INTERNATIONAL VIDEO AND CONTEMPORARY ART FESTIVAL
The goal of the WATERPIECES festival is to highlight the relevance of the medium of moving image and video within the field of contemporary art. In 2020 the international contemporary and video art festival WATERPIECES celebrated its 20th anniversary. Every year during the festival, audiences have the chance to discover the technical and artistic diversity of the moving image. Select programmes showcase the latest domestic video art works and globally renowned festival and experimental moving image archive programmes. In an era, when much mention is made of the ‘renaissance of video art’, Rigans and tourists have the opportunity to view internationally renowned works of art, continuing to promote the ubiquitous nature of the video medium and to observe its trends in the context of contemporary art.
Originally a narrow event of interest to professional artists, the festival has evolved into one of Latvia’s cultural events with the richest traditions and has been held every year for the past 20 years. The festival provides a platform for the promotion of the development of video art in Latvia. Programmes compiled under the auspices of the festival are distributed to foreign partners and serve as a sustainable means of nurturing collaborative partnerships and addressing new audiences. WATERPIECES is a meeting place for internationally renowned media art curators, moving image art professionals and festival representatives, as well as an opportunity to discover memorable, entertaining and inspiring work of video art from the latest programmes from world famous video archives and media art festivals, providing an insight into the development of the latest technologies and the influence of differences in culture on the art of the moving image.
Over the course of many years, the WATERPIECES festival has been organized in collaboration with the world’s most notable video and media art and short film festivals and archives, including the video art archive Onedotzero, the prestigious Japanese Media Art Festival, the German travelling video festival CologneOFF, the Finnish video archive Avearhi, the internationally renowned Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, the Trans Europe Halles professional cultural centre network the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the SonicActs festival, the cultural and art platform Screencity Lab, the Lithuanian National Art Gallery and the Estonian Contemporary Art Centre, etc. Every year, the festival attracts several new cooperation partners, continuing to expand the programme’s geographical, visual and professional diversity.
The festival main cooperation partners in Latvia are Riga City Council, the State Culture Capital Foundation, the international short film festival “2Annas”, the Art Academy of Latvia, Liepaja University, Riga Technical University, University of Latvia, RISEBA and many others.
PROGRAMME 2022
JULY – AUGUST
Free admission
6.07. 7 PM Inspired and Audacious: Women Creators in Japanese Animation (Japan Media Arts Festival)
13.07. 7 PM Prix Ars Electronica Animation Selection
20.07. 7 PM Grounded in Movement: Video Art Ethiopia (AVAF Addis Video Art Festival)
27.07. 7 PM Video Art Argentina (FIVA Festival)
3.08. 7 PM International Short Film Festival Oberhausen – International Competition
10.08. 7 PM Short Export – Made in Germany*
17.08. 7 PM International Short Film Festival Oberhausen – Art and Experiment
24.08. 7 PM Video Art of Israel**
31.08. 7 PM Japan Media Arts Festival – Animation Selection
The series of event is implemented with the funding of Riga City Council as part of the Riga Summer Culture Program.
*Supported by Goethe-Institut Riga.
**Supported by the Embassy of Israel in Latvia.
