Festival “Waterpieces 15″. In search of new coordinates

In the beginning, the celebration ‘Waterpieces’ was a journey, where each year in August a towboat would take the floating stage and the audience for a ride on the River Daugava. From time to time travellers would stop to view the panorama of Old Riga at night. Thus the artworks and the moving image were complemented with the enlightened spires of the Old Town and the artists’ created imaginary worlds that were displayed on screens would contrast with the impressive monolith movement of the dark river waters.

At the beginning of its journey in 2000, the organizers of the festival (Dzintars Zilgalvis, Juris Boiko and Līga Miezīte) did not choose a specific destination and saw this journey as a process. This allows us to mark destinations in the well-researched Latvian contemporary art scene and continue in search of new discoveries.

Over the course of time the festival ‘Waterpieces’ has gone from praising creative excellence to becoming an arts celebration that promotes experimentation and the process of research. Now through the collaboration of art organizations, research institutes and educational establishments, new knowledge-based artworks are created.

This year the celebration ‘Waterpieces’ will begin with an opening of interactive artworks ‘Water Stories – Daugava’. The guests will have the opportunity to follow the development of the artwork concepts and the search of their technical solutions and forms of expression.

Each day of the festival is dedicated to the search of specific values and coordinates. And similar to a proper boat ride, the festival guests are the ones to decide on their route and places to stop.

A retrospective on the festival’s history and origin ‘My video is invisible. Juris Boiko’ will be displayed in the stowage of the floating gallery. The first day of the festival will delight the guests with a performance by Roberts Gobziņš, the band ‘Resnie Putni’ and the video artist Linda Konone, as well as the performance of the festival’s special guest Ieva Akurātere. The disco on tape ‘Cosmos’ that will close the evening will be kept in the best traditions of NSRD.

The second day will include the performance ‘Ghost Ships and Water Dreams’, which is created by the festival’s special guests – the French curator Marie Cantos and the artist Laura Gozlan. Their performance is an invitation to dive deeper into the unknown waters of human psyche and the manipulations of the mind. However, the evening will continue with an audio visual performance by the artist and composer Jachin Pousson (USA) and the saxophone player Arvydas Kazlauskas (LT). The music of the performance takes the form of an improvisation between a baritone saxophone, electric guitar and electronics, which is complemented with a video projection of sound and vibration visualization. The evening will be closed by DJ Mārtiņš Ratniks.

The third day of the festival will move to Kronvalda Park, next to the Freeport of Riga Authority, as part of the Riga City Festival and will offer the best works from the Japan Media Arts Festival program. And the final day of ‘Waterpieces’ will have a program for children and host animation workshops in collaboration with the studio ‘Multenkulten’.

Floating arts centre ‘NOASS’

AB Dam 2, Riga, LV – 1048

Free admission

More information: noass.lv

https://www.facebook.com/noass.lv

 

Supported by:

Riga City Council,

Latvian Culture Capital Fund,

French Institute in Latvia