EXHIBITION CURATORS:
Kaspars Vanags, Zane Zajančkauska / Riga, Latvia
Diana Franssen, Curator and Head of Research at Van Abbemuseum / Eindhoven, the Netherlands
"Do you remember the time before the Facebook era and text messages? The era when people had to agree on a meeting beforehand but friends could show up unannounced? It was characterized by telegrams, address books and calligraphy notebooks. Typewriters clattered in offices and there were lines at phone booths. These memories are a part of the story about the last pre-Internet generations and their lives.
"By combining the works of such seminal artists as Irma Blank, Vija Celmins, On Kawara, Boris Lurie, Ry Nikonova, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, Dayanita Singh, Harry Smith, Miroslav Tichý, Drago Trumbetaš and Jiří Valoch with examples of contemporary folklore, social history and pre-digital technologies, the exhibition deals with the recent past when the search for oneself and others took place in an analogue instead of a digital environment. It is the story of self-exploration and social networks in the last decades before the arrival of the Internet, told through a cross-disciplinary display of artworks next to a selection of quotidian forms of creativity: diaries and items from private archives, correspondence by mail or through underground channels of alternative communication and samizdat. The point of both types of exhibits is to question any clear-cut borders between art and everyday life."
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
Xavier Antin, ARTPOOL Studio (György Galántai, Deák Ferenc, Erdélyi Miklós, Kelemen Károly, Maurer Dóra), Valdis Āboliņš, Season Butler, Irma Blank, Vija Celmins, Radomir Damnjanović Damnjan, Guillermo Deisler, Braco Dimitrijević, Marlene Dietrich, Viktorija Eksta, György Galántai, Jean Genet, Vladimir Glushenkov (Владимир Глушенков), Rodney Graham, Atis Ieviņš, On Kawara, Žilvinas Kempinas, William Kentridge, Andrzej Kostolowski, Jaroslaw Kozlowski, Boris Lurie, Bogusław Madej, Dalibor Martinis, Jiří Menzel, Ry Nikonova (Ры Никонова) and Serge Segay, Yoko Ono, Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell, Edgars Ozoliņš, Livija Patikne, Ingrīda Pičukāne, Dmitry Prigov (Дмитрий Прыгов), Konstantīns Raudive, Aleksandr Rodchenko (Александр Родченко) and Varvara Stepanova (Варвара Степанова), Martha Rosler, Dieter Roth, Joachim Schmid, Dayanita Singh, Harry Everett Smith, Zdzisław Sosnowski, Hans Stevens, Mladen Stilinovič, Andrejs Strokins, Jüri Tenson, Rein Tenson, Priit Pärn, Krista Virkus, Mari Kuutmaa, Miroslav Tichý, Dragutin Trumbetaš, Jiří Valoch, Franz Erhard Walther, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt