Photo reportage from RIBOCA2 'and suddenly it all blossoms'

August 25, 2020
Author Echo Gone Wrong

Published in Photo / Video from Latvia

RIBOCA2

In light of our current situation, RIBOCA2 had to be reimagined. Initially planned to open on 16 May 2020 with a five-month duration, the project will now transform into a feature movie and the exhibition will become its film set taking place from 20 August to 13 September 2020.

RIBOCA2: and suddenly it all blossoms grew out of the urge to change our way of inhabiting the world through reaching out to other voices, sensibilities, and ways of making relationships. As an alternative to the deluge of hopeless narratives, the notion of re-enchantment became a frame for building desirable presents and futures, where the end of “a” world does not mean “the end of the world”. The present global circumstances resonate dramatically with the project and its urgent call for reinvention. Yet it has meant that the exhibition’s original plan, composed of 85% new commissions, cannot be carried out as initially imagined, as parts of the world have abruptly paused and with them core transport and production infrastructures.

Understanding this extreme situation as a call for reinvention, the exhibition, spreading over 200,000m2 of the Tarkovskian former port district of Andrejsala in Riga, will be open to the public from 20 August – 13 September. It will be transformed into the setting for a feature-length film that will be shot during opening hours. Between a ruin and a construction site, past fallen dreams and present reality, the project, transformed into a unique experience, acknowledges the limitations and possibilities of today.

“As with the show itself, the movie will be a reflection on thresholds and metamorphosis at the end of a world. Its script follows the remnants of the original exhibition plan, between unfinished, reconfigured, and reimagined plans, and unfolds as an odyssey, a drift and a meditation on impermanence. This movie is a tribute to a desirable and reenchanted nascent world, where artworks act as guides for thoughts.” says Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel.

Visitors will be able to explore the exhibition and witness the process of the film being shot. During the three-week run of the show, performances, guided tours and public programmes will be held while maintaining sanitary and social distancing measures.

Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel, as artistic director and script writer of the movie, invited acclaimed Latvian film director Dāvis Sīmanis to co-direct the film, collaborating with his team including Andrejs Rudzāts as director of photography. Together they are working on a feature-length film that is planned to be released early 2021.

The visual identity developed with the Laboratory of Manuel Bürger equally echoes notions of transformation and movement, the renewal of visions and perspectives. Inspired by meteorological phenomena and their permanent becoming, the campaign will start from the motif of a cloud which will develop throughout time. Slowly evaporating as weeks pass, the cloud will morph while allowing images of the project to be revealed.

RIBOCA2
The 2nd Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art
and suddenly it all blossoms
20 August – 13 September 2020
Curated by Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel

Photography: Ugnius Gelguda

RIBOCA2 opening ceremony with curator Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel. ‘life time’ by Ugo Rondinone, 2019, in the background

Bridget Polk ‘Balancing Rocks and Rubble’, 2020, performance and installation

RIBOCA2 guided tour

Heinz Frank, ‘Insofern’, 1978