"Marches", installation, objects, digital print, documentation, 2005-

Abu Hamdan (1985) lives in Beirut, Lebanon. Artist’s work frequently deals with the relationship between listening and politics, borders, human rights, testimony and truth through the production of documentaries, essays, audio-visual installations, video works, graphic design, sculpture, photography, workshops and performance. The artist’s video The All Hearing 2014 was selected for the 44th International film festival Rotterdam. In 2014 his works became part of collections at MoMA New York, Van Abbe Museum Eindhoven and Barjeel Art Foundation, UAE.

At the centre of the Marches project is a series of performances that take place on the streets of towns and cities. These performances are choreographed marches in which a small group of 10 performers march planned routes through urban districts. These routes are primarily designed to include the most interesting acoustic/architectural dimensions of the town, connecting large halls, domed ceilings, glass walls, narrow corridors, piazzas, crowded spaces etc. The only costume the performers of Marches wear are specific shoes adapted for greater sonic effect. The footwear is designed and adapted in collaboration with cobblers and shoe makers, during the Artangel project, the artist undertook a mini residency at Anthony Andrews Special Footwear and Orthotics. Participants of the performances are choreographed to join and disperse at points of distinctive acoustic interest. Pathways are planned according to the most acoustically exciting way of navigating all the domed roofs, narrow corridors and reflective glass walls offered by the surrounding urban territory. Planning also involves sociological research and historiography; digging into the city’s history to find stories and accounts of parades, processions, marches, trudges and demonstrations. The resulting routes, illustrated in the maps/scores made, were harvested and mapped onto the current city form, intersecting new buildings and extinct pathways to create new navigations of the city

"A Distance from here", video, 12 min, 2010

Bani Abidi was born in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1971. She studied painting and printmaking, earning a BFA from the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan, in 1994. She later attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, earning an MFA in 1999. She completed residencies with the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine (2000), Fukuoka Art Exchange Program, Japan (2005), and DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (2011–2012).

In the video The Distance from Here (2010), Abidi veers away from the explicit, if poetic, documentary work .The film was made on a set with hired extras playing the role of expectant visa applicants. They file onto a bus to an embassy. They are ushered into lines. They wait to be frisked, one by one, as they watch those before them disappear behind a fabric curtain. The embassy, in this regard, functions as a third country. Crossing its glass-door threshold is a solitary rite of passage. They carry stoic, if not vacant, expressions on their faces. Abidi carefully renders the tedious passage of time that is central to the experience of waiting-—an interminable, conflicted simmers of emotions. They wait keenly for their turn, yet they dread rejection.

"Spatula", installation, objects, 2011-ongoing

David Bernstein (1988, San Antonio, Texas) is an artist based in Amsterdam. Performance, sculpture, and writing to tell stories through objects. He has presented his work internationally at Raven Row, London (2015); De Appel Art Center, Amsterdam (2015 & 2013); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2015); Galerie van Gelder, Amsterdam (2015); Nomas Foundation, Rome (2014 & 2013); Performa 13, New York (2013); CAC, Vilnius (2013); and SculptureCenter, NY (2012). He is currently a resident at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht.

Spatulation, conspatulation, spatulism, VIVA la SPATULISM!

What started as a symbol, became an obsession and when I look for spatulas, I see them everywhere. The spatula came from a therapy game called the “spatula game” from 20th century psychologist, Donald Winnicott. In it, a spatula is placed on a table in reach of a child. The child grabs it and starts to play. It starts to imagine the spatula transforming into something else, perhaps an airplane waved around in delight. Now that it sees an airplane, it can think of what an airplane can do, it can think through the imagined thing. So the spatula allows us to both extend our body to reach further, but also to extend our mind further because we can now think through the thing. "But what is the difference between thinking and thinging? Thinking is just the thin king."

Untitled (trausers), installation, 2015

Arturs Bērziņš (1971) has graduated the Art Academy of Latvia as a painter in 2009. He did his master’s degree in the Department of Visual Arts and the Theory of Art and Culture in 2014. The artist’s works are in the collection in the Latvian National Museum of Art, in the forthcoming Museum of Contemporary Art and in private collections. Since the year 2007, he has organized more than 15 solo exhibitions. The artist has created two-dimensional and three-works about ‘..the Latvian traditions in painting; the structures that make culture and the system; the sound and the forms of  its; time and its passage, the traditions of thinking’.

Exhibited work is a wearable piece of clothing, made of cotton. One side of it is made in Pakistan. The other side is made in my studio. Both of the sides are new; they are not worn before. There are different values of residual, prices and attitudes merged together in the good.

Walk to Bolderāja, photodocumentation, 1980

Imants Žodžiks has studied architecture from 1973 to 1979. During the 70ies he has studied photography at the Riga station of Young technicians. He has actively participated in the action art in many different places together with his colleague Hardijs Lediņš (1955) and stage designer Leonards Langanovskis (1955) since 1980. He has been a member of the annual action ‘Gājiens uz Bolderāju (The Walk to Bolderāja)’; Action No.4 or ‘Transfer / Moving’ (1983), ‘The Line in Kurzeme’ (1983), ‘The Line in Jūrmala’ (1983). In the end of 80ies the artist participated in many art actions and performances together with L. Laganovskis, H. Lediņš, A. Sparāns, M. Steķis, I. Černovs, J. Boiko and ‘NSRD - Nebijušu sajūtu darbnīca (The Workshop of Unprecedented Feelings)’. Imants Žodžiks has participated in the exhibition ‘Riga – Lettische Avantgarde’ together with NSRD in West Berlin, Kiel and Bremen in 1988 and 1999.

