PLAYING CHAMELEON/Seminar about the Survival Strategies for Art Initiatives
PLAYING CHAMELEON / Seminar about the Survival Strategies for Art Initiatives took place on September 18th, 2009 in Riga as part of the international art festival Survival Kit organized by The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art.
Curator of the seminar is Anda Klavina.
Although with a different intensity, the economic recession of the past year has affected cultural sectors across the globe, most evident in the form of diminished funding and art market deflation. As a result, alternative initiatives and entrepreneurship are required to look for new modes of growth and sustainable activity.
PLAYING CHAMELEON is guided by a belief that artists are particularly gifted in finding survival strategies. As its name indicates, the seminar refers to the ability, in this case of artists, to camouflage or betray their field of activity and become someone else. It is the creative ability to adapt and re-emerge into something new, in quality and form. In their own work, artists often take chances and risks, tactics that may prove worthy role models not only for their practice, but for society in general. Therefore, at a time when Latvia is experiencing a deep economic crisis, it is pertinent for us to gather people from different art initiatives who are known for their chameleon strategies, to have them share their experiences and ideas about coping and surviving under such economic strains.
When writing on the superiority of Anglo-American literature, Gilles Deleuze states that it is a “literature of traitors.” These are writers and heroes that refuse the past and future, from their roots and history taking only the sky as a guide in their wish to become. They are nomads; nomadic not in the sense of moving across vast territory, but in the essence and initial refusal to make roots. A life without future and past is a betrayal to “the powers of earth which fix us, put us into a grille, identify us, and make us recognized.” Betrayal against paradigms and the established order is in Deleuze’s view a core component of creativity. “To lose our identity, to lose our face, to paint ourselves in the colors of the world.”
Until recently it was gainful for cultural workers in Latvia to operate within the system, to play around with its codes, to be shrewd in their interpretation. The crisis has substantially affected this previously stable support system and forced a number of initiatives to make radical decisions about how to be.
How does the creative process respond to the crisis predicament and turn it into constructive opportunity? What can be taken from previous experiences, and what preconceptions have to be overcome? What can we lose and gain by taking a risk? Is the crisis a green light to experiment with unbounded creativity?
The practice of the artists and curators participating in the seminar PLAYING CHAMELEON can be described as a constant becoming and risk-taking. One can say that they are nomads working in diverse forms that negate fixed functions, territories and codes. New York, Riga, Zurich, Berlin, Parnu, Moscow, Vilnius – participants come from different social, economic, political and cultural contexts provoking an intense exchange of viewpoints and ideas.
While speaking about their previous activities the participants of PLAYING CHAMELEON introduced ideas, principles and strategies that have allowed their artistic initiatives to adapt and creatively overcome the pressure of external circumstances. Participants shared their experience of what it means to “survive and thrive” in different institutional and socio-economic contexts under pressing conditions.
Participants of the seminar
ADAPT AND CONQUER
By Trong Gia Nguyen (New York)
Trong Gia Nguyen borrowed his sister's pickup truck in 1999, packed up all his things, and moved to New York, with zero budget. He slept on the couch at a friend's apartment and within a week found a place to live and a job working in art gallery. Nguyen continues to curate, write, and make art by constructively adapting to his own financial limitations, and now the shrinking economy's. The bottom line and question is, how does one go on producing substantial work under such difficult constraints? At Playing Chameleon, Nguyen will speak about his own experiences of adapting and introduce the projects of various organizations and initiatives in New York that have found creative means to keep culture blood pumping in the veins, and ultimately, rise strong from the ashes.
Trong G. Nguyen is an artist, curator, and writer based in New York. He has exhibited nationally and internationally in both solo and group exhibitions, including recent solo shows in New York at Fruit + Flower Deli and in Ho Chi Minh City at Galerie Quynh. From 2005-07, he established and directed the Brooklyn space New General Catalog. Trong has received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Harvestworks Digital Media Center, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Puffin Foundation. By day he writes and conducts interviews as the editor at Artslant and blogger for Art21. He has previously guest-lectured at Location One, New York University, School of Visual Arts, Columbia University, Icelandic Art Academy, and Catalyst Foundation. Recently Trong finished writing a "lost chapter" to The Da Vinci Code based on the secret love life of Marcel Duchamp.
www.cameandwent.com/tgnprojects.html
NO MONEY. NO HONEY
By Rael Artel (Parnu)
Nowadays, the world of contemporary art has become a realm full of unexpected dangers and unfriendly circumstances. Lack of visionary ideas, unequally distributed means of production, irresponsibility of the functionaries, corruption, precarious life-styles, institutional racism, constant lack of financial resources... What to do if there is nothing to
do?
In my presentation I will discuss several dilemmas which I have faced in my professional as well as private life during previous years in the context of Estonian Republic. I will also present some of my curatorial projects that have been in one way or another the answer to the specific socio-political situation in society as well as in the art scene. "Utopia is urgency", as Žižek puts it, and current social reality is just perfect trigger to create utopias in any size forced by urgent needs.
