White Night 2010

Tonight - do it yourself, take part, for it's White Night - Contemporary Culture Forum 2010 in Riga. The dominant aftertaste after observing several visual installations and sound and movement performances: rummaging through old junk and one's own subconscious.

The night is short, though by now an already cool and dark autumn night. We managed to visit only three locations - Survival Kit 2 on Miera Street, the VEF complex, and Andrejsala. Miera Street lived up to its name fully - calmness, a retro retrospective, art workshops. We took part in creating a world picture from nails, in the performance of French artist Benjamin Sabatier. In the basement "Fly Agaric" we watched clay creations taking shape, and marvelled at what can be formed from a glass bottle under the influence of heat. We encountered a porcelain penguin figurine in the design shop "20th Century." The owner explained that it was a gift and unfortunately not for sale. Paintings, portraits in an abandoned apartment - tonight full of curious visitors.

The VEF complex required a little more time - to walk through all the abandoned industrial spaces and look into the many rooms. Voldemārs Johansons's installation OPUS 23 - the interaction of sound and space. Strike a vessel to resonate the spacious room with its good acoustics - only a mechanical movement that propagates sound waves without electronic amplification.

A musical performance in the VEF complex in Riga, within the "Auditory Park" project.

The exhibition "I Am Dying (I Am Living)" - a great deal of death, little joy of life. The awareness that when you are born you are alone, and when you die you are also alone. The interplay of life and death, the last knights of the Round Table seeking the Holy Grail perhaps somewhere far out in the cosmos, on another planet, or perhaps on an Earth where no life remains on the surface. What determines that you are alive, and what determines that you are already dead? Rasa Šulca's "Death of Fantasy" struck a chord: "If the dimension of fantasy dies - I AM DYING. If it stays alive - I AM LIVING."

From Andrejsala we had expected more. We stopped only at the antique shop, which experienced an unprecedented and pointless influx of people; at the media station (an experiment with sound in a dimly lit space with many and various soft seats); and at the bicycle trials area (fantasies about vehicles that, it turns out, actually move forward in real life too).

One thing is clear: art objects are created by the dark and the light demon that lives within the artist. What is inside comes out. Both carry an extraordinarily powerful energy, and both could be felt that night.