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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). | |
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Art intervention in the art-free zone
Contemporary art is an elite affair - in order fully understand and enjoy it, one must be specially prepared. Latvia's artists, curators, critics and a section of intellectuals are ready for it at any place and hour of the day. For the rest, the concept of art is still connected with a nice picture in a museum or a good monument in the cemetery or the park. In order to bring a change, the European Commission's "Culture 2000" programme is supporting the international project "re_public art", emphasising the importance of public art. Within the frame of this ambitious project, exhibitions, conferences, seminars etc. are to be held in several countries, among them the "re:public" art project held in Riga. The idea is to draw the attention of artists and other creative individuals to the extensive area of Riga outside the limits of the traditional centre, and to intervene in the rhythm of everyday life in the outskirts and suburbs of Riga, placing their works of art here and inviting the involvement of local residents. Relationships between the province or periphery and the centre are topical in the context of life in the new Europe. Our own lack of knowledge and doubts, our lack of confidence in our own coolness and the demagogic benevolence of Europe's officials in drawing attention to marginal regions at the appropriate moment. Confrontation: the centre with its prosperity, intellect, snobby customs and sense of superiority, its regular foreign trips and forgotten rural origins, against which the dormitory districts and the suburbs can offer enduring traditions, brutal life-force and not very high incomes. It even amounts to a somewhat politically-incorrect balance of power - while the centre of Riga is already living in Europe, the outskirts are in some sense still living in the Soviet Union. The idea behind the project affirms that contemporary art in Riga is restricted, not only in terms of ideas, but also quite physically, to a very limited area, and the majority of Rigans have no conception of it. The feeling of a first encounter is heightened by the catalogue for the project, created on the model of the Riga tourist guide Riga This Week, including traditional texts by the theoreticians (Solvita Krese, Jānis Taurens, Pauls Bankovskis, Ilmārs Šlāpins and Māra Traumane), concepts for works written by the artists, and brief, exciting comments appropriate to a travel guide on the entertainment venues, sports centres, sights etc. of the urban fringe and housing districts of Riga (Emīls Rode, Simona Veilande). In the context of Riga, this is a quite exceptional case: artists realize their ideas in an environment that has had no previous contact with the practice of contemporary art. This means a broad emotional resonance for the art in the local setting (incomprehension, comprehension, enthusiasm, anger etc.) and a jumble with regard to the criteria for evaluating this art. Accordingly, I will deal more with various aspects of the overall idea behind "re:public" and their significance within the development of contemporary art in Latvia. Aliens in the neighbouring district The more culture is oriented towards material values, the less material art becomes. At one time, the impressive objects of Oļegs Tillbergs were topical, everyone liked the orange games of Ojārs Pētersons and everyone wanted to see the latest works at Pedvāle or the museum and gallery spaces filled with smaller objects. Nowadays an object as such almost automatically embodies the idea of private property (if it is a thing, then it could be mine.) And it is expected that sooner or later someone will come up and ask how much it costs. In order to nevertheless retain the status of art above that of craft, interior decoration or any other sphere of material production, it is necessary to dress one's ideas in a form that is not so easily privatised. It is a sort of reanimation of situationism in a new form: current art is quite elusive, being linked to the particular situation, to a particular environment and specific conditions of perception. This tendency to flee from materialism has been most vividly embodied in Latvian art already from the mid-90s in the E-LAB and later the RIXC activities in the field of internet studies of art and sound. They have never gained wide popularity, since they were not readily visible, tangible or reproducible. Some effort was needed to find and perceive them, and with very little hope of perceiving them in the manner that the authors had intended. There is a similar basis for this project organised by the LCCA: the viewer needs to find certain points in the urban environment, in order to view