Latvian local camp/ International Summer School “Art Mediation as Conversation” took place on August 5th-9th in Kuldīga, Latvia. This is the 8th annual iteration of the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art LCCA summer school organized in collaboration with the Kuldīga Artists’ Residence.
On the first day of summer school, artist Inga Erdmane gave the lecture “The Artist as Mediator. A Conversation About Making Socially-conscious Works of Art” at Kuldīga Artists’ Residence. Friday, August 6th, and Saturday, August 7th were devoted to the international part of the program. The artist, curator, and manager of mediation programs Daniela Ramos Arias from Bergen, Norway, held the first lecture/creative workshop of the program. Based on the artist’s mediation programs developed for the Bergen Assembly and Hordaland kunstsenter, mediators reflected upon the things they want to learn and teach. During the workshop, three mediation strategies on particular topics emerged.
Artist and researcher Emmeli Person who has developed mediation programs for Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation in Stockholm was in charge of Saturday’s program. She prepared an audio task “Critical documentation: How to look at the past and not re-produce the future”. It dealt with critical documentation and the ways art institutions document the process of educational programs. Mediators from each country produced the content for www.bigartspaceofyourchoice.com, a website designed specifically for the project.
As a part of the local program, mediators participated in a conversation exercise at the Democracy Café, a part of the Democracy Festival in Kuldīga. They learned more about dementia from psychiatrist Daniels Šamburskis and data visualization from lecturer Paula Vītola. This information came into use later when mediators held workshops dedicated to data recipes together with an artist Anna Priedola.
To conclude the summer school, mediators and the artist held an open creative workshop “Dairy Diaries Dementia Data Recipes” for the locals and visitors of Kuldīga. They learned to represent data on dementia using food products to make statistics easier to digest and to be experienced using different senses. In the data recipes workshop, information on dementia could be tasted, touched, and sniffed, helping to create cognitive and corporeal associations in the process.
Moreover, mediators visited Kuldīga Hospital to share four different meals with the patients, observing the particularities of physical sensation. The workshop was inspired by the extravagant dinners Futurists held in Italy in the 1920s and 1930s and experimental Neo-Futurist dinners in the present-day Netherlands. These dinners nourished not just the flesh but the spirit, affecting all human senses and created new ways of eating to promote a healthy exchange of substances and thoughts.