‘YOU’VE GOT 1243 UNREAD MESSAGES. The Last Generation Before the Internet. Their Lives’ at the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga
Do you remember the time before the Facebook era and text messages? The era when people had to agree on a meeting beforehand but friends could show up unannounced? It was characterized by telegrams, address books and calligraphy notebooks. Typewriters clattered in offices and there were lines at phone booths. These memories are a part of the story about the last pre-Internet generations and their lives.
By combining the works of such seminal artists as Irma Blank, Vija Celmins, On Kawara, Boris Lurie, Ry Nikonova, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, Dayanita Singh, Harry Smith, Miroslav Tichý, Drago Trumbetaš and Jiří Valoch with examples of contemporary folklore, social history and pre-digital technologies, the exhibition deals with the recent past when the search for oneself and others took place in an analogue instead of a digital environment. It is the story of self-exploration and social networks in the last decades before the arrival of the Internet, told through a cross-disciplinary display of artworks next to a selection of quotidian forms of creativity: diaries and items from private archives, correspondence by mail or through underground channels of alternative communication and samizdat. The point of both types of exhibits is to question any clear-cut borders between art and everyday life.
Beginning with mid-20th century, increasingly large numbers of people started using equipment for mechanical reproduction of texts and images and data transmission – telephones, typewriters and portable cameras. In the West, people used Xerox copiers, whereas Soviet citizens had to make do with carbon paper. The new opportunities had an important effect on both the creative expression of artists and such traditional means of self-reflection as diaries, scrapbooks, pen-pal correspondence and family albums. The interactions between the private and the public, between institutionalized art experiments and micro-historic testimonies of creative resistance by lay practitioners are highly topical in the age of digital reality and represent the focus of the exhibition.
Self-determination and departures from the normative, consciously nurtured peculiarities, horizontal forms of socialization or daring experiments with the everyday belong to the art history’s chapter on early conceptualists, as well as to the cultural heritage of the vernacular. Hence, the exhibition is a poetic assemblage of surprising juxtapositions. “Instruction verses” by Moscow conceptualist Dmitry Prigov, who was sent to psychiatric institution for performing a street action by handing these poems to passers-by, are displayed next to the subversively doctored library books for which Londoners Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell were given custodial sentences. Networks built by mail-artists and shortwave radio enthusiasts demonstrate the same affection for serialism and slowness as a chess-game played intercontinentally by post. The date, fixed in a painting by On Kawara, marks the beginning of a date of industrialist Günter K. with his secretary Margret, scrupulously documented in an intimate, photo-based diary, which was found decades later when a flat was emptied of someone’s personal effects during an auction.
The multitude of the materials on display is like a long-unopened mailbox where, within the scores of messages, one might find a personally addressed one. The exhibition is likely to unleash various memories for mature viewers and present a hitherto unknown, yet intriguing world for those who have reached adulthood in the Internet era.
Imprint
| Artist | Xavier Antin, ARTPOOL Studio (György Galántai, Deák Ferenc, Erdélyi Miklós, Kelemen Károly, Maurer Dóra), Valdis Āboliņš, Season Butler, Irma Blank, Vija Celmins, Radomir Damnjanović Damnjan, Guillermo Deisler, Braco Dimitrijević, Marlene Dietrich, Viktorija Eksta, György Galántai, Jean Genet, Vladimir Glushenkov (Владимир Глушенков), Rodney Graham, Atis Ieviņš, On Kawara, Žilvinas Kempinas, William Kentridge, Andrzej Kostolowski, Jaroslaw Kozlowski, Boris Lurie, Bogusław Madej, Dalibor Martinis, Jiří Menzel, Ry Nikonova (Ры Никонова) and Serge Segay, Yoko Ono, Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell, Edgars Ozoliņš, Livija Patikne, Ingrīda Pičukāne, Dmitry Prigov (Дмитрий Прыгов), Konstantīns Raudive, Aleksandr Rodchenko (Александр Родченко) and Varvara Stepanova (Варвара Степанова), Martha Rosler, Dieter Roth, Joachim Schmid, Dayanita Singh, Harry Everett Smith, Zdzisław Sosnowski, Hans Stevens, Mladen Stilinovič, Andrejs Strokins, Jüri Tenson, Rein Tenson, Priit Pärn, Krista Virkus, Mari Kuutmaa, Miroslav Tichý, Dragutin Trumbetaš, Jiří Valoch, Franz Erhard Walther, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt |
| Exhibition | YOU’VE GOT 1243 UNREAD MESSAGES. The Last Generation Before the Internet. Their Lives |
| Place / venue | Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga |
| Dates | December 9, 2017 - February 4, 2018 |
| Curated by | Kaspars Vanags, Zane Zajančkauska, Diana Franssen |
| Website | www.lnmm.lv/en |
| Index | Aleksandr Rodchenko Andrejs Strokins Andrzej Kostolowski ARTPOOL Studio Atis Ieviņš Bogusław Madej Boris Lurie Braco Dimitrijević Dalibor Martinis Dayanita Singh Diana Franssen Dieter Roth Dmitry Prigov (Дмитрий Прыгов) Dragutin Trumbetaš Edgars Ozoliņš Franz Erhard Walther Guillermo Deisler György Galántai Hans Stevens Harry Everett Smith Ingrīda Pičukāne Irma Blank Jaroslaw Kozlowski Jean Genet Jiří Menzel Jiří Valoch Joachim Schmid Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell Jüri Tenson Kaspars Vanags Konstantīns Raudive Krista Virkus Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art Livija Patikne Mari Kuutmaa Marlene Dietrich Martha Rosler Miroslav Tichý Mladen Stilinović On Kawara Priit Pärn Radomir Damnjanović Damnjan Rein Tenson Rodney Graham Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt Ry Nikonova Season Butler Valdis Āboliņš Varvara Stepanova Vija Celmins Viktorija Eksta Vladimir Glushenkov William Kentridge Xavier Antin Yoko Ono Zane Zajančkauska Zdzisław Sosnowski Žilvinas Kempinas |