{"id":6848,"date":"2023-07-25T23:46:56","date_gmt":"2023-07-25T23:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bienale.lt\/2023\/?p=6848"},"modified":"2023-08-03T19:03:25","modified_gmt":"2023-08-03T19:03:25","slug":"the-kaunas-biennial-and-survival-kit-present-artist-lists-and-venues-for-joint-exhibition-long-distance-friendships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bienale.lt\/archive2023\/en\/uncategorized-lt\/the-kaunas-biennial-and-survival-kit-present-artist-lists-and-venues-for-joint-exhibition-long-distance-friendships\/","title":{"rendered":"The Kaunas Biennial and Survival Kit present artist lists and venues for joint exhibition Long-distance Friendships"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the 14th Kaunas Biennial (Lithuania) and the 14th edition of Contemporary Art Festival Survival Kit (Latvia), co-curators Alicia Knock and Inga L\u0101ce gather almost 40 <\/span>\u00a0<\/span>artists across two cities to present <\/span>Long-distance Friendships. <\/span><\/i>These sister exhibitions of the same name\u2014which open 25 August in Kaunas and 7 September in Riga, respectively\u2014invite visitors to engage with stories of transnational solidarity, resistance and resilience, from post-socialist and post-colonial world where microhistories of friendships and encounters become a starting point for contemporary alliances.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Long-distance Friendships<\/span><\/i> will invest in defunct infrastructures\u2014the former Kaunas post office and <\/span>a concrete warehouse in Kaunas Fortress Park<\/span>, and Vidzeme Market in Riga\u2014providing opportunities for reimagining them in the present. What new kinds of transactions might be supported, whether based on exchange and gifting or on fragmentation and impossibility? How can we foster long-distance solidarity, both in relation to Ukraine and against russian imperialism, but also in response to other colonial and neo-colonial wars and anti-imperial struggles? <\/span>The sites in Kaunas and Riga will form a joint and complementary backdrop against which the intimate research journeys of <\/span>Long-distance Friendships<\/span><\/i> are presented. Knock and L\u0101ce have chosen to engage with contemporary artists with strong ties to Africa and Eastern Europe across diaspora and within an open-ended transnational research. Some artists will exhibit exclusively at each exhibition, others will present ongoing and transitory works on-view across both sites.<\/span><\/p>\n

Co-curators Knock and L\u0101ce elaborate:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis project attempts to connect histories <\/span>of the relationship between Africa and Eastern Europe<\/span> that are linked more closely than many are aware of. Our choice of the venues for each event is not a coincidence. The old central post office in Kaunas and the market in Riga are both collapsed spaces for exchange and togetherness. The histories of each space echo that of the people who inhabited them. By drawing on these personal histories, we are using traces of times past to invite artists to propose alternative perspectives for the future. In a time of geopolitical fragmentation, it is important to strive for international alliances that are forged through friendship and collaboration rather than power dynamics.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

14th Kaunas Biennial: <\/b>Long-distance Friendships<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

The two-month-long Kaunas Biennial will be housed in one of the most significant sites\u00a0 of interwar Lithuanian modern architecture, the Kaunas Central Post Office (1931, architect Feliksas Vizbaras), and in a 19th cen<\/span>tury concrete warehouse, which was revived a few years ago as a space for artistic activities. One commission takes place at the former textile factory, where Ibrahim Mahama will work with the scars of the building. Artists from around 20 countries will present<\/span> personal stories of exchanges, solidarity movements and acts of resistance that have in the past brought groups of people together. The Biennial\u2019s main site echoes<\/span> Long-distance Friendships\u2019<\/span><\/i> strong focus on the importance of communication, speaking and being understood.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The spacious entrance hall of the Kaunas post office, once bustling with postal operations, will be reanimated\u00a0 with the exchange of letters, postcards, stamps and news shared with artists and friends from various locations. Encountered during the research process from countries such as Benin, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Sudan and Zimbabwe artists including Salah Elmur or Sam Kakaire will share postal fragments from their time in the former USSR and former Yugoslavia. Georges Ad\u00e9agbo and Ibrahim Mahama among others, will reflect on the ideas of friendship and freedom by post, sketching new transnational pedagogies for today. New communication possibilities will unfold based on coded and indecipherable language or based on translation, such as in the work of Hamedine Kane revisiting the role of USSR trained filmmaker and educator Ousmane Sembene. Nino Krvivishvili and Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien create\u00a0 symbols drawn from textile patterns that expand\u00a0 on the rich textile history of the city, while other works will communicate via sound and other embodied interactions, like in the <\/span>African post office <\/span><\/i>reenacted by Sumayya Vally, Moad Musbahi and Thania Petersen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Through Fran\u00e7ois Xavier Gbre\u2019s photographic intervention, the post office reveals itself as a transhistoric site embedded in former systems of censorship,\u00a0 from which a fragmented and reinvented history of resistance can emerge. Echoing the history of anti-Soviet student resistance in the 1970s in Kaunas, artists such as Admire Kamudzengerere and \u00c2ngela Ferreira activate the building\u2019s underground spaces, mirroring the letter-making by imprisoned freedom fighters and military figures like Angela Davis.<\/span><\/p>\n

