An image of the cover of Ievas Jerohina’s photo exhibition The Encountered Ones booklet. The exhibition in the Hull Shop of Andrejsala was opened on 31 October 2006 and those interested had a chance to visit it for nearly one month.
The Story of Daniel Ray
On 5 October, the Andrejsala’s Welding Shops (Dirty Deal Cafe) hosted the first performance of the theatre group’s United Intimacy internationally recognized production The Story of Daniel Ray. The script writers, directors and actors – Armands Berģis, Baiba Geķe, Andris Kalnozols, Mārcis Lācis, Gints Širmelis-Širmanis un Ģirts Šolis – described their production like this: “A great many of us keep up with TV serials, computer games, and there are as many people who try to ignore things like that. However, there is now one generation who does not want to know who Vinny the Pooh is, but prefer pokemons, the Cow and the Chicken, spider-men and batmen. We are not trying to influence or convince anyone or else to get involved in any kind of struggle for and against. This production is a parody on us, on how important brands are in our lives, on what sort of stuff we like watching, on what is that we want to see. The image of actors-terrorists has been chosen deliberately”.
Since there had been a growing interest and wish to watch the performance again, The Story of Daniel Ray returned to Andrejsala (The Power Shop) also in November and December.
Poetry readings by young Finnish, Estonian and Latvian poets
On 5 October, the Latvian Embassy in Estonia and the Finnish Institute in Estonia carried out the project The Poetry Trip – poetry readings by young Finnish, Estonian and Latvian poets in the Andrejsala’s Power Shop or the Orbit’s poetry lab.
The project Poetry Trip involved the popular Finnish poet Heli Laaksonen, who speaks and writes in the southwest dialect of Finnish, and the circulation of her poetry book reached an incredible 35,000 copies, as well as Sanna Karlstrem, whose first poetry collection was awarded the Finland’s Poetry Prize.
Estonia was represented by Contra, the poet already known by the Latvians, and the popular young generation Estonian poet Elo Viiding. Latvia was represented by the poets Inga Gaile and Kārlis Vērdiņš as well as the author of the idea of the project and the poetry translator Guntars Godiņš.
A similar trip to popularize the poetry of the three countries is expected to take place in 2007, too.
The year’s last program of Future Shorts
On 27 October, Andrejsala’s Carpenter’s Shop hosted the fifth and the year’s last Future Shorts demonstration of shorts (the program was shown repeatedly on 3 November).
In the echo of several publicly significant events and in expectation of new ones, the fifth program of the Future Shorts was made up by a collection of political shorts.
Both What Barry Says (Simon Robson, 2004) and Harrowdown Hill (Chel White, 2006) express their harsh criticism at the US and British foreign policy and the participation of these countries in the war in Iraq. The audience had a chance to evaluate Jānis Vingrs’ film Baltais zvērs (The White Beast), which tells about the year 2012 in Latvia, when all those unable to produce a bank card with at least 30 LVL balance on it are considered offenders to be eliminated. The program was ended by the music video of the Faithless about the grandiose mass celebration of the North Korea Victory Day. The Future Shorts is to come back to Andrejsala in 2007 with new grand events and contests!
Photo Artist Ieva Jerohina's One-Man Exhibition Encounters
On 31 October, the project room Canteen (Ēdnīca) of the Centre for Contemporary Arts (the Hull Shop) saw the opening of the one-man exhibition of the photo artist Ieva Jerohina. It was the first exhibition to take place on these premises, and it was open until 26 November.
The exhibition offered 12 portraits of teenagers from the collection Encounters, which was created during the residence stay in Düsseldorf. The artist took photographs of the teenagers in their rooms and interiors, and supplemented the photographs with a textual part: every teenager’s answer to 2 questions: What makes you happy? and What is your dream of the future? The portraits photographed in the teenagers’ rooms, combined with their reflections on happiness and the future, reflect well the interests of the youths themselves as well as make one think of the society in general.
“The heroes of photographs” are teenagers aged 15 to 18. Teenage years are the most mysterious, brightest and also the most complicated period of human life. It is the time when a person finds him/herself in a sort of a waiting room, when he/she is not already a child, but not yet an adult either. In the waiting room, one can come across the most daring dreams of the future. It was a challenge to work with teenagers, moreover in a different country. I surrendered myself to the city’s stream, not knowing where and whom I would meet. I encountered a lot of interesting teenagers, who opened doors to their rooms and dared reveal some of their dreams”, I. Jerohina described the idea of her exhibition.
The collection Encounters is but a part of a larger project by I. Jerohina – a series of teenage photographs and their answers to the questions from various countries. This project has been carried out also during her residence stay in Iceland, and this part of the collection was on display in September and November 2006 in the Latvian office of the Council of the Nordic Countries Ministers. The collection enables visitors to compare teenage thinking in various countries as well as the environment, which surrounds their lives.
