Riga - European Capital of Culture 2014 candidate

iga’s proposal for the projectof the european capital of culture 2014Every city has many faces. Possibly, we know just a few ofthem. City guests and inhabitants often see completely differenttowns. Riga – a cultural metropolis, a European suburb, apoint between Russia and the West, a harbour town, a bilingualsociety, a city with rich cultural traditions, song celebration,Jugendstil, old wooden structures, innovations, new medias,opera. Culture is undoubtedly a significant component of thiscity that cannot go by unnoticed even during a short visit, inthe haste of today when there is no time to observe and obtainin-depth knowledge.For many of Riga’s guests, the first encounter with the city takes placeat the airport. RIX – the airport’s denomination marking Riga on theglobal map. Kult[rix] – that is how we will recognise Riga as the 2014European Capital of Culture (ECC), a city inseparable from culture.Kult[rix] is more than a hybrid of words, it is the key to the Riga’s culturalspace code, encompassing both tradition and innovation, joining thecommon with the elitist, immersing the local into the global and holdingan endless amount of the undiscovered and unknown. One of thechallenges faced by the ECC is to reveal what Kult[rix] is to both Riga’sinhabitants and guests.Often known in Latvia as the patriarch of multi-media, Hardijs Lediņš– architect, musician, man of letters, artist and performance master– said several years ago that ‘... every geographic point is capableof generating anything. Absolutely anything that can be generated.Therefore, practically any point presents the opportunity of generatingan entire scale of values’.[x] is the unknown point on the map of a city, country or Europe thatcreates and accumulates creative energy and expresses itself inthe most unexpected ways. It doesn’t matter if the creative potentialis concentrated in an environment with a well-developed culturalinfrastructure or in a city suburb that can’t pride itself with culturaltraditions and ordered surroundings. Transgressing and expanding theusual territorial and geographical boundaries, initiating and stimulatingthe development of cultural processes onto an unfamiliar territory, weliberate a new charge of creativity and can achieve surprising results.When looking for the [x] point, imagine the view from an aeroplaneheading towards Riga, or a Google Earth image on a computer screen.We can try and zoom in, looking for a familiar place or noticing somethingout of the ordinary. The digital age offers an unaccustomed closeness,allowing the image to be transformed into pixels. The Kult[rix] schemewould work in a similar way, first focusing on the region and the city,then zooming in to the cultural institutions and events that take placethere, and finally – the people.Cultural activities migrate to the suburbs and through gentrificationtransform degenerated territories into cultural polygons andlaboratories. Short-term cultural activities and artists’ interventions informer harbour territories, monotonous residential areas or languishingsuburbs continue the development of new and existing infrastructures,as well as improve the quality of life.[x] is cultural territory, where, through the interaction of various culturalaspects, a symbiosis of new cultural forms is created, widening the usualborders of cultural perception and providing new experience. The textureof culture is interwoven by various forms of life – cuisine, conversations,gardens, psycho-geographic walks. The various expressions of cultureare interconnected. As the global interacts with the local, the nationalculture is influenced by the global and European cultural processes,and they, in turn, are fed by the specific features of the local.Along with the aspect of global and local interaction, we can developa theory about the spirit of the age or zeitgeist, and atmosphere of aplace – they both are mutually connected values. Their interaction couldbe compared to panoramic potentiometer activity. Turning it one waythe proportion of zeitgeist increases and the presence of atmospherediminishes, but turning it the other way, the opposite occurs. However,the total exclusion of one factor is impossible. The system zeitgeist –atmosphere of a place’ has an inseparable polarity, where one pole isin a contradictory position in respect to the other’.As a text is formed by words and spaces between them, the languageof culture is formed by events, buildings, achievements, as well asexpressions of culture integrated in our everyday lives, and which weperceive as self-evident. They are like a fungus mycelium, of whichwe notice only the mushrooms, leaving the net of branched rootsunnoticed. The activities of the ECC could activate the diversity ofcultural forms and the development of their entire spectre.12 13