RIBOCA2 Riga, Latvia
Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art

RIBOCA2
and suddenly it all blossoms
16 MAY – 11 OCTOBER 2020

The second edition of RIBOCA will be curated by Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel. The Biennial will bring together 60 international and regional artists and creators whose works challenge traditional definitions of art, expanding its usual territories by working and thinking beyond disciplines. Spreading across Riga’s parks, former industrial sites, wastelands, domestic houses, monuments, restaurants, hotels and harbours, the Biennial, following the principles of entanglement, embraces the pulse and rhythm of the transforming ecosystem of the city.

RIBOCA2 will look to re-enchantment as a frame for building desirable futures, to reimagine ways of being human in a context of deep ecological, economic and social mutation. Against cynicism and political despair, transforming fear into possibility and peril into exuberance, the Biennial will seek alternative actions, thoughts and narratives in the perspective of common futures. Can art offer alternative models for the way we inhabit Earth?

RIBOCA2
and suddenly it all blossoms

RIBOCA2 2nd edition
curated by Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel
Press and professional preview:
Thursday 14 May – Friday 15 May 2020
RIBOCA2 open to public:
Saturday 16 May – Sunday 11 October 2020
Brīvības 33 – 8, Rīga, LV-1010 Latvia
https://www.rigabiennial.com/

The Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA) is an international biennial with a European focus and a strong regional profile, founded in 2016. Taking the rich history of Riga and the Baltic states as its underlying framework, the Biennial highlights the artistic landscape of the wider region and creates opportunities for artists to enter into dialogue with the cultural, historical and socio-political context of the city and its geographic surrounds.

Taking into account criticisms of the proliferation of biennial culture, or ‘biennialisation’ as it has been called, RIBOCA aims to create a sustainable model based on best practices that prioritise artists, artistic production and the meticulous presentation and mediation of art. The Biennial is based on a working process that starts from the local, expanding to the national and the regional, and finally to the transnational. The Biennial aims to take root and make roots in the place where it is situated. Reflecting the biennial’s global outlook and mission to increase artistic engagement between the Baltic region and the rest of the world, a significant proportion of the commissioned and selected artists either live, work or were born in the Baltic region, a territory which still remains relatively unexplored despite its prolific artistic production.

RIBOCA sees itself as a critical site of artistic experimentation and knowledge production, an activator of co-operation and exchange between local and regional actors and institutions, an instigator of generosity towards peers, and a barometer of current social, political and economic issues filtered through artistic practices.

microRIBOCA

The inter-season programme of RIBOCA, microRIBOCA has been developed to foster a feeling of belonging to a particular place among Rigans and to free their creative potential that is present in everyday life in the public space of the city. It will offer interdisciplinary public art projects and urban exploration walks providing Rigans with instruments of social involvement useful for urban revitalization.

RIBOCA2: and suddenly it all blossoms 
Curated by Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel 
Humanity is now at a crossroads and all signs call for a new epoch. Seeking an alternative to the deluge of hopeless narratives, the second edition of Riga Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA2), curated by Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel, looks to re-enchantment as a frame for building desirable futures, to reimagine ways of being human in a context of deep ecological, economic and social mutation. “The end of the world” has always haunted mankind. But while in previous tales, the apocalypse was provoked by some exterior phenomenon, an asteroid or plague befalling the Earth, current scientific reports attest that humans are solely responsible for the mass extinction to come.
Against cynicism and political despair, transforming fear into possibility and peril into exuberance, the Biennial seeks alternative actions, thoughts and narratives in the perspective of common futures. Can art offer alternative models for the way we inhabit Earth?
The Biennial finds inspiration from Riga, Latvia and the Baltics, where “worlds have ended” many times in its history, having undergone occupations, wars and economical flux. These conditions cultivated inspired practices of resilience that culminated in the surreal human chain of two million citizens, a 600 km social sculpture, linking Tallinn to Riga to Vilnius in 1989. Riga and the Baltics have also been a zone of cultural entanglement for centuries, a bridge at the confluence of territories, where sensitivities and ideologies have been assembled and enmeshed since its very inception.
The Biennial will bring together 60 international and regional artists and creators whose works challenge traditional definitions of art, expanding its usual territories by working and thinking beyond disciplines. Spreading across Riga’s parks, former industrial sites, wastelands, domestic houses, monuments, restaurants, hotels and harbours, the Biennial, following the principles of entanglement, embraces the pulse and rhythm of the transforming ecosystem of the city.

