NEVER-DISAPPEARING PĀRDAUGAVAS

Description

Music is inseparable from its era. The audio walk Never-disappearing Pārdaugavas is the first work of the creative group Nebula ?*, and it is not about music, but about time (or vice versa). The audio performance portrays human existentialism and toiled relations in an age when social networks did not exist, but completely different threads had to be used. One such thread leads the narrator’s voice through the labyrinth of underground music.

The origins of Pārdaugava underground electronic music can be dated to 1976 with the establishment of the home recording studio Seque in the house of Hardijs Lediņš. Latvian underground scene has never been a unified or in any way officially organised movement, but looking back, we can see the extremely large number of bands come from Pārdaugava, the most melancholic part of Riga. The performance is an attempt to find out something more about one of the most mysterious members of the scene – a girl with no name, whose works are signed under the title “I’ll tell you in a thousand years”.

To experience the show, you need a mobile phone with an Internet connection and headphones.

The link to the performance is here – https://dodies.footprint.lv/pardaugava_eng/start

If you are about to experience the audio performance in Riga, the coordinates of the beginning of the walk is the public transport stop Sēlpils Street/ Donoru centrs on Dzirciema Street. Google Maps coordinates – 56.9568003,24.0526503.

If you are about to experience the audio performance in another city, please:

1. start your walk on a busy street,
2. after 20 minutes continue your walk through parks and less busy/smaller streets,
3. if possible – have some body of water at the end of your walk.

The pace of the audio walk is moderately slow. You are asked to synchronise your walking rhythm with the rhythm of the footsteps heard in the recording.

Artist / Company biography

Derived from the name of an interstellar cloud of dust and ionised gases, The Nebula ?*  is an open creative group that revolves around performing arts. The question mark in The Nebula ?* usually is replaced by the first letters of the names of the people involved in each particular work. For this project The Nebula DJV stands for Diāna Kondraša, Jānis Balodis and Viesturs Balodis.

Jānis Balodis is a dramaturg associated with the independent venue Dirty Deal Teatro in Riga. He has co-created several performances with director Valters Sīlis, including “National Development Plan” (2012) where he made his first solo stage appearance. Jānis also initiated and was one of the authors in the project “War Notes” in Dirty Deal Teatro in 2014-2015, a series of stage readings of new texts by young Latvian dramaturgs and directors as a reaction to the ongoing war in Ukraine. His works have been performed in the Baltic States, Sweden, Russia, Finland, Germany, Belgium and Kazakhstan.

Contact info

Jānis Balodis, +371 29423003

Credits

Technical specification

Programme