Kim? Contemporary Art Centre is pleased to invite you to the one evening only performance on the occasion of the finissage of exhibition Betweenness: Technoculture and the Baltics on April 21st 6pm. 

 

As part of the installation Wind as murmur, cypher and enchanted reckoner by Norman Orro and Joonas Timmi a special performance will take place that will display its full harp-like oeuvre and come to life accompanied by the mutated voices of Vaim Sarv. 

 

 

Asking the question “If the winds could compute, what would they reckon?” Orro and Timmi probe the role of soft technologies in mythmaking (and, conversely, myths around making technology). 

Wind as murmur, cypher and enchanted reckoner explores the artists’ following proposition:

 

Let’s say the wind acts as a flow of energy over the landscape, while obstacles in its path operate as logic gates, encoding it with turbulence and information. We could then say the wind, through its vagrancies, hides in plain sight all sorts of complex dynamics, including error and insight. For instance, when the wind blows open doors and windows, lifts water and floods its logic gates — this work produces openings where they do not belong, sorting them out until some form of normality intervenes to take the landscape over. Normality is then experienced in our cultures as disenchantment, the receding of spectacle. In the absence of myth, the jazz of an inorganic Eden runs windward.

 

As the veil of myth unfurls,

A reckoner takes its place,

A beacon in the winds,

A guiding light to trace.

The tales of old transmute,

A glowing ember in the shadows, a guiding star to chase.

A never-ending cycle, a constant rejoice.

 

 

Vaim Sarv (EE/US) is an experimental musician and vocalist. Her practice blends free improvisation with noise and pagan oral tradition. Mutating his voice with live electronics, she works towards an animalistic, machine-like sound interwoven with lyrics and spoken word. Often taking place in unorthodox locations, his ritualistic performances and curatorial projects amplify the disruptive, celebratory power of communal experiences.

 

Norman Orro (EE) is an Estonian artist and musician working at the junction of ecology, technology, and the humanities. His sound art project Music For Your Plants offers a sonic exploration of the post-human condition through a world in which objects are given agency to converse via audible frequencies. Using speculative and machine-assisted compositions, the project attempts to bridge an artificial divide between nature and culture, generating an ominous but pleasing tone to the interplay between semantic and atmospheric sounds—the human voice spoken by a machine, becoming a bird call for the rocks. Since 2010, the project has manifested in conceptual albums, visual essays, and installations with notable collaborations, including a soundtrack for the China Pavilion in the 56th Venice Biennale, audiovisual web-installations for DIS Magazine and Ofluxo, and performances at Creamcake Festival and Creepy Teepee. 

 

Joonas Timmi (EE) delves into the modern identity of craftsmanship, seamlessly fusing traditional woodworking methods with contemporary technologies such as VR modeling, 3D printing, and CNC milling. His work is an exploration of the human experience, wherein he seeks to uncover the psychological layers that reside within our material possessions. Through his creations, he aims to evoke a sense of nostalgia and longing, while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of functionality. His work is characterized by its naturalistic forms and an almost human-like presence, inviting the viewer to question the role of objects in our lives and their ability to evoke emotion.

 

 

About exhibition

 

Betweenness: Technoculture and the Baltics

 

Participiants: Becca Abbe (US), Uģis Albiņš (LV), Valdis Celms (LV), Jānis Dzirnieks (LV/NL), Flo Kasearu (EE), Oliver Laric (AT/DE), Deimantas Narkevičius (LT), Norman Orro & Joonas Timmi (EE), Adriana Ramić (US/PL), Tarwuk (US/HR), Evita Vasiļjeva (LV/FR). 

 

Curated by: Riga Technoculture Research Unit (RTRU) (Zane Onckule and Elizaveta Shneyderman)

 

Betweenness: Technoculture and the Baltics explores production and technicity through a gathering of Baltic and international artists. Over the past thirty years, the Baltics have experienced dramatic geopolitical upheavals and shifts in power; once bound to the Soviet Union in quasi-political isolation, the region is now more opaque and free-floating, with a cultural atmosphere that always seems to be in search of solid ground. The exhibition imagines cultural identities as technocultural and networked epistemes, binding them through their broken histories. Intergenerational and operating across mediums, this group of artists, scholars, programmers, and designers trace the effects that technoculture has had on Baltic art and life by showcasing their creations—new and old—made over the last fifty years.

 

 

Suppporters: Baltic Culture Fund, Culture Ministry of Latvia, State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, Riga City Council, Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania to the Republic of Latvia, Kokmuiza brewery.