SOCIO–POLITICAL ACTIVISM IN CURATORIAL PRACTICE. THE CASE STUDY OF FESTIVAL “SURVIVAL KIT”

Abstract

This article is focusing on the potential strategies that characterize the practice of socio-politically activism in curatorial practice and its potentiality to transform the visual art institutions. Socio-political activism in curatorial practice addresses the specific socio-political issues in various exhibition formats and includes in its methodology strategic decisions that have lasting impact both on the functioning of the institutions themselves and socio- political change in general. This article also examines what strategies Latvian contemporary art curators use to encourage the presence of socio-politically active discourse in the Latvian visual arts scene. The article concludes that strategically inclusive activities in the context of Latvian art institutions are mostly not part of the exhibition policy. The case study under consideration is Latvian contemporary art festival “Survival kit” that is one of the rare art events in Latvia that have engaged with the possibility of real socio-political change and have found it continually necessary to work in ways that question the social and political life of Latvia.