works of art, and simultaneously with the perception of art, his or her experience is enriched by the visit to the particular district. It is hard even to imagine whether this experience would be poorer or weaker, if there were no works of art at all at the places indicated. The shock experienced by art viewers (on the precondition that they share a certain level of education, certain standards of daily culture and to a large degree also certain sorts of jokes and similar tastes) when encountering different levels of existence, may be equated to that of meeting aliens. Art must be sought out in places where one does not willingly even want to tread‑- call it the urban ghetto or a dump, or ignore it entirely, but in relation to the centre, these districts are home to most of the population of Riga. It is a normal phenomenon in any city, only the scales differ, but the proportions are the same. In Paris, London or New York, a few blocks away from the accustomed cultural route there starts a different world with entirely different rules. Perhaps it would sound better if it were not the "Maskačka" or Bolderāja, but rather the Chinese quarter, the Turkish district, the street of the colonised Surinamis or a community of Vietnamese guest workers. In the exhibition catalogue - an alternative guide to Riga's periphery - Emīls Rode acquaints us with the unimposing background for the art projects - cafēs and bars in housing districts. For example, "Kvantors 1 at 1 Lomonosova Street. The owners of this place, if one is to judge by the result of their toponymical research, apparently are into exact sciences or science fiction. The result is the same - beer, vodka, solyanka." The information in the guide, to my mind, is one of the most important aspects of "re:public". It says a great deal about the place of art in the life of Riga as the capital of Latvia at the beginning of the 21st century. Why do we find it amusing that right nearby there is beer on tap, cheap vodka and "commonplace" solyanka soup, single-bedroom flats, slang, radio music, absurd and unfashionable names of bars and, after all, people for whom this is an everyday milieu? Is it pseudointellectual snobbism that permits one to enjoy Russkij Standart in some glassed-over lounge listening to a DJ (who is also a poet and writer) and succumbing to existential agony after trying sour kumis in the Gobi Desert or getting an infectious disease during an "exotic" trip through a poor district of India, while the spiritual and physical poverty in the flat of one's nearest neighbour is regarded with arrogant contempt? The disdainful attitude of people from the centre of a provincial capital towards the periphery suggests that the authors might be descendants of some hitherto unknown aristocratic families, whose gene fund does not even permit any other form of living than oats porridge for breakfast, hunting, a game of cards and dinner consisting of at least six courses, served by obedient servants to the sound of Tafelmusik. "It is strictly required that partridge pate be served only in shells collected in the Balearic Islands shortly before a typhoon," as Marģeris Zariņš wrote in 1973 ("False Faust, or a Corrected and Supplemented Cookbook"). The hero of the book was an old apothecary, alchemist and pseudoscientist, a Latvianised Baltic German Jānis Vridri˚is Trampedahs, who in 1930s Latvia enjoyed for his dinner treats prepared by a servant-woman brought specially from Scotland, each dish being served in the corresponding fine dishes to the sound of appropriate music - after which he visited the outside loo, as is usual in the small towns. "Čiko Disco Bar at 2b Valde˚u Street. Let yourself flow with Ziepniekkalns Latino disco rhythms! The reserves of beer on tap at this disco bar will ensure a never-drenching jolliness. A good choice for a birthday celebration if you live in a studio apartment and have lots of friends," writes Emīls Rode in 2003. Irony about the cheapness of beer and the lack of variety in dumplings at Riga's suburban bars, is of course healthy, but the despised "beer on tap" is poured from those same barrels of Lāčplēša, Tērvetes, Cēsu or other beer from which it is poured at the "polite" cafes of Old Riga, but for three times the price. And "movement within the district from factory to home, from home to the shop or allotment" does not differ at all from the daily movement of the city-centre resident from home to the office and from the office to the shop, the bar or the cinema. Alcohol, television and old-style solyanka soup In the introduction to the catalogue, Emīls Rode points out that life in Eastern Europe revolves around two axes - alcohol and television. The invited artists, with a few exceptions, confirm the existence of at least one of these axes - dependence on television provides an explanation for the predominance