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2014!</title></head><body>
<div>Dear Spectres,</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Please see below the first 'official' information on the FIELDS -
large scale exhibition that will feature about 40 very interesting
artworks. The event is specially produced for Riga 2014, European
Capital of Culture - so you all are all very welcome to Riga this
year, and particularly for the FIELDS opening - on May 15, 2014!</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>hope some of you to see in Riga this summer - the exhibition will
be open till August 3, 2014</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>kind regards</div>
<div>Rasa</div>
<div><br></div>
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<div><br></div>
<div>Welcome to Riga - the European Capital of Culture
2014!</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>FIELDS exhibition<br>
Arsenals Exhibition Hall of the Latvian National Museum of Art</div>
<div>May 15 - August 3, 2014<br>
<br>
Fields - patterns of social, scientific, and technological
transformations.<br>
<br>
The changing role of art in society is one where it does not just
create a new aesthetics but gets involved in patterns of social,
scientific, and technological transformations. Fields, jointly curated
by Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits and Armin Medosch, presents an inquiry
into patterns of renewal and transition. The curators asked which
expanded fields of artistic practice offer new ideas for overcoming
the crisis of the present and developing new models of a more
sustainable and imaginative way of life.<br>
<br>
In preparation for the Fields exhibition, a widespread survey was
undertaken, that did not just look at art in the narrow sense but all
kinds of creative practices that bring together new thinking,
scientific knowledge, aesthetics, technologies and social practices. A
year in advance, a public call was launched that was met by over 200
proposals. The curators of Fields could draw on international networks
such as RIXC's Renewable Network and the European collaborations
Techno-Ecologies and Soft-Control. The artist-in-residency series
Fieldwork on measurement ship Eleonore, Linz 2013, aimed at creating
ideas and projects for Fields. Workshops and panels at Transmediale
2013 - Berlin, Pixelache 2013 - Helsinki, and the Media Art
Histories conference Renew - Riga, October 2013 were used to discuss
work and taxonomies for Fields.<br>
<br>
From the 200 proposals received through the public call, the curators
have chosen 40 works from all over the world, but with a special focus
on Central, Eastern and Northern Europe. Fields will be
exhibited between May 15th and August 3rd 2014, at the Arsenals
exhibition space of Latvian National Arts Museum, the largest and most
important exhibition space for contemporary art in Riga, as a part of
Riga - European Culture Capital 2014. The exhibition will be
accompanied by public lectures, Renewable Futures conference as well
as artist performances and concerts. A catalogue will be produced,
which will consist of a special issue of the Acoustic Space peer
reviewed academic journal, jointly issued by Liepaja's University Art
Research Lab and RIXC.<br>
<br>
Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits are artists and founding directors of
RIXC, an art institution in Riga, Latvia, whose Art + Communication
festival has become one of the most important festivals of this kind
in Europe and worldwide. Armin Medosch is a curator, writer and artist
based in Vienna, Austria. The Fields exhibition is a follow-up project
to Waves 2006, which was also shown at Arsenals in Riga, co-curated by
Smite, Smits and Medosch.<br>
<br>
The curators selected works that are considered to be contextual
seedbeds for social change. The changing role of art in society is one
where it does not just create a new aesthetics but gets involved in
patterns of social, scientific, and technological transformations.<br>
<br>
Fields presents a lively landscape of art that challenges existing
viewpoints and deconstructs social issues, but also proposes positive
visions for the future. A premise behind this project was from the
very start that no single field and associated label can do justice
any more to the diversity of contemporary art practices. Typically,
today, the most interesting practices are transdisciplinary and
transformative - they rely on new combinations of existing
fields-as-in-disciplines, combining the artistic with the social and
the natural, the scientific and the emotional, the sensible with the
actual.</div>
<div><br>
Fields opens up the contemporary field for a free and associative play
of radical taxonomies, remixing and recombining existing categories,
thereby carrying out important boundary work that gives a new shape to
