spectre@mikrolisten.de
>From: Rasa Smite <rasa@rixc.lv>
>Subject: FIELDS exhibition – welcome to Riga 2014!
>
>
>Please see below the first ‘official’
>information on the FIELDS – large scale
>exhibition that will feature about 40 very
>interesting artworks. The event is specially
>produced for Riga 2014, European Capital of
>Culture – so you all are all very welcome to
>Riga this year, and particularly for the FIELDS
>opening – on May 15, 2014!
>
>hope some of you to see in Riga this summer –
>the exhibition will be open till August 3, 2014
>
>kind regards
>Rasa
>
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>Welcome to Riga – the European Capital of Culture 2014!
>
>FIELDS exhibition
>Arsenals Exhibition Hall of the Latvian National Museum of Art
>May 15 – August 3, 2014
>
>Fields – patterns of social, scientific, and technological transformations.
>
>The changing role of art in society is one where
>it does not just create a new aesthetics but
>gets involved in patterns of social, scientific,
>and technological transformations. Fields,
>jointly curated by Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits and
>Armin Medosch, presents an inquiry into patterns
>of renewal and transition. The curators asked
>which expanded fields of artistic practice offer
>new ideas for overcoming the crisis of the
>present and developing new models of a more
>sustainable and imaginative way of life.
>
>In preparation for the Fields exhibition, a
>widespread survey was undertaken, that did not
>just look at art in the narrow sense but all
>kinds of creative practices that bring together
>new thinking, scientific knowledge, aesthetics,
>technologies and social practices. A year in
>advance, a public call was launched that was met
>by over 200 proposals. The curators of Fields
>could draw on international networks such as
>RIXC’s Renewable Network and the European
>collaborations Techno-Ecologies and
>Soft-Control. The artist-in-residency series
>Fieldwork on measurement ship Eleonore, Linz
>2013, aimed at creating ideas and projects for
>Fields. Workshops and panels at Transmediale
>2013 – Berlin, Pixelache 2013 – Helsinki, and
>the Media Art Histories conference Renew – Riga,
>October 2013 were used to discuss work and
>taxonomies for Fields.
>
>>From the 200 proposals received through the
>>public call, the curators have chosen 40 works
>>from all over the world, but with a special
>>focus on Central, Eastern and Northern Europe.
>>Fields will be exhibited between May 15th and
>>August 3rd 2014, at the Arsenals exhibition
>>space of Latvian National Arts Museum, the
>>largest and most important exhibition space for
>>contemporary art in Riga, as a part of Riga –
>>European Culture Capital 2014. The exhibition
>>will be accompanied by public lectures,
>>Renewabl
e Futures conference as well as artist
>>performances and concerts. A catalogue will be
>>produced, which will consist of a special issue
>>of the Acoustic Space peer reviewed academic
>>journal, jointly issued by Liepaja’s University
>>Art Research Lab and RIXC.
>
>Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits are artists and
>founding directors of RIXC, an art institution
>in Riga, Latvia, whose Art + Communication
>festival has become one of the most important
>festivals of this kind in Europe and worldwide.
>Armin Medosch is a curator, writer and artist
>based in Vienna, Austria. The Fields exhibition
>is a follow-up project to Waves 2006, which was
>also shown at Arsenals in Riga, co-curated by
>Smite, Smits and Medosch.
>
>The curators selected works that are considered
>to be contextual seedbeds for social change. The
>changing role of art in society is one where it
>does not just create a new aesthetics but gets
>involved in patterns of social, scientific, and
>technological transformations.
>
>Fields presents a lively landscape of art that
>challenges existing viewpoints and deconstructs
>social issues, but also proposes positive
>visions for the future. A premise behind this
>project was from the very start that no single
>field and associated label can do justice any
>more to the diversity of contemporary art
>practices. Typically, today, the most
>interesting practices are transdisciplinary and
>transformative – they rely on new combinations
>of existing fields-as-in-disciplines, combining
>the artistic with the social and the natural,
>the scientific and the emotional, the sensible
>with the actual.
>
>Fields opens up the contemporary field for a
>free and associative play of radical taxonomies,
>remixing and recombining existing categories,
>thereby carrying out important boundary work
>that gives a new shape to the contact zones
>between art, science, technology and social
>engagement in the 21st century.