Contemporary Art Festival Survival Kit 14: <\/b>Long-distance Friendships<\/i><\/b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

This year, Survival Kit takes place at the historic Vidzeme Market in Riga\u2019s city centre. Founded in 1876, the market served the city of Riga as a multifunctional space for trade, social exchange, and storytelling.<\/span> Over time, the market\u2019s celebrated existence dissipated, its empty yet <\/span>distinctive<\/span> architecture a gentle reminder of the past.<\/span> Aiming to <\/span>re-populate the\u00a0 market, <\/span>the Riga-leg of<\/span> Long-distance Friendships<\/span><\/i> takes its starting point in the complex legacy of former performances of peace and friendship in festivals, gatherings and conferences held throughout the Cold War. As a response to this prompt, the curators have invited 28 artists and collectives to reactivate the dormant market halls, as they propose a redefined framework for a transnational event addressing the issues of co-existence today. Live, hybrid cross-cultural exchanges will enact a deconstructed congress for future friendships, where traces of student exchanges between the socialist countries and countries in Africa, along with other lesser-known or decentralized episodes of Soviet cultural diplomacy, merge with fictional encounters. Artists such as Natalie Perkof will present gardens of future ecologies that lead us to female agency in the agricultural context. Historical episodes are complicated by the ever-growing and decaying ecologies of personal friendships through works by Ilona N<\/span>\u00e9<\/b>meth and Endri Dani.\u00a0Anawana Haloba and Lala Ra\u0161\u010di\u0107 offer gestures of care drawn from food and operatic forms of music that help shifting the gaze from past to present, while Adela Sou\u010dkova jumps past and future, sky and earth, in her transformative hopscotch. New geometries of friendship open up through the Tashkent\u2019s Afro-Asian writers and film festivals, which played an important role in cultivating Afro-Asian solidarity and will be addressed in work by the DAVRA Collective, while Anna Ehrenstein and Anastasia Sosunova address serious issues of new language and forms of representation in today\u2019s youth.<\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond festivals, cinema played a key role in post-independence nation-building, and will be addressed from the perspective of former students who were offered scholarships in the 1960\u2019s to study in Moscow, Prague and Lodz. Artists including Jihan El Tahri, Zbyn\u011bk Baladr\u00e1n and Tereza Stejskalov\u00e1 trace some of the first of these African students. Riga-based Inga Erdmane and \u017dulijens Nuhums Kulibali will rework material from archives of international students who attended the Riga Aviation Institute from the 1960s onwards, also detailing experiences of their children, the second generation of Afrolatvians.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While new seeds grow from ashes, we continue to ask: in this time of war, what kind of Survival Kit do we need? Riga and Kaunas will each propose temporary shelters.: Yonamine and Ihosvanny Cisneros reimagine a refugee camp from the Civil War in Angola as a learning space, Martin Zetov\u00e1 develops a sign language of anti-nuclear peace training, while \u0160ejla Kameri\u0107 disseminates messages from the survival guide of the siege of Sarajevo across the two sites.<\/span><\/p>\n

Participating Artists<\/b> (* denotes work in both Riga and Kaunas)<\/span><\/p>\n

