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Photo and video reportage from Mārtiņš Roķis’ sound art exhibition “2+2=5” at the LCCA Office Gallery

“In the context of politics, 2+2=5 is a formula for falsehood, where obvious truths are denied in the name of ideology. But in the context of perception, the visible or audible doesn’t guarantee the status of truth, as uncertainty, ambiguity and vagueness dominate, removing the dichotomy between falsehood and truth. White, blue, red, sound, black silence and rhythm. Line, circle, beginning, end and infinity. Pixel, pixels, image, data, information and meaning. Reality is created anew at every moment, a passive situation is impossible. To evaluate the passing moment, one has to believe one of the truths, so that after a moment this can, again, be replaced by the next.” Mārtiņš Roķis describes his intentions for the exhibition in these words.

The works included in the exhibition have come about independently of each other, through the author investigating some thematic area of interest to him or some obsession, however, the whole tends to be something more than the sum of its parts and, combined in a unified “object-composition”, the meaning of each individual work and the intentions of the author are no longer the primary thing. Mārtiņš Roķis refers to French sociologist Bruno Latour, stating that “the more successfully a system operates, the less one has to think about the complex processes which make it work.”

At the forefront of Mārtiņš Roķis’ interests are the boundaries of a person’s perception, the relationship between the body and space. The author has studied philosophy at the University of Latvia’s Faculty of History and Philosophy and has independently mastered audio visual programming. He has been experimenting with electronic music since the late 1990s. The author works with sound in a variety of contexts and forms, performing at experimental music concerts, and creating installations and compositions for multi-channel systems. In 2013, he took part in, and his works could be seen or heard in Latvia (the Rīga Bourse Art Museum, the RIXC Centre for New Media Culture at the Spīķeri Quarter, the Skaņu mežs Festival and elsewhere), as well as at sound art centres like STEIM in the Netherlands, and EMS and Fylkingen in Sweden, the Audiorama Concert Hall in Stockholm, Cafe OTO in London, the NextSound festival in Ukraine and the Sound Around Kaliningrad festival in Russia, and elsewhere.

Mārtiņš Roķis’ sound art exhibition 2+2=5 was featured  at the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) Office Gallery from 22nd January until 28th February.