Hardijs Lediņš (1955-2004) studied at the Faculty of Architecture of Riga Polytechnical Institute from 1973 to 1979. During the 1970s he was involved in absurdism, experimental music (underground home recording studio “Seque”) and action art together with artist Juris Boiko (1954-2002), also involving architect Imants Žodžiks (1955) and set designer Leonards Laganovksis (1955). In 1982 together with Juris Boiko he formed The Restoration Workshop of Unprecedented Feelings (NSRD) and went on to record several albums, develop performances, actions, video installations and video art as well as exhibition concepts in collaboration with various musicians and artists. In 1988 and 1989 together with the NSRD he participated in the exhibition „Riga – Lettische Avantgarde” (Riga – Latvian Avantgarde) in West Berlin, Kiel and Bremen.

In 1985 Juris Boiko graduated from the  Polygraphic Technical Innovation University of  Latvia as an artist – designer. During the 1970s he was involved in literature and experimental music together with Hardijs Lediņš and in the 1980s – action art. He developed performances and their underlying concepts, actions and video art; composed music and wrote lyrics. He participated in the concert-performances of the NSRD and was the author of concepts behind several exhibitions such as “Pirmā Aptuvenās mākslas izstāde” (The First Approximate Art Exhibition). “TRAKL” (Bioko’s rendering of George Trakl’s poetry) was published in 1992 and “Dziesmas un dzejas” (Songs And Poems) - a poetry collection of selected poems and lyrics by Boiko in 2000.

The cycles of walks to Bolderāja began on the night of November 30th in 1980, when three friends Hardijs Lediņš, Juris Boiko and Imants Žodžiks met. The processions took place every year from 1980 to 1987 as well as in 2002 (the participants changed but the conditions did not).

The prerequisite of the walk is to taste the roughness of the process, when experiencing changes on the road: the change between light and dark, the change between the city and countryside and industrial areas, the changes of seasons, each year going in a different month and doing documentation with different type of media.

The photos of the walk are taken by the camera of Hardijs, we call it ‘Čaika’. The change of light and dark – the moment of the rising sun is caught through a petroleum lamp in the hands of Mediņš. This picture is given to friends as a New Year’s greeting. There is an album recorded at Lediņš’es place after the walk. It is called ‘Bolderājas Stils (The Style of Bolderāja) (©Seque; 1982)’. We sing the songs when going together in the walks of Bolderāja.

"Investigation", video, objects, 2015

Liena Bondare has accomplished the master’s degree in the Art Academy of Latvia, the Department of Graphics in 2006. She has lived and worked in Riga since 1990. The artist has participated in exhibitions in Latvia and abroad since 2004. She works in traditional techniques, trying to find the golden section of form and content.

There is a girl’s story of childhood memories on the basis. The girl had very long hair (up to the knees) and the second shift at school. Living in a small town, she regularly went to her mum’s work to get hair braided before going to the school. It would be a simple ritual, but her mother’s work was unusual. She was an investigator. Sometimes her mother continued the conversation with a detainee while doing the girl’s hair. The girl unintentionally became a witness and observer of complicated processes, which real meaning was mysteriously frightening and hidden. The intimately protective ritual of braiding hair gets a completely different meeting, when brought out of the home.

"Fear", space installation, prints, 2015

Kristians Brekte holds MA in Stage Design from the Art Academy of Latvia and currently is the Associate Professor of this department, as well as the Head of the Department of Environmental Art. He continues to have an active practice and has been part of group exhibitions across the world, including New York, Vilnius, Berlin, Moscow and Vienna. Brekte’s work has been included in the catalogue Younger Than Jesus (2009) published by Phaidon, UK. His work is in the collection of the Latvian National Museum of Art as well as in private collections in Latvia and abroad.

A light left on for the night, alarm, guard dogs, weapons, passwords, diets and vaccines. It is all because of the fears of the people around us, illnesses, death, fears from losing some kind of property or fears from ourselves. Isn’t there something else behind these formal reasons? The works done in the intaglio printing technique aims to reveal a set of rituals that we do when being afraid of things and phenomena. According to that, different either casual or very strange expressions of fears have been summarized, making one think of how far the reflexes can go and what the possible consequences can be.

Choreography for the Running Male. Performance, 2012 - ongoing. 

Eglė Budvytytė, born in Lithuania, lives and works in Brussels. Her work was shown amongst others at Moderna Museet Malmo, 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014),  De Appel Arts Centre (Amsterdam,2013), 11th Baltic Triennial of International art,  CAC in Vilnius (2012), and Stedeljik Museum in Amsterdam (2012). Budvytyte was resident at Le Pavillon, Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2012) and at Wiels, Contemporary art centre, (Brussels, 2013).

In Eglė Budvytytė’s mobile performance Choreography for the Running Male, a group of men jog a route through the city. As they trace a path in unison, they carry out choreographed gestures relating to emotions ranging from shame to seduction, along with sequences referencing militaristic action. Here they hide their faces in the folds of their clothing; there they sit daintily, hold hands or crawl through the grass.

