Dizaina Studija. Telpa Forma Laiks

I believe that design is space. The space in which you are, the space where you live. For example, so much has changed in Riga! But what and why? Is it only because strangers have arrived here, who weren’t here before? Have the brains of Latvians changed with all of the impressions that they have around them? But the fact that Rīga has transformed into an international metropolis for the nth time, is clear. It used to be like this long ago, and now it is again. As a result, all of the design elements which we see around us are dependent on this. For example, now there are Germans or Japanese here and they wish to see their own assumptions.  In turn, local businessmen sense this and adjust their strategies.  

To be honest, when I came to Latvia, I did not get any real impression about being Latvian. The Latvian image is still forming, but back then, in the early 1990s and late 1980s, there was no Latvian image. There was the former romanticism. I could find out a lot more about Latvia by meeting an émigré Latvian in America or Australia, rather than coming here. National design has slowly developed over the last eighteen years, also mental design, but it is not yet completed. The teenager has not yet come of age. Everything is still in progress, and you cannot be based only on the 1920s, because there was a large gap in the middle – fifty years long. Of course, it would be interesting to think what it would have been like if this would not have occurred. But things are they way they are, and at the moment it is all forming in a very interesting way. It is too early to talk about things which have always existed. There is a different story about all sorts of symbols and ethnographic belts. I think that at the moment something is happening, which we will be able to discuss in around twenty years time.

One aspect that has definitely crystallised is that Latvians like to eat. Here you have to eat properly, and that can be seen. Perhaps not in Riga so much, but certainly in the country. People eat seriously, over a long period, and in large quantities. This is why a phenomenon such as Ķirsons has appeared. This is totally right, natural and appropriate for the nation. You could also mention order; perhaps this is still a residue from the Germans – the realisation that every responsibility has to be fulfilled properly. If you have been under the subjugation of a German, Russian, Swedish or some other master for eight hundred years, then you have to obey. I was in Brazil; I was travelling in the country. All around me there was chaos, chaos, chaos, and suddenly – a fence. A nice fence. That was where émigré Latvians lived. I drove further – chaos, chaos, chaos, a fence, a Latvian.

Latvians are also characterised by the forest and mushrooming. We had a joint project with the French: they wanted to understand what a real Latvian is. They dug around, searched on the internet, came here and reached the conclusion that there is nothing more Latvian than mushrooming. Mushrooms and Latvia – these concepts are one and the same. No wonder Boletus mushrooms are pictured on the one lat coins...

I think that in a nation with a population of two and a half million, there can be no common characteristics which characterise Latvians. It is more likely that they are small things. For example, Stendzenieks’ advertisement with the blue cow and the guys flying, or those dolls in Sabile. I think that these are typical. There are original things, but I doubt if there is one unified tendency, individualism is more prevalent. Latvians are individual farmers. For example, people from Liepāja are locally patriotic to an absurd degree. In the country also it is sometimes village against village, but in Liepāja it is something indescribable. There are those from Liepāja, and those not from Liepaja. And you are only counted as being ‘from Liepāja’ if you were born there. If you weren’t born there, then you’re not from Liepāja.  In its own way these characteristics, this spitefulness can also viewed in the context of a space. It is a robust and slightly rough city, which is located by the sea. I don’t mean rough in a bad way, but a good one. Riga is more... there for its looks.  

Nevertheless at the same time everything is accessible to everyone and you can be influenced from the other side of the world. This is what happens today. Those who offer something unique and unusual also crawl out of the collective flow of media. Then they are mythologised, but only for a very short period of time. As Andy Warhol once said, in the future everyone will have their fifteen minutes of fame.  

In a city, the environment is a continually changing process. A museum is meant for invariability. Put something in it, and it stays that way. American poets, the deaf-dumb Peter Cook and his mate, the sign language master Kenny Lerner, who visited Latvia, said to me – if a time machine was ever built, then they would be the first ones to try it. They would return to 1200 in Spain and would tell the conquistadors that if they every travelled in that direction and if they met some guys in canoes with feathers, then to turn back, because they were devils. After that they would fly further to the Indians and tell them that if large ships arrive with guys from over there, to get into their canoes, paddle out and wave their feathers. Then the ships would retreat. With this they could change the world’s total context, to its very foundation. 

Design seems interesting to me because it can influence large things also in their initial stages. That is what is happening in Latvia at the moment, perhaps not so much now as in the 1990s. When the nation was built and its entire system was designed. Politics also contains design – how to create your own nation. And what happened in Latvia in the 1990s happened in Sweden 300 years ago. The nation was divided up: this is yours; this is mine; that is his: six families – and peace. But here in 2007 there are still some five or six guys who can’t divide up the nation amongst themselves. That’s why it’s better to do it quickly and then live peacefully for the next 300 years. In Sweden there are more strict traditions, in Latvia in turn, there are more experiments. This is because values have not been divided and totally stabilised the way they should be. Although alongside this, if there is anywhere where something totally new could occur, it is here.  

If something new occurs, then it should be this way: creating it artificially is not possible. For example, Finnish design is famous because it obviously had to be famous. But the Latvian Institute deciding what our image is – it’s completely wrong. If we today have an impression of English as hard drinkers which come to Riga for the local girls, then obviously it must be the case, because they behave in that way. But the Latvian image in a general sense? I could definitely say that in Brazil they are the type of tidy people who erect fences. 

For example, I really liked those folk songs about driving drunk, which were advertised during Jāņi (the Midsummer celebrations). A very effective way to take the historical capital and wealth and to transform it into something meaningful today. What more could we dig up? Well obviously Lāčplēsis is very popular today. Hockey fans are good, positive examples, who wear ‘Lāčplēsis’ bear ears. But it is also natural – young men and women travel the world and have a good time. And in this way they are becoming famous. This is honest and natural. This happens. If it is decided, then it will be.  

Soon a fantastic project will be launched, a short animated film titled “A Latvian”. It is about a character, a Latvian, which has been created and re-created over a period of eight hundred years. He lives on this patch of dirt, where some guy arrives and says that he should do this. And the Latvian changes. And another says that now he should do something else, and the Latvian changes again. Over eight hundred years you see what has happened to this country. The Latvian has remained here, but the whole time he has been re-designed. And only now can he become that which he should have been. He has been transformed over the last eight hundred years: recreated an innumerable number of times, and perhaps now finally there is time for him to create himself. This situation is important, if you wish to find and see the reality that is specifically related to here. That which you can see in Germany, Ireland and Russia. Here it was oppressed all this time, and that which had to come out of it, is now emerging. But no one knows quite what it is. It is a mysterious thing. And I say – it is happening right now, you can see the first trends. And still, at least ten years have to pass. Why? Because we do not yet have a generation which has completely grown up after the reinstatement of independence. Now seventeen years have already passed? Wait another ten years and let’s return to this question – then we will have something to talk about.

Material prepared by Kārlis Vērpe