HARDIJS LEDINS’ SCREENING

FOCUS PROGRAMME

HARDIJS LEDINS’ SCREENING
22.09 / 17.00 / KINO BIZE

„GOODBYE EMPIRE” 
Video provocation (1991/1996)
Concept:Hardijs Lediņš and Māra Ķimele
Video: Valdis Poikāns
Foto: Valts Kleins
Members of the rally:Uldis Anže, Ivars Auziņš, Artis Dzērve, Elita Būdniece, Daiga Gaismiņa, Milena Gulbe, Ilze, Elita Jundze, Rēzija Kalniņa, Valts Kleins, Māra Ķimele, Pēteris Ķimelis, Hardijs Lediņš, Edgars Podnieks, Ivars Stonins, Uldis Valters, Nora  Veignere, Uģis Vītiņš, Andris Zeibots, Agnese Zeltiņa and others.
Music:Hardijs Lediņš, Whiteship
Stage design:Anita Kreituse
Costumes: Bruno Birmanis, Uģis Rūķītis
Director: Elita Būdnice
The rally took place in September 1991 in different Russian cities, when several young actors and authors of the project headed there. It was a bus trip around the Russian Golden Circle, a journey which lasted approximately two weeks and was organised  by Māra Ķimele and Hardijs Lediņš. The main goal of the journey  was an exchange trip of Māra Ķimele’s young actor students to a theatre school in Yaroslavl, however, several stops in Soviet cities where made along the way, during which provocative rallies and  happenings were created, satirizing the lost Soviet Empire.The photographer Valts Kleins recollects the trip in the following way: „Hardijs understood that the Soviet Union was on the brink of a collapse, that it was drawing its final breaths, and this should be marked somehow. Not as a documentary, but ironically, creatively, as far as that was possible. That is why Ķimele’s actor  group was invited, costumes rented and different theatrical props 

created, then we hoped on the bus and toured the Russian Golden Circle. We blended in as an agitation brigade, touring around the best cities of the Golden Circle, including Moscow, driving,
watching, performing. Endless happenings took place. We were
driving and saw a tank and an absurd sculpture dedicated to the
Soviet victories, and performed a happening there. We were at the
Mažeikiai oil factory… We visited the Exhibition of Achievements
of the National Economy, Hardijs was fishing at the Red Square.
We were swimming in all of it. And Hardijs was just like Bodhisat
va, he did not get involved in useless dialogues. He would trigger a situation and disappear.”
The actors created various intriguing situations in day-to-day
environments. For instance, Artis Dzērve, dressed in a uniform,
decorated with medals, nobly marching across the Red Square,
Hardijs Lediņš with a fishing rod, fishing for something invisible in a
crowd of tourists next to Kremlin, Rēzija Kalniņa with a giant bunch
of keys thrown over her shoulder and a blue boyish haircut flirting
with a saxophone player wearing an executioner’s robe at the foot
of a fountain, Valts Kleins in a colourful 80s windbreaker, a Rus
sian guide clothed in red accompanying a group and telling them
about the history of the most important places in Moscow. Andris
Zeibots with the mirror in the form of a crescent moon wearing a
Native American robe and hat, a guard following them around and
understanding nothing because he is Russian. But we are Latvians,
and that is what this video project celebrates – freedom, wearing
the worn-down clothes of the Soviet empire, using props. Next to
the Lenin Mausoleum at the Red Square, Artis Dzērve takes his hat
off, holds it against his chest, two women in green robes from the
actor group chain him up, handcuff him, and lead him away. All
while surrounded by a group of laughing children who are shouting,
“I am on camera!”
“We are mocking the structure of this giant collapsed empire – the
way it functions, the way it has reached its state of absurdity. We
tried to expand on the absurd in a decorative form.” – Valts Kleins