The International Festival of Contemporary Theatre “Homo Novus” 2024 has ended, but Jurģis Suplenieks’ community-commissioned project Upside Down Kuldīga that was premiered in the festival continues to live in the city and can be accessible through the audio guide and in the animated film.
Upside Down Kuldīga is an audio story walk inspired by the facades of Kuldīga’s historic buildings and the stories of its residents. Many places in Kuldīga are different in the minds of the city’s inhabitants than they are in reality: furniture is sold in “Talsu meat shop”, the shop called “Bread loaf” is home to a bar, the wind is really whistling in “Windy”, and the Kuldīga Culture Centre is currently located in a supermarket.
During the Homo Novus Festival the publics walked this story-walk together, but it remains accessible to Kuldīga residents and visitors via a phone app izi.travel.
These stories cannot be read in tourist brochures or history books, say the implementers of the project. These are various funny incidents that live in the memories of fellow villagers, or everyday processes that are common to locals but incomprehensible to newcomers.
Only now we can really begin to enjoy the fruits of the “Upside Down Kuldīga” project, which was started some time ago. Ridiculous and completely crooked stories in the memory of Kuldīga residents have been identified, collected and made available in an audio guide, which during the performance could be experienced in a special performative tour, meeting the storytellers.
“Kuldīga residents must be given time to open. But when one opens, he is like a treasure chest that cannot be closed. (..) It seems to me that the most difficult task was to concentrate those stories and select the ones that will be the brightest, because it is clear that everyone has their own favorite story, but we couldn’t put everything together in an audio guide either,” said project producer Krista Jansone.
About 100 stories were collected. For example: once at the warning sign that you shouldn’t swim in Venta, someone jokingly wrote that it was because of the crocodiles. These news spread to the people, and someone believed it. On the other hand, the “flying pig” is a balloon launched by the Soviet military near the city to ensure communications. But locals have noticed that they can also determine the weather by the condition of the pig etc.
“Upside Down Kuldīga” was commissioned by community art commissioners from Kuldīga in the framework of the “DemArt” project and made part of the programme of the International Festival of Contemporary Theatre “Homo Novus”.
“I think we would like to continue this collaboration with people outside the capital and outside art circles.” said festival’s curator Santa Remere. “Our intention is to reduce the gap that often exists between a contemporary artist and a person who does something other than contemporary art on a daily basis.”
