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| THE RIGA FASHION IN ART 2003. RE:PUBLIC Alise Tīfentāle The annual exhibitions by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) are always an indicator of the fashion in art at that particular time - not setting the fashion or indicating the trends, but rather like Vogue, recording the indisputable truths with the respectability of an organisation that is large and influential at the Latvian scale. Those truths that have reached Latvia from the ramp of the haute couture of art and have been accepted, adapted and integrated, are now officially declared this year's theme, just like ethnic design, asymmetry or the form of shoe heels in fashion magazines. And the centre picks up all these trends unfailingly - and indeed it would be hard to fail, since the community of those actively creating the art of today is right here in front of our eyes in Riga and does not usually hide its intentions from the curators met at cafēs and exhibition openings. And so this year, social art in the urban environment, which has previously demonstrated its vitality in the projects by Open and Kaspars Vanags, has been declared by the centre to be in vogue. The urban environment, in this case, means not the convenient and inhabited central quarters of the city, but rather the most dismal and frightening outskirts, usually discussed not in art journals, but in the crime news of the daily papers. Āgenskalns, Torņakalns, the Maskavas Street area, Iļģuciems, Pļavnieki, Imanta, Grīziņkalns, Zolitūde, Vecmīlgrāvis and Bolderāja were the venues for the "re:public" project (6-21‑September). |
| THE SMOKY LUMINARY – LENZ Māra Grudule In 1953 Andrejs Johanson's collection of essays entitled Dūmainie spīdekļi (The Smoky Luminaries) was first published. Along with other Latvian and foreign authors Lenz, named "the Vidzeme resident of storms and passions", was brought out of the darkness of the past. His name was one of those that had been heard, but still required a follow-up question, "Sigfried Lenz, the author of "The German Lesson"? Or does this Lenz have anything to do with physics?" As to me, there are centuries in Latvian literature that in some sense have passed by as "smoky luminaries". How much do we know about them, how colorful and large in depth and height is the landscape of writing from Kurzeme, Zemgale, Vidzeme and Latgele in our eyes? Unfortunately, quite often this landscape in our consciousness is synonymous with the history of Latvian literature. Meanwhile Martin Heidegger, speaking of Hölderlin quoted his letter to Casimir Ulrich Böhlendorff. And still many European bookstores carry works of Werner Bergengrūn, Eduard Keyserling and Jacob Lenz in their shelves. And still the majority of Latvian readership thinks of these names as unfamiliar to them even though the lives and activities of these writers for a longer or shorter period of time were linked to the Baltics, to Vidzeme and Kurzeme. Lenz among the others, undeniably is the most recognizable one, it is his fame that from Vidzeme has traveled furthest; without the analysis of his works the late 18th century Sturm und Drang epoque in literature is unthinkable. |
| WHERE CONCEPT MEETS MEANING OF LIFE Alise Tīfentāle An exhibition of photographs by Inta Ruka and Egons Spuris (1931-1990) at the State Museum of Art (15 August-14 September). |