The work investigates notions of socialized behavior that infiltrate public consciousness and, as an extension, public space. Choreography for the Running Male investigates crowd mentality as well as the dynamics of the relationship between audience and performer, pushing up against the boundary between the two. It challenges the normally static performer–audience relationship, for to fully witness the performance we must run alongside the men, becoming one of the pack.

"Botanizing on the Asphalt", Cyanotype, 57 x 38 cm, 2015

Nanna Debois Buhl is a visual artist living and working in Copenhagen and New York. She participated in The Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program, New York (2008-09) and received her M.F.A. from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2006). Her installations and films have been exhibited widely, recently at Pérez Art Museum, FL; Sculpture Center, NY; Art in General, NY; The Studio Museum, Harlem, NY; El Museo del Barrio, NY; Lunds Konsthall, Sweden; Kunsthallen Brandts; Museum for Contemporaty Art, Roskilde; and Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark.

The installation Botanizing on the Asphalt is a site-specific work created for Survival Festival, Riga, Latvia. The installation is a collection of cyanotypes depicting discarded objects collected on walks in the streets surrounding the former national library where the 2015 festival is held.

Buhl’s project takes an outset in Walter Benjamin’s description of the urban wanderer as one “who goes botanizing on the asphalt” and the work of the 19th century British botanist and photographer Anna Atkins. Atkins extensively catalogued British algae in her publication Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. It is considered the first book illustrated with photographic images. And some argue that Atkins was the first woman to create a photograph. Weaving together Benjamin’s notion, Atkins’ technique and traces from the library area, Botanizing on the Asphalt captures a moment in time before the objects are again scattered, whirling into new directions. Buhl thinks of the work as a herbarium, but unlike the classical herbarium, her contains both man-made and organic objects.

Marie-Louise Ekman (1944) is a Swedish painter and film director. She is a Professor of Art and the former rector of the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. In 1991 she was awarded the Creative Achievement Award at the 26th Guldbagge Awards and the prestigious Prince Eugen Medal in 2007. From 2009 till 2014 Ekman was the Managing Director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Sweden's national stage. She is one of the most influential artists in Sweden in the post war period and has directed over a dozen films, TV series, and plays. Ekman’s art narrates stories of current, political and taboo topics in a humorous and amusing way. She is main the subject of her own liberation project and as such is a challenging role model to cultural players today.

Marie-Louise Ekman frequently portrays everyday environments draped in pastel colours, while adding absurd and surreal elements to her work. She blurs lines and boundaries, drawing references from the history of art and fusing it all with the elements of pop culture. Her work depicts mundane and commonplace scenes, occasionally borrowed from middle-class environments. It transcends political, artistic and erotic taboos by means of playful naivety, which balances on absurdity. Marie-Louise Ekman is one of the first artists in Sweden to address the subject of domesticity, children and family.

"The Run", installation, video, audio, 2015

Kristaps Epners is a multimedia artist, who works largely with the formats of video, installations and photography. His name is known outside the borders of Latvia, and one of his recent projects was to participate in the exhibitions Canvascollectie and Confining Spaces in Belgium. The works of Kristaps Epners have been included into the Noass Latvian video art archives.

The ritual of running is my daily practice. I have been taking my video camera with me in my journeys since October 18th 2012. There is not a single run that repeats even though sometimes it happens to repeat the same route. Running is like writing a diary, replacing words by the photos and the curves of trajectories.

"I navigate in collisions", woodcut on paper, 2014 –

Ester Fleckner (1983) lives and works in Copenhagen. Artist explores intersections between identity, language, physicality and navigation across time and space. Often the outcome appears from collisions between different elements in which mistakes and repetitions are central part of the work. The practice has materialised in woodcut prints, collages, installations and performative reading formats. Especially the woodcut print has been a recurring media. The technique is simple and immediate and the physical resistance of the wood as well as the printing process allows for differences, errors and a loss of control.

I navigate in collisions (2014-2015) is a series of large woodcut prints taking a starting point in the family tree. Seeking depictions of a chaotic sense of belonging and skew patterns of love relations, the series reflects navigation out of straight place and history. The signs or abstract letters in the prints consist of anus stars and clit-dicks, as a bodily and poetic language. Each print is an attempt to depict family treesthat do not predefine identification or relations and thus the series reflects a continuous dreaming and searching for images of the undefined, fluid and queer. The first prints in the series (no. 1-8) were produced in March 2014. The series has been expanded in 2015 with four more prints (no. 9-12). The woodcut print is a recurring media for Fleckner. The technique is simple and immediate and the physical resistance of the wood, as well as the printing process allows for differences, errors and a loss of control. As organic and natural material, wood creates a physical dimension of Fleckner's exploration into collisions between the body and various cultural norms and ideas. The series I navigate in collisions is related Fleckner's on-going investigation of experiences of displacement, the unfinished and failure in relation to queer navigation and the fluidity of the body.

