Spīķeri

While the museum's building in Andrejsala is still in the early stages of its development, answers to the questions “what is art? / what is museum?” (in Latvian: kas ir māksla? / kas ir muzejs?) can be found in Spīķeri. The block of Spīķeri buildings is situated in the historic centre of Riga and was included in UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1997.

Vision of the filiation of Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art in Spīķeri by the architecture bureau MARK (2009)

kim? IN SPĪĶERI

Spīķeri is planned to be a new venue for culture and creative education in the centre of Riga offering friendly and contemporary space for different cultural and entertainment events, cosy restaurants, shops as well as fixed up and lively banks of the Daugava. At present, the architecture bureau MARK in collaboration with the owners of Spīķeri RKS Ltd. has developed the architectonic proposal for the filiation of the Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art. It has been planned that the building conceived for activities by kim? will be rebuilt over the next few years.

Since May 2009 kim? functions in temporary premises at 12/1 Maskavas Street in Spīķeri where it strives to offer high quality,  profound contemporary culture programme that would seem attractive to modern people. The implementation of the project by unitary planning of the content, marketing and public relations policy is carried out by the most potent Latvian organizations of contemporary culture – New Media Culture Centre RIXC, Department of Visual Communication (Art Academy of Latvia), publishing house 1/4 Satori, New Theatre Institute of Latvia, META-KAFE, National Film Centre of Latvia, culture and art project NOASS, poetry group "Orbīta", experimental music festival "Skaņu mežs" and others.

Using the synergy among different fields of contemporary culture and uniting traditional audiences of partner organizations, kim? aims to stimulate the creation of a new, intellectually and emotionally receptive audience that would be gradually warming up to most varied manifestations of contemporary culture in art, music, cinema, theatre, dance, circus, architecture, design, fashion, literature, philosophy etc.

 
View of Spīķeri (2008)