The modern culture forum White Night
This year, the modern culture forum White Night in Riga is scheduled for September 10th and 11th. For the eleven time this annual festival in Riga brings together personalities of culture and art life of the capital and adds some foreign nuances with international modern art projects. White Night has become a welcome and integral part of Riga’s cultural calendar and takes place at the beginning of September each year.
White Night programme will include about 50 culture and art projects of various genres, including cinema, performances, exhibitions, music, and poetry as well as interdisciplinary projects.
All White Night events can be attended free of charge and are hosted in different parts of the city. The most active locations this year are in and near the Spīķeri Quarter, the Old Town, Miera street, the active centre of Riga as well as the left bank of River Daugava.
White Night is a modern urban culture forum – one night a year locals and tourists are invited to enjoy a vigil creativity aimed to change their perception of environment and cultural life. This is a chance to purposefully experience something extraordinary and be involved in various activities offered by artists. White Night tradition was started in 2002 in Paris and it spread like a positive epidemic to Brussels, Rome and Madrid, with Riga as one of the early adopters too. Later on, Amsterdam, Bucharest, Porto and Valetta joined the White Night movement in Europe, while Toronto, Tokyo, Montreal and other cities joined it globally.
WHITE NIGHT EVENTS IN SPIKERI
Mind games
Spīķeri quarter square, 8 Maskavas Street
Sleep is essential to human health, even a necessity of life. While sleeping, a person rejuvenates, gains new energy and strength to continue to fully and creatively work the next day through their daily activities.
In Spīķeri square the visitors will be offered a memorable and impressive audio-visual performance interpreting two natural states of human body – sleep and waking through the prism of the mind. Audio-visual projections through the artist’s visualisations will be presented on four large format screens showing what happens in the human mind while being asleep contrasted to what is seen, thought and visualised when being awake, abstractionism contrasted with realism.
Comedies through the prism of time
Spīķeru kvartālā, Maskavas ielā 4, k-1
Through the ‘White night’ event, the film project ‘Spektrs’ in cooperation with the association ‘Rīgas Spīķeri’ invites you to an open-air cinema programme offering three original, hilarious and witty comedies that visualise humour through time and space – from silent movies to situations comprehensible to the modern Latvian.
Programme:
- Movie “Manhattan”
USA, 1979, 96 min, b/w
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway, Meryl Streep and Michael Murphy
‘Manhattan’ is one of the best movies by Woody Allen, the quintessence of the ‘Woody Allen style’ filmmaking – light, fascinating and romantic. The subtle, visually saturated film is permeated by love for life, New York and all of humankind. The sparkling remarks contain wit and irony that are attenuated by nearly palpable bursting surges of true feelings, real emotions and ‘unbearable lightness of being’.
- Movie “Midnight in Paris”
France/Spain/USA, 2011, 94 min
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Michael Sheen, Tom Hiddleston and Carla Bruni A young couple due to marry in the fall arrive in Paris, the most romantic city. The fiancée’s parents are also in the city for business. They do not have any clue as to the upcoming events in the city of love that are about to irreversibly change their lives. ‘Midnight in Paris’ is a romantic comedy about a young man’s love for the city – Paris. It is about the illusion that a life different from the one we currently have would be much better…
- Short films from Latvian filmmaker Oskars Rupenheits
Performance “Post 100”
“Dirty Deal Teatro”, Spīķeri, Maskavas ielā 12, Building 2,
It is 2016 and the time continues to move on. Regardless of what today is like, we believe that tomorrow will come. But even more important as ever is the question – what will this tomorrow be like? Will in a hundred years the world be ruled by Christians, Muslims, atheists or scientologists? Maybe people will begin to shrink, and the dominant life form on this planet will be tigers the number of which will be growing for the first time in a hundred years? Maybe the melting ice sheets caused by global warming will simply flood the world? There are many utopian and dystopian scenarios. There is one for each of us. We will try to implement some of them in the form of performances, live paintings or installations.
Five teams of artists will give an insight into a unique vision of the development of the world, trying to record and assess the conditions of today on which the world in which we will (or won’t) live tomorrow, in ten, hundred or thousand years, is built.
Programme:
- 20.00–1.00 “Zootopia”, authors Mārtiņš Zariņš and Paulis Svilans. 10 minute video and sound installation which will be shown all night at the DDT building.
- 20.00–00.00 “Incubator”, authors Sandra Lapiņa and Jeļena Oļševska, performed by Valērijs Komisarenko. 15 minute dance performance performed once every hour at the DDT Black hall.
- 20.00–00.30 “Short course in the history of Latvian language”, author Laura Čaupale, performed by Anete Saulīte, Toms Liepājnieks. 20 minute language game in which you can participate all evening long in the DTT White hall.
Supported by: Riga City Council, Education, Culture and Sports Department of Riga City Council
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