Photography series “TrabZONE”, C-print, 2010

Nilbar Güreş (Istanbul, 1977) received BA degree in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Marmara University, İstanbul, and then completed her MA degree in Painting & Graphics from the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

Photo series takes us on a journey to the artist’s childhood - one particular city in the Black Sea region - Trabzon, notorious for its fanatic attachment to religious and national values. Nilbar Güreş always looks for the hidden and the uncanny taking place behind the protection of traditional structures. Trabzon is a place with many paradoxes; strongly attached to a Turkish Muslim identity, it is also one of the historic centers of Pontus (during Hellenic and Roman times) whose inhabitants are known as the very first converts to Christianity. The social visibility of women is very poor, similar to many Anatolian cities, women may not appear in public spaces unless they are accompanied by their fathers, brothers, male cousins, fiancées or husbands. Yet the lives of men and women are quite separate; while men work or gamble with their pals in coffeehouses, women carry the whole load of household and family.

"The Passports of the States Don’t Exist Anymore" (The Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, German Democratic Republic, Tibet), bead knitting, 2012–2015

"Working in the Public Space" (Lungotevere dei Tebaldi, Rome, The Patarei Prison, Tallinn, The Square of the Three Cultures, Mexico City), documentation of performances, 2012–2015

Kalle Hamm was born in 1969 in Rauma, Finland. He graduated in Lahti Fine Art Institute 1994 and made his MA in the University of the Art and Industrial Design in Helsinki 2002. His works of art examine cultural encounters and their impacts both in historical and contemporary contexts.

Dzamil Kamanger was born in 1948 in Mariwan, Iran. He is an Iranian Kurd and set in Helsinki since 1994. He studied ceramic in the Kermanshah University and made his MA in 1973. He is concerning in his art his own experiences as a refugee by using traditional Iranian handicraft techniques. He has collaborated with Kalle Hamm since the year 1999.

DzamilKamanger’s works combine traditional Central Asian craft skills with modern themes. He presents four beadworks made using a traditional Kurdish technique. The work consists of four pieces: a Soviet Union, a Yugoslavian, a GBR and a Tibetan passport. As an Iranian Kurd, Kamanger is interested in countries that don’t exist, because the Kurds don’t have their own country.

Kalle Hamm’s and Dzamil Kamanger’s photographs are documentations of Kamanger’s interventions in public space he started to make in 2009. They comment on the immigrants’ working conditions and refer to various problems linked to a specific site, the city and the state.

“Minutes, hours, days, week”, embroidery on canvas,  2015

She graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and Funen Art Academy in 2008. Selected exhibitions: Belding a Humen. Galleri Tom Christoffersen, Cph, 2013. Rules Demo Room of Galleri Image, Aarhus, 2013 All for One. With Luana Perilli. Media Gallery, Bratislava (SK). A Room With a View. Rønneb3/4ksholm, Herlev, 2013. 24 SPACES - A Cacophony. Malmö Konsthall (SE), 2013. Modsmerte. Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde, 2012. FOCUS. Nikolaj Kunsthal, Cph. 2012. Enter 2011. Brandts, Odense, 2011. 7 large embroideries, one for each day in the week. Each day consists then of tiny registrations with exact time indicating that the artist for example "Tusday 7.02am Kis my boyfrent" or "Thursday 11.14am pot on makop”. The artist is dyslexic, so misspellings is an important part of the work. The work is about power structures and repetition.

Seven large embroideries, one for each day in the week. Each day consists then of tiny registrations with exact time indicating that the artist for example "Tusday 7.02am Kis my boyfrent" or "Thursday 11.14am pot on makop”. The artist is dyslexic, so misspellings is an important part of the work. The work is about power structures and repetition.

"Are you trying to tell me something good or bad?"

Visual reflections on the present day language and life, photography, drawing, text 2015

Dārta Hofmane (1986) graduated from the Art Academy of Latvia with an MA in Graphic Art. Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg. Studies people and speech.

Reinis Hofmanis (1985) graduated from the Visual Communication Department of the Art Academy of Latvia. Studied photography in Hannover, Germany. Studies the relationship between reality and enactment, language and image.

Based on ‘found language’ – texts, words and conversations. A portrait of today’s language, which allows scope for interpretation. How can it be that we understand one another? Is it possible to free human thought from the constraints of language? Can language think autonomously?

Ingela Irhman (b. 1985) is an artist based in Malm. Her recent exhibitions include Stream Chapter 2 (Helpless), South Windham, US; Becoming by Recalling, Passagen konsthall, Linking; Den naturliga ordningen, Haninge konsthall. Along with Sofia Hultin and Johan Eriksson Ingela forms the performance group Hägersten's Botanical Garden, currently engaged in a collaboration with Art Lab Gnesta within the project Swamp Storytelling.

Ingela Irhman contributes to the Survival K(n)it exhibition with a work in progress that explores the interaction between man and a group of plant species classified as invasive. Her video The Giant Knotweed Panflute Ensemble sounds from tunes produced by panflutes made from the bamboo-like stalks of the giant knotweed. The filmed situation resembles a plant meditation and suggests an alternative, less hostile approach to the Giant Knotweed than the one prevailing among land owners in despair. The giant hogweed is another invasive plant that causes problems both in Sweden and Latvia as it is spreading rapidly and contains a sap which can cause severe burns on human skin when exposed to sunlight. In Ingela's presentation the giant hogweed is inscribed in a story about overwhelming sexuality, burning juices and being drawn to something potentially harmful.