RIBOCA2 Chief Curator REBECCA LAMARCHE-VADE

Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel is a French curator and writer, former curator at Palais de Tokyo (2012 – 2019). Her internationally critically acclaimed projects include the solo exhibitions of Tomás Saraceno, Tino Sehgal, Marguerite Humeau, Ed Atkins, David Douard, Helen Marten, François Curlet and Jon Rafman. ON AIR by Tomás Saraceno (2018-2019) spanned the entire 13000m2 of the Palais de Tokyo and became the most attended exhibition in its history, while the carte blanche to Tino Sehgal (2016) was the largest live-art show ever presented worldwide. In 2015 she presented the group show Le bord des mondes (The edge of the worlds), which focused on the limits of the territories of art after the writings of Marcel Duchamp. Lamarche-Vadel has regularly collaborated with international institutions, such as the Château de Versailles with Voyage d’Hiver(associate curator, 2017), the 11th Bamako Biennale (curatorial advisory, 2017-2018), MoMA PS1 with the projects Truce (2013) and Bright Intervals (2014), the Stedelijk Museum and Trouw with Landscape (2013), and the 12th Biennale de Lyon with Unachieved Presents (Resonance, 2013). A graduate in History, Political Sciences and Art History at the Sorbonne, she regularly coordinates and participates in seminars, juries and talks worldwide, and her writings have appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Monopol, Mousse, Cura, and l’Officiel Art, amongst others. She is the 2019 guest curator of FIAC special projects.

RIBOCA2 – CURATORIAL STATEMENT
Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel
“The end of the world” has always haunted mankind. But while in previous tales, apocalypse was provoked by some exterior phenomenon, an asteroid or plague befalling the Earth, current scientific reports attest that humans are solely responsible for the mass extinction to come. Humanity is now at
the cross-roads and all signs call for a new epoch. Seeking an alternative to the deluge of hopeless narratives, the second edition of Riga Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA2), curated by Rebecca
Lamarche-Vadel, looks to re-enchantment as a frame for building desirable futures, to reimagine ways of being human in a context of deep ecological, economical and social mutation.
How can we construct an inclusive society of entangled solidarities between beings? How to reconsider our culture when it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism? Which
mythologies could replace the narratives of progress that dominated modernity? And can art offer alternative models for the way we inhabit the Earth?
The Biennial engages with our mental landscapes, encouraging poetic reinvention, asserting the potential for art to dialogue with the challenges and complexities of the world around us. The Earth, humans, non humans and matters are part of a vast interconnected network in which we can no longer play a central dominating role. Our constant exchanges with other presences, from micro to macro scales, confirm our hybrid, interdependent position within the bigger assembly of the living. The notion of collective re-enchantment means listening more carefully to these rhythms, looking more closely at other trajectories, being aware of longer timescales and the invisible architectures that animate the world. Against cynicism and political despair, transforming fear into possibility and peril into
exuberance, the Biennial seeks alternative actions, thoughts and narratives in the perspective of common futures.
The Biennial finds inspiration from Riga, Latvia and the Baltics, where “worlds have ended” many times in recent and distant history. Amidst occupations, wars, and economical flux, the region has undergone
radical changes and rebirths. These conditions cultivated inspired practices of resilience, amongst them poetry, ritual and song, signs of a groundswell that culminated in the surreal human chain of two million citizens, a 600 km social sculpture, linking Tallinn to Riga to Vilnius in 1989. Riga and the Baltics have also been a zone of cultural entanglement for centuries, a bridge at the confluence of territories, where sensitivities and ideologies have been assembled and enmeshed since its very inception.
The Biennial will bring together 60 visionary international and regional artists and creators whose works challenge traditional definitions of art, expanding its usual territories by working and thinking beyond disciplines. Their researches question established conventions, becoming catalysts for
alternative ways of looking, listening and feeling. Spreading across Riga’s parks, former industrial sites, wastelands, domestic houses, monuments, restaurants, hotels and harbours, the Biennial, following the principles of entanglement, embraces the pulses and rhythms of the transforming ecosystem of the city.

