Siegfried. NOMADIC CINEMA

12.04.-24.08.2025. 11.00-18.00

From April 11 to August 24, Siegfried's exhibition “Nomadic Cinema” will be on view in the Great Hall.

The exhibition will offer an insight into the work of Sig (Siegfried Debrebant), a French composer, musician, film director and traveler of worlds. Although Sig's sudden death last autumn has radically altered the process of making this exhibition, and most likely the way we look at his oeuvre, which now is revealed in its totality, it is a full-fledged emanation of his ideas and presence. 

The exposition is centered around the film Kinogamma I & II, which is more than two hours long masterpiece of ecstatic world view.  It is complemented by black-and-white analog photographs taken during Sig's wanderings, which can be viewed both as a supplement to his cinematic vision of the world, as travel notes, or as an artistic inquiry into the mysteries of the human dimension.

Sig's film and photo works are permeated by an undisguised, perhaps even romantic fascination with the mundane, almost invisible substance of the human existence. The image appears here as a witness and interpreter of mysteries of time and being, where Bresson's "decisive moment" merges with the Mythical time in which all the present, past and future coexist, where the evanescent and timeless are intertwined into one inextricable totality.

In 1998, Siegfried Debrebant's (1973-2024) first feature movie "Louise (take 2)" was screened in the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival. Six more feature films followed, which were shot in various parts of the world and successfully screened at Cannes, Rotterdam, Sundance and other prestigious international film festivals. In 2004, the film "Sansa" was shown at the "Arsenals" film festival. In 2017, in Riga, Siegfried shot the film "Riga, take One". His feature film "Bengali Variation” shot in Calcutta was shown at the Riga IFF film festival in 2022.

Siegfried has written music not only for all his films, but also for films made by other directors. As a musician, under the pseudonym Sig, he has collaborated with such famous musicians as Ivry Gitlis, Erik Truffaz, Steve Lacy, Le mystère des voix Bulgares, Thomas Bangalter, Vladimir Volkov, Lewis Pragasam, Joy Frempong, and Latvian musician Artis Orubs. He has given solo piano concerts with the Russian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian Philharmonics and has released numerous music albums. His last concert took place on the stage of the "Kanepe Culture Center" (KKC) in August 2024.

The exhibition is organized by the Association of Culture Institutions of Riga State City Council and the exhibition hall Riga Contemporary Art Space with the support of the Riga City Council and Kaņepe Culture Center.

Beate Poikāne. PETALS SPROUTING FROM THE SKIN

30.07.2025. 19.00

The Riga Contemporary Art Space will host “Petals Sprouting from the Skin”, a performance by Beate Poikāne, created in collaboration with artists Ģirts Dubults and Laine Luīze Freidenberga.*

The performance unfolds as a poetic system of mutual resonance between performers Laine and Ģirts. Rooted in the fantasy worlds that gravitate around Latvian origins “Petals Sprouting from the Skin” emerges as a speculative space in which the artist drifts through internalized Eastern European atmospheres and those parts of the self that feel out of place in Scandinavian cultural contexts. By refusing assimilation, a new sense of belonging is nurtured through the construction of an imagery system tied to a shared place of origin. Here, the boundaries of the human soften and merge with the environment, giving rise to new beings who carry elements of their surroundings –apple blossom buds, failed infrastructure projects, fragments of home. It marks the beginning of a gentle reimagining of cultural landscapes while searching for new forms of attachment that stretch beyond identity, and lead into landscapes of becoming.

 

“Frozen puddle portals / on a gloomy walk with my memory purse / Latvian void / ripening apple blossoms / to the Maxima and back / icicles melted by licking / failed infrastructure projects / springtime craving / goods from the West / sweet, sticky human / the concrete surface crumbling / our theatre at the abandoned station.”

About the artist

Beate Poikāne is a visual artist, theater maker and scenographer. Working at the intersection of visual art and contemporary theater, she creates visual dramaturgies and self-performing environments that explore how bodily experience within specific cultural and spatial contexts shapes spaces of imagination. In her work, humans interact with non-human entities, objects, and technologies as performers, becoming driving forces of ever-shifting landscapes.

Poikāne holds an MFA in Directing from the Stockholm University of the Arts' Performing Arts program, a Master’s degree in Scenography and a Bachelor's degree in Visual Communication from the Art Academy of Latvia, and has studied in the “Performance and Time-Based Art” program at the Faculty of Fine Art at KMD, University of Bergen, Norway.

Ģirts Dubults is a choreographer whose areas of exploration include language, visuality, and people. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in choreography at the Stockholm University of the Arts. Previously, he earned a bachelor’s degree in contemporary dance from the Latvian Academy of Culture and a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Rīga Stradiņš University. He has also participated in the creative training program at the choreography center “La Faktoria” in Pamplona, Spain. Ģirts is a member of the contemporary dance collective “SIXTH” (Latvia).

Laine Luīze Freidenberga is a musician who created the soundtrack for the performance “Petals Sprouting from the Skin”. The sound for the piece was developed by deconstructing the traditional sound of the double bass and reimagining the musician’s interaction with the instrument.

 

Duration of the performance: 45’

Admission to the event with the exhibition ticket

* The piece was developed as Poikāne’s MFA graduation work in Contemporary Theatre Directing at the Stockholm University of the Arts.

Laimdota Malle. I BIT INTO THE SKIN OF THE GLASS LAGOON

15.08.-26.10.2025.

The exhibition "I Bit into the Skin of the Glass Lagoon" explores the fragile boundary between body and landscape, where the “glass lagoon” emerges as a metaphor for a world that is beautiful, delicate and intimate, while the “bite into its skin” signifies a bodily closeness to the environment – simultaniously sensual and violent.

Artists Laimdota Malle (LV), Anastasija Šnepe-Šnepe (LV), and Rebeka Korn (UK) work across installation art and interdisciplinary research. Malle’s sculptural works traverse the porous line between inner and outer landscapes, balancing the organic and synthetic to reflect on posthuman ecologies. Šnepe and Korn's artistic practice examine the body as a vessel of generational memory, bringing together autoethnography, hydrofeminist theory, and material inquiry.