Riga2014: Survival Kit: Utopian City

Survival Kit International Contemporary Art Festival
Utopian City
04. – 27. 09.2014.

The “Survival Kit 6” Contemporary Art Exhibition and the Symposium “Urban Utopia: Art and Culture as a Tool for Exploring and Researching a City”.
At the former ‘Boļševička’ Textile Factory at Ganību dambis 30, Riga.

Curator: Solvita Krese, co-curator of the Festival: Aneta Szylak, Director of the Alternativa Festival in Poland.

The Festival this year forms part of the Rīga 2014 European Capital of Culture programme.

Artists: Alicja Karska & Aleksandra Went (PL), Andreas Angelidakis (NO, GR), Anouk de Clercq (BE), Ēriks Božis (LV), Grzegorz Klaman (PL), Hiwa K (IQ), Inga Erdmane (LV), Isola Art Centre (IT), Julita Wojcik (PL), Jun Yang (CN), Katarina Lundgren (SE), Katrīna Neiburga & Andris Eglītis (LV), Kirils Panteļejevs (LV), Kristīne Alksne (LV), Laura Ķeniņš (LV), Łukasz Surowiec (PL), Mariam Natroshvili & Detu Jintcharadze (GE), Nir Evron (IL), Predmetiv (UA), Reinis Hofmanis (LV), Aglaia Konrad (BE), Toots Timo (EE), Vilnis Putrāms & Vladimirs Jakušonoks (LV)

Tue – Fri 2 pm – 8 pm; Sat – Sun 12 – 7 pm

Symposium
Urban Utopia: Art and Culture as a Tool for Exploring and Researching a City

Two day symposium

12.09. 12.00 Vāgnera Hall

13.09. 12.00 Boļševička

Establishments support dominant ideologies, which in return ignore the existence of alternative options. However, each territory ‘knows’ the existence of interspace, fault or niche. A topos respecting the existence of alterity, a space where rules and norms disappear or change, where a city’s reality is transcended by illusion and dreams, a world proposing and fostering alternative ideologies, social and cultural experiments, a society that creates awareness about its subcultures, supports its heterogeneous, manifold, heterotopian existence.

The symposium will gather international and local theoreticans and activists to embrace the complexity of urbanity and bring more light to the jungle of Utopia, Topos, Heterotopia, Dystopia.

Participants:

Joseph Imorde (art historian, Germany), Catalina Niculescu (artist, Romania), Charles Bourrier (social designer, Latvia), Airi Triisberg (art activist, Estonia), Karolina Keyzer (Stocholm’s chief city architecht, Sweden), Iliana Veinberga (art historian, Latvia), Bert Theis (artist, Luxemburg), Jekaterina Lavrinec (researcher, Lithuania), Joachim Otto Habeck (social anthropologist, Germany), Ania Szremski (curator, Egypt), The Strelka Institute (multidisciplinary educational project, Russia).

Co-courator Jonas Büchel (Urban Institute Riga)