A contemporary media art exhibition «Fields» has opened at the «Arsenāls» Exhibition Hall of the Latvian National Arts Museum. Its programme is accompanied by the international festival for new media culture «Art+Communication 2014».
Nowadays art does not only search for new forms of aesthetics, but also gets involved in patterns of social, scientific, and technological transformations in the society. The exhibition presents a lively landscape of 40 artworks that challenges existing viewpoints, deconstructs social issues, and proposes positive visions for the future. The exhibition tries to answer the questions of which boundaries of fields do artists cross today and what fields are they exploring.
Festival «Art+Communication»
The exhibition will co–occur with events of the «Art+Communication 2014» festival — on Friday, May 16 at 20.00 the Spīķeri Concert Hall will host an electronic music concert featuring one of Europe’s leading contemporary avant–garde musicians Mia Zabelka who will be using a special electronic violin with an attached radio antenna in her performance. Powerful laser projections in accompaniment with an acoustic cello will be presented by a sound artist and composer Yamila Rios and Joris Strijbos, an artist from the Netherlands. The Latvian sound art collective «Clausthome» and an artist Mārtiņš Ratniks will reveal electricity in colours and sounds. Japanese experimental film author Makino Takashi will portray the magical colours and sounds of the universe in his repeatedly awarded video performance «Space Noise 3D». Tickets can be purchased at the «Biļešu Paradīze» box offices and on the internet.
Conference «Renewable Futures»
From May 16 to 18 an international conference on art, science and culture innovation «Renewable Futures» will take place in Riga and Liepaja. The conference will create new interaction spaces between academic research work and various contemporary art practices, art and science, sustainable entrepreneurship and social initiatives in the 21st century.
On Friday at 17.00 the Goethe Institute–Riga will hold public lectures on the role of avant–garde art in contemporary society by the art theorist and professor Miško Šuvaković, who will introduce the «grey areas», where art crosses the border of politics; the curator of the exhibition «Fields» Armin Medosch will give a profound insight into the ideas of the exhibition, but the art historian Ieva Astahovska will introduce the overstepping of the areas and borderlines of genres in the art of 1970–80ies in Latvia.
On Saturday, May 17 the first day of the conference will explore the subject «Art and Science — From Techno–ecological Practices to New Theories of Sustainability». The second day of the conference, May 18, will be spent in Liepaja, focusing on the subject of art as research. Ideas and theses will be presented by artists who work in collaboration with scientists, PhD students of art and lecturers from academies and universities in Northern Europe, Iceland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.
The conference will take place at the Goethe Institute–Riga, Torņa iela 1 (entrance from Klostera iela) and the Liepaja University’s Art Research Lab, Kūrmājas prospekts 13. Entrance for the conference events is free of charge, but it is advisable to notify the organizers on your appearance by writing an e-mail to rixc@rixc.lv
More information on the exhibition and its artists, as well as the full programme of performances, concerts and the conference are available on the «Fields» homepage.
Viedokļi