Photo reportage from the exhibition ‘NSRD: Information About a Transformed Situation’ by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art at the Radvila Palace Museum of Art

February 18, 2025
Author Echo Gone Wrong

Published in Photo / Video from Lithuania

'NSRD: Information About a Transformed Situation' at the Radvila Palace Museum of Art, Vilnius, 21.11.2024-23.02.2025. Exhibition view. Photo: Gintarė Grigėnaitė

The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA), in partnership with the Lithuanian National Museum of Art, presents ‘NSRD: Information About a Transformed Situation’, an exhibition dedicated to the legendary Latvian avant-garde music and art group Workshop for the Restoration of Unfelt Feelings (NSRD) and their associates, is on view until February 23. This exhibition, on view at the Radvila Palace Museum of Art of the LNMA until February 23, 2025, is the broadest display of NSRD’s work to be organized outside of Latvia in 35 years and will provide an opportunity for international audiences to be introduced to the recent history of Latvian underground art and its continued influence today. The exhibition has been curated by Māra Traumane (AAL) and Māra Žeikare (LCCA).

NSRD, as an interdisciplinary group, was active in the fields of music, literature, performance and video art. The group was founded in 1982 by Juris Boiko and Hardijs Lediņš, who were joined by their long-term associates Inguna Rubene (Černova) and Imants Žodžiks. However, their projects often involved a much wider circle of participants, and not all of the projects developed by the members of this wider group – which included actions, design, architecture proposals and discotheques – can be linked to NSRD directly.

The exhibition ‘NSRD: Information About a Transformed Situation’ will focus on the various models of creative collaboration seen in the work of the group from the late 1970s till 1989. Despite the restrictions of the Soviet time, these activities allowed the introduction of cutting-edge avant-garde, new wave and postmodern aesthetics into the Latvian cultural scene.

NSRD and the activities that surrounded it hold legendary status within the history of Latvian experimental culture and have inspired many contemporary artists and musicians. In the exhibition, the continuity of the legacy of NSRD is reflected in the works of the artists Maija Kurševa, Evita Vasiļjeva, Kaspars Groševs, the text group Orbīta (Semjons Haņins, Artūrs Punte, Vladimirs Svetlovs, Sergejs Timofejevs) and the band Alejas (Kirils Ēcis, Spāre Vītola, Reinis Žodžiks).

The exhibition opening took place on November 21 at the Radvila Palace Museum of Art of the LNMA in Vilnius, starting at 18:00. It featured contributions from Latvian artists and musicians, including an atmospheric video concert by Alejas, as well as live performances by musician and performance artist Elizabete Balčus and the music project Approximate Fluctuations (Inguna Rubene and Lauris Vorslavs).

For the occasion of the exhibition, a reissue of the NSRD vinyl record was released in collaboration with the Belgian music label STROOM. A bilingual publication on NSRD (LCCA, 2016) and the vinyl record were available for purchase at the museum and the LCCA online shop. The vinyl release date was announced in due course.

Curators: Māra Traumane (Art Academy of Latvia), Māra Žeikare (LCCA).

Commissioners: Solvita Krese, Director of the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, and dr. Arūnas Gelūnas, Director General of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art.

This exhibition is organized by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art in collaboration with the Radvila Palace Museum of Art of the LNMA.

The exhibition is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, Lithuanian National Museum of Art, State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, Embassy of the Republic of Latvia in the Republic of Lithuania, and AAS “BTA Baltic Insurance Company.” The research section of the exhibition has been carried out within the framework of the SRP project “IDEUM: Landscapes of Identities: History, Culture, and Environment” (No VPP-LETONIKA-2021/1-0008).