the contact zones between art, science, technology and social
engagement in the 21st century.<br>
While the final list of artists may still change, we would like to
present some examples for the radical diversity of approaches:<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>The relationship
with nature plays a major role in this exhibition, often in
combination with ideas from the open culture that emerged on the net,
about sharing resources and tackling social issues through
participatory and social mechanisms.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>In some cases, such as
Leave it in the Ground by Oliver Ressler (2013), or Seedsunderground
(2013-14) by Shu Lea Cheang, the work carries a clear and direct
political message, concerning issues such as renewable energy,
sustainability or the fight for the diversity of agricultural seeds
and plants.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Other work, less overtly political,
opens our senses and minds to new ways of seeing the world, referring
to what French philosopher Jaques Ranci?re calls the 'distribution of
the sensible'. Lisa Jevbratt shows how different reality is if we
imagine to look at the world with animal eyes. The Belgian collective
Okno combines rooftop gardening and beehives to create new maps of the
distribution of plant life in cities. Erich Berger measures changes in
the magnetic field of the Earth. Manu Luksch offers a free ride on a
water taxi in exchange for a conversation with Kayak Libre.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>The human body itself becomes seen as a node in
a complex network of force-fields, where nature, genetic science and
political and economical topics intersect. The Latvian artist Gints
Gabrans proposes to modify our bodies so that, with the help of new
enzymes, we can eat grass and tree branches. Hu.M.C.C.- Human
Molecular Colonization Capacity project by Maja Smrekar, Slovenia,
uses an enzyme from the artist's body to create a yoghurt. Hans
Scheirl's paintings and installation Transgenic (TM) breaks through
barriers between 2D and 3D, simultaneously opening up new ways of
artistic and bodily trans-gression. <br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>The
intersection of social and visual fields is the topic of works by
Austrian video artist Annja Krautgasser's Prelude (2010) and media
artist Hannah Haslaati, Finland, who uses principles known from
Gestalt psychology to make group dynamics visible.<br>
The intersection of the globalised economy with digital technologies,
financial markets exploitative labour practices and culture and
concerns of local communities and indigenous people are addressed in
works such as Histoire Économique (2013) by British artist Hayley
Newman, Working Life (2013) by Danish artist collective Superflex and
Eccentric Archive (2012-14) by Ines Doujak and John Barker.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>The relevations by
Edward Snowden about global surveillance activities of the USA through
its PRISM program has made evident how important the invisible world
of data flows and data bases is. Data fields, battlefields and the war
on terror mark the background for works such as Endless War (2012-14)
by British-Japanese artist couple YoHa (Graham Harwood and Matsuko
Yokokoji), and We should take nothing for granted! - on the building
of an alert and knowledgeable citizenry by Slovenian artist
Marko Peljhan and Project Atol. <br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>The relationship
between matter and information, as suggested by cybernetics pioneer
Norbert Wiener, is the topic of the Earth Computer (2014) Martin
Howse and Ghostradio (2014) by Pamela Neuwirth, Markus Decker and
Franx Xaver.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Artists such as Martins Ratniks'
installlation with 27 CRT TV screens, and French artist Cecile
Babiole's sound installation are engaging with the raw energy of
electrical and electro-magnetic fields, continuing work started with
the Waves project in 2006.</div>
<div><x-tab>
</x-tab>Relationships between electrical and biological fields inform
the work of Latvian sound artist Voldemars Johansons, who, in
collaboration with RIXC's own project Biotricity (bacteria battery)
has made music from electrical signal fluctuations that are generated
by living micro-organisms.</div>
<div><br>
These are some key topics and examples of up to 40 works that will be
shown at Fields.<br>
</div>
<div>http://fields.rixc.lv</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Support: The Fields exhibition is supported by Riga 2014 and Riga
City Council, Latvian State Cultural Capital Foundation, Latvian
Ministry of Culture, Austrian Ministry of Culture, French Cultural
Institute, Nordic Culture Point.<br>
<br>
Contact: For further questions please write to: fields@rixc.lv</div>
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