SERDE 2019

The

Residency and workshop centre SERDE Atmodas iela 9 LV-3456 Aizpute Latvija www.serde.lv facebook.com/SERDE issuu.com/smg.serde vimeo.com/smgserde smg.serde@gmail.com

APPLETHINK - ART AND CRAFT MARKET

September 14

Annul Art and craft market Applethink developed as collaborative platform for contemporary art professionals, researchers of traditional culture, amateurs and enthuziasts in culture heritage field. During the Applethink artists who works at SERDE residencies centre presents their projects and local craftsmen join for shows and degustations.

Participants: Kazdangas pūtēju orķestris, James Sarigiannidis (GR), Jūrkalnes kokles, Amee Evans Godvin (USA), Jessica Escobar (FI/MEX), Aitor Climent Barba (ES), Iveta Laure and Arta Dzirkale (LV).

Amme Evans Godwin

Ceramic workshop by Arta Dzirkale

James Sarigiannidis

“Zaļā brīvība” - prepara�on of the “Disco soup”

Glass jewelry by Marta Gibiete

“Dzīvo Zaļāk” - workshops and games about environment

Nursing home “Rokaiži”

15TH INTERNATIONAL CAST IRON ART SYMPOSIUM

August

5 - 11

Cast Iron Art Symposium is part of the art event series which is focused on experimental non industrial technologies. Artists are invited to use diverse raw materials and supplies for recycling and creating art works – old out-of-date cast iron radiators are used during symposium. In the hands of professional artists they are transformed into amazing masterpieces of art.

Symposium led by Kārlis Alainis. Participants: Gunārs Dzelme, Ligita Franckeviča, Dāvis Valbaks, Nils Jumītis, Roberts Bāliņš, Emīls Kristiāns Muzikants, Rūdolfs Alainis, Artis Alainis, Rūta Patmalniece, Ance Ausmane, Trīne Pucena, Laura Mary Kern (USA), Jessica Escobar (FIN/MEX), Aitor Climent Barba (ES)

5TH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON WOOD RESTORATION

July 22 - 28

Workshop has been created to allow professionals and amateurs to meet outside their usual working environment. Practical work is done on-site in 18th century wooden architecture complex which has been in a slow, thoughtful restoration process for the last decade.

Restoration workshop led by Jānis Tolpežņikovs.

Participants: Jānis Priedītis, Juris Gailis, Mairis Meinerts, Edgars Revins, Inta Krauke, Ervins Krauklis, Raimonds Kalējs, Reinis Blūms, Jurģis Krastiņš, Līga Sprūde, Mārtiņš Sprūds, Kristīne Grīnberga, Ritvars Skuja, Arta Skuja, Kristīne Niedrāja, Sigita Olte, Mārtiņš Vītols, Mārīte Mitlere, Ance Ausmane, Signe Pucena, Uģis Pucens, Trīne Pucena, Jessica Escobar (FIN/MEX), Aitor Climent Barba (ES).

LARGE FORMAT BLACK & WHITE PHOTO WORKSHOP

h�ps://issuu.com/smg.serde/docs/foto2019

July 12 -

14

Lectures and Practices in the Context of Large Format Photography - LF Cassette Testing and Calibration, Zone System Simplification Options, Classic Black & White Photos technologies.

Participants: Mārcis Bendiks, Gvido Kajons, Vadims Jurjevs, Imants Žodžiks, Ģirts Jēkabsons, Gatis Vanags, Rolands Bors, Jānis Knāķis, Aivars Vaksis, Harijs Daina Liepiņš, Kaspars Gerda, Agris Klestrovs, Jānis Deinats, Ritvars Skuja, Spāre Vītola.

STONE BEER WORKSHOPS

Within the framework of the Intangible Cultural Heritage workshops ancient stone beers reconstruction took place in SERDE residency centre, in Valmiermuiža festival “Sviests” and in Liepaja “Līvas ciema svētki” craft program.

Glocalfilm Workshop for school youth from Aizpute and Skrunda secondary schools directed by professional film directors Silke Beller, Kerstin Rickermann and Laurenz. The teams of pupils selected and invited by the Goethe Institute jury were active throughout all the week.

ART AND ENERGY

October 5 - 6, Muhu, Estonia

Seminar and workshop at Muhu in Estonia. How to apply art works with energy production. Wind and solar energy production. Organized by MUHU InSEA NGO, Estonia, coordinated by Culture Power Station NGO, Finland, partner: SERDE NGO Latvia.

COALFATHER INDUSTRIES - CRAIG NEWSOM AND KARA JANSSON

The hazmat suit is a symbol of disconnection. From time and place. The bridge is a symbol of connection. The figure in the suit is leaving. He waves at no one, or maybe the dogs barking in the distance. As he walks away he comes to a crossroads. He is unable to choose a direction.

Michelle Bonczek Evory

Two years ago at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, I photographed an elk whose antlers had become entangled in barbed wire. It was an ugly, constricting image. Wild beauty wrapped with human invention.

