Riga Sound Locations was a four day workshop that took place at various spaces around the city of Riga, Latvia. The project starts with the concept of site-specific artistic activity while integrating contemporary sound recording practices that cover areas of “performance”, “field recording”, “improvisation” and “documentation”. With the site being the prime focus, the artist as actor and instigator uses the means of sound to investigate the qualities of of the surrounding space and his or place in it. Riga Sound Locations (”Rīgas Skaņu Vietas“) was a workshop conducted from August 14-16th at various sites around Riga and was organized by Maksims Shentelevs and myself in cooperation with NOASS. The aim of the workshop was to visit 6 different locations around the city in order to investigate site-specific sound activity related to each place. These activities would be recorded and filmed to document each intervention. A group of about 6 people went out each day to see what could be found that was unique to each locations. The sites included an abandoned apartment, construction site, former power station, abandoned warehouse, old military airport and a backyard. Apart from the backyard all of these locations were temporary in the sense that they either being developed or destroyed at some point in the near future. So not only were we documenting our activities we attempted to capture the transitional feeling of the spaces.
day 1, at an abandoned flat across the Daugava river.
day 1, 25 stories up on the roof of a new skyscraper
day 1, Jekabs tries to contact mic a noisy construction elevator
day 2, playing found plates at an empty factory space
day 2, ringing hanging pipes at an empty factory space
day 2, exploring the steam turbine at the former Riga power station
day 3, rolling ceramic insulators at an abandoned military air hangar
day 3, improvising with found objects in an abandoned air hangar
day 3, an improv session in the backyard
day 4, returning to the former power station
day 4, Patrick McGinley joins in to play the steam turbine wheel
The video recordings were edited and presented as an installation at the SKAN sound art event in Riga from September 26th to October 13th.
Former Riga Power Station (2:02) Riga, August 2007:
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Former Military Airplaine Hangar (2:08) Riga, August 2007:
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Backyard Improvidation (2:20) Riga, August 2007:
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participants included: John Grzinich, Toomas Thetloff, Maksims Šenteļevs, Jēkabs Nīmanis, Kaspars Kalniņš, Gints Birznieks, Ivars Šmits, Ivars Gravlējs, Mārtiņš Strautnieks (Martines Gonzales), Jānis Biķis, Kaspars Groševs, Patrick McGinley, Johanna Lonka
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[...] and mixed them for a live presentation. The exhibition included the video documentation from the Riga Sound Locations workshop I was involved with in August. As I did not have much time to view all the works I’m [...]