International contemporary art festival and performance program

 

Opening: 7 June 2024

Duration: 8 June – 28 July 2024

Venue: Hanzas 22, Riga

 

Participants:

Jānis Dzirnieks (LV), Santa France (LV), Kaspars Groševs (LV), Sky Hopinka (USA), Laura Kaminskaitė (LT), Sanya Kantarovsky (USA), Nikita Kadan (UA), Viktors Timofejevs (USA/LV), Tīrkultūra group (Rolands Pēterkops, Emīls Jansons, Emīlija Didžus, Reinis Semēvics, Michael Holland, LV), Agate Tūna (LV), Evita Vasiļjeva (LV/ FR), Jonas Wendelin (DE) and Evita Manji (GR), Young Boy Dancing Group (YBDG).

 

Festival curators: Evita Goze, Žanete Liekīte, Zane Onckule

Festival director: Zane Čulkstēna

Festival design: Krišs Salmanis

Communication: Austra Stupele

Project management: Katrīna Jauģiete, Žanete Liekīte

 

 

Exhibition opening hours:

Wednesday – Friday 14.00–19.00

Saturday 12.00–19.00

Sunday 12.00–17.00

Closed on 22-23 June

 

Celebrating 15 years of existence, Kim? Contemporary Art Centre announces an annual international contemporary art festival in Riga. Since the start of its public activities in 2009, Kim? has retained the status of a key platform in the region’s art processes, consistently providing a considered contribution to contemporary art programmes. While celebrating its jubilee and pondering its future direction, Kim? is expanding its physical and programmatic ambition by presenting and warming up its forthcoming new premises – a historic pre-renovation building and its adjacent inner courtyard in Hanzas iela 22, marking a positive moment not only for the institution, but also the Latvian and Baltic art scene in general.

 

Around the time Kim? opened its doors in the then-creative quarter in Spīķeri, American art historian David Joselit in his seminal publication Grey Room published the article Institutional Responsibility: The Short Life of Orchard, which was devoted to Orchard, an artist-run space which by then had disappeared from the metropolis. Although a from great distance and functioning under different circumstances, the fragile existence of countless such spaces in the oversaturated infrastructure of the art field is no less relevant in the here and now. In the context of EDEN and particularly the question contained in the name of Kim?, we turn in gratitude to the hundreds of individuals without the help of which our “institutional” or “architectonic” contours would not be secured and, importantly – would not be continued. This continuity in its various manifestations and (un)limited driver of activity, as part of EDEN, strives to push into the foreground more diffuse forms which, on this occasion, are not supported by the protective yet just as limiting framework of the white cube. Kim?, what are you and what next.

 

In terms of concept and content, EDEN at the new address might be seen as an ephemeral “exhibition-performance” soaked in layers of history, in which artists purposefully examine the timbre and reverberations within social space and the means of achieving with the help of immersive art the feeling of a safe space in an uninhabitable interior. In constructing EDEN, one of the questions has to do with the fear of being expelled, since temptation requires from the sonic, the buzzing and the witness of the historical relict to replace the visual or to generate its effect.

 

In dialogue with the artists, the thematic arc of the 2024 Kim? festival is marked by a turn to the illusory tools of self-representation, reflections on today’s society in its manifold manifestations, ruling ideologies, public and private space. It brings together a newly created sound and installation activating an inclusive experience (Evita Vasiļjeva), a performative Cabinet of Eden which catches radio signals (Tīrkultūra), a premiere of a newly-created video piece containing historical references (Viktors Timofejevs), an audially-charged dystopian transposition of humanity’s early architectonic forms to the present (Jonas Wendelin and Evita Manji), a large-format silent vanitas of contemporary society placed in the interior (Santa France), a site-specific installation made as a result of wanderings through the building (Jānis Dzirnieks), a video reflecting on the illusions of image-making, society, ideology and its own “self” (Sanya Kantarovsky), a “ghostly” spatial arrangement reflecting on positive-negative spaces (Agate Tūna), a site-specific installation rooted in exercises with objects, languages, abstract forms and routine (Laura Kaminskaitė), a fragile witness to a protracted regional conflict carrying a harsh sentiment (Nikita Kadan), a rhythmical mini-story about the mental consequences of colonial plunder, fused with earth, sky, sea, myth and place (Sky Hopinka) as well as a constellation of deeply intimate, sexually charged collective energy and objects gathered during the opening performance (YBDG), meanwhile a more traditional medium – small-format painting – is contributed by an artist’s (Kaspars Groševs) ongoing series about the old man who walked, walked and has now already returned home – to Eden. The exhibition experience is also complemented by a model of the forthcoming Eden designed by the architecture office Vilnis Mičulis, which can be found by taking a walk through the exhibition space.

 

The title is a nod that in the beginning was the word. New Address: EDEN is a literary and imagined interaction, which, from one perspective, shows the life-cycle of an art institution which changes homes due to gentrification and other external considerations, steeling, perfecting and advancing itself in the process. At the same time, the title also includes a self-reference to a happening which took place at the beginnings of Kim? in Spīķeri Quarter in 2010, when a group of artists and stage designers (among them participants of this year’s EDEN) used an abandoned, roofless warehouse overgrown with trees and bushes next to the building of Kim? to set up Eden, an improvised hotel that could be entered and exited but not inhabited for long.

 

Festival Patrons:
Novum Riga Charitable Foundation, Pillar,  

 

Supporters:
Ministry of Culture, State Culture Capital Foundation, Riga City Council, Absolut, Valmiermuiža

 

Media Support:
Arterritory, Echo Gone Wrong, Radio SWH