LCCA Summer School 2020

This year, the Summer School of the Latvian Centre for Contemporary was held in cooperation with Kuldiga Artists’ Residence and the Art Academy of Latvia and it took place from 31 July–5 August. The Summer School is an annual event that draws on developments in critical thinking, artistic research and creative practices related to recent debates in contemporary culture. In 2020 the focus was on issues of feminism and gender studies from both historical and contemporary perspectives in the Baltics and Eastern Europe. The summer school brought together artists, curators, interdisciplinary scholars, and cultural studies researchers who deal with the gender narratives marginalized in art history, as well as on issues of everyday solidarity and emancipation today.

This year, The Danish Cultural Institute in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania supported the project with partial costs bringing to the LCCA Summer School, artist gala Valentine Tanz/Vala Tomasz Foltyn, who is based in Copenhagen

Valentine Tanz/Vala Tomasz Foltyn is an artist and cultural anthropologist who characterizes himself as ‘a poetic choreographer, performance artist, queer witch, priestess of love, disobedient shape-shifter, devotional singer, visual mythology artist, political queer activist. At the LCCA Summer School Valentine Tanz/Vala Tomasz Foltyn will give a lecture-performance ‘Strategies of soft resistance – unveiling unspoken poetics and politics of witchcraft’.

The lecture was a huge success, many important and relevant points were brought up and the participants were very enthusiastic. Check out some pictures from Vala T. Foltyn / Valentine Tanz’s performance/lecture below.