Having started the action in a couple of rooms the Culture and Information Centre K@2 now manages already a small network of cultural spaces spread around Karosta, the district of Liepaja. Back in 2000 one would call this area a “ghetto neighbourhood”, now this place is a must to visit for everybody interested in ongoing cultural processes in Latvia.

A playroom for kids, gallery of arts, multimedia laboratory and sound studio, artists in residence programme and hostel, free internet access, a small film theatre – all these structures are up and working, open to wider public and artists willing to share their experience among themselves as well as interact with society.

Now we would like to take this further and invest into capacity of the K@2, gradually turning Karosta into a safe and colourful educational and artistic playground open to everyone.

We intend to develop a strong, regional and international culture centre – Campus Karosta – with a harmonious balance between HARDWARE (physical spaces and structures) and SOFTWARE (cultural events, performances, workshops, exhibitions, skills and brains of people etc.).

About Karosta

Liepajas Karosta was built by order of the Russian Tsar Alexander III as a military port in the Baltic region.
Karosta as autonomous city environement emerged at the end of 19th century and at the beginning of 20th. Liepaja that time was a part of Russian Imperia, and it was famous with its’ non-freezing open trade port. The other factor relevant to choose this place for Russian Imperia Baltic Sear navy base was its nearness to the border.
Since 1890 towards the North from the city of Liepaja, begin huge scale building process of the fortress and war city. Official order to start the construction was given by Russian Tsar Alexander III. His son Tsar Nicolai II, in remembrance of his father ordered to call this new war base “The Port of Imperator’ Alexander III ”.
Only during the period of Latvian independence this place was named Warport (Karosta).

The Port of Alexander III was completely autonomous settlement with its’ own infrastructure, electrical power plant and water supply. There was even post office, also called under the name of “The Port of Imperator’ Alexander III”. Sending the postcard from there to Liepaja cost like intercity shipment - 3 kopeck  instead of 1 kopeck, which was the price for postal services within the Liepaja city.
 
After the Soviet occupation of Latvia Karosta became a military base housing some 25,000 and was closed to civilians by a fortress wall was build all around the whole city. After Latvian independence the Soviet army left in 1994, leaving behind some 6000 people (mostly Russians relatives of the army, staff or military pensioners). Those who stayed salvaged what was left behind, stripping the buildings of their floors, windows, wiring and even bricks; selling them off for scrap. Today some 7500 people live in Karosta. Less than 25 percent of them are Latvian citizens. Mostly Russian speaking, the stateless citizens of Karosta either carry Latvian issued so-called ‘alien’ passports, or old Soviet ones. The town appeared to be a landscape of ruins. Many houses were completely destroyed from the original vandalism, and the town is plagued by mass unemployment.

After and experience setting-up arts workshops for local kids in Karosta, documentary film-makers Kristine Briede & Carl Biorsmark began making a film on Karosta and subsequently decided to step through the screen to “become documentary social workers” with the inauguration of the Culture and Information Center K@2 in December 2000.

http://www.borderland.tv

Karosta Project
by Derek Holzer and Sara Kolster

Even as time goes on, it leaves its traces in the objects around us. The Latvian town of Karosta has seen much of the Twentieth Century: Imperial Russia, the Second World War, Soviet occupation and now an independent state. For 30 days crossing over into the new year of 2003, artists Derek Holzer and Sara Kolster (US/NL), together with the K@2 arts center, explored how much of this rich and often tragic history lies hidden in the physical objects remaining: a collapsed housing blocks, a pile of bones found on the beach... and discover how new life for the future can be made from them.

The contribution of the artists to K@2 and Karosta existed in initiating workshops in the area of digital image and sound for the young people in Karosta. These workshops focused on using simple audio and video tools, such as microphones, radio receivers, image scanners and cameras to investigate details in our environment which are usually left unnoticed.

Also, one of the goal of the workshops was to create an "audio-database" of Karosta, reflecting sounds that its residents find characteristic, or feel they are in danger of losing [or have already lost...] These sounds were marked with Global Positioning System [GPS] data, mapped out and placed in a GPS-accesable database hosted by GPSter.net, so that future explorers and residents of Karosta can have a window to the region's acoustic past.

---
From: Derek Holzer <derek@x-i.net>
Date: Fri,  3 Jan 2003 01:32:46 +0100
To: xchange@re-lab.net

Happy New Year to the Xchange list!

Day Fifteen: Hello to the Old...

New Year in Karosta actually happens twice. At eleven, Russians from the housing blocks begin with rockets and cheap champaigne alongside their cousins in Moscow, one time zone away. By the time midnight rolls around, the whole scene is pretty well lit up with legitimate and not-so-legitimate displays, and the Latvian military base lends a hand with high-intensity, parachuting signal flares. We spent an icy quarter of an hour on the beach watching everything glow before going back inside to prepare for the evening's performances.

"Old Year's Night" began for us with an opening in the K.Maksla? Gallery here in Karosta. The theme was "Sirdsapzina (conscience)", which followed closely on the theme of "Korupcija (corruption)" and "Leiputrija" [an untranslatable Latvian word referring to a mythical place where you have everything you dreamed about - everything is made of food but those who come there soon take no pleasure in eating]. This theme of conscience strikes very close to the work which Sara and I are doing here by reading the "resonances" of the buildings and objects which we find here. The silent reception our "sketch" video [bones, beach, fortress, massacre, sea, beach, bones...] received proved quite aptly that many people here are still not ready to confront issues of the past. Other reminders of the past, like the bones I found last summer, surfaced this winter as well. An old Russian shell, unexploded and chopped out of the ice by a local sculptor, featured prominently in the gallery show. Alongside this was a home-built still for making moonshine from yeast and sugar --the purest booze known to man-- just in case one's conscience keeps them from sleeping. For those wishing to audibly measure their conscience, a body-resistance-activated noise device built was brought by Roman from Riga. The slight jolt it gave off was an instant hit with the local youngsters, who held hands to make long daisy chains, sending the voltage circling around the table.

The audio tracks for today are a selection of prepared and improvised [but isn't it always improvised at the last moment?] material for the gallery opening and performance on new year's eve. Max Borisov's [String] track was created to go along with a series of X-Ray photographs arranged by Carl Biorsmark, behind which the subjects of these photos would stand. The two performance tracks, "hello 2 the old" and "goodbye 2 the new" were recorded live between four and five am, new year's morning. The track made with myself and Max Borisov is an improvisation for manipulated objects, prerecorded environments [many of which have appeared or will soon appear in this webjournal] and live processing. The second track is based around a collection of handmade and Soviet-era synths and noise-makers from Alexei and Roman [aka Nr.11], with additional keyboards by Max and intermittant vocals and noise by Handjah. A snapshot in time, leaving one year and moving on to the next. We're glad you decided to join us...

--- derek

The whole Karosta Project is very much a process-based work. There are no set conclusions, no predetermined end-points, just a few concrete results that we hope to have ready by the end of our stay [some audio tracks, a short video, the audio-database]... Everything else relies on our daily experiences to guide us. This weblog will detail some of these daily experiences, as well as show some of the audio-visual materials that we gather along the way. It also provides us with further experiences for us in the form of your comments. Please feel free to post your reactions, ideas and questions to this website, and they will help to shape this project for all of us.

http://karosta.edworks.net/