“The UK is now on the ‘orange list’,” it reads in an email from the organizers of the Riga Biennial.In essence, we were now personae non gratae in Latvia; Visitors to the countries on this list, or worse, from the dreaded “red list,” now spend 14 days of quarantine on arrival.It’s not an ideal progression two days before we had to catch an Air Baltic flight to Riga.But, It reassured us, this would not be the case for us, thanks to a “special policy for traveling art professionals” that would allow us to circumvent this requirement simply by passing a Covid-19 test.
The name of the Biennial, and everything flourishes, invites us to reflect on the goodness that can resurgence from the precariousness of this time.
Aside from the delight of a fellow journalist, whose US passport somewhat guards the border, the immigration clearance was carried out without incident. After checking into our accommodation, the adorable boutique hotel in Neiburgs in the old town, we were duly shown to a checkpoint across the river, where a woman dressed in dangerous fabrics sat me in a swivel chair there. from work and presented me with portions. from my nostrils that I never knew existed. When we won an email in Latvia with the recognizable verdict of ‘negativ’, I wondered how the organizers would have responded if the effects of the check had been otherwise. It seemed that the RIBOCA2 team had overcome a main obstacle: triumphing against all odds in bringing foreign media to the event. Although the generous personal investment behind the Biennale (a budget mix of the Riga Biennale Foundation, founded through Agniya Mirgorodskaya, and other personal donors and sponsors), it certainly had a strong influence on the achievement of which is almost impossible, with backed by the Riga City Council and the Latvian Ministry of Culture, their decision in the face of many setbacks (if a global pandemic can actually be called a “setback”) was impressive.
“I have already reached the goal of the global,” said Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel, curator leader of RIBOCA2, in her inaugural address on August 20.Lamarche-Vadel presents a biennial that is really very different from what she had imagined.Months ago. Originally scheduled to open in May and last five months, the Riga Biennial will now only be open during the last weeks of its scheduled execution.
If Lamarche-Vadel’s words speak of our current context, somewhat apocalyptic, the Biennial turns out to have been conceived with an end to the global already in mind.With its original curatorial theme of “reenchanation”, RIBOCA2 has sought an image reflected in an imminent cataclysm, the desire to reconsider our relations with other beings (whether animals or even aliens), and the imperative that comes from giving way to voices and visions of choice, a commitment that is attested from the beginning through the diversity of RIBOCA2 participants.This inclusive term, according to executive director Anastasia Blokhina, recognizes that not all exhibitions of the Biennale necessarily are profiled as artists, but also come with Dr. Vija Enia, expert in medicinal plants, who has deposited sage, lavfinisher and chamomile.seeds throughout the site; and Erika “Aya” Eiffel, a lawyer for the most productive objective sexuality known for having “married” to the Eiffel Tower in 2007.He also granted several of his “companions” a holiday in Riga, adding a Japanese bow.
In the spring of 2020, the expected theoretical cataclysm arrived, in an amazing example of life imitating art. Blokhina describes how, after preventing preparation for RIBOCA2 in March, the team learned that RIBOCA2 “had to arrive this year”, not despite The Dramatic Context, but because of the unique odds of this dubious period. The name of the Biennial, and suddenly everything blooms, invites us to reflect on what kindness can arise from the precariousness of that time.
The Covid-19 pandemic will be a central detail of the debate, either in an almost creative and creative way.The advent of Lamarche-Vadel is positioned at the main site of the Biennale: the partially deserted commercial port of Andrejsala.poisonous surroundings and soils echoes the apocalyptic language of conservatives and the infection that says “put us on our knees.”From this pollution, he points out, Andrejsala has created new ecosystems; running within the constraints of our new truth and “accepting the restrictions of our power,” he hopes that this site can, in turn, generate “modest and humble concepts for new futures.”
