“It’s working, there’s a bit of anxiety, as always before a big sequence of events, but we’re sure that everything will work out,” the artistic director of the forum, Baiba Bartkeviča, revealed her feelings even before the planned events.
In the first half of the day, the last organizational works, but in the evening the gates for diversity in art will open.
Astoni events in four places
“Liepāja Art Forum” will be held for the ninth time. How much interest is there from visitors? “This is the only contemporary art music platform in Liepāja, and it must be said that we have been here for years grown up audience trust. Already last year, we heard people say that people came to the festival with an open mind for adventure.
The forum is a bit more experimental, more unusual, “uncombed” platform, which many people really like.
It is a pleasure and a great satisfaction that this trust is there and people are already waiting and asking for what could be next year. When we announce the program, we see response and interest.”
This year “Liepājas Mākslas forum” will offer culture lovers eight different events in four places in the city, including the club “Kursa” and the music club “Fontaine Palace”.
“Every year we give the forum a motto, a unifying element, and this time it is “All birds sing beautifully”. I was inspired by the performance of Krista Burāne’s own place, which is given that name, but it is, of course, also a verse of Latvian folk songs.
I found it a very touching and appropriate name for our festival as well, which speaks of the fact that each bird has its own unique song,
in the same way, people also have their own character and their own language, their own vision, which is important in creating an equal, just world and also in thinking about an inclusive society,” explains B. Bartkeviča.
The festival will gather Latvian and foreign artists, a virtuoso guitar performance, a rave in the concert hall, avant-garde flamenco, the singing of ancient sutartins and contemporary dance, American the chapel, circus performances, an exhibition and a musical participation show.
“There are so many artists in the world with different artistic signatures,” says B. Bartkeviča, answering the question of whether there is a shortage of people to invite.
”I have lists of lists in my head, I have to be able to put them off again and again. Studying different artists, their art practices, watching festivals in different concepts, also sifts through and gives a feeling, which ones should be brought here and shown to our listeners. And there are a lot of them.”
Dementia – present, but underrepresented
Today at 18:00 in the art room of the concert hall “Civita Nova” the exhibition of the new media artist, assistant professor of the University of Liepāja, Anna Priedola, “Piena diensgrāmatas. Dementia in statistics and stories’.
The portal met the artist while the exhibition was being set up. “The title is quite descriptive,” she says, introducing the exhibition.
“You will be able to get to know the diaries of fellow dementia patients, testimonies about their daily routines.
Also statistics describing the situation with dementia in Europe, the world, and Latvia.”
“They are not real,” Anna Priedola says about the photos on display, putting on white gloves at the time of setting up the exhibition. “Because currently there is no senior in my family. However, I wanted to include portraits when illustrating the aging process, so I used an artificial intelligence tool. The main part of the work is not exactly these initial images, but their processing together with the photos I took at the moment the milk was coagulation.” In this way, Anna depicts the everyday life and perception processes of a senior with dementia. Photo: Egon Sieverts
Visitors to the exhibition will be surprised how A. Priedola presents the data and introduces the everyday life and perception processes of seniors suffering from dementia, using milk and its products as the main means of expression.
In her creative work, the artist has already focused on the study of food as an art material and the multisensory experience it provides in the perception of a work of art.
The exhibition will feature refrigerators in which, for example, cheese rolls cut in different ways will display statistics. In the art space, a more than four-meter-high milk carton will roll, and in this enclosed space, the audio diaries of dementia patients’ fellow human beings, voiced by Liepāja theater actors, will be heard.
There will also be reminders on the walls, which have been made referring to real recommendations, reminders left on different pieces of paper in places of residence by people with dementia.
“This is so that while they are alone, they can remember to do various practical and everyday activities,”
says A. Priedola.
The exhibition has previously been exhibited elsewhere, for example in the Paula Stradiņš Museum of Medical History. “As I was told afterwards, many visitors wanted to talk to the art mediators who introduced the exhibition and share their personal experiences related to dementia, because there is not quite the time or the right place for that elsewhere,” says A. Priedola.
She turned to it herself because of her grandfather, who was diagnosed with dementia. The many “white spots” that appeared in the memories of a close person and ruled also in the understanding of dementia by the artist herself and other relatives, resemble the white color of milk, which is used a lot in the elements and scenography of the exhibition.
For A. Priedola, milk is also associated with personal childhood memories – summers spent in the countryside with her grandfather, where fresh milk was always available.
The exhibition “Civita Nova” can be viewed until November 3, while on September 30, October 21 and November 4, from 3 to 6 p.m., the exhibition will be complemented by “Dementia data workshops” led by A. Priedola and art mediators of the Latvian Contemporary Art Center, where visitors will have the possibility to create data recipes from various everyday available and familiar food products to promote your cognitive health.
They will be able to be seen and tasted, getting to know the challenges caused by the aging of the body and humanity’s efforts to remove it in an attractive and relaxed way. “We will also conduct some of the creative workshops at the old people’s home. So let’s go outside the concert hall to show seniors closer to such a more sociable cultural activity.”
Contribution of the media support fund from Latvian state budget funds. The portal liepajniekiem.lv is responsible for the prepared content.
2023-09-29 04:25:35
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