Press review

Gunita Ozoliņa, Auseklis, 7 October 2004..
FARMERS BECOME INSTALLATION STARS.

All inquired participants and spectators, observers of the multimedia installation Milk in the Saturday afternoon, said that it has been interesting. It was a conclusion of an international project realised by the Dutch artist Esther Polak and Latvian Ieva Auziņa in collaboration with RIXC New Media Culture Centre at the Bārda Family Museum Rumbiņi in the Katvari Parish. The farmer Jānis Simsons from Vidridži Parish and Katvari local people – the farmer and Parish Chairman Mārtiņš Freimanis with his spouse Zaiga, Aina Rudzīte, Ilga Grīnberga, Andis Ozols, Astrīda Pauliņa, head of the local dairy-farming co-operative Pienene – all of them spent one day with a GPS device in their pockets and were recorded by a camera, thus marking the origins the Rigamont cheese produced by Limbažu piens. The project was continued in the Netherlands, including phone conversations with its largest distributor Henk Vonk? and the author of the cheese recipe, Italian Angelo Frosio. [. . .]
Several tens of interested people, including the protagonists – installation stars, watched this performance that lasted about an hour, smiling and commenting upon it. Already during the shooting of material, Jānis Simsons remarked that he would readily attach the small locative media – GPS devices – to each individual cow.
[. . .] After the performance conversations on the remarkable project went on in the Rumbiņi farmstead of the Katvari Parish, tasting a huge round Rigamont cheese and pies. Katvari people sincerely thanked authors of the project, wishing them good luck and success outside Latvia as well. After some time interested people will have a chance to look into the project’s electronic version because the authors have started to work on the home page and, possibly, a book will be published as well.
On Sunday several tens of interested foreign visitors observed the project, arriving from the international festival of new media in Riga. The installation will be on view till Sunday evening, then it will travel to the Netherlands and later will be shown at an international exhibition of art, media and technologies in Germany.