Years before I had begun to take photographs I termed “Obstructions” of picaresque landscapes always with some object intruding - it was a file of failed photos, I thought. Rolling hills intersected by telephone poles, a riverbed with a beer can on its sandy bank. Traces of humans everywhere - cigarette butts, broken glass, plastic bags.

Then I took one photograph in Wyoming that made me reconsider - a plastic bag caught in a fence looked organic in sunset, some combination of a veil and vine. I tried to capture its beauty but knowing what it was still made me uncomfortable, made the scene meant to be aesthetically pleasing, feel ugly and artificial. So I began wondering if maybe it was me. Was it my own sense of beauty determining what I saw, overshadowing how I interpret and respond to the human touch in the landscape? Perhaps that elk wasn't trapped by barbed wire, but had conquered it.

I began asking, are there ways and intersections where the human’s impression and changing of the environment could be beautiful? At SERDE, I set out to find occasions when a human touch enhanced nature.

Walking Aizpute I noted the motor bike tracks, the tearing out of trees and grass for loud, fast machines - t he track is not pleasing to the eye, nor to my heart. I noted pests on various plants, leaves frayed and withering. The pests eat to survive but what of survival does a motorbike track serve? My husband Rob humorously proposed that the racetrack keeps us from killing each other. Maybe…

Along a road, a pile of remains from a collapsed building. In a pond, a sieve someone probably dropped when being used for a net. Not exactly aesthetically pleasing. So, what was I left with?

I tried to curb the obvious - gardens, architecture reflected in water, birdbaths. But still it is that made by hand, mostly, and intended to enhance beauty it seems that makes beauty. A cat drinking from a tub of water. So many gardens. A bridge over water.

I still am looking to find the accidental like those antlers wrapped in rose vines instead of barbed wire.

The Princess Deer

In the mouth of a dark wood, a hermit tends a fire. Elsewhere in the same wood, a white doe sips from a stream, swallows and sparrows flitter around her. Life goes on like this. The hermit with his thoughts, the deer with her songs. Until one day a hunter stalking the deer, aims, fires, misses. And the deer flees to the hermit who takes her in, spreads over her his arms like heron wings. He shelters her body from the hunter who refuses to let the idea of her go. Hermit and hunter, fists and knife—until blade slides into hermit, until bullet slices doe and they both bleed out their last breath.

In this story, the doe becomes a princess, the hermit her prince. The forest a castle, little birds their servants, the hunter a stone that sinks to the bottom of the stream where demons flay, dry, and devour him for 1000 years.

Then, the story begins again. There is this couple, maybe rich, maybe poor, perhaps waiting tables, driving Ubers, teaching college without benefitsperhaps all three. The woman struggles to conceive. The man labors nightly over unpaid bills. The dog has cancer, the cat no teeth. Ceilings drip in rain, freeze in winter, press the wood to further gap. And so it goes. Until one day a ray of lightning, an earthquake’s pulse brings the world down upon them as if they weren’t already living in its rubble. While they are watching Late Night with Stephen Colbert, a meteor drifts through their dark den and in a burst of light, the dog becomes a wolf. The cat, a lion. The man, a buck. A forest springs from the house’s ruins, a waterfall splashes from leaky roof. And above, the stars shiver through the stratosphere as the woman becomes a white doe carrying the first light of a fawn.

PAULA FÖRSTNER (ES/DE)

h�ps://paulafoerstner.pb.online/workslatvia

Interested in social, political or philosophical matters my creative focus has been on exploring topics such as prosecution, unequal rights or the influence of the environment on life. A Spanish / Germans visual artist, I work on different media such as photography, drawing or collage techniques inspired by things found in flea markets, books or magazines which I bring together in order to create strong visual language, works that get an awareness on matters that surround our existence and I also seek to deal and reflect upon themes usually unnoticed but that are influenced by behaviour and environment.

At SERDE I worked on my project: Seas of fire

“I am drowing, my dear, in seas of fire” Virginia Woolf Based on this sentence of the feminist Virginia Wolfe a metaphor of the way many women felt and even feel today, caged in lives under family and society even political ties, being in society but not playing an active role in it. In still growing project with over 70 works and each series representing many aspects of women´s lives in patriarch society, my artwork, with a feminist undertone, aims to create a link to past existences, to women influenced by culture, traditions, society and family bounds, closely linked to history, politics and society by research for traces women left in the past in Europe.

The main goal is to create an awareness on the situation of women and redefine women´s “herstory” as Virginia Woolf put it, therefore inspired by the environment, I plan to work with elements associated with women creating in a strong visual language, images to illustrate and an understanding of the role of women are allowed to assume and also paying a tribute to the long forgotten women, now actresses of the awareness on many social aspects unchanged then and regrettably still nowadays.

AMEE EVANS GODWIN (USA)

h�ps://aegodwin.com/collec�ng-karma%2C-latvia

The video by Amee Evans Godwin, was recorded in Aizpute in 2018 while at SERDE, and became "Collecting Karma Through Small Neglects, Three Meditations", newly edited this year.

The work expands on the artist's use of walking meditation to explore connections between place and body. This technique helps to bring sensory awareness to every step and breath, so that the present moment can make contact with energies from the past that may persist in a place, in this case, due to the times of war, occupation, and extermination.

