Andris Brinkmanis is an art critic and curator, born in Riga and based in Brunate and Milan. He is a Senior lecturer and the Course Leader of BA in Painting and Visual Arts at NABA in Milan and Visiting Professor for the Art Academy of Latvia Curatorial Course. In 2021 he has curated and edited the book Asja Lācis. L’agitatrice rossa. Teatro, femminismo, arte e rivoluzione (Meltemi, 2021). His most recent curatorial projects are Over Exposed (Museo Irpino, Avellino, 2023); Panoptic Garden a one week intensive public program for the Pavilion of Uzbekistan at the Venice Biennale, with Sara Raza (Venice, 2022),Infancy and History (OCAT, Beijing 2019); Signals from Another World. Asja Lācis and Children’s Theatre (AVTO, Istanbul 2019), Asja Lācis. Engineer of the Avant-Garde (Latvian National Library, 2019), 2nd Yinchuan Biennale. Starting from the desert Ecologies on the Edge with Marco Scotini (Yinchuan, China, 2018); Mei Lan Fang and The Soviet Theatre (Research project for The Szechwan Tale. Theatre and History at the First Anren Biennale in Anren, China and Milan in 2018); Signals from another world. Asja Lācis Archives (Documenta 14, Kassel 2017); and Disobedience Archive (The Park) with Marco Scotini (SALT, Istanbul, 2014). Brinkmanis has collaborated with magazines and publications such as Corriere della Sera, Alfabeta 2, Flash Art International, Monument to Transformation, SOUTH as a State of Mind and Studija. His research is centred on alternative education and the relationship between education and visual culture.
Andris Brinkmanis Exercises in Care
The workshop entitled Exercises in Care will depart from the premises and proposal by physicist David Bohm On Dialogue – aimed at creating a ground for a radically different communication, being in the world and with each other.
Bohm underlined our inability to listen and lack of attention that goes beyond idiosyncratic perception, as a prime reason for our failure to embrace diversity, collectivity, provide empathy, care, as well as respect multiple intelligences and forms of life.
By utilizing tools provided by Pauline Oliveros, such as Deep Listening, theatrical exercises by Augusto Boal, Asja Lacis, ideas stemming from eco-feminism to bel hooks, from indigenous epistemologies to anarchist thought and philosophy, the workshop will be an attempt at stepping away from anthropo and western-centric perspectives, towards new, more inclusive, plural and ecologically sustainable ontologies.
Through a series of exercises and experiments of non-verbal communication, dance, performance, breathwork, sensory disorientation, mindfulness, yoga, meditation, readings, discussions and aesthetic/artistic practices, this workshop will attempt to explore possibilities and limits of experiential learning as a collective worldbuilding, as well as its eventual social and political implications.
What forms of assembly can be built in order to experience less fragmentary and more holistic worldviews? Through this a frequently abused, but crucial concept of care will assume a different collective and more embodied and embedded connotation. The workshop will be organized in collaboration with The Museum of Care, as well as local and international guests.