"Uprising", video, 4 min, objects, drawings

Flo Kasearu (1985) studied painting (2004-2008) and photography (2008-2013) at the Estonian Academy of Arts. In 2006-2007 she was an exchange student at the Rebecca Horn studio at Berlin University of the Arts, where she started doing performance and video art. Her works have been exhibited widely inside and outside of Estonia. She won Köler Prize in 2012 and established Flo Kasaru's House Museum 2013.

The group of works entitled “Uprising” are build around a video filmed during roof maintenance works performed on a building in Tallinn’s Pelgulinn district, where the artist lives and where she has been hosting her “Flo Kasearu House Museum” project since 2013. The metal taken off the roof was folded into plane figures, much like the DIY models folded by children from paper. The DIY and reuse technology metal planes as the main motif of the exhibition appear to be symbolic of military action, yet simultaneously representative of an exit strategy, the crossing of the country’s borders by air, immigration and emigration issues. The airspace - a perspective from which to assess ones own position as both a liberating and a frightening idea. Also responding to the current political milieu of strained international relationships between Russia and the West.

"Ironmur", instalation, 2015

The experimental union "Klīga" consists of 3 new generation’s artists: Līva Rutmane (1984) and Inga Ģibiete (1979) have accomplished the master’s degree in the Art Academy of Latvia (the Department of Graphics), but Klāvs Upaciers (1979) studied in the Department of Visual Communication. The artists are actively involved in the group exhibitions of the contemporary art in Latvia and abroad. They have organized several solo exhibitions as well. Klāvs Upacieris have had ‘Viena zīmējuma izstāde (the Exhibition of One Drawing)’ in the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (2012), as well as ‘zhjkshhkjzh’ in his private flat on Merķeļa street (2011).  Līva Rutmane have had a solo exhibition κπ’ in the gallery ‘4 2 7’ (2014) and ‘Gandrīz kā saulriets (Almost like the Sunset)’ in the gallery ‘Komutators’ in Andrejsala (2007). Inga Ģibiete is active in graphic design, creating the identity of art events and publications.

If "Klīga" is an institution, it must be a live institution. "Klīga" only exists in exhibitions. "Klīga" aims to get shorter and shorter, more live and vivid and more excellent. That is why in the next exhibition "Klīga" looks through other creative person’s problems. This is the 3rd exhibition. In the first exhibition, the drawings were created while shouting. In the second the works were crumpled and knead in order to get them softer, more gentle and comfortable. In the third exhibition the drawings are going to be smoothed. The conscience will occur and "Klīga" will sacrifice one of its artworks to people. Art has to be smoothed, otherwise it is too unclear. Art has space. The artists are spongers. Everything has to be repeated. Art must be preservable. The art of "Klīga" will be broader and more available.

„What has our strugle given to me?” Part of the on-going project „Creative Strategies”
http://www.creative-strategies.info/

Andreja Kulunčić is a visual artist, living in Zagreb. In her works, she questions various aspects of social relations and engaged art practices, which actively include various viewing public, collectivity-founded work processes and multidisciplinary collaborations. www.andreja.org

She participated in numerous relevant international exhibitions: Documenta 11, Kassel; Manifesta 4, Frankfurt; Istanbul Biennale, Istanbul; 10th India Triennale, New Delhi; Liverpool Biennale, Liverpool; Day Labor, P.S.1, New York.

Andreja Kulunčić’s art practice is based on exploration of new models of sociability and communication situations, an interest for socially engaged themes, confrontation with different audiences, and collaboration on collective projects. She sets up her own interdisciplinary networks, seeing artistic work as a research, process of cooperation and self-organization. She often asks the audience to actively participate and "finish" the work. Some of Kulunčić's frequent subjects are correlations between economy, transition, feminism and racism. Creative Strategies is a part of a long-term multidisciplinary project that encompasses theoretical research, art production, activism and processes of critical reflection. It is an ongoing project that Andreja Kulunčić started in 2010, with the purpose to map and facilitate creative strategies to articulate social problems and give support in seeking solutions on micro- and macro-levels.

So far, three modules have been realized within the project framework, Everyday Divergences (Zagreb, Croatia, 2010 / Usti nad Laben, Czech Republic, 2011) about the potential of public spaces, Conquering and Constructing the Common (MUAC, Mexico City, 2013) based on the experience of self-organization within different communities in the deprived neighborhoods of Mexico City. The presentation for "Survival K(n) it" exhibition introduces a segment of the third module of Creative Strategies that was inaugurated in Gallery Nova in Zagreb in 2014, under the title Begin the Best We Can: Toolkit for a Joint Action.

The project engages with the current problems of workers’ self-organizing and other citizens’ initiatives in Croatian context, along with a wider gamut of social themes. Andreja Kulunčić realized the project in close collaboration with number of local activist groups and workers' unions, such as Direct Democracy in schools group, as well as with the New Union and groups such as BRID - Organization for Workers' Initiative and Democratization, Women’s Front, Fem Front or Right to the City, and also with a string of other organizations and individuals who participated in the project with their numerous discursive activities during the show, or who took part in the making of the toolkit for joint action. The project was determined by erosion of social security, massive unemployment and unstable labor market in Croatia, with a special emphasis on the phenomena the rising poverty, workers’ self-organizing, direct democracy, social solidarity, self-organized citizens’ activities, and contextual theology.

