For the twelfth year in a row, the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art (LLMC) has been organizing an international festival of contemporary art “Survival KitThis year it will take place in an unprecedented format – instead of empty buildings, visitors will be invited to go to the memorial museums in Riga.
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According to the organizer LLMC representative Gundega Turnele, the choice of festival venues will help to reveal its theme, calling attention to individual stories in the context of collective memory and issues of population aging. Survival Kit 12 will run from September 3 to October 3 this year.
The festival will be curated by independent curators Övül Ö. Durmușoğlu) and Joanna Warsza, living in Berlin.
The Survival Kit 12 will include an exhibition of contemporary art, discussions and talks with artists, as well as tours during the public program. The public program of the festival this year will be organized in close cooperation with the international poetry festival “Poetry Days”.
The exhibition of the festival will take place in Jānis Akuraters Museum, Krišjānis Barons Museum, Rainis and Aspazija House, Janis Rozentāls and Rūdolfs Blaumanis Museum, Andrejs Upītis Memorial Museum, Ojārs Vācietis Memorial Museum, Roman Suta and Aleksandras Beļcova Museum.
“Life has never been completely submissive to the structures that seek to manage and administer it. It has always managed to avoid this situation. This is also the case now that the overarching issue of society’s survival and aging is becoming more prevalent than ever. The metaphor of the survival kit leads to ask a series of questions: how to live in an aging society with age discrimination, structural changes in working and care conditions and now the virus, how to deal with the consequences of the previous generation and what to do with the political, economic and and the ecological sphere that future generations will have to deal with? How to accept the idea of our extinction as a human race? as a woman, as a child, as a partner, as an artist? as an inverted pyramid: Europe ‘s society is getting older, it is also being created by artists and spectators who have now reached the age of six, “this year’ s theme is outlined by its creators.
“Memorial museums in Eastern Europe seemed like suitable places for us to ask questions about memory, memorials, as well as about life, aging, eugism, survival, community and immunity. We invite artists to respond and participate with context-specific new works as well as existing works. , which will be housed in the memorial museums of eternal poets, artists and writers, “reveals the curators.
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The festival’s curators, Övül Ö. Durmușoğlu and Joanna Warsza, live in Berlin and are curators, teachers and writers. They were both curators of the public art initiatives Die Balkone 1 and Die Balkone 2 in the windows and balconies of the Prenclauerberg district of Berlin in 2020 and 2021. In parallel with Survival Kit 12, they are curators of the Autostrad Biennale in Kosovo in the summer of 2021.
The international contemporary art festival “Survival Kit” attracts more than 10,000 visitors every year, it is one of the most ambitious annual contemporary art events in the Baltics since 2009. The festival emerged as a reaction to Latvia affected by the economic crisis with the aim of encouraging the public to respond to changes in today’s world and to reflect on different survival strategies. Every year, a topical and important topic in the society is chosen for the festival. The empty buildings of Riga are used as venues for the festival to draw people’s attention to their future development potential.
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