14th Kaunas Biennial: <\/b>Georges Ad\u00e9agbo, Andrius Arutiunian, Judith\u00a0Blum Reddy, Ihosvanny Cisneros, Andro Eradze, \u00c2ngela Ferreira*, Fran\u00e7ois Xavier Gbre, \u0160ejla Kameri\u0107*, Jeanne Kamptchouang*, Admire Kamudzengerere, Hamedine Kane, Nikolay Karabinovych*, Mohammed Omar Khalil, Nino Kvrivishvili, \u017dilvinas Landzbergas, Ibrahim Mahama, Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien*, Ieva Martinaityt\u0117-Mediodia, Jaanus Samma*, Yonamine*, Anastasia Sosunova*, Ad\u00e9la Sou\u010dkov\u00e1*, Magdalena Birut\u0117 Stank\u016bnait\u0117-Stank\u016bnien\u0117, Sumayya Vally with Thania Petersen and Moad Musbahi, Kemang Wa Lehulere and Lefifi Tladi, Martin Zetov\u00e1<\/span><\/p>\n

Postal exchanges (preliminary list): <\/b>Simon Benjamin, Claudie Dimbeng, Christopher Ejugbo, Salah Elmur, Petra Feriancova, Rashidah Ismaili, Sam Kakaire, Euridice Kala, Ermias Kifleysus, Louisa Marajo, Hassan Musa, Nonument Group, Tjasa Rener<\/span><\/p>\n

Survival Kit 14:<\/b> Younes Baba-Ali, Zbyn\u011bk Baladr\u00e1n and Tereza Stejskalov\u00e1, N\u00fa Barreto, DAVRA Collective (Valeriya Kim, Dona Kulmatova, Zumrad Mirzalieva and Saodat Ismailova), Endri Dani, Anna Ehrenstein, Inga Erdmane, \u00c2ngela Ferreira*, Anawana Haloba, \u0160ejla Kameri\u0107*, Jeanne Kamptchouang*, Nikolay Karabinovych*, <\/span>ku\u0161!<\/span><\/i>, \u017dulijens Nuhums Kulibali, Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien*, Ilona N\u00e9meth, Thierry Oussou, Liene Pavlovska, Natalie Perkof, Lala Ra\u0161\u010di\u0107, Jaanus Samma*, Janek Simon, Anastasia Sosunova*, Ad\u00e9la Sou\u010dkova*, Jihan El Tahri, Evita Vasi\u013cjeva, Yonamine*, Ala Younis<\/span><\/p>\n

14th Kaunas Biennial<\/b> Long-distance Friendships<\/span><\/i> will take place from 25 August to 29 October in Kaunas (Lithuania), at Kaunas Central Post Office (Laisv\u0117s av. 102) and P.A.R.A.K.A.S. (Pranc\u016bz\u0173 str. 2). The opening event will take place between 25th-26th of August.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Kaunas Biennial is partly funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Kaunas City Municipality. More information: Bienale.lt<\/span><\/p>\n

Contemporary Art Festival Survival Kit 14 <\/b>Long-distance Friendships<\/span><\/i> will take place from 7 September to 8 October 2023 in Riga, Latvia. <\/span>Survival Kit 14 is organised by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art <\/span>and supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, Riga City Council, R\u012bgas Nami, Goethe-Institut Riga and Institut f\u00fcr Auslandsbeziehungen. More information: survivalkit.lv<\/span><\/p>\n

Further collaborations<\/b><\/p>\n

A collaboration is organised with Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts (opens 15 September 2023) under the artistic direction of Ibrahim Mahama.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the 14th Kaunas Biennial (Lithuania) and the 14th edition of Contemporary Art Festival Survival Kit (Latvia), co-curators Alicia Knock and Inga L\u0101ce gather almost 40 \u00a0artists across two cities […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":6849,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-uncategorized-lt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bienale.lt\/archive2023\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bienale.lt\/archive2023\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bienale.lt\/archive2023\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bienale.lt\/archive2023\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bienale.lt\/archive2023\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bienale.lt\/archive2023\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bienale.lt\/archive2023\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bienale.lt\/archive2023\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bienale.lt\/archive2023\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bienale.lt\/archive2023\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}