The group exhibition Wearable Memory and Body Techniques featuring Solomon Levitanus and Ljuba Monastirsky, on view at Kim? Contemporary Art Centre, until December 29, is accompanied by a public program. The following events, a symposium, performance, and workshop, are scheduled for November 24 and 25.
SYMPOSIUM
Wearable Memory and Body Techniques
Time: November 24, 14.00–18.30
Venue: Art Academy of Latvia, Building K2, O.Kalpaka Boulevard 13, Riga
Target audience: students, adults, seniors
Language: English
Participation: free of charge, no registration required
Participants and topics:
14:00–14:30
Introduction
Curators Estere Kajema, Ricarda Messner, and Zane Onckule on their curatorial methodology and the biographies and creative practices of Solomon Levitanus and Ljuba Monastirsky.
14.30–15.40
Can the book be a lieu de mémoire?
Iļja Ļenskis, director of Museum “Jews in Latvia”, in conversation with historian and senior researcher of the National Library of Latvia, Gustavs Strenga, and Austra Aizpuriete, a conservation expert of the Collections Preservation Centre of National Libray of Latvia.
15.50–16.30
Triptych: Suit
Contemporary fashion and art duo MAREUNROL’S talk about creating objects in the form of fabric reliefs that describe Solomon Levitanus’ spatial thinking in volumes.
16.30–16.50
Subsurface Imaging of a Mass Grave: The Old Jewish Cemetery of Riga
Researcher Mikaela Martinez Dettinger’s audio explanation of the work and how to interpret the visual scans of the ground patterns displayed at the exhibition.
17.00–17.30
Golden Book
Fashion designers Santa Matule and Simona Veilande share insights from their collaborative textile workshop series inspired by Solomon Levitanus’ textbooks.
17.30–18.15
Recollecting Recollection Bureau
A screening of a short film recollecting Recollection Bureau: An Instructive Happening by POST (first performed at the exhibition opening), followed by a panel discussion.
About participants:
Gustavs Strenga is a historian and senior researcher at the National Library of Latvia (NLL). His research interests include memory studies, gift-giving, heroes, and book history. He has curated several book exhibitions at the NLL.
Austra Aizpuriete has a gained education in restoration and used to be a paper conservator (graphics restoration). She is a conservation expert at the Collection Preservation Center of the NLL. The position involves organizing preventive preservation activities ensuring proper storage and safety conditions of the NLL collection.
Iļja Ļenskis graduated from the History and Philosophy Department of the University of Latvia, specializing in Modern and Contemporary History. Since 2006, he has worked at the Museum “Jews in Latvia”, director since 2008. His field of interest includes Latvia’s Jewish history with an emphasis on Enlightenment, modernization of the Jewish community, Jewish-Latvian relations, as well as issues of Holocaust commemoration.
MAREUNROL’S (Mārīte Mastiņa-Pēterkopa and Rolands Pēterkops) are simultaneously expanders and breakers of design’s boundaries. Thinkers and storytellers who lift clothing — fashion — out of the familiar frame of functionality, employing it as a thread for world- and self-awareness. They have participated in many international competitions, festivals, biennials, and group exhibitions.
Santa Matule works as a digital artist and architect at MARK arhitekti. She is the art and fashion curator for the design collective Butterman, which organizes various pop-up exhibitions on fashion design at Galerija Centrs. She studied architecture at Riga Technical University and holds a Master’s in Fashion Art from the Art Academy of Latvia.
Simona Veilande is a fashion designer and researcher at Tribal Hotel and part of the design collective Butterman. She holds a Master’s degree in Fashion Design from the Art Academy of Latvia and a Bachelor’s in Finance. Simona has created several conceptual fashion collections of interdisciplinary artworks and organized workshops with students, working with patterns from archival materials and translating them into the present.
Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is a non-invasive geophysical method that sends electromagnetic pulses into the ground (Jol and Bristow, 2003). The Geoarchaeological research team responsible for this data comprises professionals and students from multiple disciplines. This team combines local and international expertise in the earth sciences, geography, history, and archaeology. These researchers work together to perform non-invasive investigations of Holocaust sites to locate, map, and memorialize sites that were once thought to be lost to history. Researchers are from the University of Wisconsin, Eau-Claire and Duquesne University, and research from the Museum “Jews in Latvia,” Indiana University, and Christopher Newport University. Involved in the Old Jewish Cemetery investigation: Michael Barrow, Harry Jol, Philip Reeder, Richard Freund, Ilya Lensky, Mikaela Martinez Dettinger, Tristan Wirkus, Isabel Radtke, Delia Ihinger, Bri Jol, Caroline Heyes, Joseph Beck.
POST is an interdisciplinary master’s specialization based on ideas of art in context. The program explores and examines how it is possible to study art today simultaneously in Eastern Europe and Northern Europe, a region with different borders characterized by a changing environment and a rich experience regarding the forced use and collapse of global ideologies. MA POST can be perceived as an open study space for various ideas and experiments, moving along in the zigzagged relief of practice. POST participants: Laura Aizporiete, Krišjānis Beļavskis, Katrīna Biksone, Lauma Muižarāja, Ieva Viese-Vigula, Spāre Vītola. Other participants: Johanna Sandels.
WORKSHOP
A tailor’s friend: Zine-making-practice
With co-curators Estere Kajema and Ricarda Messner
Time: November 25, 12.00–14.00
Venue: Kim? Contemporary Art Centre
Target audience: Primary and elementary school children (Grades 4–9)
Language: Latvian, English
A zine-making workshop for tweens and teens, where the young visitors are welcome to join the exhibition curators in thinking about conveying the complex subject matter into tangible, educational, playful material. Exercises will include finger tracing, creative writing, and reflections on mindfulness.
PERFORMANCE
Hautnah (Skin-tight)
Artist Alba D’Urbano and seamstress Klinta Šinta
Time: November 25, 13.00–16.00
Venue: Kim? Contemporary Art Centre
Target audience: students, adults, seniors
For the performance on November 25 at Kim?, the artist and seamstress will make an overall using printed fabric. The installation’s interior will be transformed into a tailor’s workshop, complete with everything necessary to produce the garment. Visitors to the exhibition will experience the process of creating the skin: cutting, sewing, handling patterns, and ironing. Seeing and hearing are part of the experience—transforming a two-dimensional surface into a three-dimensional object.
Alba D’ Urbano (1955, Italy) traces conceptions of individuality and technique in her works by relating people, individuals, media, and technology in her objects and installations. She uses contemporary forms of expression to analyze and reflect these forms critically. Her work has been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries in Germany and abroad since 1984. Her works are represented in many public collections such as Gutenberg Museum, Mainz; Dresden Bank, Munich; collection of the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Termoli (I); Deutsche Bank, Darmstadt; ZKM Karlsruhe or at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin. D’Urbano teaches at the Institut für Neue Medien, Frankfurt, and at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach. In 1995, she was invited to become the Chair for computer graphics at the Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig. Since 1998, she has taught the class for Intermedia at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig.
