“Greeks [..] go much further back, to the immemorial intelligence displayed in the tricks and imitations of plants and fishes. From the depths of the ocean to the streets of modern megapolises, there is a continuity and permanence in these tactics.” (M. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 1984)

The exhibition "Resilience. Secret Life of Plants, Animals and Other Species" derives from an interest in plants and animals as a metaphor for certain patterns in human behaviour currently and historically, as well as an occasional desire to plant oneself in a flowerbed.

Focussing on the idea of resilience as one of the characteristics inherent for many plant and animal species along with tactics like camouflage and tricks, the exhibition strives to highlight examples of contexts where adaptation has become a necessary tool. This kind of adaptation could be attributed to societies of the Eastern Europe during the Soviet Union and the transition processes in the nineties, as well as in a broader geographical and temporal area - in societies that meet violence, radicalism and other forms of oppression.

Meanwhile as entangled as the present moment may seem a suggestion also comes through plants - considering the "plant-thinking" or thinking through and within plants appears as an open possibility that my direct thinking towards a non-linear, diagonal ways that take diversity and manifold positions into account.

Image: Ieva Balode, part of the series "Invisible images"

supported by LCCA- Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art Riga and Kulturamt Leipzig

Inga Lāce and Kārlis Vērpe will talk about their most recent collaborations drawing a line of common interests and revealing ideas behind projects like the exhibition “(Re)construction of Friendship” (co-curated with Aesa Sigurjonsdottir and Inese Baranovska) that took place in the former KGB headquarters building in Riga in 2014 using friendship as a metaphor to talk about the relationships between the super-powers and smaller countries. They will also discuss the research based project “Lost in the Archive” (co-curated with Andra Silapētere) that took the archive of the Soros Centre for Contemporary Art-Riga as its starting point questioning the role and the influence of an archive and contemporary art discourses in a post-soviet country. Moreover they will also include a possible future trajectory of their research revealing their interest in the decolonial and feminist theories possibly examined through the collections of Latvian museums, especially the Latvian National Museum of Art “Riga Bourse” (former Latvian Museum of Foreign Art).

Inga Lāce (1986) is curator at the Latvian Centre for contemporary Art and curatorial fellow at de Appel arts centre, Amsterdam (2015-2016). She was curator of the Contemporary Art Festival Survival K(n)it 7 (2015) and is currently working on its next edition (with Solvita Krese).

Kārlis Vērpe (1982) is writer and independent curator. He participates in a project devoted to cultural politics of Latvia, organizes a series of discussions devoted to political questions at the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art and collaborates with Kuldīga Artist Residency. He obtained a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Latvia (2012).

In frame of the exhibiton: ' Resilience. Secret Life of Plants, Animals and Other Species', opening on 17th of March