Echo Gone Wrong Photo reportage from 'Being Safe is Scary' Contemporary Art Festival Survival Kit in Riga

The annual Contemporary Art Festival Survival Kit, which is organised by Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, will be held from September 4 to October 4, 2020, in Riga at the former building of the Museum of Literature and Music. The address of the building is Terbatas street 75.

The eleventh edition of the festival is titled Being Safe is Scary and will be curated by Katia Krupennikova.

Being Safe is Scary takes its title from a site-specific piece created in 2017 by artist Banu Cennetoğlu for documenta 14. The phrase comes from graffiti on a wall of the National Technical University of Athens, noticed by Cennetoğlu around the time of the signing of the EU-Turkey refugee deal in March 2016. Violating international law on refugee protection, the contract forced every irregular entrant to Greece to be handed over to Turkey, causing reception facilities and temporary camps on the Greek islands to be turned into detention centres. By adopting this heavily charged title, this edition of Survival Kit connects itself to wider, ongoing discussions around security and political violence.

The notions of safety and security are central to today’s political imagination. They are used to provide rationales for wars, nationalist agendas, racism and inequality, and to legitimise and normalise extensive surveillance and self-surveillance, aggression, hatred, insularity and other reactionary attitudes and policies. The politics of fear feeds upon precarity. Whole systems of domination are built upon the fierce illusion of protection, encouraging brutal competition and enforcing both financial and moral indebtedness.

It is usually the most marginalised members of society that are classified as threats: those stigmatised due to sexual identity, race, class, religion or gender. The figure of the migrant, as deployed in populist discourse, is one of the key phobic objects of our time. In addition, those who organise and participate in resistance against the status quo are often viewed by the state as security threats. If these people are threats, who are the endangered subjects that need protecting? And what are the real threats and dangers that are covered over and pacified by this construction of social dangers?

This exhibition aims to explore why it’s urgent and necessary to transform the suppositions that undergird such discourse and calls for safety to be reconnected to practices of love, intimacy, sharing, commonality, mutual support, attention, care for each other and for the environment, and social alliances.

Katia Krupennikova is part of the curatorial team at V-A-C Foundation, Moscow, a docent for curatorial studies in the Fine Arts master’s program at HKU University of the Arts, Utrecht, and a fellow at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht. In 2019 she was a member of the core group at the Bergen Assembly 2019, Actually, The Dead Are Not Dead. Through her projects, Krupennikova attempts to transform existing social and political constructs into critical artistic models within which existing relations can be mimicked, criticized, distorted, displaced, and revised.

Artists: Muhammad Ali, Apparatus 22, Sabian Baumann, Sabian Baumann & Karin Michalski, James Bridle, Anna Dasović, Alexis Destoop, Envija, Silje Figenschou Thoresen, Robert Gabris, Evita Goze, Johan Grimonprez, Saskia Holmkvist with Ellen Nyman and Corina Oprea, Alevtina Kakhidze, Klara Källström & Thobias Fäldt, Polina Kanis, Yazan Khalili, Omar Mismar, Katrīna Neiburga, PEROU, Katarina Pirak Sikku, Sauli Sirviö, Līga Spunde, Imogen Stidworthy, Pilvi Takala, Martta Tuomaala, Evita Vasiļjeva, Sigrid Viir, Emma Wolf-Haugh

Alevtina Kakhidze, Plants Don’t Kill Each Other At Once. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Alexis Destoop, Northern Drift. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Anna Dasović, So, on behalf of my country and from the bottom of my heart. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Apparatus 22, V1– V8. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Emma Wolf-Haugh, Sex in Public. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Envija, Cognitive Dissonance. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Evita Goze, Fingerlocks. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Evita Vasiļjeva, Impulse (J or Imp). Photo by Madara Gritāne

Imogen Stidworthy, Iris [A Fragment]. Photo by Madara Gritāne

James Bridle, Drone Shadow (Hermes 450, Watchkeeper WK450). Photo by Madara Gritāne

Johan Grimonprez, every day words disappear. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Katarina Pirak Sikku, Dollet (Grasp). Photo by Madara Gritāne

Katrīna Neiburga, Transformations. Witches’ broom. Thunderbesom. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Klara Källström and Thobias Fäldt, 25 Lemon Trees, No Gardeners. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Līga Spunde, There’s No Harm In Any Blessings. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Martta Tuomaala, FinnCycling-Soumi-Perkele! Vol. 2. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Muhammad Ali, Fears Fresh. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Omar Mismar, Schmitt, You and Me. Photo by Madara Gritāne

PEROU, Considering that it is plausible that such events could be repeated. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Pilvi Takala, The Stroker. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Polina Kanis, Toothless resistance 1. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Robert Gabris, CYBERLOVE. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Sabian Baumann and Karin Michalski, An Unhappy Archive. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Sabian Baumann, Diving with Isabell. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Saskia Holmkvist, Ellen Nyman, Corina Oprea_Sicherheit. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Sauli Sirviö, We need oil to breathe. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Sigrid Viir, Office Sweet Home. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Sigrid Viir, Souvenirs of the False Vacationer. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Silje Figenschou Thoresen, Different objects from the Present Stability series. Photo by Madara Gritāne

Yazan Khalili, Centre of Life. Photo by Madara Gritāne