This year, Amee has returned to SERDE to work on some new ideas about collecting memories and images from local folks here who might wish to share with her as part of a beginning investigation around a benevolent collection of data in a world already overrun by all of our shared digital information.

I PATOM THEATREAUDE LORRILLARD (FR), VITA MALAHOVA (LV), ALBERTO BARBERIS (IT)

h�p://ipatomtheatre.mozello.com/performance/ask-the-bread/

ASK THE BREAD is an ongoing theatre project which is a result of international collaboration between the actresses Vita Malahova (LV) and Aude Lorrillard (FR), the photographer Vika Eksta (LV), director Tone Haldrup Lorenzen (DK) and the composer Alberto Barberis (IT). Through the physical expression, photography, mask theatre, and music, the artists will create an interdisciplinary performance ASK THE BREAD.

The performance takes its primary inspiration from the self-portrait project God Nature Toil of the Latvian photographer Vika Eksta (vikaeksta.com). The performance will investigate into the themes such as; migration from rural areas, women's life in the Latvian countryside and the connection between nature and human beings.

During the stay in residency SERDE artist investigated on the sound scape of performance ASK THE BREAD.

I patom theatre singing workshop led by Vita Malahova (LV), Aude Lorrillard (FR)

GINTS GABRĀNS

Presentation and demonstration of clone of the Moscow's SAN project in Aizpute (http://web.san.lv/), which was visible within a radius of 50 kilometers from July 12th to noon on July 19th, 2019.

IVETA LAURE (LV)

Sparkling moments and Champagne dress

Opening each bottle of prosecco sparkling drink is associated with a moment of celebration in our lives. A lot of cork sticks are like memories of beautiful moments in life and celebrating life.

Iveta Laure created the Champagne dress, which is a paraphrase of the traditional term of the fashion world - a cocktail dress. The cork connectors on the tops resemble beads at the top and fringe at the bottom, associated with various festive outfits.

AGNESE RUDZĪTE, JĀNIS RUDZĪTIS, TERĒZE RUDZĪTE (LV)

Craft workshop for children - performed a surprise task using their imagination and skills, jewelry from different materials and resources that have been created and produced in the past.

AITOR CLIMENT BARBA (ES)

My firsts impressions were very impressive for me besides the bad weather compared to the Spanish summer. I began to meet new people, to discover the place and to find the way in which I could help. During the summer I helped to host several artists from different countries whom I spent evenings having long and interesting conversations. Supporting their art projects was a nice way to see different ways of creating related to different personalities.

Apart from that I had the chance to collaborate in different workshops and symposiums, from which I learned new techniques and skills.

In September I participated in Āboļošana, the closing event of the year in SERDE. There were live music, workshops, stands and other different activities. It was the perfect space to show the art pieces I could make during the summer and to share a workshop to the audience.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed the three months when I could get involved and lived in SERDE through the professional and personal fields. It’s going to be a nice experience to enrich my future projects and I’m really pleased to share the space and time with all the people who were there.

JESSICA ESCOBAR (FIN/ MEX)

An EVS Volunteering Program took me to SERDE for two months this summer. My time in Aizpute was time for isolation, reflection, and work. It was also a time for making connections with the natural surroundings, the rich culture of The Baltics, the locals, the visiting artists, and myself. Daily, I collaborated on the tasks that keep SERDE running, and was kindly invited to participate in the workshops and activities organized by other visiting artists.

With SERDE's and Radi Vidi Pats’ support, I had the opportunity to conduct a workshop called “How to build a narrative?”. Where participants discovered and explored the value, validity, and importance of the different points of view from which a story can be told. Their findings were transformed into sculptures made out of organic materials, trash, and polyester resin. Being in peaceful SERDE gave me the chance to focus and produce work whilst making connections that shifted how I relate to my artistic practice.

Publisher: Interdisciplinary Art Group SERDE

Team: Uģis Pucens, Signe Pucena, Trīne Pucena, Ance Ausmane

With thanks for collaboration: Radi vidi pats, Dzīvo zaļi, Zaļā brīvība, Piepildīto sapņu istaba, LiepU MPLab, Aizputes novada dome, Aizputes novada Tūrisma informācijas centrs, Armands Ausmanis, Dzintra Vēvere, Ieva Vītola, Ieva Zilberte, Jānis Tolpežņikovs, Diāna Reine, Sandija Santa.

Photos: Jānis Rudzītis, Jessica Escobar, Aitor Climent Barba, Mārcis Bendiks, Jānis Deinats, Gatis Vanags, Jānis Knāķis, Michelle Bonczek Evory, Iveta Laure, Ervins Kraukis, Ģirts Jēkabsons, Ritvars Skuja, Signe Pucena, Ance Ausmane.

Financial support: VKKF, VKKF Kurzemes kultūras programma, Erasmus+, Nordic Council of Ministers

www.serde.lv facebook.com/SERDE issuu.com/smg.serde vimeo.com/smgserde smg.serde@gmail.com