The final concert of Skaņu Mežs 10-year anniversary concert cycle will take place on Thursday November 29 at the Anglican Church. This event will coincide with the first day of Advent, a day Skaņu Mežs traditionally marks with a concert. Performing will be the highly acclaimed American vocalist, Julianna Barwick, and Robert Lippok from the post-rock group To Rococo Rot. In addition to these two artists, Jeļena Glazova and Zane Raudiņa will perform a duet. Their cooperation, initiated by Skaņu Mežs, will take the form of an improvisational audiovisual performance, a duet between Glazova’s music, and Raudiņa’s video art. The piece they will be performing has been specially created for this concert.
Jeļena Glazova is one of few women in the male dominated electronic music scene. This young artist has prefers to work in many fields, combining image, poetry, sound and installation. Glazova currently studies audiovisual art at the Latvian Academy of Art. She only started working with music last year, but quickly attracted attention with her interesting approach. Her signature sound is drone and she uses the aesthetic of noise music which she creates by manipulating vocals live. Glazova herself draws a parallel between this interest in the voice and her work with poetry.
Zane Raudiņa is a young latvian visual artist, who has won acclaim for her video art. Raudiņa’s visuals are strongly influenced by 1960s science fiction. She highly appreciates the early stages of this genre, when models, rather than computer graphics, were used for effect. Zane also uses models in her own work, to replicate the naivety and dark longing for cosmic clarity and happiness prevalent in these films. A hint at the 1080s also often appears in her videos, which are always projected onto self-made structures – bright colors and a dreamlike haziness. It could be said that her pieces are a feminine attempt to create her own synthetically colorful and isolated reality. This might even, in its distancing, offer her a chance at changing her perspective of herself.
The concert on November 29 will take place in collaboration with the Goethe Institut in Latvia, the project Sound Exchange, and the foundation Trust for Mutual Understanding. It should be noted that the book Anthology of Experimental Music Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe 1950-2010 will be presented at the start of the concert. This book has been produced as part of the Sound Exchange project, and includes essays by latvian authors, although it will be published in English and German.
Skaņu Mežs is a member of ECAS (European Cities of Advanced Sound) which in turn is supported by EU Culture Programme 2007-2013 and the Latvian Ministry of Culture.
Tickets can be bought through the ticketing service – www.bilesuserviss.lv. Tickets bought early cost 7 LVL and 10 LVL on the door. Anglican Church, Anglikāņu iela 2A, doors open starting 18:45, concert starts at 19:00. Further information: www.skanumezs.lv