>While the final list of artists may still
>change, we would like to present some examples
>for the radical diversity of approaches:
> The relationship with nature plays a
>major role in this exhibition, often in
>combination with ideas from the open culture
>that emerged on the net, about sharing resources
>and tackling social issues through participatory
>and social mechanisms.
> In some cases, such as Leave it in the
>Ground by Oliver Ressler (2013), or
>Seedsunderground (2013-14) by Shu Lea Cheang,
>the work carries a clear and direct political
>message, concerning issues such as renewable
>energy, sustainability or the fight for the
>diversity of agricultural seeds and plants.
> Other work, less overtly political, opens
>our senses and minds to new ways of seeing the
>world, referring to what French philosopher
>Jaques Ranci?re calls the ‘distribution of the
>sensible’. Lisa Jevbratt shows how different
>reality is if we imagine to look at the world
>with animal eyes. The Belgian collective Okno
>combines rooftop gardening and beehives to
>create new maps of the distribution of plant
>life in cities. Erich Berger measures changes in
>the magnetic field of the Earth. Manu Luksch
>offers a free ride on a water taxi in exchange
>for a conversation with Kayak Libre.
> The human body itself becomes seen as a
>node in a complex network of force-fields, where
>nature, genetic science and political and
>economical topics intersect. The Latvian artist
>Gints Gabrans proposes to modify our bodies so
>that, with the help of new enzymes, we can eat
>grass and tree branches. Hu.M.C.C.- Human
>Molecular Colonization Capacity project by Maja
>Smrekar, Slovenia, uses an enzyme from the
>artist’s body to create a yoghurt. Hans
>Scheirl’s paintings and installation Transgenic
>(TM) breaks through barriers between 2D and 3D,
>simultaneously opening up new ways of artistic
>and bodily trans-gression.
> The intersection of social and visual
>fields is the topic of works by Austrian video
>artist Annja Krautgasser’s Prelude (2010) and
>media artist Hannah Haslaati, Finland, who uses
>principles known from Gestalt psychology to make
>group dynamics visible.
>The intersection of the globalised economy with
>digital technologies, financial markets
>exploitative labour practices and culture and
>concerns of local communities and indigenous
>people are addressed in works such as Histoire
>?conomique (2013) by British artist Hayley
>Newman, Working Life (2013) by Danish artist
>collective Superflex and Eccentric Archive
>(2012-14) by Ines Doujak and John Barker.
> The relevations by Edward Snowden about
>global surveillance activities of the USA
>through its PRISM program has made evident how
>important the invisible world of data flows and
>data bases is. Data fields, battlefields and the
>war on terror mark the background for works such
>as Endless War (2012-14) by British-Japanese
>artist couple YoHa (Graham Harwood and Matsuko
>Yokokoji), and We should take nothing for
>granted! – on the building of an alert and
>knowledgeable citizenry by Slovenian artist
>Marko Peljhan and Project Atol.
> The relationship between matter and
>information, as suggested by cybernetics pioneer
>Norbert Wiener, is the topic of the Earth
>Computer (2014) Martin Howse and Ghostradio
>(2014) by Pamela Neuwirth, Markus Decker and
>Franx Xaver.
> Artists such as Martins Ratniks’
>installlation with 27 CRT TV screens, and French
>artist Cecile Babiole’s sound installation are
>engaging with the raw energy of electrical and
>electro-magnetic fields, continuing work started
>with the Waves project in 2006.
> Relationships between electrical and
>biological fields inform the work of Latvian
>sound artist Voldemars Johansons, who, in
>collaboration with RIXC’s own project Biotricity
>(bacteria battery) has made music from
>electrical signal fluctuations that are
>generated by living micro-organisms.
>
>These are some key topics and examples of up to
>40 works that will be shown at Fields.
>
>http://fields.rixc.lv
>
>Support: The Fields exhibition is supported by
>Riga 2014 and Riga City Council, Latvian State
>Cultural Capital Foundation, Latvian Ministry of
>Culture, Austrian Ministry of Culture, French
>Cultural Institute, Nordic Culture Point.