Instead of faking a return to normality, the absence and tension of adaptation are bare in RIBOCA2, where, in the words of the chief curator, we are witnessing “many ghosts and many silences.”In Oliver Beer’s Simply Rights / Unattained Goals, designed to highlight the acoustic quality of the elements belonging to 3 women in the artist’s family circle and those of a Riga resident, 3 out of 4 sets of bases are empty in the gigantic exhibition space.In DER HINTERGRUND SEI ICH, TIERE IM EIGENEN ANDEREN ZUSAMMENHANG MIT ARCHITEKTUR via Heinz Frank, who unfortunately died less than a week after the opening of the exhibition, photocopies update the original architectural drawings.That is, admits Lamarche-Vadel, guiding us through the exhibition, an “unusual proposal for a foreign biennial”, but a obligatory reality.The only remaining item at Dominika Olszowy’s Yawn of a Sleepy Heart facility is a single stained glass window, and the rest is on display in Warsaw.Ion guide, those undesed plans are not omitted, but the text is simply prohibited and therefore visual for the reader.
An unexpected product of these adaptations, the continuation of RIBOCA2’s original project to create an area for chosen voices, introducing the participation of netpaintings in the artistic concepts of many paintings.pine through an organization of Riga artists.PaweAlthamer’s Congress of Cartoonists Public Art Project was brought online and promoted through online contributions with a much broader scope than the case if participation had been limited to visitors to the exhibition.
These adjustments to the works are indicative of what the player Anastasia Sosunova (exhibiting her assignment of outdoor installation Habitaball) describes as “conforming to the empty spaces of the exhibition created through those pitfalls and cancellations”.The Lithuanian artist says that she “was inspired by the way [the team] controlled to reorganize, settle for time, limitations and impossibility while remaining sensitive,” emphasizing that artists were invited and encouraged through organizers to “share their impressions and take care of the lockdown.”Lithuanian artist Augustas Serapinas, who faced his own unrest even before Covid, when his assignment to snowmen was thwarted by an unusually mild winter in the Baltic, also said that the organizers supported the artists amid wonderful demanding situations (congratulates the RIBOCA team for paying all the artists the agreed Array fees despite the relief in the duration of the biennial).engagement and a sign for the local art world, ” he told me.
More specifically, the coronavirus also marked the delight of the Biennale for visitors. We are greeted on-site through various hand-washing stations, as well as sales symptoms of social distancing and bottles of disinfectant scattered throughout the space, especially for jobs that require the use of headphones. Part of the public masterclass and lecture program co-organized through Sofia Lemos moved online, while popular Italian restaurant Casa Nostra, which designed a special RIBOCA menu, had to put aside its plan to seat guests. guests. at long communal tables. However, no such scruples about social distancing were revealed on opening night. When I was asked to put a sticker on my phone’s camera, my first thought was “Wow, how wild is this party going to be? Array … maybe this is the closest I’ve ever got to Berghain”; a little more in the Party – lively but much more familiar than I think Berghain – an organizer told me that it was so that “the municipality does not close us down”, not because of the debauchery yet to circumvent the social regulations of distancing.
With RIBOCA2 open only for the last weeks of his planned career, the Biennial will continue as a feature film, filmed the event. The film, directed through local filmmaker D-d’Samanis, attracted the help and perplexity of the participants.for many of them it is an exciting but unrthodox concept.”The film adds to the full exhibition and can give it a new reach,” Serapinas says, “it’s a rare reaction in those rare times.”German artist Katrin Hornek, who is participating in her clay-based installation A Land Mass to Come, is intrigued: “I’d like to see the film before I get an opinion on it.I’m very curious to know the result because I myself can’t think of a conspiracy that can work.”
Admitting on a guided tour that “Covid is my co-curator, whom I will have to greet”, the leading curator of the Biennial speaks of a non-unusual thread of the event: accepting and knowing the global agony in which we are located.his premonition of the 2020 sense of completion, RIBOCA2 might well have understood what a “apocalypse” really is.It’s not just about the end of the world; after all, the original ancient Greek word, apokolypsis, refers to a “revelation” or a “revelation.”Instead of taking the pandemic as a sign of Armagedron and abandoning the artistic ghost, the Biennial has resolved, imperfectly but admirably, to adapt, reinvent itself, and seek new probabilities and visions that have just “revealed itself” through this crisis.