RIBOCA2 participants:
Pawel Althamer* / Kristaps Ancāns* / Alex Baczynski-Jenkins* / Nina Beier* / Oliver Beer / Hicham Berrada* / Dora Budor* / Eglė Budvytytė* / Valdis Celms* / Emanuele Coccia / CAConrad / Lorraine Daston / Edith Dekyndt* / Vinciane Despret / Erika Eiffel* / Vija Eniņa* / Miķelis Fišers* / Heinz Frank* / Monica Gagliano / Cyprien Gaillard* / Bendik Giske* / Honkasalo-Niemi-Virtanen* (Felicia Honkasalo, Akuliina Niemi, Sinna Virtanen) / Katrin Hornek* / Pierre Huyghe / Marguerite Humeau / IevaKrish* (Krišjānis Sants, Ieva Gaurilčikaitė) / Institute of the Cosmos: Anton Vidokle, Arseny Zhilyaev, Marina Simakova / Mikhail Karikis / Agnese Krivade* / Lina Lapelytė* / Hanne Lippard* / Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing / Mikhail Maksimov* / Mareunrol’s* (Mārīte Mastiņa-Pēterkopa, Rolands Pēterkops) / Berenice Olmedo* / Dominika Olszowy* / Sarah Ortmeyer* / Philippe Petit / Bridget Polk* / Paul B. Preciado / Tobias Rees / Ugo Rondinone / Jaanus Samma* / Tomás Saraceno*/ Boaventura de Sousa Santos / Ashley Hans Scheirl* / Augustas Serapinas* / Timur Si-Qin* / Nikolay Smirnov* / Anastasia Sosunova* / Daina Taimiņa*

ABOUT RIBOCA
The Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA) is an international biennial with a European focus and a strong regional profile, founded in 2016. Taking the rich history of Riga and the Baltic states as its underlying framework, the biennial highlights the artistic landscape of the wider region and creates opportunities for artists to enter into dialogue with the cultural, historical and socio-political context of the city and its geographic surrounds.

Taking into account criticisms of the proliferation of biennial culture, or ‘biennialisation’ as it has been called, RIBOCA aims to create a sustainable model based on best practices that prioritise artists, artistic production and the meticulous presentation and mediation of art. The Biennial is based on a working process that starts from the local, expanding to the national and the regional, and finally to the transnational. The Biennial aims to take root and make roots in the place where it is situated. Reflecting the biennial’s global outlook and mission to increase artistic engagement between the Baltic region and the rest of the world, a significant proportion of the commissioned and selected artists either live, work or were born in the Baltic region, a territory which still remains relatively unexplored despite its prolific artistic production.

RIBOCA sees itself as a critical site of artistic experimentation and knowledge production, an activator of co-operation and exchange between local and regional actors and institutions, an instigator of generosity towards peers, and a barometer of current social, political and economic issues filtered through artistic practices.

RIBOCA FOUNDATION
The Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA) was founded as a major initiative of the Riga Biennial Foundation, its commissioning body. The Founder and Commissioner of the Riga Biennial Foundation, Agniya Mirgorodskaya, developedRIBOCA in order to set up a new global platform for international and Baltic artists, to promote contemporary art and provide educational and community support within the region, as well as to increase artistic engagement between the Baltic region and the rest of the world.

Riga has been an important trading post since the Middle Ages, and during the late 19th and 20th centuries, Latvia has served as a significant industrial base. Latvia’s historical relations with Sweden, Russia, Poland and Germany have put it at the crossroads of different cultures and ideologies, with its gaze shifting between East and West. RIBOCAcharts the particular psychogeography of this region within the new world order at a time of major global shifts.

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