Named after the video “What has our struggle given to me?” Kulunčić realized within the framework of Zagreb module, the presentation in Riga centers around the film that examines possibilities of workers’ struggles and self-organization in the troubled circumstances of corrupt privatization and social erosion in Croatia. This is an ongoing project that started in 2014 and it continues throughout 2015.  Realized as a series of interviews with the protagonists of various workers' struggles the video presents workers, factories and companies, trade unions and non-governmental organizations who protest and defend workers’ rights in dramatic collapse of the social security system. What are the potentials of workers' self-organization today?
What is the involvement of trade unions and non-governmental organizations to protest and to defend workers' rights? What are the concrete possibilities of workers' strikes, public advocacy campaigns? Along with the video, the installation in Riga encompasses a spatial unit and a portable glossary. Those elements call for the audience attention to take them in their hands in order to encourage joint actions in finding alternative solutions to discontents of capitalism.

"Tomorrow", video, 4.48 min, 2007

"A Summer Job", video, 6.56 min, 2009

Johanna Lecklin has graduated with a master’s degree from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts 2003 and from Helsinki University 2008. She is doing her doctoral studies at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and at Helsinki University. She has studied at the Fine Art Media department at Slade School of Fine Arts, UCL in London 1998-99. Lecklin lives and works in Helsinki, Finland.

"Tomorrow" is a short film about how a child understands abstract concepts. A little girl is wondering about what tomorrow is. She asks her father what it means and when she can see tomorrow. She tries to stay awake till midnight in order to see today change into tomorrow. She gets very disappointed when she realizes that it is not possible to see tomorrow.

"A Summer Job" is story of a disastrous summer job experience. Three persons with different English accents tell the same story on the video. A woman with black hair and glamorous clothes starts the story, a black young girl continues and a Russian man finishes the story. The choreographer and the dancers were sent to a little town in Italy, where they ended up in the hands of the mafia and make an unbelievable escape in the story. The story has been recorded within Lecklin’s project Story Café where the visitor gets a free coffee in exchange for a story, the stories are recorded on video, some of them - dramatised into short films, and later screened in locations where the Café takes place.

"Retouch", spatial installation, 2015

Inga Meldere has accomplished bachelor’s degree at the University of Latvia (Faculty of Education, Psychology and Art) in visual art and the history of art in 2001. She has done the bachelor’s and master’s degree Restauration department in the Art Academy of Latvia (2007). She has studied at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht (Netherlands) from 2013 to 2014. There has been nine solo exhibitions organized either in Latvia or other countries since 2007. The artist has participated in more than 20 group exhibitions in Latvia and abroad where her works have paid attention to many international curators of exhibitions. Inga Meldere’s works are exhibited in Kiasma – Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki.

Inga Meldere’s project "Retouch"anticipates to move into one of the festival’s premises, uncovering its walls and supplementing them with the fragments of wall paintings or fictive and retouched, like they have always been there, originals. With the use of the image system, that the spectators may be aware of already, there will be a visual narrative created on the walls of the building.

The fragments of paintings in the narrative are going to be an interpretation, the retouching of memories about a person’s experience and observations, that have resulted in, what concept of festival has already mentioned- ‘the avalanche of fortuitousness, and they have caused a surprising chain of coincidences, weaving together private, intimate and the space of the world’.

Video from installation ”ARMPIT”- The Latvian pavilion at the 56th Venice collaboration with Andris Eglītis. Sound: Andris Indāns, Jānis Šipkevics, Andris Eglītis, Riga Dom Cathedral Boys Choir, The Riga Technical University male choir “Gaudeamus”. Video, 2:20 min, 2015

Katrīna Neiburga graduated from the department of Visual Communication at the Academy of Latvia, and studied in Sweden and France. Neiburga creates installations, video and light projections, scenography, video for operas and theatre productions. Since 2000 she actively participates in exhibitions in Latvia and abroad. Neiburga was the first recipient of the Purvītis Prize in 2009.

Andris Eglītis received an MA in painting and studied at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium. Eglītis has received nominations and won several awards, among them the Purvītis Prize in 2013.

The closed microcosm of garage co-ops, where the socio-economic environment has blended with personal space, provides a step back in time. Men are still boys, but their tinkering is both the trade and hobby of individual entrepreneurs, since self- exploitation as leisure time activity is a time capsule where neoliberalism has enclosed the postindustrial proletariat.

"Levitation", video, 6 min, 2006

Ingrīda Pičukāne has participated in different art projects since 1998. She has accomplished the master’s degree in the Art Academy of Latvia (the Department of Visual Communication) as well as the Estonian Academy of Arts (the Department of Animation). In order to carry out the ideas. The artist uses different media and forms of art. She practices comics, animation, video, installations and performances. The artist is interested in people and their documentary stories; she investigates the inner regularities of the society and the role of individuals. Ingrīda has participated and led several comics and animation films’ workshops. She currently works in press, draws comics, creates fact- finding artwork and blogs about fashion.

The women (at the age of 24-26) target audience’s video research about the qualitative effects of the household chores on the brain activity and body control. The results clearly show that monoton and regular household chores may lead women to meditative state of consciousness or trance.

