Sunday 27 November – final day. Due to a misunderstanding when booking flights Kristjan left early for Iceland today. Aina and Lidija were busy with something else outside of the city … the residency was drifting apart and away rather than finishing with a big bang … maybe that was okay. It kind of reflected how it started … but with different people playing the first and last to do things.
Kaspars took some shots of Sorcha and me in our ’installation’. I look forward to seeing the results from his splendid medium format film camera! I thought that we would pack away things but Kaspars asked us to leave everything as it was so that he could take more photos.
Matthias drove Sorcha, Kaspars, Andreas, and me in to town, Fenu was already there having breakfast with friends. We dropped Kaspars off to pick-up his car from the night before and continued to the central food market. Sorcha and I headed inside leaving Matthias and Andreas to smoke outside. We were seduced by the counters full of fantastic looking sweets. Kaspars and Fenu arrived, we walked around and decided on coffee and pastries/doughnuts. It was really nice to sit there together and chat … not specifically about the residency or our projects … more about our lives ’back home’ … our families and other friends.
Andreas was leaving that afternoon, he and Matthias stayed longer at the market and then went to the airport. Fenu, Kaspars, Sorcha and I went to the National Art Museum. If I had realised the time I would have spent less time in the temporary coin exhibit and more time in the permanent collection … as it was I covered two floors and two centuries of Latvian art in a little under 15 minutes – not something I would recommend. When, and I think it is a ’when’ rather than an ’if’, I am in Riga again I shall give the museum the day that it deserves.
We convinced Kaspars to come with us to Lido – a wonderful post-soviet self-service restaurant experience … if I understand correctly the original Lido(s) were from the soviet times … it’s not actually self-service – you choose what you want at the counter and the staff portion up approximately 100 grams of it on your plate … prices are per 100 gram for most dishes or per single item for filled pancakes and the like. The experience is better than the food! Now it was Kaspars turn to convince us to go out to where the Daugava river meets the Baltic Sea. He pointed out other empty buildings where artists had either had studios or had tried to organise studios – the monolithic former rubber factory had been one of the soviet union’s largest industrial buildings. Sitting in the back of his car driving through the dark suburbs reminded me of returning home after childhood day trips with my family … I drifted in and out of momentary naps.
A bitterly cold wind blew as we walked towards the shoreline and then out along the jetty to the beacon guiding ships in to Riga’s vast port. This walk … though not ’officially’ part of any workshop … particularly put me in mind of Frozen Progress – how could it not as the four of us walked across the snow with the cold wind whistling in our ears. Finding the narrow slither of protection afforded by the beacon we watched a large empty cargo ship silently glide through the black water. We took the passing of a smaller speedier boat as a sign to begin the walk back.
Kaspars, Fenu, and Sorcha were the first people that I met on the residency and it seemed fitting that I should spend the last evening with them.
