance, placement and other variable values. an excessively large close-up is just as imperceptible as an image that has been made too small, where we can only see only a small point (the artist has just logically shown this possibility, and i conjured this up in my imagination). how can one know which is the real moment of ‘truth’? This last question can also be ascribed to the very fact of the opening of the corner house and a questioning of the conditions that guide our current views in certain directions. riga’s year as a european capital of culture, ukraine’s slow occupation and the manipulation of its information space, the 25th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall and the end of the cold war, which has been selected by manifesta as its leitmotif and which, despite criticism, will be unveiled in st. petersburg this summer – these are just a few points of reference. “there is one truth,” declared a ukraine national radio journalist i inadvertently met at the corner house. “but you in latvia tell me that there are two truths,” she continued to wonder. i also wondered and then said that to me the truth was a drawing by aina roze, the daughter of book publisher jānis roze, that she drew in exile, in saying farewell to a girlfriend. it is very small, but at the same time it is incomprehensibly large and inaccessibly distant. just as inaccessible as the numbers, years, names, documents, objects and concepts from which a neat ‘history showcase’ is created, which is then, just in case, put behind glass to protect it from uncultured exhibition visitors or a strong draught. and, i must admit, it’s extremely cold in the exhibition. Translator into English: Uldis Brūns 1 “altar paintings? a piece of bitten-off chicken? children’s toys? a new dress? that which is hand-made? computers? flowerpots? a manuscript? a cow?” these are possible answers to the question of what to take with you when escaping from a volcanic eruption, which susan sontag lists in the novel The Volcano Lover. the organisers of the a Latvian’s Suitcase exhibition posed this same question. | |
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