Categorised in: Authors / Recent

Tribute to Indulis (obit)

Tribute to Indulis Bilzens (1940-2024) – You used to say that the wave would wait for you there on the seacoast forever.

I had the great privilege of sharing six years with you in one of the oldest and most legendary artist residencies, Sponti-WGs in Frankfurt/M at Robert-Mayer-Straße 55. It feels appropriate that you where the first person I met in Frankfurt when arriving to the Städelschule in 2000 to study. By having the opportunity of getting to know you, I was pulled like a rip current to the magical underworld of international Avant-garde of the last five decades of the 20^th century.

You always would say that the apartment at Robert Mayer Street 55 was located in the physical center of Frankfurt. Indeed, it was central, but not just geographically speaking. Your apartment was a living piece of artwork – full of artifacts, details, memories, curiosities, Mayday techno party posters, boxes filled with multimedia equipment and of course, a tidal wave of books. The kitchen was always inundated with piles of newspapers wrapped in cigarette smoke and existed as a pseudo-press room where you were always ready for a briefing. You were always at the center of the debate, an active participant in the commentary on global and national politics, history, culture, arts, and of course, the NBA. All of this was explored, debated and discussed while sitting at the circular kitchen table of your conference-style seating arrangement.

You were always a relentless and fierce defender of civic and artistic freedoms. I will always remember you saying, “Democracy is as much as it takes, as we are ready to engage in defending it”. Your skillful rhetoric, sharp intellect, and deep knowledge of culture, history, politics and science in its inter-dependencies, were simply extraordinary. You always challenged your younger opponents while seeing them grow.

We both shared the vision for an advanced Latvian society able to disentangle itself from Post-Soviet state of failed modernity. Inspired by our debates in Frankfurt, the book “Mūsdienu kultūras stāvokļi/Conditions for Contemporary Culture. Riga”, edited by Oskars Redbergs and Inga Karlšrēma, emerged as the centerpiece of contemporary cultural debate and criticism. With your inspiration, we organized the “9 Conditions of Riga: Regeneration and Transformation of the City – Urban Environment and Architecture”—the largest traveling architecture exhibition „9 Conditions of Riga: Regeneration and Transformation of the City – Urban Environment and Architecture” in Frankfurt for the European Central Bank (ECB) Cultural days, and also built The New School of Architecture in Riga.

Often on Saturday mornings, the inhabitants of Robert Mayer 55 were joyfully awakened by the sounds of evergreens, jazz, and classics you loved improvising on the piano. You enjoyed gardening, always attentive to the flowers on your balcony and in the front yard. With a certain self-irony, you used to say, “All Latvians have that strange gardening craze inside them, whether they land in New York, Frankfurt or Riga”.

You always had a way of emerging at exhibition openings and various events organized by the Frankfurt art scene. You personally drew large crowds at your famous MediaMix performance sessions as well, performed by standing on top of roundtables at Club Voltaire.

As an artist, you were always present and ready to surprise your audience. Constantly engaged with the individuals filling the surrounding space and providing a setting full of intelligence, knowledge, and laughter. With your presence, seemingly mundane everyday situations became the events of grand significance and of global importance. It felt that every meeting with you translated into a meaningful encounter and was a celebration of human endeavor. You will be remembered by many of us because of your presence emphasizing each moment for the rest of us.

You are a legend, epic in the eyes of many who were fortunate enough to know you, and I am honored to have curated your last live MediaMix performance “Riga Stronger than Death” in Riga in 2014.

https://youtu.be/mWW7mO5n3u8

And also, let’s be frank—we have been extraordinary hosts to some of the most memorable parties in Frankfurt during the last decade and you will always be remembered by your friends in Frankfurt, Riga, and elsewhere.

You lived during the most exciting times and were at the center of it all. With ease, you surfed the cultural and artistic discourses, floatably trespassing borders of cultures, languages and disciplines. Buoyantly, you used your artistic practices and your art to encounter, confront, and deconstruct the most ruthless of out world’s political powers at the time with their propaganda and strict ideologies. You fearlessly encountered every heavy wave set when they came, dropping into the barrel of the biggest one with a sincere pursuit of joy.

You used to say that the wave would wait for you there on the seacoast forever.

Goodbye, the artist.

Rest in peace, Induli

Image courtesy and text by architect Oskars Redbergs

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© Oskars Redbergs, 2014

© Megaphone Publishers, 2014