of video in the project. The most vivid example might be the continuation of Gints Gabrāns' "Starix" series - a video shown at Iļģuciems Cultural Centre, in which various events with the participation of Starix have been recorded on TV, supplemented with a training video in the form of a panel discussion on the theme of "how an ordinary person can get on TV" and the presentation of Starix's new single and videoclip. Katrīna Neiburga takes on the role of a taxi driver, provoking chance passengers to conversations that are filmed and demonstrated in that same taxi. Ieva Vīriņa and Ieva Ozoliņa ask pupils what, in their view, is beautiful, and present this documentary for viewing in a beauty salon in Zolitūde. Ingrīda Pičukāne, who spent her youth in Vecmīlgrāvis, has brought together in video format the urban legends of the district's residents. Oskars Poikāns and Mārtiņš Dūmiņš demonstrate their plotless documentary film under the VEF railway bridge. Finnish artist Tellervo Kalleinen offers an "open camera", inviting visitors to be active in front of a camera in an empty, white space. Afterwards, all can view a film put together from these individual performances. Other artists have turned to the non-material essence of art, for example within the frame of the "Free of Charge" event, by the Creative Association Ma1z3, sort of flea-markets are held at the various supermarkets that are the social centres of city districts, where people can take, give or exchange various items without any charge. The pureculture creative association has opened a "boutique"- a second-hand clothes shop - in the Moscow Suburb. Dace Džeriņa is organising dance lessons in various districts of Riga. German artist Hinrich Sachs is holding a meeting for Harry Potter fans, while Swedish artist Luca Frei, together with children from the Latgale Suburb Boarding School, is seeking a suitable location for a garden of dreams. Marianne Bramsen (Denmark) asks Rigans met on the street the question "Where would you like to have been born?", and documents the answers. The audio recording of these short interviews is to be played in the "Riga" cafe in Copenhagen. More tactile art in the context of these video and conceptual projects seems incidental: the black and white paintings "Pharmacy I-V" by Vilnis Vējš (scenes displayed in various pharmacies, showing that particular pharmacy), the discrete work by Ēriks Božis (quotations from changes to the regulations on public order issued by Riga City Council, placed on the wall next to Ziepniekkalns market - a place where the regulations and the supplements to them are entirely unknown). Likewise, the light box envisaged by Estonian artists Hanno Soans and Anders Härm, with the sign "House of Picasso and Braque" in a quite plain and undistinguished location in the town, in order to bemuse the locals and say to art-lovers that talent can reside anywhere. (Owing to budget limitations, a house in Gustava Street, Pārdaugava, had an abbreviated version stating "Picasso and...", with an altogether different meaning.) If you look at it from a different perspective - what do the words "Picasso" and "Braque" mean to someone with no knowledge or interest in art? I don't know what reaction the artists envisage or expect. To be honest, not knowing who are Picasso or Braque means nothing. I don't think that people who do not belong to the restricted, cosy crowd that congregates around art organisations and educational institutions should be despised as uneducated and "provincial" obscurants. "Re:public" is one of those projects whose significance and importance lies not so much in the works themselves as in their conceptual and informational setting. There is much to read and think about this project - although it does not bring exaltation at audacity or new discoveries, but rather surprise at the monstrous tendency pervading most of the works of regarding homeless people, alcoholics and beggars not as a disease of society, which should be cured, but rather as an interesting background for witty exhibits. Arrogant dissociation from the real Riga, in order to survive on memories of New York or dreams of London, in my view does not at all bring art closer to the people - the stated aim of this event. However, the project offers a new attitude towards the placement of art in the network of coordinates of social life. It is no longer necessary to visit the museum to see art, and increasingly often one is also allowed to touch the exhibits, and finally the significant role of TV and alcohol in everyday life has been legitimised. Maybe this turning-point will be significant for the immediate future, or maybe it has been only a weak parody of consumer culture, the authors of which are themselves not free from the typical features of consumers. | |
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