"Echoes of War", audio-video installation, 2014

Jura Shust was born in Belarus, 1983. Being a frontman of the conceptual audio-visual group IOD, he studied Media and Visual Communication at EHU (Vilnius, LT). Focused on political engaged art, he was involved in international projects as "Opening the Door?" CAC (Vilnius, LT) and "Europe n” GFZK (Leipzig, DE). In 2013 Shust obtained MA in Fine Arts at KASK (Ghent, BE). A year later he had a solo show at “Ў" gallery (Minsk, BY), and the group show "Coming People" at S.M.A.K. in Belgium Ghent, where he currently attends HISK residency program.

A Brother and sister cleaning a carpet on the street that bears a post-soviet name "Peace str.". The sound is similar to a war cannonade, reflects from the concrete walls, wanders around the sleeping district and covers its indifferent body. This daily heartbeat immerses the street in a hypnotic trance, as if the war is becoming a part of it, more and more ordinary, less and less disturbing and tangible.

The work is produced as a metaphorical reflection on Russian aggression in Ukraine and its imperialistic effect on Belarus. Uncovering hidden political processes and strategies of modern media wars, the installation is capturing a new chapter in global geopolitic, where intoxicated alpha males over and over break the ground under civilians’ feet, where media channels play a deceitful ping- pong, forcing people to hate each other. Belarus takes a pseudo-neutral position in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Depending on Putin's Russia by many aspects, the country has no voice in the situation.

"Collecting", installation, 2015

Graduated the Art Academy of Latvia (The Department of Painting) in 2014. The artist spent one term in an exchange in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerpen. She has received the grant ‘Ināra Tetereva’s Grant in Art’ in 2012 and ‘Brederlo von Sengbusch Art Award’ in 2014. Sandra Strēle has organized several solo exhibitions and also participated in group exhibitions and residences in Italy, Belorussia, Estonia, Lithuania, Norway, India and Belgium.

The installation’s „Collecting” idea comes from a personal observation about a person and the author’s attraction to things, continuous thoughts about them and collecting and keeping too many belongings. The focus of the work is a marginal personage of a ‘hoarder’. His characteristics, habits and actions can be seen in the illustrations and narratives of the large scale paintings When we change our accomodation or reorganize it, we realize that the amount of things we own has increased again. Nevertheless, there is an unstoppable desire for a new computer or new piece of clothing, even if the previous one is still good enough.

"Symphony for the Library", objects, collage, 2015

Andrejs Strokins (1984) has graduated from the Department of Graphic Design at the Latvian Academy of Art and received additional training at numerous photography courses and creative workshops. He has participated in group exhibitions in both Latvia and abroad, and organized a solo exhibition in Lithuania entitled “People in the Dunes” (2014). Andrejs Strokins works as an independent photographer, and most recently has garnered awards at a number of photography competitions, including Kaunas Photo Star, La Quatrieme Image, and the Photo Annual Awards in the category of documentary photography. “Disorders and Obstacles” is his first solo exhibition in Latvia.

Any action or inaction leaves its footprint on the environment. The venue of  ‘Survival K(n)it 7’ holds the last memories of the former building and employees of the National Library of Latvia. The man within his life slowly moves forward to the inescapable end. Nevertheless, everything that we feel and the way we recognize ourselves is based on the dainty constructions of threads of memories. Its infinite combinations make a fragmented library of feelings. I work with a room and the objects that can be found in it: household items, books and photo albums. As a result, a fictive archive about the building and its employees is created. It functions as the memory of humankind does. Every time we want to remember something, the events are reconstructed from the very beginning. The memory is modified and transformed; only a blink is left from what has been experienced. I wanted to pay people’s attention to the problems of archiving. Sure, the information is sorted objectively and the next generations receive what we do consider to be important. All the rest is thrown away and forgotten. What do we know about the past? Only the stories written in the history books.

"Good Behaviour", photo series, 2008-2010

Iiu Susiraja ( 1975) has graduated as an artist in Turku Art academy, Finland in the year 2012 (BA). As the major substance was photography. She also makes short videos. And now she study in Finnish Academy of Fine Arts (MA). The international group exhibition called Alice in Wonderland which was seen in Finland and Spain was one of the most important exhibitions for her career. Susiraja`s pieces of art now in several major Finnishcollections (Helsinki Art Museum, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Finnish National Museum, Finnish Museum of Photography, Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art and Päivi and Paavo Lipponen Collection).

I photography me because it is the subject I certainly know the best.I make object of myself and my privacy, which is a moment of fame. To turn the privacy as a public is a shelter for me. I feel privacy very painful. When I have been spoken about my art I have mentioned words: the documentation of emotions. My art it is like a playful anarchism with equipment and the rituals of taking back the power.

Everyday life is my muse.

Recipe

1 roundish girl

1 everyday life equipment

1 bag full of dry humor

Ingredients have to mix up with each other when the guests are arriving and then put the dough into a

refrigerator for ripen.

Finally you can cut off the pastry suitable pieces for mouth and serve them with the frames.

"Phantoms of Revelation", documentary musical, 25 min, 2015

Vladimirs Svetlovs is a photographer, poet and performer. He lives and works in Riga. Vladimirs leads photo projects of artists and is a teacher of photography as well as he takes photos for fashion magazines. He is a member of the textgroup ‘Orbīta (orbit)’ since 2000. He has participated in ‘Spoken Word CD O2’ recording in 2000 and ‘O4’ in 2005. The artist has joined the performances of ‘Orbīta (Orbit)’ in Riga, Berlin, Tallin, Vilnius, Moscow, St. Petersburg. His works are interpreted in Latvian, English, German and Italian.

