Anita Pence, Dita Pence

Visual Arts Fellow 04 - 06/2003

Anta and Dita Pence’s collaborative work in 2003 reflected on the ideals of Western media and the consumer society that entered post-socialist Latvia 1990s, asking questions in a critical but non-moralizing way.

The five-part installation Flying Carpets commented on these ideals with a wink, examining principles joined to the imperatives of information dissemination, progress and glory as post-9/11 neo-conservatives call for more security. The installation consisted of four handmade carpets, each made from different garbage bags. Some were equipped with built-in CD players and speakers along with a video loop that ran on a large TFT monitor at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen. Each of the carpets and related sounds deal with the designated categories of security (dark blue with padding), fame (pink, applause-noise), consumption (green, advertising endorsements/superlatives) and the future (black, motorcycle noise). The video shows a person throwing a garbage bag carpet out of the first-floor window of the Künstlerhaus, after which the carpet is run over by a passing car. Acoustic components of the scene include a cacophonous mix of samples from a televised parliamentary debate about the Eurofighter purchase and a confetti TV show.

Anta and Dita PENCE (*1975) live and work in Riga/LY, where they studied visual communication and set design, respectively, at the Art Academy.