Rael Artel, born in 1980, is an independent curator based in the forests of Estonia. She graduated from the Institute of Art History at the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2003, and participated in the Curatorial Training Program in De Appel, Amsterdam (2004-05). Since 2000, she has contributed to a number of magazines in Estonia and elsewhere, and curated shows in Estonia as well as in Lisbon, New York, Amsterdam and Warsaw. In 2004--2008 she ran and moderated her project space Rael Artel Gallery: Non-Profit Project Space. Her current project Public Preparation, an international platform for networking and knowledge-production, deals critically with the growing tendencies of nationalism in contemporary Europe, aiming to envision alternative ways to think about global Community.
www.publicpreparation.org
ARTISTS AS INTERVENTIONISTS AND THE WORLD AROUND
By Elena Yaichnikova (Moscow)
My talk will be centered around the artists sometimes called "the interventionists" and will mainly make reference to our program of exhibitions and talks Colocation / Living Together that took place at the non-profit gallery La Box in Bourges, France from October, 2007 to July, 2008. Artists who play on the limit of art intervening largely into social, political, economical or historical fields and perceive art as a field of possibilities to invent, to test and to promote. Artists as researchers, social workers, entrepreneurs or political activists looking for a lasting impact rather than an immediate reply should make their way in time of crisis even more than before.
Elena Yaichnikova, Moscow-based independent curator and art-critic. Born in 1979, studied history, literature and history of art in Moscow, then followed an International Curatorial Training Program at the Ecole du Magasin CNAC in Grenoble, France in 2005–2006. As a curator she has been in charge of Colocation/ Living Together year-long program of exhibition and talks at the non-commercial gallery La Box in Bourges, France in 2007-2008 (together with Nicolas Audureau). She is a regular contributor to Russian art press (Moscow Art Magazine, Blacksquare and many others).
REALITY SHOW
By Linards Kulless (Riga/Berlin)
I will stress the play aspect in my talk. It is a wish to play that has fueled my interest in different media: video, photography, painting, installation, new media, graphics, theater and design and encouraged to take on different institutional roles: artist, actor, manager, VJ, curator, TV host. During these years of activity I have developed, one might say, an esoteric philosophy of what it means to play, to change and to live. I will try to share it with you in the seminar Playing Chameleon.
Linards Kulless is a multimedia artist currently working mainly in the media of video, painting and installation. He has had many projects also in the field of theater performance, new media, electronic music and design. Some of the most important group projects are electronic media project Rigasound.org and creative collective Ma1z3. He was one of the founders of the hostel and artist’s residency Singalong at the former industrial port territory meant for regeneration – Andrejsala. He was also member of the artists group Fuck For Friendship. Since 2000 Linards Kulless has been performing fervently as a VJ in many electronic music events in Latvia and Europe. Currently, he lives and works in Berlin.
www.linardskulless.info
BOLDNESS AND REALITY
By Signe Pucena (Aizpute)
Personal experience and ‘lessons’ in establishing and sustaining the artists studio and residency centre SERDE. Residency center – people, projects, process. Boldness and reality. From despair to satisfaction. Provincial charm and surprises.
Signe Pucena (mag. art.) is a researcher of traditional culture and a producer of culture events. In 2002 she established interdisciplinary art group SERDE and art residency with the same name in Aizpute, Western part of Latvia. Since 2003 she has done several research projects: orthodox community in Karosta, Liepaja, Sámi people in Lapland, Croat Serbs in Blinja. Since 2005 Signe Pucena has participated in expeditions – Folklore in the City, Aizpute People Stories about Jews, Brandava Production in Mid-Kurland, Brewing of the Beer, Making of the Soap in Jūrkalne etc..
Signe Pucena has also worked as a project coordinator at the new media culture center RIXC and as vice-commissioner of the Latvian pavilion at the Venice Art Biennial (2005) and Venice Architecture Biennale (2008).
www.serde.lv
SHOW AND TELL
By Vita Zaman (Vilnius/New York/Berlin)
My talk will be about globalization, translation, miscommunication, failure and games.
Vita Zaman (aka Vytaute Kuzmickaite) was born in Kaunas, the second largest city in Lithuania, with outstanding local modernist architecture and a reputation for speculative initiatives. During her childhood she has watched a lot of Indian films in the local cinema which was also called Kaunas. She has studied in M. K. Ciurlionis art school in Vilnius and published poetry as a teenager. Vita lived in London for ten years and studied Art, Art History and Curating at Goldsmiths College and Royal College of Art and had a "day job" as an art dealer and a curator. She has spent the last three years working on a poetry book Lynx, traveling and researching material for the remake of Leni Riefenstahl's movie “The Blue Light”.
www.zitairgita.lt
MISSION: MEDIOCRACY
By Egija Inzule (Zurich/Riga)
Following the question of how much financing art actually needs, in my presentation I will focus on the description of the system I currently find myself in. Switzerland has the image of providing for the best financing of artists in Europe. On the other hand, there are very few internationally known and important artists coming from Switzerland nowadays. Does this system only feed itself and a group of naive artists never having to face the contemporary art world with its markets and institutional hierarchies outside of Swiss borders? How strongly does the Swiss art financing politics develop self-made careers in a country where almost every idea is possible to produce only if the language ‘is right’? I don’t think I am in the position to make a judgment, but I can pose the question by presenting a few examples of artistic and curatorial careers.
Egija Inzule was born in Riga, studied art history in Leipzig and is currently studying art and cultural theory in the Zürich Academy of Arts. Parallel to her studies she has been working on curatorial projects in Europe. Currently, she is organizing an art book exhibition in Riga.
Anda Klavina is an art critic and curator. She has studied communication science in Latvia and holds a M.A. in philosophy from the Middlesex University, London. Anda Klavina does research on political aspects of contemporary art as well as on the history of contemporary art in Eastern Europe. She produces discoursive and interdisciplinary events together with the Latvian Center for Contemporary art and e-text+textiles Residency.
www.lcca.lv
www.e-text-textiles.lv