Sergius Temenos, originally from Latvia, is a levitating yogi and a tantric romance performer whose performances always include an element of surprise and often intervene with the socially accepted norms. He invents new ‘norms’ and combines them with his own sense of the world. For example, one of his recent performances saw Temenos issue a ‘penalty notice’ to car owners if the colour of the car mismatched the colour of their aura. The short documentary explores the artistic method used by Sergius.

"Supportive structures", video installation, 2015

Born in Riga (Latvia), received M.A. from the Netherlands Film Academy and B.F.A. from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. Works and lives in Amsterdam. Has been nominated for Mondriaan Funds Young Talent grant, 2013 and to Rene Coelho prize by Dutch Media Art Institute, 2010. Participated in artist residency at “Lower Manhattan Cultural Council”, NYC. Works in art initiative F.L.O.A.T.. While using mediums like moving image, film, installation and performance, her current works examines human behavioural and gestural codes in public places, our own created rules and roles, the relation of bodies to space and in diverse structures.

In my videos I try to create an existence, with its own rules and logic. I play with relationships between bodies, architecture, the space of the frame and their limits and elasticity (expansion). Composing movements in a specific rhythm, that can become irrational and possible at the same time, questions of who we are and what we do in specific locations. With light irony and poetic methods I play with a subject through staged scenarios. All the videos are connected to each other in order to create a narrative network reflecting on society and the conditions under which people live in social contexts.

"Secret", photography, 2015

Anna Volkova has studied French Philology at University of Latvia and sociology at the University of Tunisia. The first publication of her photos was in the journal Rīgas Laiks in 2001. Since then she also participates in text group Orbīta photo actions either as an author or a photo editor. The author has received Antalis Special Mention for making a book Temporary Need in Self Publish Riga Competition.

Anna Volkova’s work compares the study of daily events or objects from a viewpoint of a photo editor to that of the game of secrets commonly played by children. A secret or „секретик” (from Russian) is created in a place known only by its creator where a small flower composition or an object is concealed in the ground and covered with a piece of glass. A heap of sand is layered onto it so that no one could find it. The owner of the secret would be the only person who knows the location often showing it only to his best friends. The objects captured by the photographer become treasures desired both by the photographer himself and the others, likewise the composition hidden behind the shatters of a bottle in the children’s game of secrets.

"Event (gap)", photo series, 2014

Born 1986 in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. She lives and works in Kyiv. Zvyagintseva studied at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, Kyiv. She was a finalist in the 2010 MUHi Young Ukrainian Artists Prize. She has been a member of the curatorial group Hudrada since 2010, and in 2011 was co-founder of ISTM (Art Workers’ Self-Defense Initiative).

When the event larger than everyday life experience occur, when you understand that you are touched by history, the sense of reality disappears. The event eats you up, absorbs you. But the scariest part is when you realize that the event has its limits. Sense of unreal makes you feel that everything that happens is a theater; the suspicion arises that someone directs it. Meanwhile, reality is somewhere nearby, and its staging marks its borders. In both camps people desperately try to rush out towards the reality, but they only get more entangled, more implicated in the stage plot. As if the parts of something that used to be a union has revolted against each other, discovered the void between them. The territory of struggle, history, blood, on the one hand - and the space of the everyday, non-historical, on the other. There is a gap in between. I'm trying to stitch together these parts, these territories with my comments - but commentaries come abrupt, spontaneous, and ultimately; they are addressed towards the void. In the end, they are useful only to fix a void, to archive it.

"Operation-For Something Black and Hot", video, 2012, 20 min

Okin Collective is an artists' group, which consists of Joungmin Yi, Hwayong Kim, Shiu Jin, named after Okin Apartment complex in Jongnogu, Seoul, where in which the first group project was held.

 The performance of Okin Collective entitled “Operation– For Something Black and Hot” recalls the nuclear disaster in Fukushima during which the press was controlled and there was a media blackout leading to maximum damage for their citizens. The production of quasi–Chi Gymnastics, based on the motion studies of public drills, was a guide as to what to do during a disaster. The idea was to increase self-defense ability at a time when the government couldn’t protect their people. Okin researched many related official guides. But we were disappointed again by their carelessness and inadequacy–most of them just said repeatedly to calm down; endure; wait; prevention is the best measure; we have to fold a cloth to cover the mouth like a mask sixteen times to prevent hazardous substances from entering; and so on. After all, what Okin choreographed was nothing but a kind of practice on how to make eye contact, to hold your hands with complete strangers, and to depend on each other.

"Collectively embroidered tablecloth" , photodocumentation, 2012–2015

The Stitch Project is an international art project that aims to expand and strengthen the dialogue between artists from minorities and Scandinavia. The project is intended as a meeting place filled with adventure, dialogue, knowledge and inspiration using textile and craft. It’s a 4-year project, started in 2012 and ending in 2016. The project has been in Iceland, Palestine, Sweden, Norway and is now in Latvia.

As part of the project in the Survival K(n)it 7 festival The Stitch Project invites visitors to embroider on a 10 meter long linen cloth, spinning wool thread and plant dye with local plants. The documentation from the previous workshops is on display in the exhibition.